The Thomistic Response to the

Nouvelle Théologie
The Thomistic Response to the
Nouvelle Théologie
Concerning the Truth of Dogma
and the Nature of Theology

Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, OP
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP
and
Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP

Edited and translated by Jon Kirwan

and Matthew K. Minerd

The Catholic University of America Press

Washington, D.C.
 Introduction, bibliography, and English translations
(excluding those listed below)
Copyright © 2023
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved

English translation of Réginald Garrigou‐Lagrange, OP,

“Where is the New Theology Leading Us?”
Copyright © 2011 Josephinum Journal of Theology
English translation of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange,
“Theology and the Life of Faith.”
Copyright © 2019 Cluny Media

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of

American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence of Paper
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 “If at that age when great vocations and ardent fidelities emerge
some ardent youths meditate on these pages and receive from
them some taste and ambition for the task of theology, this
exhausting labor in service to the divine truth, both will be well
rewarded. For in an age of horrible famines—both material and
spiritual—the words of the Gospel resound with an ominous tone:
‘The harvest is plenty, but the laborers few.’”

—Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, OP

v
“Jon Kirwan and Matthew Minerd have rendered the Catholic theological com-
munity a great service. The Dominican response to La nouvelle théologie has
long been buried under the copious amounts of ressourcement discoveries and
the subsequent rethinking of how to do Catholic theology that they generated.
Today graduate theology students will find names like de Lubac and Daniélou
familiar, whereas Labourdette and Marie-Joseph Nicolas would likely be known
only to specialists. All four of these men were French Roman Catholic priests,
two Jesuit and two Dominicans. After the Second Vatican Council, the Jesuits
were honored with the cardinalate; the Dominicans were overlooked.
“The value of this book, however, rests not on the unearthing of a long–
forgotten theological debate. In fact, the book provides a long and expert intro-
duction to one of the most significant events in modern Catholic theology.
For the first time, English readers have a translation of the objections that the
Dominicans raised to the project that became known as ‘The New Theology.’
The most lasting monument to this twentieth–century novelty appears in the
some 632 volumes published at Paris in the Sources Chrétiennes collection.
Each volume presents a text by a patristic or medieval author that, as the title
indicates, is considered one of the “sources” for doing Christian theology.
“Do you wonder why learned Dominicans would have taken exception
to this project to supply fresh translations of the classical texts of the Christian
tradition? If so, and one should, read what the Dominicans themselves wrote
in their own defense. If you have noticed a certain destabilization of Catholic
theology that seems to leave so many questions open to a variety of opinions,
read this book. The Dominicans saw the crackup coming. If you are bothered
by the fact that today much Catholic theology looks like an exercise in literary
criticism instead of an exposition of eternal truth, this is the book for you.
What is best, the long introduction and fine translations come from the pens
of two devout Catholic laymen who, as far as I know, are not committed a
priori to either Jesuit or Dominican ways of thinking. No. Kirwan and Minerd
are concerned with the stabilization of Catholic truth.”
Romanus Cessario, OP
Ave Maria University, FL

“The general shape of twentieth-century theology can be summarized as a

movement away from first principles to sources and narratives. And herein
lies the tremendous value of this book: it is an important source about first
principles that challenges prevailing narratives about the history of Catholic
thought. Even if one does not agree with everything found in this volume,
no one can deny that these essays present nuanced analysis and coherent
argumentation. The heated nouvelle théologie debates of yesteryear have
ceased. The critical questions that Thomists asked about the nouvelle théolo-
gie, however, have not yet received adequate answer. Indeed, the analysis and

vi
argumentation found herein are ripe for reconsideration. English-speaking
students of theology owe profound gratitude to Jon Kirwan and Matthew K.
Minerd for the impressive erudition and remarkable industry that produced
this book—a book that asks a fundamental, timeless and timely question:
what is sacred theology?”
Cajetan Cuddy, OP
Dominican House of Studies, Washington, DC

“What guarantees the unity and pluralism, the stability as well as the adapt-
ability, of Catholic theology? What is the role of St Thomas Aquinas and his
legacy for the theological enterprise today and in the future? Through this
timely volume, Jon Kirwan and Matthew K. Minerd point us to the impor-
tance of past history in considering these contemporary questions. Not only
do they uncover one root for today’s challenges in the largely forgotten con-
tours of a lively debate about theological method in France nearly a century
ago, but they also make available in English translation some of its more neg-
lected contributions from some prominent Dominican thinkers. While their
thorough and useful introduction and chronology of the debate is sensitive
to the different nuances of the friars of Toulouse and Rome, the editors help-
fully discern some common approaches among the contributors and evaluate
some of the reasons why dialogue was so unfortunately truncated to the det-
riment of Catholic theology. The publication of this volume can only serve
to aid a renewed theological dialogue that can serve the Church’s engagement
with the modern world.”
Simon Francis Gaine, OP
Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinas, Rome

“Between the end of World War II and the opening of the Second Vatican
Council, an exchange regarding theological method and the nature of doc-
trine was initiated by Dominican theologians in Europe with their Jesuit con-
freres. The actual nature of the Dominican concern—as the evidence dem-
onstrates—was treated preponderantly by their interlocutors more as
circumstantial polemical annoyance than as matter for sustained and serious
conversation. In the time since, the exchange has come to be treated even
more reductively, in an unhistorical and prooftext manner exhibiting many
of the elements of a morality play. Much of the Dominican engagement—
including importantly the response of Labourdette to Henri de Lubac—has
been treated as mere ‘flyover’ country in the soi dissant ‘historical’ accounts
that proceed remote from the texts. This volume provides the Dominican
texts, and seeks to redress the postponement of a theological conversation
already overdue when it began before the Second Vatican Council, a conver-
sation arguably even more necessary today. The introductory essay alone is

vii
normative literature on this subject. The editors and translators, Kirwan and
Minerd, are owed a debt of thanks for making these works at last available to
the Anglophone world. May this ‘dialogue delayed’ be renewed with intensi-
fied charity and intelligence. This work is one of the most important theo-
logical publications of the past 50 years.”
Steven Long
Ave Maria University, FL

“Gives voice to a theological concern that has been marginalized, especially

in post-conciliar academic theological discourse. . . . As a great majority of
these articles are only now appearing in English, a real historical-theological
consideration of this debate can begin in the English-speaking world.”
Andrew Meszaros
St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland

“This book makes available for the first time in English the most important
texts that express Thomistic concerns about the Nouvelle Théologie. Its
scholarly introduction exposes the way in which historians have uncritically
accepted slanderous claims about the arguments, motives, and attitudes of
twentieth century Thomistic theologians. It also shows how these theologians
foresaw many problems that would arise in Catholic theology after Vatican II.”
Thomas Osborne
University of St. Thomas, Houston, TX

“It’s often the case in the history of Catholic theology that forgotten and unre-
solved disputes of the past become suddenly relevant and remembered again
in the face of a new crisis. Kirwan and Minerd have heroically unearthed such
a dispute. On one side were mid-20th century Jesuit fathers, Jean Daniélou
and Henri Bouillard. On the other side were Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange
and Michel Labourdette, representing two different Dominican provinces.
The two sides were utterly divided on the very nature of truth, dogma, and
the scientific character of theology itself. The result is an electrifying and
dynamic set of dialogues within French Catholicism that’s essential not only
for our understanding of old debates over nouvelle théologie, but these dis-
putes can also help us to renew and revive the very task and mission of the-
ology in the Church today. Highly recommended.”
C. C. Pecknold
The Catholic University of America

viii
 Contents
Translators’ Introduction: A Dialogue Delayed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Part 1: The Toulouse Response: Revue thomiste and

Dialogue Théologique
1. Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP
2. A Theological Dialogue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, OP
3. Theology and Its Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP
4. Criticism in Theology: A Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP
5. Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP
6. The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological Science . . 193
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP, and Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP
7. Closing Remarks Concerning Our Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP
8. Discussion Surrounding Our ‘Dialogue Théologique’ . . . . . . 255
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP, and Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP

Part 2: The Roman Response: Garrigou-Lagrange on Truth

and Dogma
9. Theology and the Life of Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
10. Where is the New Theology Headed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 287
11. Truth and the Immutability of Dogma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
12. Concerning Notions Consecrated by the Councils . . . . . . . . . 319
13. On the Need to Return to the Traditional Conception
of Truth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
14. On the Immutability of Defined Truths, With Remarks
on the Notion of the Supernatural . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 343
15. Relativism and the Immutability of Dogma According to
the [First] Vatican Council . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
16. Correspondence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371
Maurice Blondel and Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

ix
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391

x
 Translators’ Introduction:
A Dialogue Delayed
Jon Kirwan and Matthew K. Minerd

E
rupting during the immediate aftermath of World War II, though with
roots going back decades, the nouvelle théologie affair was a multi-year
dispute that engaged a number of Catholic (and, at times, Protestant1)
thinkers concerning a range of philosophical, theological, and political issues.
To those interested in the controversy, it will come as a surprise that some of
the most important texts in what is arguably the most important theological
debate between the condemnation of modernism and the opening of the Sec-
ond Vatican Council are all but forgotten,2 despite its continued relevance
concerning the questions of theological methodology posed today.3 With the
exception of a few sensational fragments that are frequently cited, though

1 This aspect of the dialogue, not generally noted well enough, was addressed briefly in
Marie-Michel Labourdette and Marie-Joseph Nicolas, “Autour du ‘Dialogue théologique,’”
Revue thomiste 47 (1947): 577–85. This essay is included in translation here as “Discus-
sion Surrounding our ‘Dialogue théologique.’”
2 See Étienne Fouilloux, “Dialogue théologique? (1946–1948),” in Saint Thomas au XXe
siecle: Actes du colloque Centenaire de la Revue Thomiste; Toulouse, 25–28 mars 1993,
ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino (Paris: Éditions Saint-Paul, 1994), 153.
3 Writing over thirty years ago, and from a perspective differing from the present authors,
Gerald McCool nonetheless made a perceptive observation which is as true today as it
was under his pen at the time: “In contemporary Catholic theology, the relation between
positive and speculative theology still remains a problem whose solution demands the
use of a coherent system of epistemology and metaphysics. . . . For the contemporary
debate over theological method is simply another phase in the dialectical movement of
Catholic theology’s response to the challenge of post-Enlightenment thought from the
beginning of the nineteenth century through Vatican I, Aeterni Patris, the Modernist cri-
sis, between-the-wars Thomism, the New Theology controversy, and Vatican II up to the
present. To understand where we are in Catholic scientific theology, we must understand
where we have come from and how far we have traveled in the course of the last two cen-
turies. The contemporary quest for an adequate method in Catholic theology has a his-
tory. The better that history is known, the clearer will be the theologian’s understanding
of his own discipline and his own scientific task” (emphasis added). See Gerald A.
McCool, Nineteenth Century Scholasticism: The Search or a Unitary Method (New York:
Fordham University Press, 1989), 15–16. In a way that likely would have been unsuspected
by McCool himself, we find ourselves in partial agreement, and in this volume, we also
wish to play our own role in making clear all the details of the history of the “New Theol-
ogy controversy.”

1
2 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

often misunderstood, the articles involved in this exchange, scattered as they

were throughout numerous French postwar journals, have been essentially
lost to contemporary readers. This volume reassembles many of those writ-
ings from the most important exchange in the entire ressourcement contro-
versy, in which the Toulouse and Roman Dominicans, on the one hand, and
Fourvière Jesuits, on the other, debated the nature of truth, dogma, and theo-
logical methodology during the tumultuous post-war years. Nearly ten Dom-
inican and Jesuit thinkers exchanged over twenty articles and other writings
across five different journals over a period of almost four years. Sometimes
the articles were written with grace and irenic magnanimity and other times
with bitterness and acrimony. Some are theologically subtle and well-rea-
soned, while others stand as popular manifestos and calls to arms. Moreover,
there is a great variance in theological quality. At times, it can be difficult to
make sense of the entire affair, given that different responses to numerous
charges and countercharges were bouncing back and forth quite rapidly
across different publications. Adding to the complexity was a behind-the-
scenes flurry of personal correspondence and political maneuvering.
While some aspects of the debate are timebound and outdated, consti-
tuting an interest only for historians, other aspects are still vitally important,
with certain texts seeming as if they were written for our own time. Moreover,
rereading these texts makes clear, in a pronounced way, what is already well
known: one of the most important theological debates of modern times, one
whose successful conclusion could have dramatically lowered the theological
temperature of the pre-conciliar era, was largely in fact an unfortunate failure.
What would have been an opportunity for both sides to come together, clarify
their differences and agreements, strive to shore up weaknesses in their own
theologies, and at some level work together, essentially burned itself out
before any meaningful resolution could be reached.
Thus, by providing the missing pieces of the exchange, the translators /
editors of this volume have two main aims in view. First, by presenting here-
tofore-unpublished texts, we hope to give voice to the position articulated by
the Dominican parties, whose full position has been presented only in brief
in English, and even then, in academic journals.4 By bringing these thinkers
to the table, we hope to provide a resource for a fuller understanding of the
essential issues and nuanced positions taken by each side. Second, this vol-
ume intends to provide aid in assessing why in fact this exchange was cut
short and failed to achieve resolution. The answer to the second question
perhaps will call for some revision of received opinions concerning the

4 See Philip J. Donnelly, “Current Theology: Theological Opinion on the Development of

Dogma,” Theological Studies 8, no. 1 (1947): 668–99; Aidan Nichols, “Thomism and the
Nouvelle Théologie,” The Thomist 64, no. 1 (2000): 1–19.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 3

parties involved and, therefore, may in fact spark controversy today. Be that
as it may, all of the opposing voices deserve to state their case, as pleasing or
repellant as they may be, in their own words.
Given this possible controversy, it would be beneficial for us to state, up
front, the historiographical assumptions that will direct this introduction,
which on certain key points follow the lead of the historian Thomas Haskell,
who argues that although historical neutrality is impossible, objectivity must
be sought at all costs.5 Objectivity here bears no resemblance to the antiqu-
ated notions that a history, facilitated by a “pure detachment” and able to dis-
cern an equally-pure history, essentially “is as it was.” For Haskell, the his-
torical skill of detachment is exercised not through “self-immolation” but,
rather, through “self-control,” where “the demand is for detachment and fair-
ness, not disengagement from life.” This “detachment” simply strives after a
basic fairness that is characterized by the historian momentarily, at least, step-
ping outside of his viewpoint to seek the

vital minimum of ascetic self-discipline that enables a person to do such

things as abandon wishful thinking, assimilate bad news, discard pleas-
ing interpretations that cannot pass elementary tests of evidence and
logic, and, most important of all, suspend or bracket one’s own percep-
tions long enough to enter sympathetically into the alien and possibly
repugnant perspectives of rival thinkers. All of these mental acts—espe-
cially coming to grips with a rival’s perspective—require detachment,
an undeniably ascetic capacity to achieve some distance from one’s own
spontaneous perceptions and convictions, to imagine how the world
appears in another’s eyes, to experimentally adopt perspectives that do
not come naturally.6

Sadly, this detachment is often absent from histories of twentieth- cen-

tury Catholic thought, and it is difficult to think of an academically more-
unpopular task than that of offering a kind of historical defense, or at least
qualification, for the Dominican Thomists involved in the nouvelle théologie
affair. They are regularly branded as anti-modern and anti-historical symbols
of Roman authoritarianism and Scholastic excess. While in some cases this
assessment may have been true, nonetheless, as the texts gathered in this vol-
ume will exhibit, this generally-received narrative 7 is at times sadly unfair to
the Dominicans involved, who often were voices of peace and reasoned

5 Thomas Haskell, “Objectivity Is Not Neutrality: Rhetoric vs. Practice in Peter Novick’s
That Noble Dream,” History and Theory 29, no. 2 (May 1990): 129–57.
6 Haskell, “Objectivity,” 132.
7 Reflected quite clearly in, for example, Jürgen Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie,
New Theology: Inheritor of Modernism, Precursor of Vatican II (London: T & T Clark, 2010).
4 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

dialogue, at times even seeking to find common ground and showing theo-
logical affinity for historical studies and the needs of modernity. However,
this side of the debate is often insufficiently acknowledged.
Reproducing this exchange is important not only in order to have a
complete historical record of a complex debate that is often grossly simpli-
fied but also to dispel misleading and highly charged characterizations that
envision a “Thomist attack” against a reticent and irenic ressourcement
simply wanting to survive in peace.8 These characterizations do little beyond
reigniting pre-conciliar acrimony. The reality is, as readers will soon see,
that both sides were intensely engaged, with both sides “attacking” and both
sides looking for dialogue at various points. From the time of their forma-
tion in the 1920s, the nouveaux théologiens had no small disdain for Scho-
lasticism, above all in its post-Tridentine form, and from their ordinations
around 1930 sought unequivocally, in the words of Yves Congar, to “liqui-
date” it primarily through the production of various historical studies.9
Moreover, the debate was not over history or dialogue, which the Thomists
agreed had a place in theological research, but rather, over the controlling
use of a certain philosophy of history championed by the nouveaux théolo-
giens, or, in some cases, their enthusiastic appropriation of aspects of exis-
tentialist thought.
As the table of contents attests, this volume contains only one side of the
debate, the Thomist side, and this was not our original intention. At the start
of this project, we sketched out a volume containing texts from both sides of
the debate over truth, dogma, and theological methodology, presented in
chronological order. However, this aim was altered by the very recent pub-
lication of the ressourcement reader by Patricia Kelly, a wide-ranging collec-
tion covering a number of different thinkers and debates from different time
periods in the nouvelle théologie affair.10 The volume in question provides
merely a sampling of articles from various debates and focuses primarily on
articles written by the proponents of the nouvelle théologie, in a way that is

8 This sort of tone is echoed in the introductory essay in the recent volume by Patricia
Kelly, Ressourcement Theology: A Source Book (London: T&T Clark, 2020). The consis-
tently negative tone of the introduction to the volume, along with the particular slant of
its text selection, is discussed by the two translators of this volume in book reviews to
be published in New Blackfriars and the English edition of Nova et Vetera. Moreover, as
is discussed in those two reviews, Kelly’s translation at times suffers from certain infe-
licities regarding technical terminology and also, without warning, excises content from
the articles being translated, particularly longer footnote texts.
9 For an account of their formation in the 20s, see Jon Kirwan, An Avant-garde Theological
Generation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 96–134; for the quote from Congar,
see Kirwan, Avant-garde, 162.
10 Concerning problems with the translations in the volume, see note 8.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 5

arguably somewhat decontextualized,11 not following any lines of debate from

beginning to end. Thus, in order to avoid undue overlap between these vol-
umes,12 we pivoted to cover the Thomist articles. Thus, in its current state,
this volume presents a departure from our original approach, the aim of
which from the beginning has been to reproduce the debate over dogma and
theology from beginning to end. English translations of most of the missing
ressourcement voices exist elsewhere and will be referenced here, so that
readers can piece together and read both sides of the exchange.

A DIALOGUE WITH THE MODERN WORLD:

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DEBATE
The postwar eruption of the nouvelle théologie debate over the nature of spec-
ulative truth, dogma, and theological methodology was initiated by two
works, both written by Fourvière Jesuits, Jean Daniélou’s 1946 article “Les
Orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse” and Henri Bouillard’s 1944
book Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin, the latter being published
during the closing years of the war.13 Two responses developed, which we
here will refer to as the Toulouse response, led by Michel Labourdette, Marie-
Joseph Nicholas, and Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, all Dominican fathers
of the Toulouse province, gathered around the Revue thomiste, and the
Roman response, led by Garrigou-Lagrange and published primarily in the
journal Angelicum. We have made this differentiation in order to organize
and clarify the exchanges, as they both responded to the Fourvière Jesuits
and were essentially embroiled in separate back-and-forth exchanges. Let us
begin with a general overview of the texts by Daniélou and Bouillard.
In the heady days after the Second World War, what had been an intense
and almost uninterrupted debate within the world of French Catholicism

11 For example, the text is organized thematically in such a way that a response to Labour-
dette is presented before Labourdette’s own article. Moreover, his own response is not
presented. Rather, his text, along with a later text penned by him and Marie-Joseph Nico-
las, is presented in a section partisanly entitled, “Attacks on ‘The New Theology.’”
12 However, we do have two points of overlap, namely Labourdette’s “Theology and its
Sources” and Garrigou-Lagrange’s “Where is the ‘New Theology’ Headed?” This was
needed for full context. Due to concerns addressed above related to Kelly’s recent volume,
we have included our own translation of Michel Labourdette and Marie-Joseph Nicolas,
“L’analogie de la vérité et l’unité de la science théologique,” Revue thomiste 47 (1947):
411–66.
13 See Jean Daniélou, “Les Orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249
(1946): 5–21, translated as “Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” Josephinum Jour-
nal of Theology 18, no. 1 (2011): 51–62; Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S.
Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944), translated as “Conversion and Grace in Aquinas,”
in Kelly, Ressourcement, 33–40.
6 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

over the value of Neo-Thomism and modern thought boiled over and gained
international attention. There had been three generations of critics against
Neo-Thomism, and in 1946, the movement that in 1942 had received the
appellation nouvelle théologie took center stage.14 What had been central to
the years of criticism was the demand for the abandonment of what was
called the “static” Aristotelianism of Neo-Thomism and the embrace of a
fruitful dialogue with certain currents of modern thought built on central
categories of history, lived experience, engagement, and evolutionary
science. The Jesuit Jean Daniélou, a central figure in this movement, pub-
lished a series of writings throughout the mid-40s surveying the broad cur-
rents of intellectual thought en vogue in France at the time and stridently
called for a dialogue with them.15 In fact, Daniélou wrote a full-length book
entitled Dialogues, in which he sought a fruitful exchange with Marxists,
existentialists, protestants, and Jews, declaring that the “living forces of
French thought are beginning to sketch out their outlines, and we want to
seize the moment, conscious of how this enterprise is presumptuous, but
also convinced of its importance.”16 He continued by stating that “this dia-
logue will fill the decades which we are entering” as “it is certain that the
moment has come when it is necessary, using the considerable enrichments
that science, phenomenological descriptions, and historical events have
brought over the last fifty years, and which exist in fragments. We should
work to build a new vision of the world, as was done by Proclus, Thomas
Aquinas, or Hegel.”17 For Daniélou, the fruit of this dialogue would be noth-
ing short of the renewal of the modern world: “All this fills us with immense
hope, but also makes us aware of a great responsibility. If Christians under-
stand this state of affairs aright, they will bring salvific answers to the ques-
tions being raised by the world.”18
In the article “Present Orientations of Religious Thought,” still regarded
as the defining charter and manifesto of ressourcement and the nouvelle thé-
ologie, Daniélou lays out precisely the intellectual boundaries of this dialogue
which must be the pillars of Catholic theology, history, subjectivity, and

14 For a history of the movement, see Kirwan, Avant-garde.

15 Jean Daniélou, “La Vie intellectuelle en France: Communisme, Existentialisme, Chris-
tianisme,” Études (September 1945): 241–54; Jean Daniélou, “Christianisme et histoire,”
Études 254, no. 8 (1947): 166–84; Jean Daniélou, “Existentialisme et Théologie de l‘His-
toire,” Dieu Vivant 15 (1950): 131–35; Jean Daniélou, “Existentialism and the Theology of
History,” The Month 1 (1949): 66–70.
16 Jean Daniélou, Dialogues: avec les marxistes, les existentialistes, les protestants, les
juifs, l’hindouisme (Paris: Le Portulan, 1948), 9.
17 Daniélou, Dialogues, 26.
18 Daniélou, Dialogues, 28.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 7

engagement. In his explication, Daniélou lists a who’s who of French intel-

lectual life, including secular champions of this methodology, such as Jean-
Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Simone de Beauvoir. Daniélou’s
enthusiasm for the promises of modern thought can barely be contained as
he appeals to the “men of today” repeatedly to begin building a new world
and new man.
Daniélou’s call for an engagement with history had been taken up four
years earlier by fellow Jesuit Henri Bouillard in a controversial work, Con-
version et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin, initially overlooked during the war
years. As is indicated by its title, this text, the fruit of his studies directed in
part by the conservative Jesuit theologian Charles Boyer, was dedicated to
the doctrine of grace and the act of conversion in St. Thomas’s thought. Pub-
lished as the first volume in the new Jesuit-edited series, Théologie, this text
would have resounding effects because of certain claims made in its closing
section, where Bouillard voiced broad-brush comments concerning the
nature of doctrinal and theological development.
In the now-infamous conclusion, Bouillard criticized Thomism as static
and ahistorical, “a ready-made science of immutable notions, timeless prob-
lems, and definitive arguments.”19 However, a “historical study reveals, on the
contrary, to what extent theology is time-bound and connected to the becom-
ing of the human mind. It shows what is contingent in it: the relativity of
notions, the evolution of problems, the temporary obscuring of certain
important truths.”20 After a strong critique of the Aristotelian influence on
Aquinas, and the theological turns which led him to his position,21 which he
stated was merely the adoption of the categories of the day, he declared that
Christian truth never remains in a pure state: “It is always embedded in con-
tingent concepts and schemata that determine its rational structure. It is not
possible to isolate it from them. It can emancipate itself from one system of
concepts only by passing into another.”22 However, a historically-conscious
theology “causes us to see the permanence of divine truth and, at the same
time, reveals to us what is contingent in the notions and systems in which

19 Bouillard, Conversion, 211.

20 Bouillard, Conversion, 211.
21 Bouillard does generally affirm the doctrinal continuity of Aquinas with the Fathers
without going into depth, and the reader can only assume that Bouillard primarily
refers to Aristotelian accretions as the source of most points of rupture. See Bouillard,
Conversion, 216: “Certainly, we do not intend to deny the doctrinal continuity that con-
nects St. Thomas to the Fathers and the moderns to St. Thomas. If we do not insist on
it, it is because it is fairly obvious and has often been emphasized. By contrast, in this
historical study, it has been useful to bring out the dissimilarities, which are less
noticeable.”
22 Bouillard, Conversion, 219.
8 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

we receive it.”23 For Bouillard, hindsight provides the historical theologian

the vantage to see clearly the unifying threads that run through the tradition
beneath transient concepts and categories. Thus, according to Bouillard, his-
tory does not lead to relativism, for it “allows one to grasp an absolute within
theological development [évolution]. This is not an absolute in representation,
but an absolute in affirmation.” This notion of absolute affirmation but rel-
ative formulation will come to be central to the debate, as Bouillard’s point
remains vague and is not clearly spelled out in his brief concluding chapter.24
Indeed, the seeds of controversy are plain as he explains further that history
“manifests to the times the relativity of notions and schemata in which the-
ology takes its shape as well as the permanent affirmation that dominates
them. It reveals the temporal character of theology and at the same time pro-
vides the faith with the absolute affirmation, the divine Word, which is incar-
nated in it.”25 As will become clear throughout the debate, the two parties
held two completely different theories of judgment. This profound (and argu-
ably insuperable) philosophical difference likely precluded any fully peaceful
rapprochement.
Bouillard continues that this epistemological dynamic (an absolute affir-
mation expressed in a time-bound, relative formulation) applies to dogma
and the first principles of the mind, in which the absolute is contained within
the formulation. To highlight this dynamic, Bouillard utilized the example
of the notion of formal causality used in the definition of justification
expressed dogmatically by the Council of Trent in its Decree on Justification.
He asks whether the Council wanted to consecrate this use and confer on the

23 Bouillard, Conversion, 220. In our translations, we have generally chosen to retain

“notion” as the English translation for the same word in French. For Garrigou-Lagrange,
there are several places where “notion” vs. “concept” might be tracking the later-scholastic
distinction between the “objective concept” and the “formal concept.”
24 He goes on to say (Bouillard, Conversion, 220–21):
Moreover, these affirmations themselves, in order to preserve their meaning in a
new intellectual universe, determine the new notions, methods, and systems that
correspond with this universe. If it were otherwise, old formulas, were they to
remain, would lose their primary meaning. The mind that receives a formula strives,
in fact, to understand it by connecting it to the ensemble of its conceptions. The
mind interprets it according to what it knows. It reconstructs it according to per-
sonal schemata. Only in this way can the mind understand it. But do we not see
that, in a single formula, or even several correlative formulas, if one of the concepts
or notions is unconsciously modified, all the others must be modified correlatively
so that these affirmations retain their meaning? By passing from one mind to
another that is notably different, an affirmation passes from one system to another.
This is what we have observed in the medieval theology concerning the preparation
for grace.
25 Bouillard, Conversion, 221.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 9

concept of grace-form a definitive character? He responds: “By no means. It

was certainly not the intention of the Council to canonize an Aristotelian
notion, nor even a theological notion conceived under the influence of Aris-
totle.”26 Trent simply wanted to affirm that justification was an interior
renewal, against Protestant notions of the imputation of the merits of Christ.
This claim will be the source of great vexation for the Dominicans, above all
for Garrigou-Lagrange, who will come to write a number of articles in
response to it.
Thus, according to Bouillard, it is the task of historical theology to rec-
ognize “obsolete explanations, aged schemata, and dead notions,”27 which are
like old-fashioned garments or outdated tools that hamper the process of
theological reflection, akin to the outmoded aspects of Aristotelian physics
which must be abandoned by contemporary thought. Bouillard concedes that
it is sometimes difficult to untangle these concepts “without error, from the
absolute truth with which they overlap,” but, nonetheless, in a line that will
resound down to this day, igniting a furious debate, he states, “A theology
that would not be contemporary would be a false theology.”28 Garrigou’s
interventions will almost completely be occupied with challenging Bouillard’s
conclusion (and with what he believed to be the Blondellian background to
it) and will incite his famous assertion that the nouvelle théologie was leading
Catholic thought back to the errors of modernism.

THE TOULOUSE RESPONSE

During the immediate postwar years, the controversy between the Thomists
and ressourcement thinkers became prominent, and the unquestioned
authority on the history of modern French Catholic thought, Étienne Fouil-
loux, writes that “this debate was not confined to specialized clerical circles
but had a certain echo amongst the clergy at the time.”29 Moreover, in the post-
war climate of Marxism and existentialism, Thomism seemed irrelevant and
outdated. Capturing this sentiment, Charles Journet wrote to Jacques Maritain
that in “this disintegration of the world, one seems a fool for trying to remain
faithful to St. Thomas.”30 Throughout the 1930s, there were sustained and stri-
dent attacks against Thomism by the ressourcement thinkers, with critics
accusing it of being an intellectual corruption, not only imperiling the very
substance of the faith but likewise causing the very phenomenon of secularism

26 Bouillard, Conversion, 221–22.

27 Bouillard, Conversion, 224.
28 Bouillard, Conversion, 219.
29 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 153.
30 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 158.
10 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

itself.31 Indeed, we now know that certain ressourcement thinkers had no inten-
tion of broaching a kind of rapprochement, but even in 1936 hatched a plan
to “liquidate” it through a campaign of historical studies. With this in mind,
it is striking that there was such little theological push back from Thomists,
and only in 194232 did the Roman authorities step in to correct what were
interpreted as being problematic notions of truth, theological science, and
dogma put forth by Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier, the former
in his lecture, published in limited circulation as Une école de théologie: Le
Saulchoir,33 and the latter in Essai sur le problème théologique.34
Although he names no interlocutors, the Thomist articulation of the
nature of theology, concerned above all with maintaining its scientific char-
acter, can be found in Michel Labourdette’s “Theology: Faith Seeking Under-
standing,” published in the Revue thomiste in 1946.35 Carefully treating
notions of science, faith, and the structure of theology, Labourdette provides
a crystal-clear expression of the notion of theology articulated within the
schola Thomae. His defense of theology as a science is part of a long, ongoing
debate that might be seen as the main current that unites all of the various
exchanges of the nouvelle théologie affair throughout the 1930s and 1940s.36

31 For example, one might consider de Lubac’s 1942 inaugural lecture, as well as his
famous claims against Thomas de Vio Cajetan in relation to the distinction between the
natural and supernatural orders.
32 Richard Peddicord, relying on the 1985 work of Fouilloux, holds that “Garrigou made
it clear that while he was in agreement with the decision [against Chenu], he had not
instigated the investigation and had not been one of the prime movers behind the con-
demnation.” See Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life
and Legacy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005),
107. See Étienne Fouilloux, “Le Saulchoir en procès (1937–1942),” in Marie-Dominique
Chenu, Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985), 37–60. For a
much more detailed and updated review of the entire Chenu affair, see Fouilloux, “L’af-
faire Chenu 1937–1943,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 98, no. 2
(April–June 2014): 261–352.
33 Marie-Dominique Chenu, Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir (Kain: Le Saulchoir,
1937); republished by Éditions du Cerf in 1985.
34 Louis Charlier, Essai sur le problème théologique (Thuillies: Ramgal, 1938). For a gen-
eral account of these two condemnations, see Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie, 47–
57 and 61–69; Mettepenningen, “L’Essai de Louis Charlier (1938): une contribution à la
Nouvelle Théologie,” Revue théologique de Louvain 32 (2008): 211–38.
35 Marie-Michel Labourdette, “Théologie, intelligence de la foi,” Revue thomiste 46, no.
1 (1946): 5–44.
36 See Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Position de la théologie,” Revue des sciences philos-
ophiques et théologiques 24 (1935): 232–57, reprinted as La foi dans l’intelligence in
Chenu’s La parole de Dieu, vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1964), 115–38; Chenu, Une école
de théologie: le Saulchoir; Louis Charlier, Essai sur le problème théologique, Biblio-
thèque Orientations: Section scientifique, 1 (Thuillies: Ramgal, 1938); Jean-François
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 11

Indeed, for his developed notion of science, Labourdette depends on Jacques

Maritain’s Degrees of Knowledge, which emerged, at least in part, in the
context of the conversations which culminated in the debate over Christian
philosophy in the 1930s (1930–1936).37 Labourdette begins by giving a brief
definition of science, its types, and the nature of observation, all influenced
by Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics and the Scholastic tradition. A lengthy treat-
ment of the object of faith follows, and one should remember that this was
an ongoing and highly charged topic that had been developing since the
Modernist crisis, especially after the publication of Pierre Rousselot’s The Eyes
of Faith.38 Labourdette argues that Revelation’s mode of expression is in an
“ensemble of statements, through which God makes Himself known to
humanity.”39 Striking a laudable balance, he writes “What grandeur and pov-
erty are involved in our formulas of faith!” On the one hand they are an “infe-
rior kind of packaging given to the supernatural,” however, they “lead our
mind to this Sovereign Reality which exceeds them; this is what they conform
it to; this Object is what our intellect is assimilated to through them.”40 Far

Bonnefoy, “La théologie comme science et l’explication de la foi selon saint Thomas
d’Aquin,” Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses 14 (1937): 421–46, 600–31; Marie-
Rosaire Gagnebet, “La nature de la théologie spéculative,” Revue thomiste 44 (1938): 1–
39, 213–55, 645–74.
37 Jacques Maritain, Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald Phelan et al. (South Bend: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 1995). For the Christian philosophy debate, see Gregory
Sadler, Reason Fulfilled by Revelation: The 1930s Christian Philosophy Debate in France
(Washington DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011); and Ralph McInerny,
Preambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers (Washington DC: The Catholic
University of America Press, 2006).
38 For a complete survey of the debate written at the time, see Roger Aubert, Le Problème
de l’acte de foi: Données traditionnelles et résultats des controversies récentes, 3rd ed.
(Louvain: Universitas Catholica Lovaniensis, 1958). For Labourdette’s treatment of the act
of faith, one may consult, “La foi théologale et la connaissance mystique d’après saint
Jean de la Croix,” Revue thomiste 41 (1936): 593–629; 42 (1937): 16–57 and 191–229; “Le
développement vital de la foi théologale,” Revue thomiste 43 (1937): 101–15; “Foi et créd-
ibilité (chronique),” Revue thomiste 52 (1952): 215–25; “La vie théologale selon saint
Thomas, L’objet de la foi,” Revue thomiste 58 (1958): 597–622; “La vie théologale selon
Thomas d’Aquin, L’affection dans la foi,” Revue thomiste 60 (1960): 364–80; La foi, “Grand
cours” de théologie morale, vol. 8 (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2015). For Garrigou-Lagrange’s
most comprehensive treatment of the formal resolution of faith, see On Divine Revelation,
vol. 1, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 655–775.
39 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 99 below.
40 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 99 below. The status of these
formulas had been intensely debated, and for an example of a radicalization of Rousselot,
in which concepts are minimized, even denigrated, see Marie-Dominique Chenu, “The
Eyes of Faith,” in Faith and Theology, trans. Denis Hickey (New York: Macmillan, 1968),
8–14. For an exposition in line with Labourdette’s own theological position, see Romanus
12 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

from being dead propositions, cut off from “life,” in them we find the means
for “elevating us to divine knowledge [and there] we find our spirit’s true and
profound nourishment.”41 He then spells out the ecclesiology that flows from
this theology of faith, defending against the reductionist charge that Thomis-
tic ecclesiology is merely doctrinaire and authoritarian. True, the Church
defines these formulas, fixes their meaning, and explains them, and thus, they
appeal to authority. Nevertheless, authority is not the “true and fundamental
motive” for our supernatural adherence. What motivates faith’s adherence is
supernatural revelation, God Himself as revealing, and the Church’s media-
tion safeguards an “authentic encounter” with God who reveals.42
While outlining the nature of theology, Labourdette develops a nuanced
position within the Thomist school’s own notion of theological science,43
explaining that theology does not come forth, strictly speaking, from the exer-
cise of the virtue of faith, since faith does not reason or analyze, but instead,
is ordered to assent to revealed truths. However, neither is theology merely an
application of reason to the data of faith. Instead, theology is “brought about
through supernatural faith placing in its service all of our intellectual resources
with the goal of bringing, as far as is possible, the intelligibility of the truths
of faith to the perfect state of knowledge which we call science.”44
In treating the structure of theology, Labourdette makes a critical move
by defending the importance of history and its relationship with speculative
theology, attempting to dispel the simplistic notion that Thomism is funda-
mentally ahistorical. He argues that historical reflection provides indispen-
sable service “in determining what is revealed and in understanding it,” while
still maintaining that speculative theology is the crowning achievement of
theological science.45 This subordination of historical investigation to spec-

Cessario, Christian Faith and the Theological Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic Univer-
sity of America Press, 1996).
41 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 101 below.
42 In this, Labourdette is echoing with great fidelity, what can be found at length in the
text of Garrigou-Lagrange cited in note 38. This teaching was consistently found in the
various editions of Garrigou-Lagrange’s text.
43 A number of texts are cited regarding this topic in Matthew Minerd, “Wisdom be Atten-
tive: The Noetic Structure of Sapiential Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera (English edition) 18,
no. 4 (2020): 1103–46; also see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Remarks Concerning the
Metaphysical Character of St. Thomas’s Moral Theology, in Particular as It Is Related to
Prudence and Conscience,” trans. Matthew K. Minerd, Nova et Vetera 17, no. 1 (2019):
261–66 (“Translator’s Appendix 1: Concerning the Formal Object of Acquired Theology”).
44 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 105 below.
45 Labourdette is echoing a sentiment that one can find in the posthumous remarks
about Ambroise Gardeil written by Jacques Maritain in his introduction to Ambroise
Gardeil, La vraie vie chrétienne (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1935), viii: “He maintained
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 13

ulative thought will be a significant point of difference between the Thomist

and ressourcement thinkers. However, Labourdette never posits the compart-
mentalized reduction of history that his interlocutors charge, as theology is
never in a finished state here below, and there is a “continual back-and-forth”
between speculative theology and historical theology, which remain closely
intertwined. Nonetheless, he recognizes the limits of history and its pro-
visional character, that it cannot shackle the speculative work of the theo-
logian: “We do not need to completely traverse the entire field of positive
theology in its multiple developments in order to then begin our reflection
on the intelligibility of the revealed datum as well as on the possibility of
developing it into a science.”46 Underscoring this unity, he writes that “at the
same time, historical and critical reflection will develop themselves along
with their own proper methodologies. If both remain theological, each will
benefit from the other’s progress.”47
Without formally engaging in a debate, Labourdette draws this article
to a close by succinctly articulating that what divides Thomism from the res-
sourcement thinkers is precisely the powers of the human intellect. Indeed it
was the question of Aristotle that hung over the debate since the Modernist
crisis when Édouard Le Roy accused Thomists of requiring a double conver-
sion, first to Aristotle and then to Christianity.48 The defining Scholastic
response to this criticism emerged out of this debate in Garrigou-Lagrange’s
Le sens commun, which Gardeil adopted.49 The response to this charge by Le
Roy might be summarized in Gardeil’s response: “Must the simple concepts
of revelation embrace the modalities of Aristotelianism? Yes and no. No, if it
is the systematic and personal mentality of the philosopher. Yes, if it is the
human mentality itself, to the extent that it is present in the Aristotelian

speculative studies at the level that is rightfully due to them, not ceasing to show, at
once, their primacy over so-called positive studies, as well as their harmony with
them.”
46 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 107 below. The influence of
Ambroise Gardeil is readily apparent, and this is a position that Garrigou-Lagrange would
broadly align himself with. See Ambroise Gardeil, Le Donné de Révélé (Juvisy: Cerf, 1909;
2nd ed. 1932).
47 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 107 below. For a summary of
the discussions concerning positive theology at around this time, see Celestine Luke
Salm, “The Problem of Positive Theology,” S.T.D. Dissertation, The Catholic University of
America, 1955.
48 See Guy Mansini, What is Dogma? The Meaning and Truth of Dogma in Edouard Le
Roy and His Scholastic Opponents (Rome: Gregorian University, 1985).
49 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense: The Philosophy of Being
and the Development of Doctrine, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus
Academic, 2021).
14 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

mentality by the data of common sense.”50 Near the conclusion of his own
article, Labourdette reiterates this point emphatically:

The outlooks that we find ourselves fighting against profoundly under-

rate the powers of the human intellect and cast suspicion on everything
that is a “conceptual construction.” These attitudes are connected with
quite different currents of thought than those animating St. Thomas’s
own and, indeed, clash with what quite obviously was his constant prac-
tice as a theologian. Thus, the problem must be transferred to philoso-
phy’s terrain and, most especially, that of the critique of knowledge. . . .
This difference of philosophical outlooks, which, without always being
explicit, is profound, is not the only motive for the low esteem many
have for the great theological syntheses and, along with them, for spec-
ulative theology itself. Many join to it a desire that testifies to their
Christian sense and their zeal for God’s House: does not speculative
theology run the risk of incorporating a “philosophical system” into
Christian doctrine? Will this not involve (and compromise) the faith
in our speculations? . . . In point of fact, what theology claims to offer
to faith as an instrument of scientific explanation is not the doctrine of
this or that author, Aristotle, Plato, Confucius, or Shankara, but rather,
those notions which best assure us of attaining definitive truths and
imperishable values, whose scope is not temporal or relative but,
instead, supra-temporal. . . . What theology wishes to use (and, more-
over, what the Church likewise uses in the more precise formulations
of her dogmas) are not truth values that are relative to a given author
or to a given time. Rather, she wishes to use absolute truth values, by
which it reaches a particular, unchangeable aspect of reality. Here, the
fact that such truth values do indeed exist is still a philosophical prob-
lem whose resolution depends on the notion that one forms for oneself
concerning the intellect and its scope, as well as concerning the unity
and permanence of human nature.51

Although “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding” stands on its own,

it will be explicitly presupposed in the later debate, which is chronicled in
the sequence of articles following it in the present volume. The next four
articles to be discussed constitute a whole and were published as a small book

50 Gardeil, Le Donné, 307. For an important discussion of this theme, noting how philo-
sophical explication is and is not involved in this connecting of dogmas to common sense
(superelevated by supernatural faith), see Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense,
278–86. For recent discussion of this topic (with some critical words concerning Gardeil
and Garrigou-Lagrange), see Guy Mansini, “The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense:
Ambroise Gardeil, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Yves Congar, and the Modern Magiste-
rium,” Nova et Vetera (English edition) 18, no. 1 (2020): 111–38. Some systematic discus-
sion of this issue will be undertaken below.
51 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 123 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 15

on account of publication delays with the Revue thomiste. The Thomists saw
Daniélou’s aforementioned article in the popular Jesuit journal Études as an
unprovoked attack, and Labourdette wrote that Daniélou had “deeply
wounded several of us,” and he wanted to “respond as quickly and as clearly
as possible to what was understood at the time to be real act of anti-Thomist
aggression.”52
Gathering together the texts in a single volume, the Toulouse Dom-
inicans wished to bring together their relevant pieces, together with an
anonymous Jesuit Response, written by de Lubac,53 and not included here on
account of its publication elsewhere.54 The small volume constitutes the defin-
itive Toulouse response to the Jesuits of Fourvière.55 The complete exchange
looks like the following:

1. Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue”

2. Michel Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources”
3. Anonymous Jesuits, “Response”
4. Michel Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology: A Response”
5. Marie-Joseph Nicolas, “Conclusion: Theological Progress and
Fidelity to St. Thomas”

Labourdette’s “Theology and Its Sources,” directly questioned the ani-

mating spirit of recent work by Jesuit authors reflected in their parallel series
Théologie and Sources Chrétienne, and Fouilloux states, “Theology and Its
Sources” is anything but polemical: “the tone is meant to be modest, serene,
and even explicitly benevolent.”56 Despite this, Labourdette’s article resulted
in a swift and sharp anonymous reply from the Jesuits published in their jour-
nal Recherches de science religieuse.57 Due to the aforementioned postwar
delays with the Revue thomiste, a volume apart was published as Dialogue
théologique, containing both articles, a response from Labourdette (“Criti-
cism in Theology: A Response”), along with a stentorian introduction by Ray-
mond-Léopold Bruckberger,58 and a conclusion by Marie-Joseph Nicolas,

52 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 157.

53 See note 68.
54 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 174; Anon., “Response to ‘The Sources of Theology’[sic],” in
Kelly, Ressourcement Theology, 73–82.
55 For the definitive history of this exchange, see Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 154–59.
56 Marie-Michel Labourdette, “La Théologie et ses sources,” Revue thomiste 11 (1946):
353–71; Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 155.
57 Henri de Lubac et al. (anonymously written), “Théologie et ses sources: Reponse,”
Recherches de science religieuse 33 (1946): 385–401.
58 Bruckberger, a now-forgotten figure, was a larger-than life Dominican from this era.
The primary chaplain to the French resistance during World War II, he would come to have
16 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

“Conclusion: Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas.” The fascicule

was published as Dialogue théologique.59
In his introduction, Bruckberger appeals for a “theological dialogue” in
what is certainly a provocative attempt to insert Thomistic thought into a
dialogue to which it was not invited, Daniélou’s appeal for dialogue with the
modern world. Indeed, this appeal explicitly excluded a repudiated Scholastic
thought from the conversation. Thus, “A Theological Dialogue,” is very much
a manifesto for a return to Thomism and can in every sense be seen as a kind
of counter-manifesto to Daniélou’s “Present Orientations.” A side-by-side
comparison offers the clearest picture of the underlying mentality of the dif-
fering sides. Both men were writing barely a year after the weapons of the
Second World War had been silenced, and the stark differences of their cul-
tural, intellectual, and religious analyses are striking. Daniélou’s exuberant,
almost triumphal piece cries out to the “men of today” that “now is the time”
to build a new theology, new man, new Christianity, and new civilization on
the rubrics of the most cutting-edge modern thought, which for Daniélou
was reflective of the best ancient thought. This is contrasted against Bruck-
berger’s solemn warning that the only hope for a “world wherein intellects
have been so violated, hearts so debased, and bodies so trampled” was a the-
ology that could help man regain his own dignity and raise his “intelligence
to the highest disciplines, those which, instead of dividing man, can unite
him in the search for, and possession of, the truth.”60
For Bruckberger, scientific theology is central to this task and should not
be renounced simply because a “physio-chemical” notion of science has been
monopolized by the modern world. In this effort Aquinas is the great archi-
tect of the science of theology:

With St. Thomas, theological style is not the sole matter at hand. More
importantly still, there is the scientific value of his work. In Greek

a tumultuous public life, at times filled with private scandal, at other times publicly taking
up his pen in open war against the French episcopate after the Second Vatican Council.
For a partial, albeit incomplete, account of his life, see Bernadette and Bernard Chovelon,
Bruckberger: L’enfant terrible (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2011). For some of Bruckberger’s
own auto-biographical reflections (prior to his final years, which reportedly included
repentance for sins against his vows as a Dominican) and some relevant articles written
during the 1970s, see Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, Tu finira sur l’échafaud: Mémoires
(Paris: Flammarion, 1978); À l’heure où les ombres s’allongent (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989);
Toute l’église en clameurs (Paris: Flammarion, 1977).
59 See Marie-Michel Labourdette, Marie-Joseph Nicolas, Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger,
Dialogue théologique: Pièces du débat entre “La Revue Thomiste” d’une part et les R.R.
P.P. de Lubac, Daniélou, Bouillard, Fessard, von Balthasar, S.J., d’autre part (Saint-Maxi-
min: Les Arcades, 1947).
60 Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue,” 127 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 17

temples as well as Romanesque and Gothic churches, in the Palace of

Versailles and Baroque monuments, we see various expressions of the
identical and invariable laws that constitute the universal code of archi-
tecture, at least as regards the elementary laws of gravity and resistance
that a native applies instinctively when building his hut and that Man-
sart observed in designing the Versailles. And without the application
of these laws, neither hut nor castle would ever exist.

The same is true for St. Thomas. His value does not consist so much in
having constructed a magnificent theological edifice in an admirable
style which is now, however, outdated. Rather, his value lies in the fact
that, more than any other thinker, he made greater progress in theo-
logical knowledge, in its scientific systematization, to the point of hav-
ing written the manual par excellence for the theologian, a text that will
always be of use in order to purely and simply become a theologian,
just as one goes to school in order to become an architect.61

Bruckberger’s assessment is tempered by the sober awareness of “human

malice and stupidity” which plagues a humanity “worn out as much from
lies as it is from hardships and sorrow,” and this sober appraisal, so divergent
from that of Daniélou, concludes with the Gospel admonition that the “har-
vest is plenty, but the laborers few.”62 Bruckberger feared that ultimately the
exchange would be a failure and that a “dialogue of the deaf ” would ensue.
As we shall see, this is indeed what happened. Thus, as we read the texts, we
can ask: Why is it that one of the most important exchanges of the modern
era, on the vital question of the relationship between history, truth, theology,
and dogma, was never brought to its completion? A fresh examination of the
exchanges reveals the need for historical revision.
In contrast with the soaring rhetoric of Bruckberger’s words, the tone
of Labourdette’s article is all the more striking, polite and affirming to the
point of being almost obsequious. Keying in on two recent book collections
edited by the Fourvière Jesuits, Sources Chretiennes and Théologie, which
he praises in no uncertain terms, describing them, for example, as a “won-
derful achievement,” and “magnificent enterprise” which “cannot be highly
praised enough,” and after reviewing Jean Moureaux’s Sens chrétien de l’
homme in the most-glowing terms and without registering any strong accu-
sation, Labourdette nonetheless raises “grave concerns” over the two col-
lections, which manifest a “common spirit.” However, he stresses that their
“positive and constructive design is more important than the defects which
tarnish their aim.”

61 Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue,” 128 below.

62 Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue,” 132 below.
18 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Before continuing with what he senses to be the anti-Scholastic aim of

the two projects, Labourdette recognizes the deficiencies often manifest in the
Scholasticism of his day in a self-effacing passage where he admits that a devel-
oped theology always risks getting stuck in its own problems and questions:

It is almost run-of-the-mill to note—and this is easily confirmed—that

on many points the problematics involved in our theology have become
[overly] academic [scolaire]. I mean, it is something learned and often
remains bookish in character. Such theology indeed lends itself to reflec-
tion and real solutions, but nonetheless, it lacks a kind of dynamism [acti-
vation]. It is freighted, too hastily presuming itself to be completed and
perfected. Only with difficulty does it escape the temptation to indolence
and ease, merely resting on its past achievements. . . . Anyone who has
had to teach theology will have had ample opportunity to experience this
mental laziness, more the friend of formulas than of apprehension, more
eager to rest on what has been achieved than to seek the first appercep-
tions of such truths so that one might then trace out anew the whole sub-
sequent course of thought, doing so in a wholly personal way.63

Labourdette further states that given that ressourcement theology has not
presented itself in too-literal a formulation and remains in some respects vague,
he will not identify individual thinkers, but instead, wishes simply to discuss
certain tendencies and a contemporary mentality. Moreover, he makes a point
of saying that he is not questioning the whole thought of either de Lubac or
Daniélou, which he praises, but instead, wishes to raise concerns only about
specific aspects. Further, he mildly notes that the emphasis on patristic riches
is accompanied by a depreciation of scholastic theology, but he fears that this
rejection threatens to ruin the foundations of their own project, which “pre-
supposes a previously-existing edifice.” It is clear that Labourdette is deeply
concerned that Daniélou’s rejection of scholastic thought in order to make con-
tact with Marxism and existentialism (the history and subjectivity they pre-
suppose and focus on) is imprudent. Furthermore, he rejects the notion that
these categories are foreign to Thomism: “it is a perfectly living way of thinking,
one that is both ambitious and capable of entering into and understanding new
problems, able to assimilate everything contained in the most modern of doc-
trines.” However, he continues, “it has too much respect for the truth and is
too concerned with its scientific rigor and with avoiding facile conformism for
it to adorn itself immediately with ideas and ‘categories’ that it would not have
first carefully examined and critiqued.”64 Labourdette is clearly concerned that
modern thought should be carefully tested and approached with caution lest

63 Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 136.

64 Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 141n8 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 19

wisdom be swept away in the “flood of impermanence.” Moreover, modern

thought must take care to avoid “the permanent temptation to judge all systems
of intellectual expression first and, indeed, ultimately, in terms of the historical
context and experiences of its author and the era in which he lived, not essen-
tially in terms of their conformity with the reality of what is.”
He continues that history is not the issue, which in the form of positive
theology, Thomism also finds indispensable, as he argued in his article “The-
ology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” but in fact, the real issue is the philosophy
of history that Daniélou and the others seemed to be employing, a philosophy
of history that risked entailing a “pseudo-philosophy,” unknowingly driven
by a historical relativism. In this philosophy the notion of speculative truth
becomes suspect: “The very idea that our mind could, in its most-assured
notions, come to grasp and identify timeless truth becomes, strictly speaking,
unthinkable.”65 This leads to a critique of Bouillard’s work, which is occupied
by concerns that Labourdette claims to also share: “to show how historical
methodology need not lead to a form of complete relativism.”66 Labourdette
points out the inherent weakness of distinguishing absolute affirmations from
relative formulations and argues that our mind cannot isolate them from one
another. Even here, Labourdette’s magnanimity is front and center as he extols
Bouillard’s “praiseworthy” attempt to avoid relativism. Thus, Labourdette
makes it clear that it is not history that is at issue, but rather the general res-
sourcement methodology concerning the place of historical studies in theol-
ogy, and he concludes by reiterating points which he made earlier, stating that
this attempt to make contact with existentialism, Marxism, and other con-
temporary currents, as especially laid out in Daniélou’s “Present Orientations,”
falls “into the most unfortunate kind of ready harmony, drawing immediate
connections between the most superficial confluences [of thinkers and ideas],”
and Labourdette makes clear that his response is simply a defensive maneuver:
“the powerful thrust of irrational philosophies is the principle cause of the
offensive taken against scholastic philosophy, which we seek to defend.”67
The most surprising aspect of the debate is de Lubac’s anonymous
response, which even figures like Jean Daniélou and the Jesuit superiors
found too harsh and polemical.68 De Lubac avoided direct debate altogether,

65 Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 146 below.

66 Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 149 below.
67 Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 157 below.
68 Because of the structural changes made to this volume, this text must be read in
Patricia Kelly’s aforementioned work, which however, for the reasons adduced at the
beginning of this introduction, must be approached with caution. For de Lubac’s confir-
mation of his authorship of the anonymous response in a 1988 letter to the Italian histo-
rian of theology Antonio Russo, see Aidan Nichols, “Thomism,” 10. For the disapproval
of the polemical tone of the response, see Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 181.
20 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

casting aspersion on Labourdette’s legitimate questioning and attempted to

array the Society itself against the Dominicans, citing an unnamed high
authority who encouraged a response. As Fouilloux has noted, the response
constitutes a real tragedy, as this is the moment that a much-needed discus-
sion could have and should have happened, as the Toulouse Dominican inter-
locutors presented themselves interested in a serious and genuine dialogue.
The moment, however, was lost as Garrigou-Lagrange’s intervention, as we
shall see, took center stage and overshadowed this overture.
De Lubac’s article eludes a close analysis, as it deliberately makes no
attempt to further the discussion but instead casts aspersion on Labourdette’s
claims and motives, with de Lubac declaring himself a victim put on trial.
Further, the author gives the impression that he wants nothing to do with the
Dominican discussion, and claims he is only responding on the advice of
“high authorities.” The opening of the response captures the tone of the piece:

Fr. Labourdette does not want us to profess “the essential historical rel-
ativism of all human expressions of divine truths.” He does not want a
Christian mindset that is “ashamed of its past.” He does not want “theo-
logical wisdom to be swept away by the flood of impermanence.” He
does not want historical methodology to be weighed down by a
“pseudo-philosophy” which “replaces the metaphysical notion of spec-
ulative truth with that of a more modest historical truth.” He does not
want us to “perpetually recast our conceptions of God,” all under the
pretext of critiquing “theological progress.” He does not want a “nomi-
nalist philosophy” which, through a veritable “caricature of the life of
the mind,” professes the notion that “the only thing that human reason
. . . directly reaches is its concepts, which such nominalism holds are
mere empty abstractions, logical frameworks whose value is wholly
pragmatic in nature.” He does not want us to deny that “the divine mes-
sage is addressed also to our intellect.” He does not want us to subscribe
to “the complete emptying of the idea of speculative truth.” He does not
want us to say that speculative truth is “inaccessible for us, nor, to deny
our mind, “in its most assured notions,” the power of grasping, “an
atemporal truth.” He does not want metaphysics and theology to be
judged, in the end, “according to the categories of aesthetics.” He does
not want us to expect “that a teaching would do nothing more than
awaken in us the sense of the beautiful or lead us to an incommunicable
experience.” Finally, he does not want us to doubt that there are “defin-
itive acquisitions in the domain of knowledge.”69

After framing these questions, de Lubac quickly dismisses them by

declaring:

69 Anon. (Henri de Lubac et al.), “La théologie et ses sources: Réponse,” Recherches de
science religieuse 33 (1946): 385–86 (pp. 76–77 in Dialogue théologique).
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 21

[How] right he is! We certainly do not want any of this any more than
he does, and there is nothing that would give anyone any reason to
suspect that we do want it. And he does not cite a single text of ours
that implies any of this. Moreover, while we are happy to tell him that
we are in full agreement, we are suprised that he has invited us to
explain ourselves.70

De Lubac roundly dismisses any notion of a common project or “ten-

dencies” and declares that the warning of historical relativism is comical.
Sadly, through such defensiveness, he squandered an opportunity to discuss
what would continue to be one of the most pressing issues throughout the
twentieth century (and to our present day): the relationship between history,
theology, truth, and dogma.
The Thomists gathered around the Revue thomiste, including figures
such as Jacques Maritain, were stunned by the response and felt chastened.
Fouilloux writes that the major feature of the Response is the “denial of the
debate in substance.”71 Marie-Joseph Nicolas, in a letter to de Lubac, wrote
that Labourdette’s article was simply “a fair and courageous expression of a
wounded and anxious Thomism,” declaring that “if there is a fundamentalist
[intégriste] party, we are not it,” but in a firm response, de Lubac accused
Labourdette of firing a “parthian arrow” based on “imaginations” that portray
his victims as “semi-heretics.”72 Although Labourdette had a much warmer
and fraternal personal correspondence with Daniélou, amongst themselves
the Jesuits accused the Dominicans of being intellectually second-rate, and
de Lubac declared that their time would be better spent in choir, later accus-
ing Labourdette of avoiding a face-to-face encounter on account of “timid-
ity.”73 De Lubac wrote to Daniélou that there was nothing else to discuss with
the Dominicans, “because we do not accept the imaginations of Labourdette
and Garrigou. If the good fathers so wish, let them tilt at windmills. However,
I do not accept my name being placed upon these windmills.”74
Maritain, in his turn, wrote that de Lubac “seemed to me to be a superior
mind, though accompanied by that intellectual arrogance (virtuously con-
cealed) frequently found among the Fathers of his Society.”75 Moreover, he

70 De Lubac, “La théologie,” 386.

71 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 173.
72 Marie-Joseph Nicolas, Letter to Henri de Lubac, February 5, 1947, with a response on
February 7 (ASJF), quoted in Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 180.
73 Nichols, “Thomism and the Nouvelle Théologie,” 15.
74 Henri de Lubac, Letter to Jean Daniélou, February 7, 1947 (ASJF), quoted in Fouilloux,
“Dialogue,” 180-181.
75 Jacques Maritain, Letter to Charles Journet, Oct. 6, 1945 (AJRM), quoted in Fouilloux,
“Dialogue,” 164.
22 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

declared that the “Jesuits, the more intelligent they are, the more they bend
to the era in which they live and adapt to its weaknesses.”76 Fouilloux provides
a more charitable interpretation of de Lubac than Maritain, writing in the
Response, that we see “a man of poor health and anxious temperament, nat-
urally inclined to exaggerate the scope of such a case and its effects. His pes-
simism, admittedly not wholly unfounded, gives the ‘Response’ much of the
severe formality and harshness that he will be accused of.”77 For his part, de
Lubac expresses his frustration even more stridently in private correspon-
dence, writing that the issues “are at once annoying and disarming. One can-
not discuss this with children, but they should not be entrusted with positions
as directors of major doctrinal reviews. . . . These childish actions risk causing
a great deal of damage.”78
The exchange is almost predictable at this point, with the chastened
Labourdette responding defensively in order to further explain his posi-
tions and methodology against de Lubac’s criticism. In his response, “Crit-
icism and Theology” (as well as in his own annotations added to his orig-
inal article when it was republished in the volume Dialogue théologique),
he spends a good deal of time arguing a point that virtually everyone now
admits, which de Lubac continually denied, namely, that there was, at least
on some broad level, a movement and common project shared among the
ressourcement theologians, and therefore, as current proponents of the
movement have noted, certain general “tendencies” can in fact be discerned.79

76 Jacques Maritain, Letter to Charles Journet, June 24, 1945 (AJRM), quoted in Fouilloux,
“Dialogue,” 164.
77 Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 175.
78 Henri de Lubac, Letters to Bruno de Solages, Feb. 8 and 15, Archives dominicaines de
la Toulouse, henceforth, ADT, quoted in Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 181–82.
79 Jürgen Mettepenningen sees four central characteristics (it is French, open to the his-
torical method, favoring positive theology, and anti-Neoscholastic) in Nouvelle Théologie,
7–13. For a treatment of the cultural and generational tendencies of the movement, see
Kirwan, Avant-garde. David Grummet sees the movement as a “collection of ideas” and
“tendencies” in “Nouvelle Théologie,” in Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology,
ed. Ian McFarland, David Fergusson, Karen Kilby, and Iain Torrance (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2014), 348–49. Gabriel Flynn describes it as a “movement of
renewal” comprised of a “host of new initiatives” in the introduction to Ressourcement:
A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and
Paul Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 1–2. Hans Boersma repeatedly
speaks of a “ressourcement movement,” even with “key characteristics,” in Nouvelle
Théologie and Sacramental Ontology: Return to Mystery (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 134. Brian Daley writes that the Scholastic Msgr. Pietro Parente “was not entirely
wrong” about the existence of a movement and outlines the “characteristics” and “basic
convictions” of the ressourcement thinkers in “The Nouvelle Théologie and the Patristic
Revival: Sources, Symbols and the Science of Theology,” International Journal of System-
atic Theology 7, no. 4 (2005): 363, 375.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 23

Labourdette argues that these tendencies can be discerned in the two col-
lections, Théologie and Sources Chrétiennes. He dismisses de Lubac’s insinu-
ation that he is unduly obsessed with heresy hunting, arguing instead, that
legitimate concerns regarding history and relativism were at stake in the
unifying aspects of these collections.80 Furthermore, he claims that Tho-
mism can be attentive to history and subjectivity, and nowhere does he
indicate that these categories in and of themselves are to be avoided. In
attempting to refocus the debate, now becoming deeply personal, Labour-
dette concludes by articulating a list of general norms that should be fol-
lowed in any continued discussion.
Nicolas provided the Dialogue théologique volume with its conclusion,
“Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” therein declaring that they
were “disappointed at having received a joke in response to our concerns.”81
He further defended the concept of speculative truth, as well as St. Thomas’
own categories. To Nicolas’ eyes, to the degree that contemporary thought
scorns those categories, it poses a great danger:

The abandonment of the central positions of St. Thomas’s metaphysics

would lead, little by little, to the ruin of the faith. Maybe we are wrong
in feeling that St. Thomas is so absent from the new theology. Perhaps
this reservation simply comes from the well-justified persuasion that
our contemporary mentality is too impregnated with idealism, existen-
tialism, or evolutionism for Thomistic language to be rendered under-
standable, even if it were expressed in language that is fashionable today.
Perhaps one feels, in fact, that Thomism is too much the property of a
particular sort of mind which is closed off to history, science, and to
contemporary sentiments for it possibly to be used freely. Perhaps the
need to Christianize certain intellectual subjects which hold an all-pow-
erful sway over contemporary minds is judged to be far too urgent for
us to spend time waiting until Thomism manages to integrate this into
its metaphysics without denaturing the latter.82

Sadly expressing the difficulties involved, Nicolas notes that holding to

the truth of Thomism necessarily puts one at odds with much of the modern
world, which he believes is, nonetheless, fundamentally flawed, despite being
assimilable on various points. To stress this point, we can once more cite
Charles Journet’s letter to Jacques Maritain, in which the former declares “in

80 In the case of the Sources Chrétiennes series, Labourdette’s explicit concern was not
with the publication of patristic works in translation but, rather, with the notes and intro-
ductions which accompanied these texts, voicing an anti-scholastic bias.
81 Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” 187 below. He is referring
to a joke that is cited in our translation.
82 Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” 190 below.
24 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

this disintegration of the world, one seems a fool for trying to remain faithful
to St. Thomas.”83 Labourdette wrote to Maritain and declared that the Jesuit
response was “a bit of a declaration of war,” and the Jesuits “seem convinced
that no one will dare to speak out on behalf of Thomism.”84 For his own part,
Nicolas stressed that Thomists take no joy in being so ostracized and long to
participate in the categories that Daniélou’s “Present Orientations” stressed,
namely, engagement and incarnation:

Perhaps the vivacity of our criticism bore the accent of the bitterness
experienced when one feels so lonely in holding an intellectual outlook
which we, however, feel it intellectually and morally impossible not to
take, an outlook which we, in the end, believe holds the greatest promise
for success, while modern thought increasingly unveils to the eyes of
all the profound vices that corrupt it.85

In conclusion, Nicolas admitted “it is more difficult for us than for them
to accept all intellectual outlooks which differ from our own.” However, he
insists that they cannot be accused of being haughty and overly self-confident:
“We know how to recognize our errors and forever will do so.” Though, he is
also clear that the Thomists will continue to elaborate their convictions:

While we strive never to confuse, on the one hand, the human mind’s
general aptitude for reaching certitude with, on the other, the truth of
our own judgments, we will not be overly scrupulous in saying what
we think, beseeching those who read us not to see in our criticism ver-
dicts uttered by a judge or even appeals to a sacred tribunal but, simply,
the free and frank expression of our sentiments.86

Nicholas concludes with the tone that Bruckberger took at the opening by
declaring that they too seek to reach the needs of modern man and to
“resolve the questions that every contemporary Christian thinker asks him-
self with anguish, doing so with the assistance of St. Thomas’s thought.”87 By
the spring of 1947, any hope of a fruitful dialogue had passed, but the Tou-
louse Dominicans sought an amicable face-to-face meeting with the Jesuits.

83 Charles Journet, Letter to Jacques Maritain, August 9, 1945, Archives Jacques et Raïssa
Maritain (Jacques and Raïssa Maritain Archives, Kolbsheim, France, henceforth, AJRM,
quoted in Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 158.
84 Michel Labourdette, Letter to Jacques Maritain, March 23, 1945 (AJRM), quoted in Fouil-
loux, “Dialogue,” 159–60.
85 Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” 191 below.
86 Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” 191 below.
87 Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” 192 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 25

Bouillard wrote to de Lubac, declaring that the Dominicans “obviously have

an inferiority complex faced with those who attacked them. They wish to
meet with us, not so much to explain themselves as to receive a public tes-
timony of esteem.”88 Fouilloux writes that, despite this, goodwill persisted
in the Dominican camp and cites as proof their article “Closing Remarks
Concerning Our Position,” which Labourdette described in a letter to Mari-
tain as “a text that is not at all polemical but which has the importance of
wanting to define the burning questions somewhat,” and he insists that he
wants to free the debate from personal implications and insist on the free-
dom of different theological schools.89 Roman Thomists felt that Labour-
dette was too soft and downplayed the relationship between the Magisterium
and theology, with one declaring that Labourdette seemed to apologize
simply for speaking clearly, and, on the other side, the Jesuits, likewise, were
not satisfied, with de Lubac declaring it only a partial retraction.90 Finally,
Bruno de Solges, Rector of the Institut Catholique in Toulouse, organized
a kind of Thomistic joint statement that de Lubac agreed to sign, but Chenu
and Fessard were reluctant, as the former was convinced that Thomism
needed to be rethought in terms of modern science and the latter fearing
that they would bring ridicule upon themselves by signing it.91 Ultimately,
the Jesuits decided against any accord unless Dialogue was disavowed.
In mid-1947, the Dominicans were surprised that the Jesuit philosopher,
Jean-Marie Le Blond, wrote an article in Recherches that seemed to restart
the polemics on the question of analogy and its application to notional rel-
ativity.92 As we shall see, the doctrine of analogy will be central, as both Bruno
de Solages and Bouillard invoke the notion as the key to firmly grounding
the disputed union of the formulation and affirmation. Le Blond’s article is
worth describing here, as he puts front-and-center the question of anthro-
pology and in particular the doctrine of Pierre Rousselot, so central to the
nouveaux théologiens, which posited that an intellectual drive toward the
absolute precedes and orders a weak and more unstable conceptual

88 Henri Bouillard, Letter to Henri de Lubac, May 4, 1947 (ASJF), quoted in Fouilloux, “Dia-
logue,” 189.
89 Marie-Michel Labourdette, Letter to Jacques Maritain, April 11 (ADT), quoted in Fouil-
loux, “Dialogue,” 189–90.
90 See Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 190.
91 See Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 191.
92 See Jean Marie Le Blond, ‘L’Analogie de la vérité: Réflexion d’un philosophe sur une
controverse théologique’, RSR, 34 (1947), 129–41. An English translation exists in Kelly’s
volume, though, for the reasons adduced at the beginning of this introduction, it must
be approached with caution. For Le Blond’s intervention, see Hans Boersma, “Analogy
of Truth: The Sacramental Epistemology of Nouvelle Théologie,” in Ressourcement: A
Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, 157–71.
26 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

knowledge.93 (Moreover, the Dominican parties gathered in this volume

sensed the background influence of Henri Bergson, whose theory of pre-con-
ceptual intuition resembled aspects of the noetic presupposed by Le Blond
and Bouillard, and Garrigou-Lagrange was quite insistent on the importance
of bearing in mind Maurice Blondel’s writings related to the nature of
truth.94) He begins by invoking Aquinas on the analogy of being and insists
on an equally present “analogy of truth”:
The thesis of the analogy of truth, in fact, does not impose itself to a
lesser degree than that of the analogy of being. Truth is not univocal;
there is, we have said, a subsistent Truth which is absolute, which is
God Himself in His simplicity, God insofar as He knows Himself and
knows all things in Himself. The counterpart of this assertion, which
no Christian philosopher can question, is this, which no one will deny
but from which we will not always frankly draw the consequences,
namely, that all the other truths are complex and deficient, that they
imitate simple truth, without being able to equal it in their multiplicity.
They are, in a word, truths which are analogous to the first Truth.95

Le Blond continues by explaining the relationship of these complex and

deficient truths with the simple truth of God himself within the anthropology
inspired by Rousellot and Joseph Maréchal.96 These truths are still true,

93 For an overview of the importance of Rousselot on the Jesuit nouvelle théologiens, see
Kirwan, Avant-garde, 76–90, 108–21; and Boersma, Nouvelle Théologie and Sacramental
Ontology, 67–83; and for the influence of Rousselot on Chenu’s development, see Carmelo
Giuseppe Conticulo, “‘De Contemplatione’ (Angelicum, 1920) La Thèse inédite de doctorat
du M.-D. Chenu,” Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques 75 (1991): 362–422.
94 For the clearest exposition of the Bergsonian notion of intuition, see Henri Bergson,
An Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. T. E. Hulme (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educa-
tional Publishing, 1980). Bergson would remain a regular intellectual foe for Garrigou-
Lagrange. A strong Thomistic response to Bergson, dependent on Garrigou-Lagrange,
can be found in English in Jacques Maritain, Bergsonian Philosophy and Thomism, ed.
Ralph McInerny, trans. Mabelle L. Andison and J. Gordon Andison (Notre Dame, IN: Uni-
versity of Notre Dame Press, 2007); also see Maritain, De Bergson à Thomas d’Aquin (New
York: Éditions de la Maison française, 1944). The various relevant works of Blondel will
be cited at length by Garrigou-Lagrange in the essays collected in this volume. For
accounts of his influence on figures involved in the debate here gathered, see the index
entries “Blondelian” and “Blondel, Maurice” in Kirwan, Avant-garde; William L. Portier,
“Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology and the Triumph of Maurice Blondel,” Communio
(English edition) 38 (Spring 2011): 103–37; Michael A. Conway, “Maurice Blondel and
Ressourcement,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Cath-
olic Theology, 65–82; Peter J. Bernardi, “Maurice Blondel: Precursor of the Second Vati-
can Council,” Josephinum Journal of Theology 22, nos. 1–2 (2015): 59–77.
95 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 130.
96 On the work of Maréchal’s “Transcendental Thomism” in the background of Le Blond
as well, see McCool, Nineteenth Century Scholasticism, 257–59.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 27

because, in grasping any unity of concepts and judgments, its tendency

to the absolute is manifested to the mind. In fact, the positing of the
absolute, the existence of limitless act, is implied in every judgment
through the use of the verb “to be,” whether “copulatively” or “existen-
tially.” This positing of the absolute, which precisely speaking gives our
affirmations their own, proper character, constitutes the form of our
knowing, in an affirmation that extends to infinity and whose various
representations provide a limiting matter. It unveils the ideal and the
spring of the mind in this fundamental, implicit affirmation of the abso-
lute underlying all its acts.97

Le Blond further stresses the difference between absolute truth and

human truth, writing that “relative to the absolute and, as a result, distinct
from the absolute, human truth is . . . relative to that which is multiple and
mutable.”98 Thus, truth here below is composite, resulting from the encounter
of two elements, the drive [visée] towards the absolute gives to the truth its
proper character and imprints the character of Subsistent Truth.99 However,
on the other hand the concrete situation, in time and space, a limiting and
restrictive element that explains in human truth, no longer the character of
truth, but instead its character precisely as human.100 It is this second aspect
which introduces historicity into knowledge, and “it is not contradictory to
speak of successive aspects of the truth developing in time.”101 Each individual
drive toward the absolute has an individual character on account of its unique
reference: “Each era, each school, and even each man has an original way of
striving for the absolute and of drawing up its image, doing so with tenden-
cies and images which are convergent and analogous, though they ultimately
remain differentiated by their points of departure.”102
This is especially true for St. Thomas, who, according to Le Blond, is
sometimes treated as a divine word whose historical character is lost, and
Thomists frequently argue about the “mind of Thomas,” demonstrating a
“clumsy veneration” that seeks to place Thomas above time. Thus, he says,
Thomists have made very little progress for centuries, arguing over the same
texts in order to precisely determine what the mind of Thomas is on a whole
host of points. Le Blond declares that it is the historians who have finally
made progress toward an “objective and exact” knowledge of Thomas.103 Of

97 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 131.

98 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 134.
99 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 134–35.
100 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 135.
101 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 135.
102 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 136.
103 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 136.
28 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

course, Le Blond refers here to figures such as Gilson and Chenu, and he con-
tinues with a discussion of the former’s work.104
Attempting to integrate his account of the analogy of truth into the anal-
ogy of proportionality, Le Blond likens knowledge to a bronze coin, of real
but inferior value, and it would be chimerical to exchange this currency for
the gold coin it represents, which “synthesizes” in itself all the riches and
which only God can give us by communicating himself directly to us.105 Le
Blond finally gets to the all-important question of the definition of truth and
declares it cannot be a total adequation to reality, but it is “a certain assimi-
lation which always leaves a certain degree of ignorance.”106
Le Blond concludes by warning that if this doctrine is not adopted, a defin-
itive break with the modern world will occur. Indeed, he declares that the “most
profound wishes of the Church” call for adapting herself not only to the lan-
guage but also the mentality of distant peoples: “she is not afraid to see her the-
ology translated, not only into foreign words, but even into foreign concepts.”107
Le Blond’s final paragraph is worth partially quoting here, as it underscores the
link between the question of truth and his Rousselot108-inspired anthropology,
which was simultaneously being debated in de Lubac’s Surnaturel:109

It would represent the ignorance of analogy, the transcendence of divine

truth, and the proper character of human science. It would be a sign of
a hidden but very real victory of Cartesian rationalism and of Spinozist

104 Concerning the affection felt by Gilson, himself a close associate of Chenu, for the
nouvelle théologie, see “Correspondence Étienne Gilson—Michel Labourdette,” ed. Henry
Donneaud, Revue thomiste 94 (1994): 479–529; also, see Étienne Gilson and Henri de
Lubac, Letters of Etienne Gilson to Henri De Lubac, trans. Mary Emily Hamilton (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1988).
105 This is an analogy that the nouveaux théologiens drew heavily on from even their first
years reading Rousselot, and de Lubac wrote to Yves de Montcheuil: “Because if it is true
that Thomism’s theory of the agent intellect, the phantasm, and the essence of things is
now untenable, as you claim, and also that they constitute the most apparent part of the
doctrine of Aquinas, then, on the other hand, it seems to me also true that we find
explicitly in St Thomas certain principles even more fundamental. When these are drawn
out, they overshadow the famous ‘material essences’, thus permitting a disciple of St
Thomas to sacrifice them without being unfaithful to the master. Rousselot remarked in
his thesis that if St Thomas held to the essences, it was because he was preoccupied with
higher things. He does not take the trouble to verify the copper treasure that the world
of his time thought was gold. . . . More and more I find in St. Thomas texts that open me
to other perspectives.” De Lubac, letter to Yves de Montcheuil, dated Thursday, Autumn
1924, ASJV, quoted in Kirwan, Avant-garde, 111.
106 Le Blond, “L’Analogue,” 139.
107 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 141.
108 Along with Blondel and Bergson.
109 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946).
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 29

univocity, no matter how venerable the clothing that covers them. Per-
haps a theologian could manifest the intrusion of this rationalism in
certain theories concerning a quasi-natural faith, where human logic
leaves practically nothing for grace. In any case, it emerges in the con-
fusion that some would like to establish between absolute and univocal,
between relative and analogous. This represents a formidable danger
for Christian philosophy, and it is fundamentally opposed to the spirit
of St. Thomas. Truth has an absolute character, but it is not univocal.
Our human truths, which are not purely relative, are only analogous to
the divine truth.110

In response to Le Blond’s article, Labourdette and Nicolas penned a

lengthy article in Revue thomiste, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of
Theological Science.” After a five-page summary of Le Blond’s arguments,
Labourdette and Nicolas begin a lengthy discussion of the nature of truth
and the philosophical and theological anthropology that underpin claims
that one makes concerning these matters. They carefully distinguish logical
truth (which will be the primary domain of their concerns) from the onto-
logical truth of things (which seems to be the primary domain of Le Blond’s
focus on the analogy of truth). They develop the logical notion of speculative
truth (as the adequation of the mind to reality, expressed precisely in judg-
ments, the products of the second “operation” of the intellect) in human
knowledge carefully but quickly moving toward the truth character of
revealed data, as well as the knowledge articulated in theological science.111
Following these introductory points, Labourdette and Nicolas present a
lengthy set of sub-distinctions concerning the various kinds of diversity to be
found in human knowledge. They begin with the physical / biological distinc-
tions that exist among human persons.112 Although they depict racial diversity
with perhaps an overly broad brush, their intention in this sub-section is quite
clear: beyond questions of physical differentiation, there is immense differen-
tiation within human culture and civilization. Moreover, human activity, pre-
cisely because it is incarnate, is stamped with the mark of historicity and tem-
poral development (and backsliding). Nonetheless, they also assert that in the
midst of all of this historical change, there are elements that enable one to
affirm that the “entirety of the human condition”113 is present in all men.

110 Le Blond, “L’Analogie,” 141.

111 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 199–208 below.
112 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 208–13 below.
113 Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 213 below.
30 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

In the next section, they develop the Thomist school’s noetics of science,
reflecting directly on the epistemological question of the various degrees of
truth involved in human knowledge, tracing out the differences between per
se nota principles (known through the virtue of understanding), scientific
judgments (which are known in an objectively illative manner, through the
virtues of scientia and sapientia114), and opinions, noting how the careful
drawing of distinctions can help to discern what is true from what is false in
this final category of judgments.115
Continuing in this section, they discuss a point that is often not parsed
carefully enough in this debate as a whole: the kind of “truth” which is found
in conceptualization. Strictly speaking, this is not the same sense of truth as
what is involved in judgments (where truth is most strictly found).116 Here,
in conceptualization, the mind has a kind of ontological truth through “fidel-
ity” to the nature that is known, although often involving significant labors
in order to arrive at a definition of what is known. Labourdette and Nicolas
reject an epistemology akin to that of Henri Bergson, who proposed that con-
ceptualization is, in fact, a product coming after a primordial, intuitive, non-
conceptual contact with reality. Rather, over the course of a number of pages,
they develop a theory of conceptual elaboration which bears witness to the
way that the human mind must progress from the vague to the distinct, as
well as the various ways that knowledge is marked by the abstractive charac-
ter of human knowledge.117 After discussing these points concerning concep-
tualization, Labourdette and Nicolas take up the question of the linguistic
expression of what is known, discussing the way that history, culture, style,
and genre all interact with our conceptualizations.118
Next, they take up the question of systematization. This particular point
touches on the nerve of the whole debate that is raging around them at this
time, for it is precisely the question concerning the nature of theological
science, which is at the heart of the disagreements between the Dominican
and Jesuit parties writing in the debate concerning the nouvelle théologie.

114 On this topic, see the remarks made in Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive,” 1103–46.
115 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 214–18 below.
116 See the texts cited in note 217 in the systematic portion of this introduction.
117 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 214–23 below. In the text itself, it is clear that they are relying upon Maritain’s
work in the Degrees of Knowledge. However, much of what they say about definition and
the development of an initially-vague notion seems almost certainly to be a continuation
of Garrigou-Lagrange’s own reflections on these matters. Regarding the latter, see note
217 in the synthetic subsection of this introduction.
118 Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 223–25 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 31

Systems of thought, organizing explanatory principles and explained conclu-

sions, are attempts aiming at scientific elaboration. The overall architecture
of these systems will be dominated by their principles, which will determine
their respective scopes, as well as their pliability in the face of new data.119
Moreover, even within a given system of thought, various thinkers will bring
to bear their own “mentalities,” coloring one and the same overall conceptual
content with various contingent factors that must be carefully disentangled
with the tools of both history and systematic thought in hand.120
Labourdette and Nicolas draw their article to a close by reflecting on St.
Thomas’s place in the history of theology, whom they assert will necessarily
be replaced if one were to attempt to “baptize” Hegel, Bergson, Kierkegaard,
or Marx in a way analogous to the way that Aquinas purified and utilized
Aristotelian thought, for according to Labourdette and Nicolas, the disparity
between these modern thinkers’ principles and those of St. Thomas is far too
great for any true synthesis to be fashioned. To accept their principles would
ultimately be to deny St. Thomas’s. Aware that this assertion might seem a-
historical, they protest that it is not at all such, for true progress is possible
in human knowledge, just as it is in the applied arts:

These are men [i.e., St. Thomas and Aristotle, along with other Fathers]
who, in fact, discovered or decisively expressed this or that truth, plac-
ing their stamp upon it. But who thinks of the inventor of the plow?
Nonetheless, the plow exists and has become a perfected machine
whose principles have not changed. Certain ideas and methods are
inventions that are more precious than the plow or than any other tool.
And I know quite well that Aristotle and the whole of Greek thought
itself seem to represent a rather partial view of the human mind con-
cerning things when we think of the world of Hindu thought or even,
having become so different from them, that of modern thought. Non-
etheless, it is not for nothing that the Divine Truth was revealed and
first taught in Hebrew and Greek concepts. Without a doubt, they were
adapted to this task and prepared for by the Word who illuminates
every man coming into this world. Without a doubt, they were, above
all, flexed and rectified, thereby being given more truth, by this Divine
Truth which had to be expressed in them. Plato and Aristotle are our
masters, but how transformed are they by the Faith which found in
them the concepts needed for its own human expression!121

119 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 226–28 below.
120 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 228–31 below.
121 Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 235 below.
32 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

They likewise address the seeming-imperialism of scholastic thought,

which would strive to establish a single theological science. They acknowl-
edge that no such unified theological science can ever be fully achieved.
Nonetheless, they believe that the requirement that it be scientific in character
will lead it to tend toward an increasingly unified form, explaining the objec-
tive content of faith, even while it may be inspired by non-objective factors
involved in the theologian’s personal experience of reality and, above all, of
the mysteries through mystical experience. They acknowledge, moreover,
that the encounter with new systems of thought (in the course of missionary
activity) will lead to the refashioning of some points of Latin theology.
However, this does not mean that cultures receiving Christian thought would
ultimately need to fully recast the latter, thus leading to the abandonment of
the heretofore accepted notional content of Christian dogmas. Moreover,
they point out that Western philosophy was profoundly altered by Chris-
tianity, implying that the same would likewise happen to Eastern philosophy
in its encounter with Christian truth.122
The article draws to a close with strong words written in an almost-
prophetic tone:

How can we fail to see that Thomism finds itself at a critical moment—
and along with it, all the traditional theological schools, for none of
them would survive its ruin unscathed, existing thereafter only in the
form of scattered themes taken up and transformed into brand new
intellectual constructions? Is it a gangue to be broken up so that Chris-
tian Dogma may be thereby freely extracted therefrom? Or, by contrast,
does it remain its most perfect and perfectible scientific elaboration?
In any case, if it could only survive as an “analogical” relic, then, in
keeping with its most essential contention, it would be most appropriate
for it to step aside and allow itself to be replaced.123

Though generally careful and measured in their responses and reactions to

their Jesuit interlocutors, the Dominican Fathers at the Revue thomiste here
bear witness to the profound concern that they feel. This sentiment will be
matched upon the pen of their older confrere writing from Rome, to whose
interventions we will now turn.

122 Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 237 below.
123 Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 239 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 33

THE ROMAN RESPONSE

The Roman response was undertaken primarily by Garrigou-Lagrange. Of
course, there were other theologians who opposed the various authors in
question,124 but he was the most prominent of the Roman theologians, and
his response was, in the end, what came to characterize the entire affair. Just
as we began the Toulouse section with an article on the nature of theology
from their perspective, acting as an anchor and contextualizing their later
articles, we have done the same here, including one written by him during
the 1930s debates on the nature of theology.
The bulk of the affair involved eight articles (and a set of letters), six
written by Garrigou-Lagrange, and two responses from the nouvelle théologie
camp, one by the secular cleric and friend of the Jesuits, Bruno de Solages
and the other by Bouillard himself. Of these eight articles, only the first has
been remembered, and it is one of the most famous pieces of the twentieth
century, “Where is the New Theology Headed?” The article has existed in
English for over two decades, and it is often referred to as the “atom bomb”
that dramatically escalated the affair.125 The exchange unfolded in the follow-
ing order:

1. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed?” (1946)

2. Bruno de Solages, “For the Honor of Theology: Fr. Garrigou-
Lagrange’s Misinterpretations” (1947)
3. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Truth and the Immutability of Dogma” (1947)
4. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Concerning Notions Consecrated by the
Councils” (1947)
5. Garrigou-Lagrange—Maurice Blondel, “Correspondence” (1947)
6. Henri Bouillard, “Conciliar Notions and the Analogy of Truth”
(1948)
7. Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the Need to Return to the Traditional Con-
ception of Truth” (1948)
8. Garrigou-Lagrange, “The Immutability of Defined Truths, with
Remarks on the Supernatural Order” (1948)

124 See for example, Charles Boyer’s articles “Nature pure et surnaturel dans le Surna-
turel du Père de Lubac,” Gregorianum 28 (1947): 379–95, and “Qu’est-ce que la théolo-
gie? Réflexions sur une controverse,” Gregorianum 21 (1940): 255–66; Pietro Parente,
“Nouve tendenze teologiche,” L’Osservatore Romano (9–10 February 1942): 1; and for an
early Anglophone critique see David Greenstock, “Thomism and the New Theology,” The
Thomist 13 (1950): 567–96.
125 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie: où va-t-elle?” Angelicum 23
(1946): 126–47; English translations have existed for over two decades, with the first,
widely circulated online, by the traditionalist publication Catholic Family News in 1998.
That translation was refined and reprinted in a special issue of the Josephinum Journal
of Theology, vol. 18, no. 1 (2011), which we have used here with some changes.
34 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

9. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Relativism and the Immutability of Dogma

According to the [First] Vatican Council” (1949)

Garrigou-Lagrange does not engage in the open irenicism of the Toulouse

Dominicans (who actually refused to publish “Where is the New Theology
Headed?” in the Revue thomiste on account of the tense situation in France).
However, his tone is much more measured than the bitter dismissal that char-
acterizes Henri de Lubac’s (anonymous) response. Indeed, throughout the
entire exchange, he is nothing but polite and restrained.126 His tone is never
personal, and he takes care to note that he has had a long and cordial corre-
spondence with Blondel over the years.127 Despite this, his charge that res-
sourcement theology was leading back to the errors of theological modernism
was enough to overshadow the Toulouse overture.128 The first response to Gar-
rigou-Lagrange came from Bruno de Solages in a wide-ranging piece that was
emotional and accusatory and sought to defend each of the major ressource-
ment thinkers.129 He made numerous charges, which we shall discuss below,
accusing Garrigou-Lagrange of sloppiness and dishonesty.

126 Nichols, “Thomism,” 12. For an account of the postwar situation in France, which
highly favored the ressourcement thinkers, see Kirwan, Avant-garde, 204–51. This char-
acteristic tone of Garrigou-Lagrange, which is never personal, is exemplified in an article
not included by us in this sequence, though published immediately thereafter, Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, “Le relativisme et l’immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum 27, no. 3
(Sept. 1950): 219–46. This text focuses on Hume, Kant, and Hegel. If any Catholic falls
under a direct critique, it would be Antonio Rosmini and Anton Günther, and even then,
these long-dead thinkers are mentioned only in passing.
127 For further details of this relationship, see U potrazi za istinom: korespondencija
Blondel-Garrigou-Lagrange, ed. Hrvoje Lasic (Zagreb: Demetra, 2016); John Sullivan,
“Forty Years Under the Cosh: Blondel and Garrigou-Lagrange,” New Blackfriars 93
(2012): 58–70; Michael Kerlin, “Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange: Defending the Faith from
Pascendi dominici gregis to Humani Generis,” U.S. Catholic Historian 25, no. 1 (Winter
2007): 97–113.
128 However, because of certain lingering distortions concerning the history of this inter-
vention, it is important to emphasize the fact that his main focus was the conclusion to
Bouillard’s volume. As Maritain wrote to Journet, following upon a meeting with Garri-
gou-Lagrange on June 2, 1946, during which the men spoke about the state of mind reign-
ing then at the Holy Office:
From what he told me, it appears that no public threat seems possible against the
[general] tendencies [and] the articles of the review (this relieved me). His predomi-
nating concern is with Bouillard’s book (let them do with it what they will). My own
opinion is that the Pope should promulgate a positive document, enlightening minds
concerning the nobility of speculative knowledge and the need for Catholic thought
to be inspired by the wisdom of St. Thomas (Fouilloux, “Dialogue,” 168–69).
129 See Bruno de Solages, “‘Pour l’honneur de la théologie’: le contre-sens du R. P. Gar-
rigou-Lagrange,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 48 (1947): 64–84.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 35

Ultimately, de Solages’s intervention did little to move the debate forward,

and Garrigou-Lagrange responded with two articles in the same volume of
Angelicum. Bouillard finally countered the first Garrigou-Lagrange article in
1948 with an excellent piece. His tone is measured, with an approach that is
focused and clear, and the article gives a sense of what could have been possible
if the debate had been successful. As we will discuss below, Bouillard provided
a thorough defense of his positions, attempting to refute Garrigou-Lagrange’s
charge, and most importantly, clarifying his famous conclusion, the precise
response for which the Thomists had been awaiting for several years. There is
no doubt that the brief Garrigou-Bouillard exchange represents a highpoint in
this whole affair. Both parties were neither personal nor excessively wide-rang-
ing (as were the Toulouse thinkers at times), and most importantly, they
attempted to address the arguments against them directly, without obfuscation
or indignation. Garrigou-Lagrange was clear, as were the Toulouse Dom-
inicans, that they were not accusing the Jesuits themselves of modernism, but,
rather, only that they feared their theological methodology would ultimately
imply results that revisited modernism. Although the Toulouse Dominicans
were privately in full agreement with the substance of Garrigou-Lagrange’s first
article, they were careful not to use the word “modernism” because of the effect
it would have on a French church already decidedly against them.
Garrigou-Lagrange continued his response with two articles in the same
1948 issue of Angelicum, and a final article in 1949. Thus, the debate ended
before it was begun in full rigor. Due to the arguably-intemperate Jesuit
response as well as Garrigou’s invocation of modernism, the Jesuits were
effectively silenced. Before we briefly peruse the high points in the debate, a
brief note about Garrigou-Lagrange is in order, at least to explain why he
took such a strident stance against Bouillard’s conclusion.
If Garrigou-Lagrange’s long life as a theologian can be summed up with
one issue, it would be the defense of dogma and its immutability. This was a
central preoccupation and directed many works in his expansive bibliogra-
phy,130 from his earliest work up to this late-life debate. Indeed, the kind of
religious conversion he experienced after reading Ernest Hello’s Life, Science,
and Art was what prompted him to join the Dominicans, and this conversion
involved the question of the immutable character of speculative truth. He
later recounted:

In an instant, I glimpsed that the doctrine of the Catholic Church was

the absolute truth about God, about His intimate life, and about man in
his origin and supernatural destiny. I saw in an instant that this was not
a truth that is relative to the present state of our knowledge but, rather,

130 See Benedetto Zorcolo, “Bibliografia del P. Garrigou-Lagrange,” Angelicum 42 (1965):

200–72.
36 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

an absolute truth that will not pass away, though it will shine with ever-
increasing radiance until we see God facie ad faciem. A ray of light made
the Lord’s words shine in my eyes: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but
my words will not pass away.” I understood that this truth must bear
fruit like a grain of wheat in good soil. . . . Gratia est semen gloriae.131

Thus, he entered the Dominican Order as the Church was in the throes
of the Modernist crisis, which challenged the very notion of dogma on both
philosophical and historical grounds. His most important non-commen-
tatorial works in speculative theology and philosophy, such as Sens commun
(in English, Thomistic Common Sense), De Revelatione (in English, On Divine
Revelation), God, His Existence and His Nature, along with his philosophical
writings on the principle of finality, all have this defense in mind, at least
peripherally, and the first of those books was written precisely as a response
to the Catholic Modernist, Edouard Le Roy. Thomistic Common Sense
defended the transhistorical character of language and its ability to support
the immutability of dogma.
It was also during this period that Garrigou-Lagrange entered into a
four-decade-long charitable personal correspondence with the philosopher
Maurice Blondel. Although they had strong disagreements, he always held
that Blondel was acting in good faith, in contrast to figures such as Alfred
Loisy and George Tyrrell. He disagreed most strongly with Blondel’s philos-
ophy of history and the way he replaced the classical definition of truth, as
the conformity of mind and reality in judgment, with the conformity of mind
and life, believing that this gravely imperiled the absolute character of dogma.
This preoccupation continued in the 1930s when he was forced to intervene
in the affairs of Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis Charlier over works that
seemed to undermine the immutable character of dogma.132 Thus, Garrigou-
Lagrange’s formative years during the Modernist crisis marked him as per-
petually wary of a recurrent threat, and in the post-war decades of the 20s
and 30s, Catholics were divided over whether the Modernist threat was in
the past or just lurking beneath the surface, waiting to reappear. Thus, after
the appearance of Bouillard’s book, Garrigou-Lagrange’s response had none
of the complimentary or wide-ranging character that marked the Toulouse
response. Rather, he went directly to the heart of the matter: to his eyes,
Bouillard’s sometimes-vague and unclear explanations (something the latter
would himself later seem to admit) weakened the stability of the content of
dogmatic propositions and would dangerously lead to modernism. Although
he is perhaps less clear than Labourdette on this score, the concern is above

131 Quoted in Marie–Rosaire Gagnebet, “L’oeuvre du P. Garrigou-Lagrange: itineraire

intellectuel et spirituel vers Dieu,” Angelicum 42 (1965): 9–10.
132 See notes 34 above and 212 and 269 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 37

all with Bouillard’s theological explanation which, nonetheless, seemed to risk

implying problems on the level of De fide requirements against modernism.
In the famed first article of the sequence, Garrigou-Lagrange goes imme-
diately to Bouillard’s claim that a theology that refuses to be contemporary
would be a false theology, likewise challenging Bouillard’s claim that the
Council of Trent did not intend to canonize the notion of formal causality,
which according to him is now obsolete and thus able to be replaced with
another notion:

If it is another notion, then it is no longer that of formal cause: Then

it is also no longer true to say with the Council: “Sanctifying grace is
the formal cause of justification.” It is necessary to be content to say
that grace was understood at the time of the Council of Trent as the
formal cause of justification, but today it is necessary to define it
otherwise; this passé definition is no longer “contemporary” and thus
is no longer true, since a doctrine which is no longer contemporary,
as was said, is a false doctrine.133

Garrigou-Lagrange continues by charging that Blondel’s definition of

truth is the source of the trouble:134

We can see the danger of the new definition of truth, no longer the
adaequatio rei et intellectus (adequation of intellect and reality) but
conformitas mentis et vitae (the agreement of mind and life). When
Maurice Blondel in 1906 proposed this substitution, he did not fore-
see all of the consequences for the faith. He himself would be perhaps
terrified, or at least very troubled.135 Which “life” is meant in this def-
inition of: “agreement of mind and life”? It means human life. And so
then, how can one avoid the Modernist definition: “Truth is no more
immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and
through him.”136 We can understand why Pius X said of the Modern-
ists, “They pervert the eternal concept of truth.”137

133 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed?,” 289 below.

134 For the influence of Blondel on the Fourvière Jesuits, see Chs. 2, 4, and 6 in Kirwan,
Avant-garde; also Antonio Russo traces these influences and reproduces some of their
correspondence in Henri de Lubac (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998).
135 Another theologian, whom we shall cite further on, invites us to say that at the time
of the Council of Trent transubstantiation was conceived as the changing, the conversion
of the substance of the bread into that of the Body of Christ, but that today it has come to
be thought of as transubstantiation, without this changing of substance, meaning that the
substance of the bread, which remains, becomes the efficacious sign of the Body of Christ.
And this pretends to conserve the Council’s meaning! (Footnote Garrigou-Lagrange’s.)
136 Holy Office of Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 58 (Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no. 2058]).
137 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed?,” 290–91 below.
38 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

For Garrigou-Lagrange, from “this principle, it emerges that the truth is

always in fieri [in process], never immutable. Faith is the conformity of
judgment, not with being and its necessary laws, but with life, which is
constantly and forever evolving.”138 Thus, foundational doctrines such as
original sin, hell, and the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist are all
in danger of being swept away.
As mentioned above, de Solages responded to Garrigou-Lagrange in
the April–June 1947 issue of the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, the jour-
nal of the Institut catholique in Toulouse, and accused him of “outrageously
violating” the elementary laws of historical and literary criticism and engag-
ing in a dishonest examination in which he used Thomism as a “bludgeon to
crush his opponents.”139
First, by accusing Garrigou-Lagrange of irresponsibly using private
texts, he is referring to the anonymous but influential mimeographed
papers and books circulating in French Catholic circles most often associ-
ated with Teilhard de Chardin’s thought.140 De Solages declares that, given
their private nature and questionable authenticity, he refuses to comment
on them. He asks why Garrigou-Lagrange would use texts of an unknown
origin and aim.
Second, de Solages accuses Garrigou-Lagrange of arbitrarily naming the
adherents of the nouvelle théologie movement, and de Solages listed Bouillard,
Blondel, de Lubac, Fessard, and Teilhard de Chardin, declaring that “none of
these authors have, as far as I know, spoken of a ‘new theology.’ Moreover,
they constitute an artificial block, arbitrarily constituted and singularly dis-
parate.”141 Here, de Solages essentially takes up de Lubac’s position in his
response, namely, that there was no movement or group of nouveaux théol-
ogiens. At every point, he attempts to use St. Thomas to scold Garrigou-
Lagrange, declaring: “Saint Thomas gives us here an admirable example. Liv-
ing in a period when one was far from having the means at hand for knowing
the history of philosophy and to unravel the different currents of thought
involved therein, far from confusing Platonic and Aristotelian currents of
thought, he always strove to distinguish them.”142
Third, and most serious of all, is Garrigou-Lagrange’s use of citations:
“He is content to quote some sentences, often citing mere sentence fragments,
from each of the authors he attacks. This is already poor methodology when
one wants to judge the thought of an author. But this is nothing! These

138 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed?,” 298 below.

139 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 66.
140 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 67.
141 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 68.
142 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 69.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 39

citations are inaccurate, detached from any context, and misinterpreted.”143

De Solages declares that also in this regard, Garrigou-Lagrange shows himself
to be a “very bad disciple of St. Thomas.”144
After this five-page introduction, de Solages then, in the next ten pages,
treats individually de Lubac, Daniélou and Chenu (in the same section),
Bouillard, and Blondel. Regarding de Lubac, de Solages castigates Garrigou
in no uncertain terms for having quoted merely a single phrase from de
Lubac’s Surnaturel and accuses him of being totally unconcerned with under-
standing de Lubac’s actual position.
In the section on Daniélou and Chenu, de Solages quotes an entire para-
graph where Garrigou-Lagrange anonymously quotes passages on the rela-
tionship between spirituality and theology. This is a key issue for Garrigou-
Lagrange, since some of the Modernists held that theology was merely the
reflection of a spiritual experience, and the Dominican claims that Daniélou’s
formulation is excessively vague and potentially dangerous:

Moreover, is this not the new definition of truth that is found in the
new definition of theology: “Theology is no more than a spirituality or
religious experience which has found its intellectual expression.” And so
follow assertions such as: “If theology can help us to understand spir-
ituality, spirituality will, in most cases, burst open our theological
frameworks, and we shall be obliged to formulate different types of
theology. . . . For to each great spirituality has corresponded a great
theology.” Does this mean that two theologies can be true, even if their
main theses are contradictory and opposite? The answer will be “no”
if one keeps to the traditional definition of truth. The answer will be
“yes” if one adopts the new definition of truth, conceived not in rela-
tion to being and to immutable laws, but relative to different religious
experiences. This idea brings us remarkably close to Modernism.145

De Solages charges that Garrigou-Lagrange quoted Daniélou (the

author of the second, longer quote) anonymously, accusing him of taking
the Jesuit out of context and ignoring the larger point in the selection. As
regards the first quote from Chenu, he claims that Garrigou-Lagrange took
the former out of context, and Chenu refers only to “theological systems,”
per se, rather than simply theology in general:

It is not a question of theology, of theological science, but of theologies,

that is to say, of various theological systems, partial, more-or-less perfect
incarnations of theology or of theological science. Fr. Garrigou-

143 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 69.

144 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 69.
145 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed?,” 291 below.
40 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Lagrange’s definition reads: “Theology is none other than. . .” Fr. Chenu’s

phrase is “a theology.” This underlines the fact that there are several
“theologies,” and therefore that it is a question of systems, as the imme-
diate context proves abundantly, since it is a question of Bonaventurian,
Augustinian or Scotist and Molinist, alongside Thomism.146

Regarding Bouillard and the famous claim that a theology that is not
contemporary is false, de Solages tries to clarify that the former

in no way affirms the monstrous notion that a theology that would have
been true at one time becomes objectively false ‘when the mind evolves,’
but rather, that it will be subjectively false, meaning that it would be
interpreted in a false sense by a mind that, as a result of its own evolu-
tion, would no longer give the same meaning to the various notions
used by this theology.147

Regarding Bouillard’s controversial attempt to square dogma and devel-

opment with the notion of absolute affirmation,148 de Solages insists that it
can be understood in “another language, one that is more Thomist” and
appeals to the notion of analogy, insisting that the “more superficial element”
(the relative formulation) does not jeopardize the substantial orthodoxy of
the theory, given that Bouillard insists that—and here de Solages’s appeal
remains as vague as Bouillard’s conclusion—a notion of equivalency binds
them together. Finally, with respect to his defense of Blondel, he accuses Gar-
rigou-Lagrange of once again taking him out of context and failing to under-
stand the philosopher’s meaning.
Garrigou-Lagrange promptly responded to de Solages later in 1947 with
two articles totaling thirty pages in Angelicum, “Truth and the Immutability
of Dogma,” in which he attempts a point by point refutation of de Solages’s
charges, and “Concerning Notions Consecrated by the Councils,” in which
he disputes that analogy can be used to ground his affirmation-formulation
notion Thomistically, and he challenges Bouillard’s claim that conciliar
notions, like Trent’s use of formal causality, can be abrogated.
Bouillard himself finally responded in 1948 with “Notions Conciliaires
et l’Analogie de Vérité” [Conciliar Notions and the Analogy of Truth], a
twenty-page essay in Recherches de science religieuse. He begins by denying

146 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 74.

147 de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 75.
148 It should be noted that although Gardeil’s first chapter of Le donné révélé et la thé-
ologie strives to show that there is something absolute in our affirmations, his purely
Thomistic theory of judgment and truth is the same as that of Labourdette and Garrigou-
Lagrange and not that of Bouillard, de Solages, or Le Blond.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 41

any radical intentions, and he declares that he holds to the traditional defi-
nition of truth (adequatio rei et intellectus), recalling a passage from his
famous conclusion that clearly shows he also holds that absolute affirmations
not only pertain to dogmas but also to Scripture and Tradition as well as first
principles and acquired truths:

To avoid all equivocation, let us note that the absolute affirmations that
we contrast with contingent representations include not only defined
dogmas, that is to say propositions canonized by the Church, but also
all that is contained explicitly or implicitly in Scripture and Tradition.
Likewise, they include the invariant or the absolute of the human mind,
first principles and acquired truths, all necessary for defining dogma.
We contrast this set of invariants with what is contingent in theological
conceptions. It is essential that we understand that these invariants do
not subsist alongside (and independent of) such contingent concep-
tions. They are necessarily conceived and expressed in them. However,
when they change, the new conceptions contain the same absolute rela-
tions, the same eternal affirmations.149

Bouillard goes on to declare that he refers only to “certain technical

notions,” which theologians have used to express divine truth, the per-
manence of which he has highlighted. Moreover, he writes that his historical
work has been primarily concerned with the differences between theological
systems rather than with the “profound and essential identity of their doc-
trinal teaching.”150 Furthermore, he declares that across concepts and systems,
which have undergone modifications, the same truth always remains:

The history of these notions is in fact dominated by a fundamental and

constant affirmation: justification is a free gift of God. It is by grace that
man is freed from sin and can accomplish good works. This thesis con-
stitutes what one can call an invariant. We forever find it present in the
evolving notions and systems. Most of all, in order to maintain its own
integrity, it itself brings about the use of new notions and schemata.151

He continues by quoting from the conclusion to stress that he did indeed

underscore the importance of divine truth in his work: “Thus the history of
theology causes us to see the permanence of divine truth, and at the same
time reveals to us what is contingent in the concepts and systems in which
we receive it.”152 For Bouillard, it is the task of historical theology to “grasp”

149 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 221.

150 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 253.
151 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 216.
152 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 219.
42 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

the absolute that lies at the heart of theological development. Thus, for Bouil-
lard these absolute affirmations are the constant meaning that persists despite
the changing formulations.
However, he concedes the possibility that formulas in his book could have
been better stated (“ne soit pas entierement heureuse”), admitting that “the
facts analyzed can be interpreted differently, provided that proof is given.”
He then attempts to clarify another contentious sentence, which directly
precedes the admonition about a theology that refuses to be contemporary:
“When the mind evolves, an immutable truth is maintained only thanks to
the simultaneous and correlative evolution of all the concepts, in which the
same relationship is maintained.”153 To this Garrigou-Lagrange had
responded: “how can ‘an unchanging truth’ maintain itself if the two notions
that are united by the verb to be are essentially variable or changeable?”154
When he came to defend himself, Bouillard insists that he says the same
thing in different words, adding the clarification that something immutable
expresses itself differently according to the chosen system, and here he
employs the notion of analogy that de Solages argued for earlier in the
debate, but which Garrigou-Lagrange (as well as Labourdette and Nicolas)
will challenge later on:

This immutable thing is expressed in a different manner, depending on

the system one chooses. This is the law of analogy which can be ignored
by no Thomist. When one and the same revealed truth is expressed in
different (e.g., Augustinian, Thomist, Suarezian, etc.) systems, the var-
ious notions which are used for translating this truth are neither “equiv-
ocal” (if they were, one would no longer be speaking about the same
thing), nor “univocal” (for otherwise, all systems [of thought] would
be identical) but, rather, “analogous.” In other words, they express the
same reality in different ways.155

Bouillard draws to a close by arguing that his conclusion was not meant
to articulate a general theory of development / evolution and permanence in
theology and, therefore, should not be read in isolation from the rest of the
book on which it depends. Furthermore, he argues that his famous claim
about false theologies is being misunderstood:

A theology which, by maintaining old technical notions among new

technical notions, would not scrupulously maintain relevance regarding
truth [l’actualité du rapport de vérité] and would make false assertions.

153 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 219.

154 Garrigou-Lagrange, “Where is the New Theology Headed,” 288 below.
155 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 254.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 43

It is all-too-clear that I have never meant that a theology that was true
in the past would then become objectively false but, rather, simply that
it would be misunderstood by a mind that would no longer give the
same meaning to the concepts used.156

This of course is much different than what Bouillard had implied in his
conclusion. He claims that he never intended to say anything other than what
Garrigou-Lagrange himself said regarding Trent and Aristotle, namely, that
the Council did not canonize the Aristotelian notion of form with all of its
relations to other notions used in the Aristotelian system. Bouillard here
seems to backtrack and attribute a strikingly mild intention to his conclusion:

When speaking of ‘formal cause’ to a man who has no rudimentary

knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy or scholastic theology, such a per-
son will not understand. He will interpret the word ‘form’ as meaning
the exterior figure of a thing, which has nothing to do with the thought
of the Council of Trent. We are here dealing with technical terms which
need to be explained. However, to explain them is to translate them
into other terms that are equivalent to them.157

He concludes this section by once again appealing to his particular interpre-

tation of the notion of analogy.
After defending his conclusion, Bouillard responds to Garrigou-
Lagrange’s three main points. First, Garrigou-Lagrange claimed there are cer-
tain notions, even technical notions, which have truly been consecrated by
the Councils. After analyzing several key issues, Bouillard declares that his
position is closer to Garrigou-Lagrange’s than the latter seems to think. First,
he accuses Garrigou-Lagrange of overstating the problem by citing almost
the entire table of contents of Denzinger as an example of this issue. More-
over, he argues that Garrigou-Lagrange is confusing human and technical
notions, further contradicting himself when he argues that the terms are
technical but not Aristotelian:158

The Aristotelian notion of form is technical when it is understood with

its relations to other notions of the Aristotelian system (which is the
only way to understand it correctly). Otherwise, it is no longer either

156 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 256.

157 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 257.
158 This is an argument that goes back to the section on dogmatic formulas in Garrigou-
Lagrange’s Sens commun, where he argues that such notions used in dogmatic formulas
are rarely merely those of common sense. Rather, they are technical notions which, non-
etheless, are accessible to common sense. See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common
Sense, 245–300.
44 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

technical, nor properly Aristotelian. There is a contradiction involved

in writing that the Council has consecrated this technical notion with-
out canonizing all its relations to the system [from which it was
derived]. Either the Council of Trent consecrated a specific Aristotelian
notion, or it has not consecrated a technical notion.159

Bouillard then goes on to analyze Trent on both the formal cause of jus-
tification as well as Transubstantiation, arguing on textual grounds that neither
was consecrated by the Council. Maintaining that he and Garrigou-Lagrange
are closer than the latter thinks, he concludes the section by saying:

Summarizing, we can say that the Councils often utilize technical

notions, sometimes as subjects of their propositions, sometimes as
predicates. Some are philosophical in origin. In order to understand
them, it is not always enough to refer to a very general metaphysic, to
notions that are simply human. Sometimes at least, it is necessary to
refer to the system from which they are drawn. But the Councils did
not want to consecrate them as linked to this system.160

Bouillard attempts to refute a second argument, namely, that “one cannot,

without modifying the meaning of the Council’s teaching, renounce these
notions or let them fall into obsolescence, substituting them with other so-
called equivalent or analogous ones.”161 First, Bouillard states that he never
claimed the notion of formal cause was “unstable” but only that it was con-
tingent, which simply indicates that it is “non-necessary and means here that
other notions (equivalent and analogous) can be used”162 to designate the same
reality. Bouillard then argues against Garrigou-Lagrange’s contention that in
theological development, for example between Augustine and Aquinas on the
issue of the Real Presence and habitual grace, “there is only here a passage
from the vague to the distinct for the same notion, not two different and anal-
ogous notions; it is the same notion becoming more explicit and distinct.”163
Bouillard tries to refute this claim, which would certainly undermine his
theory of historical analogy, which he articulates in the following passage:

To imagine that the Fathers of the Church had only vague notions, and
that Saint Thomas alone knew how to express them in explicit form,
would be to misunderstand the history of ideas, indeed, an error identical

159 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 260.

160 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 263.
161 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 258.
162 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 264.
163 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 264.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 45

to the one that led to the assertion that philosophy begins with Descartes,
art with the Renaissance, and political life with the French Revolution.
Each thinker, like each period, has his own intelligibility. He must be
understood for his own sake and not just as a transition to something
else. Certainly, in the course of the history of ideas, progress takes place
and notions become clearer. Although it then assumes a special character,
such progress also takes place in theology (and there is no need to stop
it in Saint Thomas). But sometimes new ways of thinking abandon pre-
cious elements of the past. The light cast on such-and-such a notion or
problem leaves in the shadows what was perhaps clearer before. To imag-
ine that Augustine’s notions are vague whenever they do not exactly cover
Thomist conceptions is to ignore the reality of history.164

The third and final charge of Garrigou-Lagrange that Bouillard chal-

lenges is his own notion of analogy and the former’s contention that the
meaning of certain conciliar proposals would become unknowable or uncer-
tain even for the Church, leading to relativism. Bouillard argues that different
councils have often expressed an identical truth in different terms. He pro-
vides this example:

When a professor, catechist, or preacher teaches Christian doctrine,

they need to explain what transubstantiation, formal cause, and hypo-
static union mean. How can this be done if not by translating these
terms into equivalent terms? Without a doubt, there is a risk of error,
and indeed preachers or professors express themselves here or there in
an inexact way. Father Garrigou-Lagrange himself, salva reverentia,
does not always explain in a perfect way the texts of the Councils. The
risk of error is inherent to the human mind. To do away with this risk,
we would need to do away with human thought. However, man does
not always make mistakes. We must not forget that the mind is an active
power of discernment, able to grasp differences and relationships [par-
entés], contradictions and identities. It knows how to spot the per-
manence of essential elements under surface-level changes, or changes
of meaning under identical terms. No theologian doubts his own
thought, I believe, when he affirms, in spite of differences in the con-
ception of the Eucharist in Augustine and St. Thomas, “the reality aimed
at [réalité visée] always remains the same.” Moreover, although the iso-
lated individual can be wrong, the Church assisted by the Holy Spirit
discerns with certainty. How often has one Council interpreted another
Council, or one decision another decision, translating the doctrine in
a different way, because intellectual needs demanded it!165

164 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 266.

165 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 267–68.
46 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Bouillard continues by declaring that he never claimed that

absolute and immutable truth can only be expressed by different and

successive notions but, rather, simply that it can be expressed through
different and equivalent notions . . . and in addition, it is necessary to
admit that the Church has the active power to distinguish equivalences
from contradictions, what is essential from the accessory. Otherwise,
one would deny its infallible doctrinal power.166

Bouillard’s sober and thorough article represents a highpoint in the

exchange and gives us a sense of what might have been possible had the dis-
cussion been allowed to play out. Due to the controversy that swelled from
both de Lubac’s response and Garrigou’s accusation of a return to modern-
ism, Bouillard was not permitted to respond, and the debate essentially con-
cluded with three articles from Garrigou-Lagrange.
The first two articles were both published in the same 1948 issue of Ange-
licum, and the first, “On the Need to Return to the Traditional Conception
of Truth,” appears to have been written before he had read Bouillard’s
response and may well have been a response to de Solages’s criticism. The
second is a response to both Bouillard’s aforementioned article and de Lubac’s
latest piece in Recherches on the surnaturel debate. The final article, published
in 1949, seems to be the last major piece in the debate before Humani generis
put an official end to the affair.

HISTORICAL CONCLUSIONS
A number of questions and observations emerge from a complete reading
of this debate. It is obvious that, at least in the case of the Toulouse Dom-
inicans, the myth of a “Thomist attack” is not easy to defend. In their writing,
we find very little (arguably nothing) in the way of sarcasm, dismissal, eva-
sion, or personal attacks, nor any calls for magisterial intervention. It is
debatable whether this description applies even to Garrigou-Lagrange’s
more-strenuous articles. In any case, it would certainly be difficult to fault
Labourdette and his confreres at any point for their generally magnanimous
and irenic tone. Despite this, they indeed were committed Thomists, and
their disagreement with Garrigou-Lagrange was of style and strategy rather
than substance. Regarding the Roman response, Garrigou-Lagrange was
direct and to the point, never responding with sarcasm or personal attacks.
Although he insists that it is his right to charge that a certain theology will
indeed lead to modernism, he might be faulted for not first seeking a clari-
fication from Bouillard before employing such a charged word, thereby

166 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires,” 268.

I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 47

inflaming the situation.167 However, it is difficult to deny that some of the

formulations in Bouillard’s conclusion are indeed vague and seem to allow
for at least the possibility of a dangerous historicism.
On the Jesuit side, it is difficult to exonerate de Lubac from his respon-
sibility for the breakdown of the discussion. As Fouilloux has remarked,
clearly it was a discussion of the utmost importance that needed to happen.
Not only did de Lubac scorn the Dominicans, but he dismissed their con-
cerns, which he insisted were unfounded.
Although de Solages only elevated the temperature, Bouillard’s sober
and thoughtful piece gives us a taste of what could have been possible. With
precision and reserve, he calmly attempted to answer Garrigou-Lagrange’s
charges, both clarifying himself as well as probing Garrigou-Lagrange’s posi-
tion for weak spots.
However, beyond these historical questions about “attacks” and “counter-
attacks,” which primarily deal with a journalistic history of embittered atti-
tudes and bruised egos, the central question remains: Were the Toulouse
Dominicans correct in initiating the debate and raising the questions about
truth, method, and dogma? Moreover, were they right to be concerned that
the intellectual currents in the highly volatile climate of postwar France might
indeed open the theological terrain to problematic and ultimately dangerous
formulations about the relationship between history and truth? In short, were
their fears justified?
In answering these questions, we have the benefit of clear hindsight, and
given that, less than two decades after this exchange came to an abrupt halt,
the Church underwent a deep crisis over precisely questions of truth, history,
and dogma, we can say with confidence that indeed, regardless of their solu-
tions, the Toulouse Dominicans were right to raise the issues and even to be
concerned. The nouveaux théologiens’ brisk dismissal of their concerns is all
the more striking given how during the post-conciliar crisis they themselves
diverged sharply on these questions. In the 1970s, Chenu sent de Lubac a
copy of a long interview he had given, inscribed with the words, “Regarding
a ‘journey,’ all the memories of which we have in common,” and next to

167 The relationship between the nouvelle théologie and modernism is contested, and
Boersma dismisses any connection between them, insisting that despite some “overlap,”
the two agendas were “fundamentally different” (Nouvelle Théologie, 17–21). Gerard
Loughlin holds that George Tyrrell’s thought was much closer to that of the nouvelle thé-
ologie and that Garrigou-Lagrange was correct that it “goes back to Modernism” (“Nou-
velle Théologie: A Return to Modernism?,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal
in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, 36–51). Mettepenningen is more nuanced and
claims that it did not “repeat” modernism but “developed its core ideas” in “Truth as
Issue in a Second Modernist Crisis? The Clash between Recontextualization and Retro-
contextualization in the French-Speaking Polemic of 1946–47,” in Theology and the Quest
for Truth, ed. Mathijs Lamberigts, et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), 141.
48 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Chenu’s claims that Vatican II ushered in a Copernican revolution in

the “axis of the faith,” in that the Word of God is now found in “the exis-
tential fabric of the Church, in the life of the Church,” rather than
“reduced in a series of authoritative utterances,” de Lubac simply scrib-
bled, “absurd.” In the paragraphs that follow, where Chenu expounds
his theory of history, in which the Word of God is discerned not in
propositions but, rather, in “events” or “signs of the times,” and theol-
ogy’s role is to interpret these unfolding events, de Lubac has filled the
margin with question marks punctuated by the word “superficial.”168

To highlight with greater clarity how far Chenu had seemingly moved
in denying the “trans-historical” underpinnings of language used to express
the faith, he wrote:

The Word of God both creates history and is interpreted within history.
. . . Understanding of the unity of Word and event, in which the truth
occurs, is a fundamental point of departure for theology. . . . Biblical truth
. . . in keeping with the Hebraic mentality, does not directly affront that
which is, but that which happens, that which one experiences. . . . Greek
thought develops through a reflection on the substance of beings, and
terminates in a philosophy of immutability and permanence. It ignores
that which is proper to biblical thought: the dimension of time. . . . One
must not establish a division between the act of the divine Word and the
formulas in which it takes shape and which give it its intellectual content.
But one also must not cede to a facile concordism in which the historical
and existential character of the truth of salvation dissolves, and where
the Word of God is absorbed into and neutralized by a theological
“science.” . . . The truth is a radically Christological concept. It should not
be treated as the manifestation of the eternal essence of things. [!]169

Thus, among devotees of Rousselot and Maréchal, there are widely diver-
gent opinions about the status of dogma, and thus the value of conceptual
formulations. Both Chenu and de Lubac170 adopted Rousselot’s general

168 Kirwan, Avant-garde, 278–79.

169 Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Vérité évangélique et métaphysique wolfienne à Vatican
II,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 57 (1973): 637–38, quoted in
Thomas Joseph White, “The Precarity of Wisdom: Modern Dominican Theology, Perspec-
tivalism, and the Tasks of Reconstruction,” in Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine,
the Sacraments, and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Romanus Cessario, ed. Reinhard
Hütter and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2011), 92–123. In his analysis, White draws substantially from Henri Donneaud, “La con-
stitution dialectique de la théologie et de son histoire selon M.-D. Chenu,” Revue tho-
miste 96, no. 1 (1996): 41–66.
170 Concerning the relationship between the thought of de Lubac and Rousselot, see
John M. McDermott, “De Lubac and Rousselot,” Gregorianum 78, no. 4 (1997): 735–59.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 49

anthropology early in their academic careers, but the former had a much
more radical interpretation, making a sharp distinction between the dog-
matic aspects of faith, which are defective, burdensome, and fragile, on the
one hand, and the non-conceptual and mystical drive to understand the
object of faith, God Himself, on the other: “Far from resting complacent in
the social [and dogmatic] servitude of his faith, far from being content in a
narrow security, the believer is allured by the mysterious object of that same
faith, and within the limits of his power he strives for an understanding of
the mystery of divine life.”171 Chenu writes regarding faith that it is
not a conclusion; it is not a composition of ideas and concepts which
permits us to grasp reality. Neither is it a proof; nor is it an explanation
of the world, an argument from causality, an apologetic of creation. It
is a look, a view. It is a dialogue between my soul and God concerning
God himself. . . . I see myself and my own mysterious destiny, within
the framework of the mysterious destiny of the world in the presence
of the triune God.172

However, regarding de Lubac, in the end (as Aidan Nichols notes), he is

closer to Garrigou-Lagrange on the question of revelation than is commonly
known. In commenting on the first articles of Dei Verbum, de Lubac,
although holding that words are secondary to the acts whose meaning they
illuminate, nonetheless, defends against any depreciation of words. Quoting
de Lubac, Nichols writes that de Lubac issues a warning:
By, as he writes, “reaction against an ‘intellectualist’ thesis that would end
up in ‘atomizing’ the truths of the faith, and in order not to reduce divine
revelation to the ‘series of words that explain it,” people are now tempted
to discount the word-aspect of revelation, and notably what he terms “the
formulae in which the divine Word is embodied and which give it its
intelligible content.” Borrowing language from another nouveaux théol-
ogien, the Oratorian Louis Bouyer, de Lubac roundly castigates such a
reaction as nothing less than “ceding to that permanent temptation of
agnosticism which too often paralyses modern religious thought.”173

171 Chenu, “Les Yeux de la foi,” quoted from the English translation, “The Eyes of Faith,”
in Faith and Theology, 9.
172 Marie-Dominique Chenu, “L’Unité de la foi: Réalimse et formalisme,” La Vie spirituelle
(July–August 1937): 1–8; taken from the English translation, “The Unity of Faith,” in Marie-
Dominique Chenu, Faith and Theology, trans. Denis Hickey (New York: Macmillan, 1968),
2. The reader who is apprised of the general Thomist manner of speaking of the super-
natural resolution of faith will sense certain points of continuity between that position
and Chenu’s remarks cited here, though his words are also marked by a kind of ambiguity
regarding the objective content of the assent of faith.
173 Aidan Nichols, “Garrigou-Lagrange and de Lubac on Divine Revelation,” Josephinum
Journal of Theology 18, no. 1 (2011): 109.
50 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Regarding the Thomists and the relationship between history and con-
ceptualization, contrary to popular belief, they did understand the impor-
tance of historical analysis, but they also distrusted its provisional and per-
spectival character and saw it as open to endless revision and shaped by this
or that concrete context. Ambroise Gardeil, interestingly, an influence on
both Garrigou-Lagrange and Chenu, illustrates the limitations of history and
the importance of aligning history precisely with a historiography that
respects the entirety of tradition with an analogy of riverine explorers:

It might be helpful to compare the recent adventures of two geographers

responsible for correcting the hydrography of a well-known river. . . .
The first went to the mouth of the river, where it spread out in all its
power, and he travelled methodically up each of the tributaries one by
one. Meanwhile, he pointed out the exact position of the springs and
ridgelines, measured the flow, and carefully noted the orientation of the
streams. He returned on time, and his work has corrected previous
maps on more than one point. It was a success. The second explorer set
up camp straightaway at the watershed, and no one can describe the
misfortunes that awaited him. Sometimes he followed a promising
stream only to find himself interminably lost in the sand or in various
caves, and other times he found himself in the middle of a nearby basin
surrounded by the inconsistent flow of his river. He went this way and
that, sometimes retracing his steps, across trails and dead-end paths,
and his explorations were filled with endless hopes and disappoint-
ments. Finally, the time he had judged necessary to complete his mis-
sion had long since passed, and still he had not yet returned. They
feared he would be found at the bottom of some great cliff. The rumor
even spread that a message in a bottle, thrown into his beloved Congo
to pass his discoveries on to history, came to land, in the flood of last
September, in the wheat field of a peasant from Cairo.174

The difference of methods and the question of theological science itself

represents perhaps the greatest of the open questions bequeathed to the Cath-
olic intellectual world from the debates dating back to this tumultuous Fran-
cophone affair during the second half of the 1940s. Although not the only
topic of importance leading up to the Second Vatican Council, it represents
an issue of primary importance. Though unresolved, such speculative posi-
tions certainly were in the intellectual background among conciliar periti.
We thus find ourselves at an interesting moment in the post-Vatican II
Church. In the conciliar documents, we have clear pastoral (i.e., practical)
directives concerning theological method, but the speculative elaboration

174 Ambroise Gardeil, “La Reforme de la théologie catholique: idée d’une méthode
régressive,” Revue thomiste 11 (1903): 19, quoted in Kirwan, Avant-garde, 75–76.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 51

remained unresolved as the Council Fathers faced the pressing desire to pro-
vide a practical program for ecclesiastical activity in the contemporary world.
But paradoxically, matters remain unsettled and uncertain as regards the
speculative questions of theological methodology, something clear before the
eyes of all Catholics living in the midst of contemporary disputes. Thus, Vat-
ican II punctuated a moment when speculative disputes, at that time unre-
solved, ceded to practical programs. Perhaps, in the post-Vatican II period,
practical programs might inspire theologians to pick up the question of the
speculative disputes once again, something of great importance, given the
objective dependence of the practical upon the speculative.
The next section will present a systematic outline of the notion of theol-
ogy that emerges from the articles that are brought together in this volume.
It is intended to be a first sketch of the sort of discussions that are needed in
order to engage productively in elaborating the fundamental positions that
have been, and indeed still are, taken by various Catholic intellectual camps
concerning these matters of theological methodology.

SYSTEMATIC OVERVIEW
As was recounted in our historical-textual introduction, the two streams of
theological criticism—the articles in the Revue thomiste and the texts emanat-
ing from Rome in the pages of Angelicum, under the pen of Garrigou-
Lagrange—are not unrelated to each other. The writers at the Revue thomiste
were deeply dependent upon the older Roman Thomist, whether as his stu-
dents, through the intermediary of others (such as the contemporaneous
work of Fr. Gagnebet and that of Maritain, whose intellectual debt to Garri-
gou-Lagrange was significant), or merely through the general shared
atmosphere of the Dominican Thomistic school, which provided a common
vocabulary for their approach to philosophical and theological questions.
However, as we also made clear in our historical introduction, there were
strategic differences between the two groups, with the younger men being
solicitous to keep guard against sounding as though they were calling for a
Roman intervention.175
Nonetheless, despite this difference (one that, arguably, is but a nuance
between the two streams of response / reaction), a close textual reading of the
articles gathered in this volume bears witness to a shared body of doctrinal
positions and concerns. Obviously, the younger men at the Revue thomiste were
more explicitly concerned to dialogue with their Jesuit brethren, being openly
interested in expanding and developing the Thomist notion of theological
science, all the while maintaining their historical connections with the Thomist

175 See “Correspondence Étienne Gilson—Michel Labourdette,” 498n10, cited at length

in note 196.
52 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

school upon which they depended. Their gaze was forward-looking without
compromising on essential points of the overall noetic involved in the task of
seeking some intellectus fidei. This is clear in Labourdette’s own words:

This does not imply, moreover, that the teachings of St. Thomas must
be simply repeated word for word. It is all-too-true that it would thus
remain inaccessible to many, and we would deprive ourselves of the
wonderful and genuine progress resulting from later Christian (and
non-Christian) thinkers. Nonetheless, it remains the case that these
forms of progress, on pain of ruining their own foundations, presup-
pose the previously-existing edifice, building upon it, neither destroying
nor replacing it. They represent expansions of a synthesis, not a total
recovery seeking to build a new “representation” of the world according
to the categories of modernity, condemning everything that has pre-
ceded it as being irredeemably outmoded. Yes, there are many things
that have become outmoded, but what we cannot admit is that form of
aging which, in fact, reaches down more deeply than the level of mere
formulations: the idea that the entire worldview characteristic of a cer-
tain cultural milieu could also reach down into the very truths of the-
ology. What we cannot admit is that theological wisdom would be
swept away by the flood of impermanence and that its acquisitions
could not be held as being definitive. Now, this does not mean that they
are closed and no longer subject to further refinement but, rather,
implies that they are capable of progressively assimilating new insights
and reflections.176

For his part, the older Dominican, Garrigou-Lagrange, was far more
focused in his concerns, almost exclusively concentrating on the immutable
character of speculative truth, understood as adaequatio intellectus et rei,
the adequation between the intellect (in the act of judging) and reality.177

176 See Labourdette, “Theology and its Sources,” 141–42 below.

177 On the whole, we prefer “reality” to “thing,” in order to account for the way, for exam-
ple, that synderesis grasps truth “per conformitatem ad rem.” For a brief discussion of
this, as regards the speculatively-practical truth of synderesis, see Matthew Minerd, “A
Note on Synderesis, Moral Science, and Knowledge of the Natural Law,” Lex Naturalis 5
(2020): 47–48 and 53n17–21.
In one of the letters presented below in our volume, Blondel requests that Fr. Garrigou-
Lagrange admit this point. Alas, this request was not responded to by the Dominican
priest. For the best defense of the “adequation theory” of truth as Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange
understands it, see Yves R. Simon, Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge, trans.
Vukan Kuic and Richard J. Thompson (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990), 136–
49. Also see John C. Cahalan, “The Problem of Thing and Object in Maritain,” The Tho-
mist 59, no. 1 (1995): 21–46; Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, 96–107. The
central nucleus for all of these thinkers can be found in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,
Thomistic Common Sense, 54–55, 105–6, 147n34, 156, 160n67, 281. The same theory of
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 53

The resonances in his mind were far more tuned into this single problem,
and they awoke in him many of the concerns that had been at the center of
his work from early in his writing career, which began in the wake of the
encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis. The roots of these concerns dig down
deeper, going back into the nineteenth century, with ecclesial responses con-
cerning the idealism and historicism already being battled in the run up to
the First Vatican Council and then in its wake,178 and with particular prox-
imity to Garrigou-Lagrange, in the work of his own mentor Marie-Benoît
Schwalm, OP, who touched on many of these themes in the very first issues
of the Revue thomiste.179 In fact, as already noted in our historical discussion,
Garrigou-Lagrange’s concern during the crisis in the 1940s nearly wholly
focuses on what he interprets as being a pragmatic theory of speculative
truth operative in the writing of the lay philosopher, Maurice Blondel, and
played out as a theory of doctrinal development in the infamous conclusion
to Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin by Henri Bouillard, SJ, dis-
cussed in the first portion of this introduction. These concerns had already
been percolating in Garrigou-Lagrange’s mind prior to the writing of
“Where is the New Theology Headed?,” as is attested in several articles from
that period, namely, “Vérité et option libre selon M. Blondel”180 in 1936 and
“La notion pragmatiste de la vérité et ses consequences en théologie,”181 as
well as in his other theological and philosophical writings, dating from early
in the twentieth century.182

speculative truth is echoed in Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the Immutability of Defined

Truths, With Remarks on the Supernatural Order,” 344 below.
178 Thus, the work of Alfred Vacant, the first editor of the famed Dictionnaire théologie
catholique, remained an important touchpoint for him throughout his career. See Jean-
Michel-Alfred Vacant, Études théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican,
vol. 2 (Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1895).
179 See Marie-Benoît Schwalm, “L’acte de foi, est-il raisonnable?,” Revue thomiste 1 (old
series) (1896): 36–63; “Les illusions de l’idéalisme et leurs dangers pour la foi,” Revue
thomiste 1 (old series) (1896): 413–41; “L’apologétique contemporaine,” Revue thomiste
2 (1897): 62–92; “La crise et l’apologétique,” Revue thomiste 2 (1897): 239–71; “La croy-
ance naturelle et la science,” Revue thomiste 2 (1897): 627–45; “Le dogmatisme du coeur
et celui de l’esprit,” Revue thomiste 3 (1898): 578–619.
180 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Vérité et option libre selon M. Blondel,” Acta Pont.
Acad. Rom. S. Thom. (1936): 46–69.
181 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “La notion pragmatiste de la vérité et ses con-
sequences en théologie,” Acta Pont. Acad. Rom. S. Thom. (1943): 153–78.
182 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature, vol. 1, trans.
Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1949), 40–60, 331–37; On Divine Revelation, vol. 1,
238–48, 378n24 (a quite positive remark); 465n31, 664–65, 784–85. There are more indi-
rect references in The Sense of Mystery, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH:
54 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

The articles gathered together in this volume bear witness to the close
conceptual bonds linking the Toulouse and Roman responses to the nouvelle
théologie, for both Labourdette as well as Garrigou-Lagrange voice particularly
direct concerns regarding a latent theological relativism underlying the claims
laid forth by the Jesuit fathers in general, along with a quite-proximate danger
of such relativism in the brief account of doctrinal development presented by
Bouillard and those who came to his defense, such as de Solages and Le
Blond.183 Moreover, on the conceptual level, these two Dominican streams
(concerning the immutability of truth and dogma and concerning the nature
of theology) converge inasmuch as the question of the immutability of notions
(and of judgments based thereupon) functions as a presupposed substructure
for the possibility of science as such.184 At root, the very possibility of scientia,
“science” in the Aristotelian sense laid out in the Posterior analytics and devel-
oped through later scholasticism,185 demands that there be some immutable
first principles, judgments that express per se nota, “self-evident,” truths which
stand firm as certain and fixed lights for the scientific discourse in question.
On the basis of such truths, the entire structure of scientia is built, as a dis-
course aiming at objectively inferential truths known precisely as new conclu-
sions drawn from these first truths. For the Thomists (and, in fact, for any of
the traditional scholae broadly depending upon this Aristotelian noetic, itself

Emmaus Academic, 2017), 162n25; The Order of Things: The Realism of the Principle of
Finality, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 89,
254n2; Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 124–25.
In his concerns, he was joined by other Thomists, even members of the Society of Jesus.
See for example, Joseph de Tonquédec, Immanence: Essai critique sur la doctrine de M.
Maurice Blondel (Paris: Beauchesne 1913); Deux études sur “la Pensée” de M. M. Blondel
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1936). Also, see François-Xavier Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae,
vol. 3 Critica (Paris: André Blot, 1938), 174–86 (De doctrina cognitionis iuxta D. Blondel).
Moreover, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange regularly cited a critique registered from outside of
scholastic circles, by Émile Boutroux in La science et la religion (Paris: Flammarion,
1908), 296.
183 See de Solages, “Pour l’honneur,” 64–84; Le Blond, “L’analogie,” 129–41. For Bouil-
lard’s response to Garrigou-Lagrange’s, “Concerning Notions Consecrated by the Coun-
sels,” see Bouillard, “Notions conciliares et analogie de la vérité,” 251–71.
184 Labourdette draws this connection openly, stating that a pragmatic theory of truth
would ultimately be a caricature of the mind’s life, destroying the very notion of theology
as a science. See Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” 147 below.
185 It is clear, for example, that all the authors presuppose the elaborations that can be
found in John of St. Thomas’s Ars logica, elaborations which can be found in English in
The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises, trans. Yves R. Simon, John J.
Glanville, G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1965), q. 24–
27 (pp. 436–586).
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 55

developed from Platonic insights186), the very possibility of scientific discourse

rests upon judgments which are not themselves deduced.
In theology, this “scientific structure” (a structure which, in fact, is
sapiential as well, giving theology unique offices that a “mere” science does
not have187) depends on first principles which are per se nota solely through
faith (thus giving theology its status as a “subalternate science”).188 For the
authors who all here to some degree depend on the Thomist line which
includes John of St. Thomas, this state of affairs marks our “wayfaring theol-
ogy” with a congenital deficiency: its knowledge of principles remains non-
evident. Nonetheless, thanks to the supernatural attestation of God who
reveals, the person who holds a truth on faith holds them as certain, even if
such truths are not known in an evidential manner. (In fact, according to St.
Thomas himself, they are known more certainly, in themselves, than are first
principles which are known through reason.189) Obviously, this intellectual
certitude is marked by its own unique character, which includes the super-
naturalized movement of the will needed in order to fix the intellect in the
judgments of faith.190 Still, according to John of St. Thomas, such certitude

186 A point of continuity acknowledged by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, trans. W. D.

Ross and J. O. Urmson in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, vol. 2
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), bk. 1, ch. 4 (1095a14–13). And, as is
obvious in the opening of the Posterior analytics, the whole of Aristotle’s endeavor is to
articulate his notion of έπιστήμη, “scientific knowledge,” as an answer to the paradoxes
discussed in Plato’s Meno. See Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, trans. Jonathan Barnes in
The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 1, bk. 1, ch. 1 (71a1–71b8).
187 Concerning the question of the sapiential nature of theology, see Minerd, “Wisdom
be Attentive,” 1103–46; Kieran Conley, A Theology of Wisdom: A Study of St. Thomas
(Dubuque, IA: Priory, 1963); Mark P. Johnson, “God’s Knowledge in Our Frail Mind: The
Thomistic Model of Theology,” Angelicum 76, no. 1 (1999): 25–45; Mark Johnson, “The
Sapiential Character of Sacra Doctrina in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas,” Ph.D. Diss.
(University of Toronto, 1990); Francisco P. Muñiz, The Work of Theology, trans. John P.
Reid (Washington, DC: Thomist Press, 1958).
188 For various discussions of this topic, see Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie
comme science au XIIIe siècle, 3rd ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1969), 67–92; Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet,
“La nature de la théologie spéculative,” 233n1 (a lengthy and informative note, full cita-
tion below in note 212); Antoninus de Carlensis, Four Questions on the Subalternation of
the Sciences, trans. and ed. Steven J. Livesey (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Soci-
ety, 1994); Egidio (Aegidius) Magrini, Ioannis Duns Scoti doctrina de scientifica theo-
logiae natura (Rome : Antonianum, 1952), 22–25 (cited in Salm, “The Problem of Positive
Theology,” 10n8).
189 See ST II-II, q. 4, a. 8.
190 On the character of the assent of faith, see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The
Theological Virtues, vol. 1 On Faith, trans. Thomas à Kempis Reilly (St. Louis, MO: B.
Herder, 1965), 298–315; also see Labourdette, “La vie théologale selon Thomas
d’Aquin, L’affection dans la foi,” cited in note 38 above. This point, along with its
56 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

suffices for one to have a discourse that is scientific, albeit in an imperfect

state, so long as the truths of faith are not known through vision.191
Now, especially upon reading Labourdette’s own insistent remarks,192 it
would seem that the whole debate, at least on the Toulouse side, should be
situated on the level of theological reflection and discussion, that is, as some-
thing not calling into question the de fide convictions held by the interlocu-
tors.193 For his part, Garrigou-Lagrange’s level of discourse is perhaps less

structural repercussions on theological knowledge, is acknowledged openly by Labour-

dette in “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 97–98 below. The reader should bear
in mind that the translation of The Theological Virtues is slightly idiosyncratic, altering
the content and layout of the text on occasion, though it is still an overall faithful pres-
entation of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s thought.
191 See John of St. Thomas (Poinsot), On Sacred Science: A Translation of Cursus theo-
logicus I, Question 1, Disputation 2, trans. John P. Doyle, ed. Victor M. Salas (South Bend,
IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2020), disp. 2, a. 3, no. 6: “In the nature of a science there is
not evidence, but only certitude. For Aristotle (1.2.71b10–12) in the definition of science
does not posit evidence but certitude, when he says that ‘to know scientifically is to know
that the cause on account of which a thing exists is in fact the cause of that thing, and
that it cannot come about that the thing be other than it is.’ And the reason is that by cer-
titude alone, even when evidence is absent, that habit is based upon an infallible con-
nection and relates to an infallible truth; therefore, in this it is distinct from an opinion-
ative habit which relates to a fallible and contingent truth and is, therefore, a habit which
is subject to error, which is not to be a correct or virtuous habit of an intellectual kind. A
habit, however, that proceeds infallibly and certainly perfects the intellect without any
danger of error and without possible failure (indefectibiliter).” We would like to thank Dr.
Victor Salas for providing us with this draft text, the last work of his great mentor Dr. John
Doyle, one which has been long delayed. It will provide an excellent resource for those
readers who must read John of St. Thomas’s text in English.
192 See Labourdette, “Closing Remarks Concerning our Position,” 241–49 below; Labour-
dette and Nicolas, “Discussion Surrounding our ‘Dialogue Théologique,’” 265–66 below.
193 However, Étienne Fouilloux held that this claim of honest theological debate was a
bit naïve given that even if the director of the Revue thomiste honestly thought such theo-
logical pluralism were permitted, the censors in Rome were not so broadminded. See
Donneaud, “Correspondence Étienne Gilson-Michel Labourdette,” 498n10. Fouilloux’s
claim, as reported by Donneaud, seems a bit absolutist, merely if we were to consider,
by way of example, the various theories of sacramental causality (no small point of doc-
trine) permitted even in light of the Council of Trent’s declarations. Despite the fact that
certain theologians wanted to suggest that the de fide requirements of Trent and the later
magisterium slid in the direction of those Thomists who held to a physical-instrumental-
causality view of the matter, the Church clearly left room for a number of theories which
were stamped with a much more moral-causal view of the sacraments, most famously
the “intentional causal” theory of one-time-Cardinal Billot. See Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals
of Catholic Dogma, 2nd ed., trans. Patrick Lynch, ed. James Canon Bastible (Rockford, IL:
TAN, 1974), 330–32; Bernard Leeming, Principles of Sacramental Theology (London: Long-
mans, 1963), 295–97; Emmanuel Doronzo, Tratatus dogmaticus de sacramentis in genere
(Milwaukee: Bruce, 1946), 161–97.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 57

clearly stated. We believe that his concerns remain theological (and philo-
sophical, to the degree that such philosophy is instrumentally involved in
theological reasoning), even if he is quick to warn his interlocutors of the
danger of falling into modernism. In fact, he readily asserts that he is not
questioning the supernatural faith of Maurice Blondel, whose thought is pro-
foundly involved in the controversy at issue in most of the Angelicum articles
presented in this volume, as well as in Garrigou-Lagrange’s earlier article,
“Theology and the Life of Faith,” included in the texts gathered here.194 This
would seem to mean that even for the older Dominican, whose critique falls
most bluntly on the question concerning the nature of truth, the debate
remains on the level of philosophy and of theology, not that of faith per se.
Nonetheless, in the opening to his article, which recounts the theological
vagaries of Anton Günther and the nineteenth century roots of intellectual
trends leading up to the First Vatican Council, Garrigou-Lagrange cites a
strong statement from Vacant approvingly:
In order to fall under the Council’s anathema and be guilty of heresy, it
suffices that one claim that, on account of the progress of science, there
is sometimes room to attribute another meaning to the dogmas pro-
posed by the Church, one differing from the meaning that she once
gave for them and, indeed, continues to give for them.195

And, still citing Vacant, Garrigou-Lagrange continues by stating that this

claim is founded on “the nature of truth and of infallibility.” If nothing else,
the distinctions between theological assent (as well as, in a way, philosophical
assent) and de fide assent are less rhetorically clear here. One can at least
understand why Marie-Joseph Nicolas privately wrote his older confrere to
tell him about the need being felt (at least in France in the pages of the Revue
thomiste, if not in Rome) to carefully distinguish theological debate from
authoritative intervention.196

194 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “Truth and the Immutability of Dogma,” 305n2 below: “Thus,
a fortiori, we do not question his personal faith, nor even the good that has been brought
about by his philosophy for certain minds [esprits]. We recognize that his last works indi-
cate a manifest intention to remedy issues which existed in his earlier writings and that
they express thoughts having an undeniable loftiness”; Garrigou-Lagrange, “Correspon-
dence,” 372–73 below: “As we said in an article found in this same issue, we in no way
question Monsieur Blondel’s personal faith, nor the lofty elevation of his thought, which
we have always recognized. Nonetheless, we have examined what can be deduced from
certain assertions that he has made, along with what has, in fact, been deduced from
them on a number of occasions.”
195 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “Relativism and the Immutability of Dogma According to the
[First] Vatican Council,” 360–61 below; Vacant, Études théologiques, 286 (emphasis added).
196 See Henry Donneaud, “Correspondance Étienne Gilson-Michel Labourdette,”
498n10: “The doctrinal crisis is grave, and we here find ourselves engaging in a difficult
58 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

In any case, Garrigou-Lagrange is quite clearly concerned with the way

that philosophically explicated notions197 are taken up for use in dogmatic
formulas. Throughout his articles, one rightly senses that the older Dom-
inican fears a return to modernism, and he does not fail to cite the 58th
condemned proposition from the decree Lamentabili sane exitu: “Truth is
no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him,
and through him.”198 Clearly, to his eyes, the danger was that a philsoph-
ico-theological position (whether held by Bouillard, Blondel, or others)
was sufficiently proximate to faith to be closely connected to the danger of
modernist errors concerning the nature of dogma and its development.
Labourdette was not insensitive to this possibility, though, in his conclud-
ing reflections on the Dialogue théologique, he explicitly states that he has
tried to avoid the term “Modernism” because of all of the meanings
attached thereto.199 However, one should recall, once more, Garrigou-
Lagrange’s own unequivocal statement that he too wishes to remain theo-
logical in scope:

A theologian is not forbidden to say that, to his eyes, a given new posi-
tion leads to heresy and even that it seems to him to be heretical. He
only says this from the perspective of theological science and its

battle, one that is quite different from the one that you are undertaking in Rome. The vast
majority is against us, and they are often the most active, the liveliest and, as far as can
be judged, the most generous of Christians. There is one thing which we must absolutely
avoid, on pain of losing all credibility: giving the impression that, in order to cut short
debates, we feel the need to make recourse to Rome’s authority. Of course, authority
must be exercised, and perhaps it indeed usually ends up acting only all too late.
However, it is not our role to warn it, in whatsoever manner. Others may have the duty to
do so. Our role, for the sake of the truth, is to defend it solely by making use of our own
intelligence and valid reasoning. When I say, ‘We,’ I am speaking of the Revue thomiste.
In people’s current state of mind, not only would we lead people who are disposed to
hold St. Thomas’s position to end up standing in opposition to us, but above all, setting
all questions of tactics aside, it would be catastrophic if Thomism were only able to
defend itself through recourse to authority. I believe that the mission of the Revue tho-
miste is to defend it by itself and solely by its own intrinsic force.”
197 But, not, positions properly tied to any particular philosophical school, a point which
he held from the time that he wrote Sens commun. See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic
Common Sense, 245–300. An echo of his position can be found in Charles Journet, The
Mass: The Presence of the Sacrifice of the Cross, trans. Victor Szczurek (South Bend, IN:
St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), 154.
198 Holy Office of Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 58; Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no., 2058].
199 See Labourdette, “Closing Remarks Concerning our Position,” 249 below: “And I do
not presume to suspect, a priori, that any contemporary Catholic theologians either do
not accept this condemnation or knowingly take up this or that error drawn from among
those that fall under this condemnation.”
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 59

deductions, without authoritatively speaking like a judge in an eccle-

siastical tribunal.200

Only a desire to claim that he has committed the sin of public dishonesty could
justify the assertion that these words were deliberately false. Perhaps he was
more direct in his accusations, but it would seem that, on the whole, he and
his younger Dominican confreres shared similar concerns on this point.
The shared reaction of the two parties did not fall as much on Blondel as
upon the rather hasty201 account of doctrinal development presented by Henri
Bouillard (and defended by Le Blond). In the conclusion of Conversion et grâce,
Bouillard makes it clear that he is attempting to thereby explain the immutability
of dogma in the midst of changes; however, even to the eyes of Labourdette, this
explanation,202 which would formally be on the level of theological reasoning
using a particular philosophical theory of historical development, seemed
unable to overcome the risk of falling into a kind of conceptual relativism.203
Both Labourdette and Garrigou-Lagrange find themselves particularly
vexed by Bouillard’s claim that the notion of formal causality,204 used by the
Council of Trent in the Decree on Justification in order to defend the entitative
reality of created grace, merely belonged to an earlier era of speculation on
the theology of grace:205

200 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “Truth and the Immutability of Dogma,” 316 below (empha-
sis added).
201 The hastiness of the account, especially the infamous phrase, “A theology which is
not contemporary [actuelle] would be a false theology,” is admitted by someone like
Joshua Brotherton, who is not overly critical of Bouillard in “Development(s) in the The-
ology of Revelation: From Francisco Marín-Sola to Joseph Ratzinger,” New Blackfriars 97
(2016): 664n7: “These words can certainly be interpreted more charitably than they are
by Garrigou, but they could have also been more carefully chosen.”
202 See Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” 149, annotation (o) below. Moreover,
see ibid., 140n19, where Labourdette charitably attempts to read Bouillard as using words
which in fact to not measure up to his real intentions and thought.
203 See Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” 146, annotation (l) below: “I am criti-
quing him—and no response has been extended to me concerning this very matter—for
falling for a pseudo-philosophy that is unconsciously inspired by the methodologies of his-
tory, to the point of no longer daring to conceive of the permanence of a notion.” For his
full discussion of this, see ibid., 149ff below.
204 However, both streams, the older and the younger, note that there are many other
notions as well which are used by the Church. Labourdette notes merely person, nature,
transubstantiation, “and other precise terms.” See Labourdette, “Theology and Its
Sources,” 152 below. For his part, Garrigou-Lagrange cites what would surely number far
over fifty notions, given the somewhat bombastic list of notions enumerated in “Concern-
ing Notions Consecrated by the Councils,” 321–24 below.
205 See Trent, Decree on Justification, ch. 7 (Denzinger, no. 1529 [799]): “Finally, the sin-
gle formal cause [of justification] is ‘the justice of God, not [that] by which He Himself is
60 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

It was certainly not the intention of the Council to canonize an Aris-

totelian concept, nor even a theological concept conceived under Aris-
totle’s influence. It merely wished to affirm, against the Protestants,
that justification is an interior renewal and not simply an imputation
of Christ’s merits, the remission of sins, or the favor of God. To this
end, it made use of concepts which were common to the theology of
the times. However, others can be substituted for them without altering
the meaning of its teaching. This is demonstrated by the fact that the
Council itself much more often made use of equivalent notions derived
from Scripture.206

Ultimately, to Garrigou-Lagrange’s eyes, the abandonment of the notion

of formal causality would not merely spell doom for a particular dogmatic
formulation concerning created grace but would ultimately undermine the
whole apparatus of St. Thomas’s own theology, which ubiquitously makes use
of the notion of formal causality.207 The claim would, in fact, apply to any of
the classical scholastic schools which all utilize the notion of formal causality
sketched out in a broadly Aristotelian sense as referring to the metaphysical
principle which is constitutive or determinative of what something is. In
short, if not properly nuanced, Bouillard’s claim would seem to spell doom
for Scotists, Suarezians, Bonaventurians, and Molinists in addition to Tho-
mists, and Labourdette and Nicolas did not fear to point out this upshot.208
Moreover, although the notion of formal cause is not consecrated by the
Church in its fully Aristotelian sense, with all of its systematic connections
to the overall teaching of the Stagirite, it retains an organic connection to the
basic, though critically refined, notion of “that which constitutes the being
of something” (i.e., its “formal constitutive”). Thus, to Garrigou-Lagrange’s
eyes, to reject the notion of formal causality would place at risk the very
notion of essence (or, perhaps we could even say, that which is per se, in rig-
orous contrast with what is per accidens), along with all the various philo-
sophical principles that depend on the distinction of the essential from the
non-essential.209 And, looking upon the repercussions of the noetic proposed

just, but [that] by which He makes us just, namely, the justice that we have as a gift from
Him and by which we are spiritually renewed.”
206 Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 221–22.
207 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “Truth and the Immutability of Dogma,” 344 below.
208 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science,” 239 below (and quoted above).
209 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the Immutability of Defined Truths, With Remarks on
the Supernatural Order,” 346 below: “To abandon the notion of formal cause (or, the
notion of the formal constitutive) would be to abandon the notion of essence, as well as
the first principles which presuppose this notion. It would be to fall into relativism, and
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 61

by Bouillard, Labourdette, who is often credited for being more measured

than Garrigou-Lagrange in his response, did not fear to state his concerns
boldly in his follow-up article, “Criticism in Theology: A Response,” where
he voices the concern that the theological position being staked out does
potentially have dire consequences for matters of faith without, however,
accusing the Jesuits of actually drawing this consequence (and thereby sin-
ning against faith in the irreformable character of De fide truths):

It is true that I said that certain assertions, pushed to their con-

sequences, do not seem to me compatible with the Church’s teach-
ings. But these teachings—that is, the objective determination of the
faith or of truths more or less close to faith—are the very principles
of theology. What would theological discussion be, or theological
criticism, if we did not have the right to compare consequences with
their principles, to strive to show their disparity and thus to detect
the illogicality involved in the theological reasoning being proposed?
Does this challenge the theologian’s personal faith and his intention
to remain orthodox? This represents an entirely different domain,
and I have in no way permitted myself to enter into it.210

It is not, however, as though the Dominicans were guilty of a kind of

static view of history, unable to account for the reality of dogmatic devel-
opment. In fact, even the Roman Thomism offered at the Angelicum at Gar-
rigou-Lagrange’s time was well aware of the need to acknowledge doctrinal
development in more than a merely off-handed manner.211 Thus, given how
accessible many of the texts from this era are, it is troubling to see relatively
recent studies which seem to deny this fact,212 making stark claims which

the Ecclesia docens herself would fall into such relativism if she wished to follow down
this path, which her discernment prevents her from taking.
By a necessity which is at once logical and metaphysical, whether or not one wishes, one
erroneous denial would entail many others. . . .”
210 Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology,” 168–69 below (emphasis is Labourdette’s).
211 In fact, as will be discussed below, the closing of Dei filius, ch. 4, citing the well-
known passage from Vincent of Lérins, invited all theologians to fashion some form of
teaching concerning doctrinal development, while retaining the meaning of dogmas.
212 See Dries Bosschaert, “A Great Deal of Controversy? A Case Study of Dondeyne,
Grégoire, and Moeller Integrating Phenomenology and Existentialism in Louvain Neo-
Thomism,” in So What’s New About Scholasticism? How Neo-Thomism Helped Shape the
Twentieth Century, ed. Rajesh Heynickx and Stéphane Symons (Berlin / Boston: Walter
de Guyter, 2018), 135: “At the same moment, also Essai sur le problème théologique, a
work of the Louvain Dominican Louis Charlier, was placed on the index for discrediting
scholastic philosophy by acknowledging historicity in theology and recognizing dogmatic
62 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

stand in contrast to the clear evidence in the pages of Roman professors like
Garrigou-Lagrange, as well as his fellow professor Reginald Schultes.213
As is evidenced by a somewhat-jarring note placed at the end of his
1935 essay, “Theology and the Life of Faith,” Garrigou-Lagrange found him-
self in the midst of a debate concerning the definability of theological con-
clusions, returning on occasion to critique the position concerning this
matter articulated by his confrere teaching at Fribourg, Francisco Marín-
Sola, who articulated a theory according to which theological conclusions
could be defined as intrinsic developments of de fide revealed truths.214 To
the eyes of Garrigou-Lagrange (and, interestingly, to the eyes of the editors
of the Reiser edition of John of St. Thomas’s Cursus theologicus, which gen-
erally avoids any such editorial comment215), this involves an error of logic,

development” (emphasis added). The final words are, in particular, the most egregious
historically and speculatively. For a better, albeit still-biased, presentation of this affair
surrounding Charlier’s work, see Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie, New Theology,
61–69, esp. 68. Also, for a much richer appreciation of the various discussions surround-
ing development of dogma by thinkers in this era, see “Le Progrès de l’église dans l’in-
telligence de la foi,” in Yves Congar, La foi et la théologie, 93–120.
For an articulation of the speculative concerns voiced by Charlier’s fellow Dominicans,
see Fr. Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet, “La nature de la théologie spéculative,” Revue thomiste
45 (1939): 1–39, 213–55, 645–74, and Gagnebet, “Un essai sur le problème théologique,”
Revue thomiste 45 (1939): 108–45.
Likewise, in a recent article, Joshua Brotherton seems to present Garrigou-Lagrange
along the stereotyped lines mentioned above, even if he acknowledges Garrigou-
Lagrange’s awareness of the occurrence of dogmatic development. See Brotherton,
“Development(s) in the Theology of Revelation,” 661–76.
213 See Reginald-Marie Schultes, Introductio in Historiam Dogmatum (Paris: Lethielleux,
1922), 287–96; Garrigou-Lagrange, The Theological Virtues, vol. 1, On Faith, 125–49, and
On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, 320–26. Moreover, one should consult the relevant work on
the theological sub-treatise De locis theologicis, as set forth by Garrigou-Lagrange’s fore-
bears Gardeil and Berthier, as well as his student, Emmanuel Doronzo. See Joachim
Joseph Berthier, Tractatus de Locis Theologicis (Turin: Marietti / New York: Benzinger,
1888); Ambroise Gardeil, La notion du lieu théologique (Paris: Lecoffre, 1908); “Lieux
Théologiques,” Dictionnaire de théologie Catholique, vol. 9.1, ed. Alfred Vacant et al.
(Paris: Letouzey, 1926): cols. 712–47; Emmanuel Doronzo, Theologia Dogmatica, vol. 1
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1966), 399–544.
214 See Francisco Marín-Sola, The Homogeneous Evolution of Catholic Dogma, trans. Anto-
nio T. Piño (Manilla: Santo Tomas University Press, 1988), 168–343. For a summary of the
debate between Marín-Sola and Schultes (with the latter being close to Garrigou-Lagrange),
see Labourdette, La Foi, 84–140. Also see Guy Mansini, “The Development of the Devel-
opment of Doctrine in the Twentieth Century,” Angelicum 93, no. 4 (2016): 785–822; from
a slightly different, though related perspective, see Cyril Vollert, “Doctrinal Development:
A Basic Theory,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1957): 45–74.
215 See Joannis a Sancto Thoma, Cursus Theologici, vol. 1 (Paris: Society of St. John the
Evangelist / Desclée et Socii, 1931), 361n1.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 63

given the nature of objectively illative inferences, that is, the drawing of con-
clusions in which a new truth is stated, one which was only virtually, not
formally, contained in the premises. No doubt, this assertion seems to split
hairs, but the concern is to prevent something materially new from being
added to the deposit of revelation. All of this was written in light of the First
Vatican Council’s closing statement of Dei filius, which simultaneously
affirms the unchanging character of revelation, along with a notion of dog-
matic development expressed in the famed maxim drawn from St. Vincent
of Lérins:

For the doctrine of faith that God has revealed has not been proposed
like a philosophical system to be perfected by human ingenuity; rather,
it has been committed to the spouse of Christ as a divine trust to be
faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence also that meaning of the
sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother
Church has once declared, and there must never be a deviation from
that meaning on the specious ground and title of a more profound
understanding. “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress
in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individ-
uals and in the whole Church at all times and in the progress of ages,
but only within the proper limits, i.e., within the same dogma, the same
meaning, the same judgment.”216

Garrigou-Lagrange’s concern in relation to Marín-Sola’s erudite work is

arguably liberating for dogmatic notions. By refusing to allow that strictly
theological conclusions could be defined as something which is intrinsically
de fide, one in fact protects revealed truth from becoming the servant of any
school of theology—even Thomistic theology. Moreover, it opens space for
theological debate, where claims of formal infidelity are not immediately nec-
essary when errors are committed. One’s theological reasoning can be invalid
or unsound (on the level of virtual revelation) without thereby meaning that
one volitionally does not affirm something that must be held de fide (on the
level of formal revelation). If, in the 1940s, Garrigou-Lagrange does not
emphasize this point as strongly as do his younger confreres, nonetheless,
the point is certainly part and parcel of his own position.
However, what is the model, then, to be used for understanding how doc-
trine develops, something clearly implied in the second half of the selection
just cited from Dei filius above? There can be no question as to what this model
is for the older Dominican: the process of definition. Regularly throughout
his writing, he refers to the process by which the mind passes from a vague
concept to a distinct one as bearing witness to how conceptual content in fact

216 First Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (Denzinger, no. 3020 [old no., 1800]).
64 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

does develop without, however, implying that something formally new is

drawn as a conclusion in the process of such intellectual elaboration.217 The
passage from vagueness to distinctness involves the “explicitation” of what is
implicitly present in the notion in question, not the actualizing of something
potentially and virtually contained within what was first known.
In short, such development ultimately takes place in the activity of the
intellect’s power to define things, the “first operation” of the intellect, not in
its discursive “third operation” by which it draws out syllogistic inferences.218

217 See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 229–45, 275–78; Garrigou-

Lagrange, “On the Search for Definitions According to Aristotle and St. Thomas,” in Phi-
losophizing in Faith: Essays on the Beginning and End of Wisdom, ed. and trans. Matthew
K. Minerd (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 21–34; Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of
Mystery, 15–26. For a critical assessment of Garrigou-Lagrange’s position, see Guy Man-
sini, “The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense,” 111–38.
218 As for the latent problem of “conceptualism” and how the second operation of the
intellect is related to the first, this is not taken up by Garrigou-Lagrange directly. However,
as regards the relationship between judgment and notions in the act of faith, see his
comments on ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2 in On Faith, 84–90. For a lengthy consideration of the noe-
tics of faith and theology generally developed in harmony with Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange,
see Jean-Hervé Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu: Essai d’une critique de la connai-
sance théologique (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1966), 183–419.
Quite clearly, based on St. Thomas’s theory of faith, the revealed statements expressed
in judgments must, in and through the act of the supernaturalized judgment of faith,
expand the natural notions instrumentally used for revelation, thus meaning that one
can then return to these notions, which make up the termini of the judgment, finding
them “expanded” by this act of supernaturalized judgment. For brief indications in this
direction, see Jean-Hervé Nicolas, Catholic Dogmatic Theology: A Synthesis, vol. 1 On the
Trinitarian Mystery of God (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press,
2021), §167 (pp. 290–92).
This is something similar to what takes place in any case of analogy, even in the natural
order. It is arguable that the “imperfect abstraction” spoken of by the followers of Cajetan
concerning analogy would involve a sort of return by the intellect to its first act in the
course of reasoning things out concerning the various relationships which exist among
the analogates which are imperfectly subordinated to the analogous notion in question.
The same is true concerning the relationship of a metaphorical term to its referent, a pro-
cess of reference which cannot be fully explicated without understanding the reasoning
which links together the various inferior notions. In any case, the second-intentional rela-
tionships of superiority and inferiority are fashioned by the first act of the intellect, giving
rise for example to the famed predicables, but also to other second intentions as well.
This topic is underappreciated by Thomists, given the paucity of texts in Aquinas himself.
For indications concerning these matters, see Matthew K. Minerd, “Thomism and the For-
mal Object of Logic,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93, no. 3 (2019): 411–
44; Yves R. Simon, “On Order in Analogical Sets” in Philosopher at Work, ed. Anthony O.
Simon (Lanham: Roman & Littlefield, 1999), 135–71; and for suggestive thoughts along
these lines, see John Deely, “The Absence of Analogy,” The Review of Metaphysics 55,
no. 3 (Mar. 2002): 521–50. Historically, this involves the entire discussion of the rationes
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 65

The relationships of superiority and of inferiority implied in a definition (as

properties of the relationes rationis known as genus and species219) are pro-
duced by this operation. By a kind of general, uncritical knowledge, we can
have a vague notion of “man” or even of “subsistence.” However, when we set
forth a definition—Man: rational animal—we state again to ourselves a sim-
ple notion, albeit in a complex manner. This definition expresses—vitally
within the depths of the soul—the nature of what we are discussing and thus
enables us to pass from vague knowledge of this notion to distinct knowledge
thereof. However, note well: it is one and the same notion which is expressed,
with the vague concept being the guiding insight which directs us toward
this ultimate definition.220 There may well be a good deal of dialectical rea-
soning up to this point. In fact, Aristotle himself organizes his Topics around
the idea of the so-called predicables, which are involved as second-intentional
relations in any given definition. Such dialectical reasoning reveals the parts
of a definition without, however, meaning that the definition would be a
direct conclusion of this reasoning.221 One either sees or does not see the dis-
tinct concept as expressing the vague one.222
The reader will here excuse a rather technical parenthesis, which
addresses certain criticisms that have been registered against Garrigou-
Lagrange’s conception of dogmatic development and its relationship to “com-
mon sense.” From early on in his academic career, Garrigou-Lagrange devel-
oped the Aristotelian notion of intellectus, the habit of first principles, in a
way that made clear the profound implications of the claim that such princi-
ples are directly apprehended through the immediate correspondence of their
terms to each other, without the intervention of further discursive scientific
or sapiential elaboration. Following in the wake of the Thomist school,

involved in analogy. For an excellent study of various the treatment of this issue by various
Dominican figures, see Dominic D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas: Logical Problems, Tho-
mistic Answers (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019).
For important citations from J.-H. Nicolas, Maritain, Gardeil, Charles Journet, and Édouard
Hugon, see the translator’s introduction to Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation,
47n5.
219 See Minerd, “Thomism and the Formal Object of Logic,” 436–41.
220 See the very interesting remarks in Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery, 23.
221 Granted, one can, for example, demonstrate a definition through formal cause from
one given through a thing’s efficient or final cause. See Garrigou-Lagrange, “On the
Search for Definitions According to Aristotle and St. Thomas,” 23–24.
222 Interesting developments on the logic involved in “topical” reasoning could be drawn
from Louis-Marie Régis, L’Opinion selon Aristote (Paris: Vrin, 1935); Ambroise Gardeil,
“La certitude probable,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 5 (1911):
237–66, 441–85; Gardeil, “La topicité,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théolo-
giques 5 (1911): 750–57.
66 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

though here pushing it forward in its articulation, he saw quite powerfully

that this state of affairs indicated that there was a primordial connection
between our most basic apprehensions of reality and the philosophical re-
articulation of these same principles.223
Recently, Guy Mansini published an important study concerning the
relationship between history and the intellectual apprehensions possible for
common sense (in the natural order) and Christian common sense (in the
supernatural order of faith).224 Mansini rightly notes that Garrigou-Lagrange
is somewhat naïve in his account of the relationship between history and the
grasping of supra-historical truths. However, a path forward is possible
within the basic overall framework offered by Garrigou-Lagrange, though
with important emendations, precisely for the reasons observed by Mansini,
Congar, and others.
Too often, Thomistic discussions of “insight into first principles” (i.e.,
intellectus) seem to present a kind of automatic process, whereby the mind
quickly sees the immediate connection of two termini, as though very little
reflection were needed, let alone a great deal of historical elaboration and

223 It is here that we see an interesting point, of no small importance in relation to what
Labourdette says below in “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” namely how the
insights of intellectus precisely understood as “common sense” differ from the re-artic-
ulations of this same data when considered from within the context of a given scientific
or sapiential body of knowledge. Intellectus within the warp-and-woof of sapiential rea-
soning is part of a greater whole. It is indeed the most important part, but it no longer
can be considered in isolation from the reasoning which considers the conclusions drawn
therefrom (in forms of scientia and sapientia) as well as that which considers the intrinsic
intelligibility of the principles themselves (in forms of sapientia)
As St. Thomas remarks in ST I-II q. 57, a. 2 (and as Cajetan draws into brilliant relief in his
commentary on the same article), wisdom contains both science and intellectus / under-
standing by way of eminence. Cajetan remarks: “For wisdom makes use of per se nota
principles by deducing conclusions, which is [an office] of science, and it judges, defends,
and establishes that these very per se nota principles are true on the basis of their terms’
meanings, something that understanding sees in an absolute manner [and not through
a reflective, analytical judgment upon them]. And it has both [of these offices] through
the resolution that it makes to the highest cause, containing these offices in a more
eminent manner.” Also, see Minerd, Wisdom be Attentive: The Noetic Structure of Sapien-
tial Knowledge,” 1103–46.
224 See Mansini, “The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense,” 111–38. The comments
that follow are not meant so much to be a direct response (and most especially not a cri-
tique) of Mansini but, rather, a refraction of his concerns through a lens that looks to pro-
vide a kind of “reverential” interpretation which bears witness to how Garrigou-Lagrange
is just as much the heir to Schwalm, Gardeil, and others from the great figures of the
Saulchoir as were Chenu and Congar. While the latter were thematically more sensitive
about, and concerned with, the role played by historicity in knowledge, even Garrigou-
Lagrange was not lacking in the primordial insights necessary for elaborating a full
account of positive theology.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 67

knowledge. Throughout his works, Garrigou-Lagrange could seem to present

a sort of historically insensitive account of intellectus. Nonetheless, the
authors of this introduction are convinced that a charitable interpretation of
his texts bears witness to a foundational sensitivity to the question of histo-
ricity and development. In point of fact, this is quite clear in Thomistic Com-
mon Sense, which is ultimately concerned with explaining the true nature of
dogmatic development.
As we have said, when discussing the phenomenon of dogmatic devel-
opment, he has at hand a ready instrument for explanation: the process of
definition—the passage from a vague (“confused”) notion to a distinct one.
Although certain definitions can be proven from other definitions—as in the
case of proving a definition through material causality (“axe: a hard and sharp
blade”) from a definition through final causality (“axe: a device for chopping
wood”)—properly speaking, the process of defining is the work of what the
Thomists refer to as the intellect’s “first operation,” that is, the process by
which the mind expresses to itself more distinctly the reality that it already
knows vaguely.225 For this reason, there are even unique “relationes rationis”
involved here, ready to be studied by the logician who considers all of the
various logical relations formulated by the intellect as it defines, judges, and
reasons about reality.226 The process of defining is Garrigou-Lagrange’s pri-
mary model for explaining the development of dogma,227 though it could
also be applied, with all due proportions maintained, to the articulation of
first principles in philosophy, as well as the articulation of scientific, philo-
sophical, and theological conclusions.228 In fact, he refers to the development

225 See Garrigou-Lagrange, The Sense of Mystery, 23: “At the end of this venatio defini-
tionis realis, of this hunt for the definition (as Aristotle says in providing the rules for
such a chase), the vague concept, which was THE GUIDING PRINCIPLE of the ascending and
descending search, is itself recognized in the distinct concept, as a man who is half asleep
recognizes himself when, fully awake, he looks at himself in a mirror. Thus, the search
for the definition is the work of understanding [intelligence]—more a work of νους than
it is a work of discursive reason.”
226 See Minerd, “Thomism and the Formal Object of Logic,” 411–44. For remarks about
the need for some expansion of the Thomistic teaching on this point, see the translator
remarks in Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Order of Things, 232n12. Also, see note 218
in this introduction. For interesting connections between the Aristotelian doctrine of
nous and this process of defining, see the texts cited in the previous two footnotes, as
well as Robert Sokolowki, “Making Distinctions,” in Pictures, Quotations, and Distinc-
tions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1992), 55–91.
227 See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 95–109, 241–55, 313–31; Garri-
gou-Lagrange, “Theology and the Life of Faith,” 277–78 below. Schultes, Introductio in
Historiam Dogmatum, 287–96.
228 However, one must be very careful to distinguish, in both the natural and supernat-
ural orders, knowledge of first principles from the knowledge of conclusions that are only
68 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

of Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy as “the work of centuries,”229 and

in his essay “Theology and the Life of Faith” (included in this volume), he
makes a remark that is pregnant with implications for further development
toward an awareness of the importance of history for knowing the objective
character of a given truth:
Even were theology not to deduce any theological conclusions, properly
so-called, but were only to explain, through a profound metaphysical
analysis,230 the subject and predicate of revealed truths, and even were it
only to show their subordination in order to make us be better aware of
the depth, riches, and elevation of the very teaching of the Savior, even
in such a case, it would have considerable importance. And this is how
theology prepares for the elaboration of increasingly explicit dogmatic
formulations of one and the same dogma, that is, of one and the same
assertion or revealed truth, before it is a question of deducing from it
other truths through objectively illative reasoning.231 This deepening of
the meaning of a fundamental truth sometimes takes centuries, as with
the deepening of this expression: “And the Word was made flesh.”232

virtually contained in the former. The latter are new truths, known mediately through
objectively illative reasoning, whereas the former can be known either directly or indi-
rectly (through a sapiential, though objectively extrinsic, defense of these first princi-
ples). This is, however, a point of great technicality. For the position informing this intro-
duction, see Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive,” 1103–46.
Note, also, that first principles are formed by the intellect’s second operation, by which
we fashion judgments. Still, the explicitation of subject and predicate involved in a given
judgment involves the process of defining one’s terms. In any case, Garrigou-Lagrange
was not insensitive to the distinction between conceptualization and judgment.
229 See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 104.
230 [Tr. note: By “metaphysical,” he merely means an analysis searching for the most
essential definition (or at least what is closest thereto quoad nos) of a given reality.]
231 [Tr. note: The following explanatory remark is included by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange:] We
use the expression “objectively illative reasoning” for that form of reasoning which leads
to another [objectively new] truth. For example, from the Divine Intelligence, we can deduce
the Divine Freedom through this major premise: every intelligent being is free. By contrast,
reasoning is only explicative (or at most subjectively illative) when it establishes the equiv-
alence of two propositions in stating the same truth. For example, there is the equivalence
of these two propositions: “You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church; and
the gates of hell will not prevail over it” = “The successor of Peter, when he speaks ex
cathedra to the universal Church, in a matter of faith and morals, cannot be deceived.”
See, at the end of this article, an appendix concerning the question of knowing whether
theological conclusions obtained by objectively illative reasoning with the aid of a natural
premise (even when the latter is the major, that is to say the more universal premise) can
be defined as a dogma of faith to be acknowledged under pain of heresy properly so
called (and not only of error).
232 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “Theology and the Life of Faith,” 277 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 69

Now, the activity of defining is at once a psychological process by which

the intellect gives birth to the verbum mentis (also referred to as the conceptus
or, by later Thomists, the species expressa intellecta),233 as well as something
bespeaking a “becoming” (or, better, coming-to-be) in the order of objectivity
(or “intentional” existence).234 One of the great tasks of the mind is to trace
along the objective implications of the sometimes-centuries-long process of
articulating a definition, as well as a scientific middle term and the scientific
demonstrations connected to it. Although, no doubt, a process of reflection
dear to phenomenological analysis,235 this kind of “re-enlivening” of knowl-
edge is also well-expressed by the Thomist Fr. Jean-Hervé Nicolas:

Theology is a science. That is, it is a form of knowledge aiming at objec-

tive certitude. By its nature, every science is the work of man and of
reason—a difficult and lengthy work. It is so lengthy that a single
human lifetime is insufficient for it to be brought to its completion.

233 This would be the “virtual productivity” spoken of by the Thomist school, above all
following in the wake of John of St. Thomas. This sort of elaborative-production is involved
in intellection, memory, estimation / cogitation, and imagination. See the index entries
for “concept,” “internal sense,” “phantasiari,” “species expressa” in John Deely, Inten-
tionality and Semiotics: A Story of Mutual Fecundation (Scranton and London: University
of Scranton Press, 2007). Also see the discussion of this matter in Simon, An Introduction
to Metaphysics of Knowledge, 39–158.
234 This would be the very intentional being of the other as other that formally consti-
tutes knowledge, above all in its speculative manifestation of pure objectivity (in distinc-
tion from practical reasoning’s extrinsic informing of the will through prudence and art).
See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Cognoscens quodammodo fit vel est aliud a se (On the
Nature of Knowledge as Union with the Other as Other),” in Philosophizing in Faith, 63–
78; Simon, An Introduction to Metaphysics of Knowledge, 1–38; John N. Deely, “The Imma-
teriality of the Intentional as Such,” The New Scholasticism 42 (1968): 293–306. This
psychological-intentional duality is well discussed in Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of
Knowledge, 127–36, 411–41.
235 On this subject, there are points of interesting connection in relation to the theme
of “sedimentation” in our knowledge, forever requiring us to recover the roots of our cur-
rent articulation of knowledge, by considering the manifold presuppositions built into
the conceptual notions and terms that we deploy. Failure to be sensitive to such sed-
imentation can turn scientific, philosophical, theological, and even moral reasoning into
mere word games. Though only briefly mentioned on this or that occasion, this is a very
important point in the thought of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, who also as a professor
pushed his young Thomist students to avoid falling into mere word play. See Robert Soko-
lowski, The Formation of Husserl’s Concept of Constitution (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1964), 172, 182, 188, 212–13; Husserlian Meditations (Evanston, IL: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, 1974), 42, 66; Moral Action: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1985), 20, 35–36; Introduction to Phenomenology (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 165–68. Sokolowski’s remarks can be profitably
read alongside Jacques Maritain, “Appendice 1: Sur le langue philosophique,” cited in
note 242 below.
70 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Every science is slowly fashioned through the long effort of generations,

and the generation that receives a given science from the preceding
generations will leave it behind to the next generation unfinished and
forever in the midst of being accomplished. Every science is the never-
definitive terminus of a never-accomplished investigation. Moreover,
he who today enters into the worksite cannot content himself with reap-
ing the fruits of the investigation in progress. He must, on his own
behalf, undertake it again for himself. Certainly, he does not do this by
starting over as though nothing had been accomplished before he
existed. Rather, he remakes this intellectual journey by personally
reproducing the efforts undertaken by his predecessors, though not
without critiquing them, all so that he might make their results his own.
This is how things must be, because achieving scientific knowledge is
not merely a matter of knowing only what others have discovered
regarding some given object. We must retrieve it for ourselves, under
their guidance, so that we may not merely know the conclusions
reached by others but may know the reasons for those conclusions. We
must make these reasons our own, as though we had discovered them
ourselves.236

Here, on the pen of a Dominican who owed a debt of intellectual and

filial piety to Garrigou-Lagrange237 and who also approvingly cites the articles
concerning the nature of theology written by Labourdette and Gagnebet, we
find a firm affirmation of the close relationship between history, knowledge,
and dogma. Though not developed with such force by Garrigou-Lagrange,
the sentiment is nonetheless in line with the fundamental élan of important
remarks which he makes.
St. Thomas used the notion of intellectus to unpack the implications of
the obscure knowledge we have through the theological virtue of faith.238
One central implication of this explanation is that our faith-knowledge is not
discursively mediated through a middle term but, rather, is immediately
grasped in and through the very propositions of faith. The formal motive for
this judgment is not the intellectual light of reason illuminating the terms of
the proposition and setting them forth as having an immediate, per se con-
nection but, rather, is the supernatural authority of God who reveals (and
who through grace capacitates the soul to assent to this supernatural truth
which He reveals).239 In and through the judgment in which the truths of

236 Nicolas, Catholic Dogmatic Theology: A Synthesis, vol. 1, 2.

237 See Jean-Hervé Nicolas, “In Memoriam: Le Père Garrigou-Lagrange,” Freiburger Zeit-
schrift für Philosophie und Theologie 11 (1964): 390–95.
238 For a full discussion of this, see the texts cited in note 38 above.
239 Thus, too, one understands why a Thomist like Garrigou-Lagrange would be vocifer-
ously opposed to the notion of “discursive faith,” which would ultimately resolve the
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 71

faith are expressed, natural concepts (e.g., person, substance, sign, society,
rebirth, relation, etc.) take on a supernatural signification.240 Although the
more recondite and detailed articulations of the faith remain too technical
for the “believer on the street,” ultimately they can be rearticulated for such
a believer by an able pedagogue.241 (And we all remain such “believers on the
street,” for our supernatural faith has primacy here, not our technical theol-
ogy.) Rhetoric and preaching have the role of making such truths (whether
philosophical or de fide) known to all the faithful, who have the foundational
capacity for grasping such per se nota truths (respectively through natural
intellectus or supernatural faith).242

content of faith formally into the evidence had through naturally knowable truths, even
were they the loftiest motives of credibility. See Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation,
675–77, 696–97, and (especially) 731–75.
240 See Nicolas, Dieu connu comme inconnu, 183–316. Also, see the citation regarding
the “superanalogy of faith” found at the end of note 218 above. Although Garrigou-
Lagrange does not explicitly articulate a doctrine concerning the superanalogy of faith,
he is not unaware of the super-elevating of the natural notions used in the propositions
in which faith is expressed. See Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, 311–16.
241 This was the reason why Garrigou-Lagrange spoke of the notions used in faith-knowl-
edge as being in continuity with common sense but not purely reducible thereto. See Gar-
rigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 287–90. The idea of directly linking faith to
common sense seemed, in his opinion, to risk falling into a modernist position akin to
what one finds articulated in Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, nos. 11–13.
242 Thus, Garrigou-Lagrange proposes preaching along the lines of Bossuet as providing
this kind of contact between theological articulation and the fundamental grasp of de
fide truths through supernatural faith, the root habitus of faith. (One might also think of
the great Parisian preaching of Dominicans such as Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire,
Jacques-Marie-Louis Monsabré, or Marie-Albert Janvier.) See Garrigou-Lagrange, Tho-
mistic Common Sense, 278–83 and 289.
Maritain made interesting (non-Straussian) remarks concerning esoteric and exoteric
writing for communicating philosophical doctrines to non-philosophers. See Maritain,
“Appendice 1: Sur le langue philosophique,” in Réflexions sur l’intelligence, 3rd ed. (Paris:
Desclée de Brouwer, 1930), 338: “I know of but one solution to this difficulty [concerning
how to communicate such technical philosophical truths to intelligent non-philosophers].
In short, it is the same solution offered by the ancients: alongside the philosopher’s prop-
erly scientific and demonstrative work written above all for experts, the philosopher
rightly should present the fruits of his works to the educated public, to ‘everyone,’ though
using an expositional style that henceforth will be that of the art of persuading (‘dialec-
tical’ in the Aristotelian sense), a style aiming to beget within his listeners true opinions,
rather than science. This was what led Plato and Aristotle to write their dialogues.”
However, in the case of sacred rhetoric, the ultimate knowledge begotten is not opinion
but, rather, the certitude of faith, which itself lays at the root of acquired theological cog-
itation. For interesting directions for further reflection in this vein, see Charles Journet,
“Supernatural Rhetoric and Science,” in The Wisdom of Faith: An Introduction to Theol-
ogy, trans. R. F. Smith (Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1952), 33–40.
72 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Rather than being “epistemologically strange,”243 what Garrigou-

Lagrange’s account of common sense attempts to articulate is the following
distinction of formal objects. (1) On the level of nature, there is a distinction
between (a) common knowledge had through intellectus and (b) the intel-
lectually scrutinized understanding of the knowledge had through intellectus,
though illuminated by way of discursive reflection244 (i.e. philosophical
grasping of those truths first known by the “man on the street”). (2) On the
level of grace, there is a similar distinction between (a) the knowledge of faith
(which we could call Christian common sense, so long as we understand
thereby the knowledge of the mysteries had by all through obscure faith and
perfected through the gifts of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom245)
and (b) technical theological reflection on the deposit of faith itself.246
Even if Garrigou-Lagrange’s own language tends toward a kind of
ahistoricism, as we have already cited above, he is not wholly indifferent
to the role of history in the articulation of human knowledge. Again, to
cite his words from above: Aristotelian and Thomistic philosophy are “the
work of centuries,” and in the domain of supernatural truth, the “deep-
ening of the meaning of a fundamental truth sometimes takes centuries
of reflection,” as was true in the centuries of the first Ecumenical Councils.
One need not set traditional Thomism against a sound ressourcement. A
bit of fair, mutual understanding should allow bridges to be built between
the Thomists gathered here in this volume and those thinkers who are
more desirous of integrating historical reflection and positive theology
into theological science.
Thus, according to Garrigou-Lagrange, such development applies to
some of the most important notions of philosophy and theology. The progress
is true—just as Dei filius calls for—without, however, implying a material
expansion of the deposit of faith—as Dei filius also requires. The early Coun-
cils merely developed the de fide insight found, for example, in the words of
the prologue of St. John’s Gospel: “And the Word was made flesh.”

243 See Mansini, “The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense,” 124–26.
244 This capital point is somewhat overlooked, though it is central for understanding
how it is that sapientia formally-eminently contains intellectus (and scientia). See Minerd,
“Wisdom Be Attentive,” 1113–14, 1125, 1138–41. Also see the citation from Cajetan in
note 223 above.
245 See “The Offices of Wisdom, Supernatural and Natural,” in Minerd, “Wisdom be
Attentive,” 1126–32.
246 In the supernatural order, this is the true wisdom, not notional, theological wisdom.
See Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 310–19; also, Garrigou-Lagrange,
“The Language of Spiritual Writers Compared with That of Theologians,” in The Three
Ages of the Interior Life: Prelude of Eternal Life, trans. Sister M. Timothea Doyle, vol. 2
(St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1948), 3–20.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 73

This theme concerning dogmatic development was constant in Garri-

gou-Lagrange’s writings, going back to his work in Sens commun. In the final
edition of that work, he lays out the whole of his position with great clarity
in a lengthy passage which is worth citing, in order to allow him to speak for
himself:

This notion of subsistence, thus given precision, is obviously already an

explication of the rudimentary metaphysics that common sense pro-
fesses (in actu exercito), without reflecting upon it. Common sense uses
subjects and attributes without noting (in actu signato) what constitutes
the subject as a subject. It employs the word subsister, applying it to the
persons and to things and not to their parts, but it does not ask why.
Someone like Aristotle will need to come and write chapter eight of the
fifth book of the Metaphysics in order to extricate the metaphysics of
first substance implicitly contained in the least phrase composed of a
concrete subject, the verb to be, and a predicate. Everyone uses the prin-
ciple of [non-]contradiction, but Aristotle needed to write the fourth
book of the Metaphysics in order for it to be abstractly and rigorously
formulated, in a way susceptible to being applied to all beings.—The
same was true for the notion of subsistence. As an explication of a vague
datum of common sense, it is accessible, to a degree, to the latter,
though, to a degree, it exceeds it by its rigor and its precision. Were not
quite lengthy debates between the Greeks and the Latins, between St.
Basil and Pope St. Damasus, necessary before the formula “three per-
sons” was admitted by the Greeks and that of “three subsistences” by
the Latins? Were one to deny that the philosophical terms employed by
developed dogmatic definitions exceed the strict limits of common
sense, would this not be to wish to deny progress in our knowledge of
dogma such as it is universally defined by Catholic theologians?
Between the merely common-sense notion that the primitive Church
had concerning the God-Man and the definition of the Second Council
of Constantinople concerning the hypostatic union, there is all-too-
obviously a passage from the implicit to the explicit.247

Granted, the older Dominican perhaps would not be the first to laud the
growth in historical focus characteristic of so many disciplines in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries. By contrast, in an article published prior to
the full outburst of the events surrounding the articles which make up the
Dialogue théologique, Labourdette was indeed quite emphatic that the devel-
opment of historical consciousness represented a natural and salutary deep-
ening of theological methodology, not merely for “positive theology” con-
cerning the sources of theological reflection but even for the scientific activity
of speculative theology itself:

247 Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense, 276–77.

74 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

Theology has become far too developed as a science for historical meth-
odology, understood precisely in this self-critical sense, not to be some-
thing far more than a necessary supplement: it is an irreplaceable
instrument for speculative reflection itself.248

However, immediately after these remarks, he is equally emphatic that the

theologian must maintain himself or herself at the level of speculative reflec-
tion concerning the interrelations of the truths in question, not merely at the
level of history, chronicling what various people have happened to think:

This is because, however independent we may think that a given theo-

logical formulation is from historical contingencies, it always and inev-
itably is impacted by the circumstances that originally surrounded it:
the preoccupations of the era, errors to be combatted, influences under-
gone, aspects that are primarily emphasized, the worldview and culture
common in a given era, place, etc. . . . It will always be important to dis-
cern within an ensemble of notions and within a group of assertions
their strict scientific scope, their permanent value, and the great halo
of historical connections they have either with the context in which
they originally were proposed or with other assertions that were com-
mon at that time but which did not have the same value. Such discern-
ment requires an infinitely refined touch and a culture that is at once
theological and historical. A mind that is too exclusively that of a his-
torian will end up emphasizing, above all, the changes that it perceives,
poorly grasping the formal difference which separates notions from
facts, imperishable essences from the conditions of temporal existence,
and ideas from their histories.249

And his closing words show that these concerns are nothing more than a
restatement of the broader concern to maintain the scientific status of theol-
ogy: “It will fall to the theologian, if he is well-informed, to take and use this
idea, now understood more fully through historical reflection, though itself
independent from the whole of history as regards that idea’s own essential
notes, so that he may present his theological science in its permanence” (empha-
sis added).
Obviously, as a subjective (and even as a sociological) reality, no science
exists in a kind of pure state of one deduction after another, proceeding from
complete scientific surety to complete scientific surety and permanence,
lodged in a Platonic heaven.250 This is all too obvious in the case of the phys-

248 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 124 below.

249 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 124 below.
250 On this, Garrigou-Lagrange at times sounds like he does think that this is the case,
given his concern to show the continuity between God’s self-knowledge and our own the-
ology, even in its wayfaring state.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 75

ical sciences, wherein hypothesis and preliminary explanation remain quite

necessary as the dialectical means for ascertaining what essential and what
is not. Theology also will involve discovery and debate. Each theologian must
rediscover, with the aid of tradition, the meaning and scope of the problems
faced today in theology,251 and in executing this task, it will primarily be a
question of argumentative strength, not of declaration by authority.252 In short,
a theology which is distinct from (but vitally connected to) faith will call for
debate and dialogue. With characteristic vigor, Bruckberger thunders this
point in his introduction:

Theology has neither laboratories nor test fields in which to give wing
to its theories. However, there is free discussion. And who does not see
that without this free discussion and dialogue, the de iure impunity of
the theologian who is mistaken would be but a scientific fraud? Or
would we instead need to appeal immedialy, each time, to the
Magisterium, asking her to settle the debate by way of authority, which
in the end would again be a mere cop-out [une échappatoire]? A
theologian’s honesty is measured by the intellectual effort he expends,
illuminated by faith, and by the stubborn rigor of his reasoning. All the
rest is [mere] literature.253

Moreover, as Labourdette indicates in a very important section of his

essay on theological methodology, the passage from the assent of faith (for-
mal revelation) to that of theological science (virtual revelation) requires
more than a mere quick shift in one’s focus. Developing suggestions found
in Maritain and Yves Simon concerning the nature of facts within each
domain of knowledge,254 he lays out a careful analysis of the way that the

251 This dynamic is well expressed by Marie-Joseph Nicolas’s brother, Jean-Hervé Nicolas,
who himself openly stands in line with the vision of theology held by Labourdette and
Gagnebet. See the quote from Nicolas cited in note 236 above.
252 Though, theology will always be marked by its foundation upon de fide truths, which
are assented to on the basis of authority (formally the authority of God who supernatu-
rally reveals, as a conditio sine qua non on the authority of the Church as objectively pro-
posing a teaching). See ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2. On the formal character of the assent of faith,
see Garrigou-Lagrange, De revelatione, vol. 1, 427–81. This is a very important and
lengthy article in this work by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange.
253 Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue,” 129 below.
254 In English, see Yves Simon, “Philosophers and Facts,” in The Great Dialogue of
Nature and Space, ed. Gerard J. Delacourt (New York: Magi Books, 1970), 139–62; Mari-
tain, Degrees of Knowledge, 60–64; also see the insightful and lucid reflections in
Michael D. Torre, “Yves R. Simon, Disciple of Maritain: The Idea of Fact and the Difference
Between Science and Philosophy,” in Facts are Stubborn Things: Thomistic Perspectives
in the Philosophies of Nature and Science, ed. Matthew K. Minerd (Washington, DC: Amer-
ican Maritain Association, 2020), 19–39.
76 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

establishment of properly scientific-theological data shifts one’s formal per-

spective from that of adherence to the revealed message (i.e., the formal per-
spective of infused supernatural faith) to that of understanding what is
revealed (i.e., the formal perspective of virtual revelation):

From this first acceptance by theology, the truths of faith present the
mind with a different appearance than that of being mere objects of
adherence. Henceforth considered in their intelligible virtualities, such
data of faith become “theological data.” The same truths which, on the
one hand, are purely objects of faith, will come to find themselves now
engaged in an intellectual activity which is that of knowledge’s own
investigation, striving to establish a science where they will play the role
of being truths that are either explanatory or explained (i.e., by other
data of faith). They are at once truths of faith and also theological
truths.255

One can say that the seeds for such theology exist in every believer who
seeks to understand what he or she holds on faith.256 This attests to the
“homogeneity” which links together faith and theology, even while the two
remain formally distinct.257 The life of faith and the life of theology must be

255 Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 109 below.

256 For suggestive remarks concerning this, while bearing in mind the differences which
came to separate these Dominican brothers, see Marie-Dominique Chenu, Is Theology a
Science?, trans. Adrian Howell North Green-Armytage (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959),
14–24. Particular care must be taken here to note that Chenu draws faith and theology
close. No doubt, part of his concern here is a solicitude, felt by a number of thinkers, to
make clear that the assent of theology is not merely concerned with drawing those con-
clusions which lay outside of the domain of faith, a real danger faced (and an error com-
mitted) by a simplistic understanding of virtual revelation. Labourdette himself felt the
need to address this sort of error head on. See Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking
Understanding,” 119 below: “The latter’s function is not at all a kind of mere deduction of
propositions laying outside of the revealed deposit. In that case, we would need to say
that theology begins where faith comes to an end. On the contrary, it works on the datum
of faith in its entirety, each of whose statements, at the same time that it is, under the
light of faith, purely an object of adherence, becomes, under the theological light defined
above, a theological truth, viewed in its connections with the others, in its intelligible vir-
tualities, as truths that explain or truths that have been explained. And it strives, in this
light, to lead this entire ensemble of truths to the perfect state of scientific knowledge.”
For an outline of the point of terminology, “virtual revelation,” see Reginald Garrigou-
Lagrange, “Remarks Concerning the Metaphysical Character of St. Thomas’s Moral The-
ology, in Particular as It Is Related to Prudence and Conscience,” trans. Matthew K. Min-
erd, Nova et Vetera 17, no. 1 (2019): 261–66 (“Translator’s Appendix 1: Concerning the
Formal Object of Acquired Theology”); also see the further points of explanation offered
in Minerd, “Wisdom Be Attentive,” esp. 1108n13, 1120–25.
257 See Gardeil, Le donné révélé et la théologie, 118–317; Garrigou-Lagrange, De rev-
elatione, 19n1. For some discussion of this, see Mansini, What is Dogma?, 256.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 77

connected; in fact, they call for each other of their very natures. However, if
one is not careful, this assertion comes with the danger of sliding from sci-
entific reflection, with all its essential rigors, to a more accessible and popular
form of exposition open to all believers. Without rejecting the place of ped-
agogical presentation, theology “on the march” of scientific research calls for
a rigorous state of mind, no less than does any other intellectual discipline.258
All of this entails that theological investigation will involve many non-
scientific opinions as theology strives to constitute itself and to develop.259
However, this is not the same thing as holding that theology is constituted
solely from “opinions,” an assertion that one senses in the use of the terms
“theological opinions” in ecclesiastical discussions even today, implying that
only ecclesiastical authority can make theological conclusions binding.260 A
scientific theology is concerned not merely with opinions but, rather, with
the objective connections between principles and conclusions (and likewise
and foremost, to the degree that theology is a form of wisdom, with the objective

258 See Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 115 below. There also is
the risk that one will not be clear enough about the distinction between theological devel-
opment and dogmatic development. This kind of confusion was partially what led to the
Indexing of the work by Louis Charlier in 1942. For a Thomistic response to Charlier, see
Charles Boyer, “Qu’est-ce que la théologie: Réflexions sur une controverse,” 255–66; also,
see the important texts cited at length in note 269 below.
259 See Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” 121 below; also, below,
in Labourdette and Nicolas, “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological Science,”
see sections 3.1 (“The Various Degrees of Truth in Human Judgment”), 3.4 (“Conceptual-
ization and Systematization”) and 3.5 (“Mentalities”). Their position is an echo and devel-
opment of what is found in John of St. Thomas, Material Logic, 586 (q. 27, a. 2 p.):
Finally, let us recall that the sciences, such as they exist factually in our minds, com-
prise not only demonstrations but also many opinions. These opinions are not elicited
by the scientific habitus; inasmuch as they involve no scientific assent, they do not
pertain to science. Because they are conversant with the same subject matters as
sciences, they are expressed in the same disciplines, but the habitus that they generate
are not the same.
260 Such an outlook is expressed by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange in “Theology and the Life of
Faith,” 270 below: “It suffices, some say, that we adhere to the fixity of faith and, for
action, to the directions of ecclesiastical authority. As regards theological opinions—
whose ensemble, they think, constitutes theology!—they are merely disputed questions
to be investigated by the dedicated teams of laborers belonging to various religious
orders. These groups and their doctrines all hold an equally probable certitude, allowing
the mind complete freedom in choosing among them and even the possibility of choosing
none of them. The vital questions would lie elsewhere.”
A similar outlook is considered and critiqued in Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking
Understanding,” 121 below; and, in particular, see the section “Authority in theology” in
Labourdette, “Closing Remarks Concerning Our Position,” 241–46 below. Also, for a cri-
tique of this kind of assertion in the work of Charlier, see the text of Boyer cited in note
258 above.
78 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

truth of the principles themselves, which are to be appreciated in their own

formal luminosity261). For the writers at the Revue thomiste, this notion of
theology was the central point of contention between the two parties:

The full meaning of the debate opened here by this brief introduction262
comes to light as soon as one considers the fact that it is concerned with
the rigorously scientific character of theology, with the the bonds of
formal causality that unite the principles of faith to the most minute of
theological conclusions. We remain outside the domain of theology if
we refuse to enter its process of drawing rational connections. Without
this, one can have impressionism or sentimentality, but not science.263

And here, we have a point that marked a profound distinction between

the two parties debating each other. Perhaps, as well, this difference explains
why two faithful Catholic parties would manage to differ so profoundly
regarding the very notion of dialogue. The primary dialogue desired by the
Fourvière Jesuits was with the world of contemporary thought, whereas the
Dominicans wished first to undertake a properly theological dialogue, within
the household of Catholic faith. Indeed, for the latter party, the formal and
dominating characteristic of theology is scientific and not intrinsically apos-
tolic, seeking to speak the message of faith to the world. As Labourdette
remarks in language that is honest and direct, if perhaps a bit heated:

Although I refrained from saying it so bluntly, I also think that certain

apologetic concerns, certain ways of making connections with “con-
temporary thought,” reflect—objectively and despite whatever might
be the personal intentions of the authors, something which I have never
questioned, not for a single moment—an intolerable form of dalliance.
This assessment can be debated. But is this criticism also entirely neg-
ative, and do we not have the right to think that theology would gain
much by ridding itself of attitudes that, to the eyes of many unbelieving
thinkers, seems like a vulgar inferiority complex?264

And responding to a Protestant reflection on Dialogue théologique,

Labourdette and Nicolas emphasized the same point:

Theology is not the science or art of “speaking to the world,” above all
to the world in its present character, to this or that man, or even to this
or that class of men. However, this wholly apostolic science of speaking

261 See Minerd, “Wisdom be Attentive,” 1144–46.

262 [Tr. note: That is, to the Dialogue théologique volume.]
263 Bruckberger, “A Theological Dialogue,” 129 below.
264 Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology: A Response,” 167 below.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 79

to the world presupposes theology, which it must know in-depth,

knowing even what it contains that is independent of this or that imme-
diate apologetic necessity, in order to be able to adapt it and cast it into
categories which lend themselves to such a task only partially and not
in a fully adequate or “formal” manner. The term kerygmatic has rightly
been proposed as a name for this kind of theology, which is wholly
ordered to preaching and to the salvation of souls. It presupposes sci-
entific theology.265

In fact, it was precisely this perceived background apologetic concern

which lay underneath Labourdette’s reaction to the publication of the first
volumes in the Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie collections. While grateful
for, and edified by, their content, he was nonetheless concerned to see what
he interpreted as being an “overly apologetic inflection” of the volumes them-
selves, even those which were translations of ancient texts, for their intro-
ductions and notes seemed, to his eyes, to bear the marks of a particular theo-
logical enterprise that would seek to undermine scholastic theology—by
which he did not mean a kind of “party-spirited” Thomism (or Suarezianism,
etc. for that matter) but, rather, a theology that was scientific in its very noetic
character.266 Nonetheless, he makes broad room for a renewed use of the
Fathers in such scientific theology, so long as such an enterprise is striven
after in a spirit of continuity with the prior theological tradition, above all
avoiding a mentality whose sole concern would be to study the Fathers with
a non-systematic, predominantly-historical interpretive lens:

Far from opposing the latter either to the breadth of tradition or to

attempts at a renewed presentation (as though this could only be a dan-
gerous undertaking for it), for our own part, we believe that Scholastic
theology, precisely in the form given to it by St. Thomas, represents the
truly scientific state of Christian thought. This implies no disdain for
what came before it, a patrimony which can never be valued too highly,
and surely the Thomistic synthesis will be the first to benefit from it.
This does not imply, moreover, that the teachings of St. Thomas must
be simply repeated word for word. It is all-too-true that it would thus
remain inaccessible to many, and we would deprive ourselves of the
wonderful and genuine progress resulting from later Christian (and
non-Christian) thinkers. Nonetheless, it remains the case that, these
forms of progress, on pain of ruining their own foundations, presup-

265 See Labourdette and Nicolas, “Discussion Surrounding our ‘Dialogue Théologique,’”
257–58 below.
266 See Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology: A Response,” 172 below. Also, regarding
his particular concern with what he saw as an ulterior, antischolastic motivation in the
works of the Jesuit Fathers, see Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” 134n2, as well
as annotations (b), (c), and in particular (g) below.
80 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

pose the previously-existing edifice, building upon it, neither destroying

nor replacing it. They represent expansions of a synthesis, not a total
recovery seeking to build a new “representation” of the world according
to the categories of modernity, condemning everything that has pre-
ceded it as being irredeemably outmoded. Yes, there are many things
that have become outmoded, but what we cannot admit is that form of
aging which, in fact, reaches down more deeply than the level of mere
formulations: the idea that the entire worldview characteristic of a cer-
tain cultural milieu could also reach down into the very truths of the-
ology. What we cannot admit is that theological wisdom would be
swept away by the flood of impermanence and that its acquisitions
could not be held as being definitive.267

This may be the best way to draw these brief systematic considerations
to a close. The issues discussed in the texts which we have drawn together
in this volume are rich and varied, not readily outlined in all of their details.
In the texts cited and interpreted above, we can see that both Dominican
streams of authorship share a great deal in the concerns which they voiced
in the course of the 1940s debate with their Jesuit brothers in faith.
Obviously, this debate was not a completely new affair. Setting aside the
question of centuries of scholastic debates on the nature of theology among
(and within) the various scholae, we can merely say that in the twentieth
century the issue concerning the nature of theology had been boiling for
some time already. There was the well-known controversy surrounding
Chenu’s Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir in the 1930s,268 but just as inter-

267 Labourdette, “Criticism in Theology: A Response,” 142–43 below. See the numerous
and lengthy notes connected to this text as well.
268 Most famously in Une école de théologie: le Saulchoir. See Mettepenningen, Nou-
velle Théologie, 48–57; Kirwan, Avant-garde, 174–76; Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of
Thomism, 100–13.
Moreover, the 1930s gave rise to significant discussions concerning the nature of theol-
ogy in the pages of the Revue thomiste. Arguably, the arc of this whole debate needs to
be connected historically to this period (and, really, back into its earlier rumblings in the
period when Fr. Marín-Sola wrote his work on the development of doctrine and Fr.
Ambroise Gardeil published his works on theological methodology).
In any case, because the current volume hopes to stir up fraternal understanding between
Thomists and those who are more sympathetic to the concerns voiced by the Jesuit
fathers in the 1940s, it is useful to chronicle here the titles of the articles addressed in
this 1935 issue of the Revue thomiste, in order to point readers in the direction of a longer
historical arch reflecting the Thomist concerns regarding the nature of theology: “J. Mes-
saut, ‘Le rôle intellectuel de la théologie dans l’apostolat’; M.-M. Philipon, ‘La théologie
science suprême de la vie humaine’; F. Claverie, ‘Théologie et conscience individuelle’;
F. Valette, ‘Théologie et action codifiée’; R. Garrigou-Lagrange, ‘La théologie et la vie de
la foi’; F. Valette, ‘Religion et vie: Une théorie activiste de la sainteté’; H.-D. Simonin, ‘La
théologie thomiste de la foi et le développement du dogme’; M-.M. Gorce, ‘Le méthode
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 81

estingly, there were the debates that arose surrounding the work of Louis
Charlier and Jean-François Bonnefoy.269
The Dominican Fathers were concerned with what they thought to be a
hasty readiness—for what, at least according to the Toulouse group, were
obviously noble apologetic reasons—to do away with the theological gains
of scholastic thought, including what was still perennial in the Baroque
period of scholasticism, as well as in what came thereafter. Their attitude was
quite different from what we find elaborated by their contemporary interloc-
utors, even within their own order. Though he was not directly involved in
the debates chronicled in our current volume, the reflections of Yves Congar,
recalling a discussion with Marie-Dominique Chenu, reveal a cast of mind
that was developing, even within the Dominican Order, in quite a different
direction from that of the two strands of thought we have gathered together
in this volume. This new impulse would ultimately reign triumphant in the
second half of the twentieth century:

One day, chatting at the entrance of the old Saulchoir, [Chenu and I]
found ourselves in profound accord—at once intellectual, vital and
apostolic—on the idea of undertaking a ‘liquidation of baroque theol-
ogy.’ This was a moment of intense and total spiritual union. We elab-
orated a plan and distributed the tasks among ourselves. I still have the
dossier that was begun then. . . . It was not a question of producing
something negative: the rejections were only the reverse aspects that
were more positive. . . . What would a little later be called “ressource-
ment” was then at the heart of our efforts.270

Moreover:

[Chenu and I] came to a deep agreement, both on this mission [of

bringing to fruition in the Church what was good in modernism’s

historique du maître de la théologie’; R-M. Gagnebet, ‘Le naufrage doctrinal d’un

adversaire de la théologie: le Père Laberthonnière.’”
269 See Henry Donneaud, “Un retour aux sources cache sous son contraire: Rosaire Gag-
nebet contre Louis Charlier sur la nature de la théologie spéculative,” Revue thomiste 119
(2019): 577–612; Mettepenningen, Nouvelle Théologie, New Theology, 61–82; Jean-Fran-
çois Bonnefoy, La Nature de la théologie selon saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Vrin, 1939);
Louis Charlier, Essai sur le problème théologique (Thuillies: Ramgal, 1938); Marie-Rosaire
Gagnebet, “La nature de la théologie spéculative,” 1–39, 213–55, 645–74; Gagnebet,
“Un essai sur le problème théologique,” 108–45; Gagnebet, “Le problème actuel de la
théologie et la science aristotélicienne d’après un ouvrage récent,” Divus thomas 46
(1943): 237–70.
270 Janette Gray, “Marie-Dominique Chenu and Le Saulchoir: A Stream of Catholic
Renewal,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic The-
ology, 209.
82 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

appeals and concerns] and on the necessity of “liquidating” Baroque

theology. . . . We began a dossier on this theme. . . . Some months
ago, at the beginning of [19]46, I said to Father Chenu that our dos-
sier had become pointless, since the “Baroque theology” was being
liquidated every day and the Jesuits were among its most ferocious
liquidators.271

Wayfaring theology will forever involve debate and discussion,272 but it

is impossible to have such a discussion if we do not include the great voices
from previous generations. One cannot be historically conscious without
simultaneously being sensitive to traditional themes and voices from the
past.273 Although ressourcement has been nobly concerned with recovering
the patrimony of Scriptures, the Fathers, and historical knowledge of medi-
eval thought,274 what is now needed, however, is a generous appreciation for
the theological thought that came thereafter. There are no “flyover zones” in
the history of the Church’s life. Failure to have appreciation for all of the
periods and locales of the Church’s history dooms oneself to a kind of aca-
demic presentism that perhaps acknowledges past thinkers (in the words of
Frs. Labourdette and Nicolas) “only in the form of scattered themes taken up
and transformed into brand new intellectual constructions,” while nonethe-
less failing to seek a true communion of minds with those who through all
centuries of belief have sought out some intellectus fidei, some understanding
of the faith.
Indeed, we hope that this will arouse discussion even within Thomistic
circles. As is clear merely from the work of someone like Rosaire-Marie Gag-
nebet, a student of Garrigou-Lagrange (and someone warmly mentioned by
both of the streams included in this volume), as well as the great Swiss theo-
logian, Msgr.-then-Cardinal Charles Journet, the more-conservative Tho-
mists of this era were capable of critiquing their own tradition, without for

271 Christopher Ruddy, “Ressourcement and the Enduring Legacy of Post-Tridentine The-
ology,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theol-
ogy, 185. See Kirwan, Avant-garde, 161–66.
272 Though, a day will come when this discursus of viatores will cease in the presence
of the dawning of Eternal Light, the Vision of God, to which the blessed will be subjec-
tively adapted by the light of glory, and in that intuitively-seen radiance of the Deity, theo-
logical science will seize its object with the tranquil actuality of the participated eternity
of the blessed.
273 For suggestive reflections on this from a Thomistic perspective, see Serge-Thomas
Bonino, “Antropologia della tradizione, Prospettive di metodo,” in Persona humana,
Imago Dei et Christi in historia, Atti del Congresso Internazionale, Roma 6-8 settembre
2000, vol. I, Sentieri, Studi 1999–2000, ed. Margherita Mari Rossi and Teodora Rossi
(Rome: Angelicum, 2002), 99–109.
274 And somewhat with a recovery of the sacred liturgy.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 83

all that rejecting it as mere decadent baroque flotsam.275 It is our hope that
such a bold spirit will inspire charitable discussions among Thomists, as well
as between Thomists and the members of the Communio school of thought,
which has benefitted so greatly from thinkers like de Lubac, von Balthasar,
Daniélou, and others discussed and debated in the texts which we have gath-
ered together here.
Writing in the 1940s, Msgr. Joseph Clifford Fenton attempted to put a
positive spin on the state of American theology at that time. Doubtlessly,
there were important works being written in his days, and with the coming
decades, many influential figures would emerge upon the American scene,
men of great erudition.276 Nonetheless, we must admit that the French theo-
logical scene of the first-half of the twentieth century was dazzlingly brilliant
in comparison with the English-speaking scene at that time,277 and among
the voices which were expressing themselves in that era, the Thomist school
had adherents whose influence could be felt far and wide. In this volume, we
wish merely to give voice to some of those authors so that their thought might
be considered and retrieved as a positive acquisition in contemporary debates
concerning theological methodology. In short, and with all the meaning sug-
gested by each of the words that comprise the title of this introduction, our
hope is that this volume will provide a resource that might enable, in charity,
the taking up of “A Dialogue Delayed.”

A TIMELINE
The following is a general timeline of the major articles related to this volume.
Due to the rapidity of responses and post-war publication delays, one should
take care not to draw conclusions regarding the dependence of one article
on another except where clear internal or external criteria are available.

1. Garrigou-Lagrange, “La théologie et la vie de foi.” Revue thomiste

40, NS 18 (1935): 492–514.
2. Labourdette, “La théologie, intelligence de la foi.” Revue thomiste
46 (1946): 5–44.

275 See the text of Fr. Donneaud cited in note 269 above. The same could be said of all
the authors cited herein, including Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, all of whom were willing to cri-
tique, in charity, various members of their own schola concerning a variety of topics.
276 See Joseph Clifford Fenton, The Concept of Sacred Theology, ed. Cajetan Cuddy (Prov-
idence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018), 275–81.
277 Although they were looking to accomplish different ends, the well-known American
Catholic Encyclopedia, published in the first decades of 1900, pales in comparison to
the immense erudition found, for example, in the conservative Dictionnaire théologie
catholique, which even today on certain topics remains an important touchpoint for
researchers.
84 J O N K I R W A N A N D M AT T H E W K . M I N E R D

3. Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,”

Études (1946): 5–21.
4. Labourdette, “La théologie et ses sources” Revue thomiste 46
(1946): 353–71.
5. Jesuits (de Lubac), “Théologie et ses sources: Réponse,” Recherches
de science religieuse 33 (1946): 385–401.
6. Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie ou va-t-elle?” Angeli-
cum 23 (1946): 126–47.
7. Bruckberger, “Introduction” in Dialogue théologique (1947).
8. Labourdette, “La théologie et ses sources” (annotated version) in
Dialogue théologique (1947).
9. Labourdette, “De la critique en Théologie, réponse” in Dialogue
théologique (1947).
10. M.-J. Nicolas, “Le progrès de la théologie et la fidélité à saint
Thomas” in Dialogue théologique (1947).
11. Labourdette, “Ferme propos,” Revue thomiste 47 (1947): 5–19.
12. De Solages, “Autour d’une controverse,” Bulletin de littérature ecclé-
siastique 48 (1947): 3–17.
13. De Solages, “Pour l’honneur de la théologie: le contre-sens du R.
P. Garrigou Lagrange,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique 48
(1947): 64–84.
14. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Verité et immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum
24 (1947): 124–39.
15. Blondel and Garrigou-Lagrange, “Correspondence,” Angelicum 24
(1947): 210–14.
16. Le Blond, L’analogie de vérité: Réflexion d’un philosophe sur une
controverse théologique,” Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947):
129–41.
17. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Notions consacrées par la Concile,” Angeli-
cum 24 (1947): 217–31.
18. Labourdette and Nicolas, “L’analogie de la vérité et l’unité de la
science théologique,” Revue thomiste 47 (1947): 411–66.
19. Labourdette and M.-J. Nicolas, “Autour du ‘Dialogue théologique’,”
Revue thomiste 47 (1947): 577–85.
20. Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires et analogie de la vérite,” RSR 3
(1948) 251–71.
21. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Nécessité de revenir à la conception tradi-
tionnelle de la vérité,” Angelicum 25 (1948): 185–98.
22. Garrigou-Lagrange, “Immutabilité des vérités définies et la surna-
turel,” Angelicum 25 (1948): 285–98.
23. Garrigou-Lagrange, “L’immutabilité du dogme selon le Concile du
Vatican, et le relativisme,” Angelicum 26 (1949): 309–22.
I N T R O D U C T I O N : A D I A LO G U E D E L AY E D 85

TRANSLATION-RELATED COMMENTS
There are many people who provided generous assistance, for which we are
grateful. First, we would like to thank Père Philippe-Marie Margelidon, OP,
Director of the Revue thomiste, and Margherita Maria Rossi, at the Angelicum
journal, for allowing for the translation and publication of the articles
included here. Thanks also to Matthew Horwitz, the librarian at St. Patrick’s
Seminary, for helping to gather some of the original articles. Gratitude is
owed to Cluny Media for use of the text of Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s “Theology
and the Life of Faith,”278 to Saint Anselm Journal for allowing permission to
use an earlier form of portions of this introduction,279 and to Josephinum Jour-
nal of Theology for the use of their translation of “La nouvelle théologie où
va-t-elle?”280
In general, scriptural references have been taken from the Revised Stan-
dard Version of the Bible. Where contextual or rhetorical concerns did not
seem to allow this, we translated the text from the French provided by the
author in question. All such citations from the Revised Standard Version are
marked in the scriptural citation. For example, if a direct citation has been
taken from Romans 6:1, it is cited as Rom 6:1 (RSV). Where needed, the
Douay-Rheims version is used for translations of the Latin Vulgate. Such cita-
tions are marked with (DR). All direct citations from Denzinger are taken
from the English translation provided in the forty-third edition published by
Ignatius Press.
Our greatest thanks goes to John Martino, without whose diligent care
this volume would not have been brought to press. Moreover, we sincerely
thank the reviewers of the volume, whose warm recommendations have only
served to improve the text. We also thank Aaron Weldon for his indispensa-
ble copy-editing work and likewise express our gratitude to the design and
marketing team for creating so beautiful a volume in honor of these Thomist
theologians who have become dear to our hearts.
Finally, we dedicate this volume to contemporary and future students of
theology, whom we hope will take up this dialogue in a spirit of fraternal
charity.

278 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Theology and the Life of Faith,” in Philosophizing
in Faith, 421–43.
279 See Matthew K. Minerd, “Humani Generis and the Nature of Theology: A Stereoscopic
View from Rome and Toulouse,” Saint Anselm Journal 16, no. 2 (2021): 1–35.
280 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP, “Where is the New Theology Leading Us?” Josephi-
num Journal of Theology 18, no. 1 (2011): 63–78.
 PART 1
The Toulouse Response:
Revue thomiste and Dialogue Théologique

87
 1
Theology: Faith Seeking
Understanding
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP

Ratio, fide illustrata, cum sedulo, pie et

sobrie quareit, aliquam, Deo dante,
mysteriorum intelligentiam, eamque
fructuosissimam, assequitur.
—Conc. Vatic., Sess. III, ch. 4

If reason, illuminated by faith,

inquires in a pious and sober manner,
it attains, by God’ grace, an understanding
of the mysteries which is most fruitful.
—Vatican I, Dei filius, ch. 4, Denz., no. 3016 [1796]

1. The word “theology” can be understood in a broad sense as designat-

ing every form of knowledge that is concerned with God: just as biology is
the study of living beings, theology is the study of God, the study of divine
things. However, we can know God in many ways. In particular, following
upon the elaborations wrought during the Middle Ages, the Latin Catholic
tradition distinguishes three broad domains for our knowledge of God, each
requiring us to use the term “theology” in a completely different sense.
The first belongs solely to the natural order. That is, it abstracts from
every form of positive revelation. What can we know about God? Does He
exist? Are we able to know Him? If so, how can we conceive of Him? In being
occupied with such questions, one does indeed engage in a form of theology,
namely, natural theology.
The second kind of theology will be founded on the revelation that the
same God makes concerning truths that exceed our mind’s natural field of
investigation. To believe that God has spoken to men, that He has revealed
to them His intimate life, as well as the designs of His providence, and so
forth, requires us to admit that we have a new and unexpected means for
knowing God. This form of theology, which is the principal meaning for the
very term “theology,” is “Theologia Sacra,” theology tout court.

89
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A third kind of knowledge of divine things also traditionally bears the

name “theology”: mystical theology. The expression itself is equivocal, today
tending to mean, “the theology of mysticism.” When it is considered in these
terms, it only designates one part of “Theologia Sacra.” However, for a long
time, the term retained its traditional sense, indicating “knowledge of the
revealed God through mystical experience.”
These distinctions are profound and must be understood aright.
A fundamental dogma of Christianity lies in the fact that the real destiny
that God has given to humanity radically exceeds human nature. This destiny
is supernatural. Solely on its own, human nature is not proportioned to it,
and it requires new principles of spiritual activity.1 A whole order of objects
of knowledge and love that heretofore laid outside of man’s grasp are now
offered to him. Revelation opens up before the intellect an order of truths
that it could not attain by itself, informing it about these new things. There-
fore, here we have a rigorous distinction of spiritual lights differentiating nat-
ural knowledge (even that which is concerned with divine things) from
knowledge founded on revelation made by God.2
The distinction between “sacred theology” and mystical theology will be
a more delicate affair, though it is no less strict. Both of them are essentially
Christian and presuppose revelation. Now, is not every kind of knowledge of
the revealed God, properly speaking, “mystical,” given that it rests on the inte-
rior light of faith? Certainly, the philosopher can freely define his terms. Still,
he must specify those which he adopts if he wishes to give them a special
meaning. In theology, terminological freedom itself is singularly restricted by
a very elaborate tradition, as well as by the whole weight of history, which
freights many of the terms that come down to us. If every kind of adherence
to the mystery on account of an interior personal light or affective inclination
is called mystical, we can use this term for pure and simple faith. However, in
that case, its technical meaning is thereby singularly enlarged, and this will
not be free from the grave danger of causing confusion. In truth, by its very
means of knowing, what we are here calling mystical knowledge of God is
essentially distinct from theology properly so called, even though they do

1 Whatever one holds concerning “mere / pure” human nature, left to itself, it is certain
that man called to a supernatural destiny is, as it were, a new creature, having different
aspirations, needs, responsibilities, and aids. In order to understand him integrally, a
new light is needed.
2 See [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4: “The perpetual common belief of the Catholic
Church has held and holds also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not
only in its principle but also in its object; in its principle, because in the one we know by
natural reason, in the other by divine faith; in its object, because apart from what natural
reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries that are hidden in God that
can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (Denzinger, no. 3015 [old no., 1795]).
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 91

indeed have the same source, infused faith. In order to penetrate more fully
the teaching that has been received from God, theology uses all the rational
procedures at the intellect’s disposal, all of its resources of knowledge with all
of its greatly diversified methods, from notional analysis to historical meth-
odology, as well as textual and documentary criticism. By contrast, mystical
knowledge is intrinsically quite distant from all forms of logical discursion
and will be an experiential knowledge of divine things through union with
them, an essentially supernatural knowledge in the very means bringing about
such knowledge, namely, the infused love of charity, as well as in its principle,
namely, the inspiration of the Spirit of God currently active in the soul.
In this study, we will only be directly concerned with Theology properly
so called, considering supernatural mystical knowledge and natural knowl-
edge of God only on occasion and by way of comparison. As we said, this
Theology finds its source in the revelation that God has made to us concern-
ing what He is and what He has willed for our salvation. It is no longer the
science of God such as He is manifested by His creatures but, instead, is the
science of God such as He has revealed Himself through His personal inter-
vention [in salvation history]. Here, faith will be the indispensable principle
for this revelation, not as a point of departure that one would then leave
behind but, rather, as a permanent source of light and truth. Faith is the only
spiritual means for a truly living theology.
However, can this theology really be a science? What will be its structure
and methodology? How can one define its status and inventory its domain?3

I. SOME GENERAL METHODOLOGICAL

OBSERVATIONS4
2. The general notion of science. In St. Thomas’s philosophy, the
word “science” calls to mind a completely precise, though nuanced and

3 The notion of theology has been the object of a number of recent studies and discus-
sions. While attempting to draw profit from this or that study, our current reflections are
not specifically written to carry on this discussion or to express something new. Rather,
we have found that we must set forth, on our own behalf, how the traditional notion of
Theology is to be understood today. This is the exposition that we have published here.
4 Due to the fact that these notions are used with substantially different meanings in the
logic used by St. Thomas, on the one hand, and in modern noetics, on the other, equiv-
ocations are not rare concerning the very notion of science and its various implications.
Here, without considering in themselves questions which would require lengthy studies,
we simply wish to specify what we mean when we speak of science, observation, expla-
nation, and so forth. Obviously, the precise techniques to which these several points are
connected already presuppose that one holds certain essential philosophical positions
concerning the realism of the intellect, the value of concepts, the relationship of the intel-
lect to being, the scope of the demonstrative syllogism, and so forth. . . Our perspective
here is that of St. Thomas’s philosophy.
92 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

complex, notion. Taken in a general sense, it characterizes a given, perfect

state of intellectual knowledge, a form of knowledge wherein the mind attains
things in their proper principles, in their raisons d’être, in what gives them
their “necessity.” And because such knowledge is a perfection, we use this
term to designate the very knowledge that God has of Himself and of all
things, thus speaking of the “Divine Science.”
In the domain of human knowledge, the word “science” will simulta-
neously have a narrower scope and a greater complexity. Given that it must
abstract the notions which it utilizes, our intellectual knowledge is essentially
progressive in nature. Like every form of knowledge, it consists in the fact
that things come to take on a new life in the mind according to an immaterial
mode of existence, there taking on a new intelligible clarity, not as though
they were sketched out like duplicates on a painting but, rather, as transpar-
ently presenting themselves to us. The immaterial possession that this pre-
supposes attains a degree of perfection only through multiple procedures,
through the recomposition of concepts, the separations and rapprochements
that rule a great number of logical processes that are more or less complex
and refined. Starting with a mass of initial knowledge, as of yet neither cri-
tiqued nor coordinated, the mind strives to attain the stability of complete
certitude and perfect clarity. And given that this certitude is immediately
found only for a certain number of first principles, all our other judgments
will need to seek after such certitude in knowledge of the cause which makes
the thing judged be what it is and not able to be anything else: its proper and
necessary cause. This is what, on the level of human knowledge, is properly
called “science”: a certain form of knowledge through causes or reasons for
being, raisons d’être.
Science is distinct from the grasping of first principles in that the judg-
ment at which science terminates is not itself immediately evident. The rela-
tion between the two terms that it unites is seen to be true in light of a third
term in which we can see the reason why the predicate term belongs to the
subject. This middle term (which, in the perfect type of science, is the defi-
nition of the subject) is the essential element of scientific knowledge. We can
say that inasmuch as knowledge is indeed scientific, it, so to speak, passes
over into the middle term, which specifies such knowledge. Thus, the middle
term is its objective light, the determining motive for its certitude.
Before providing this very general notion with those nuances which are
utterly necessary, given the highly diversified state of our sciences, we should
first emphasize two particularly important points.
In scientific demonstration, the middle term has its value as a middle
only if it is first perceived in its immediate identification with the other terms,
that is, if it is first perceived as playing its role as a principle. Grasping this is
indispensable for scientific reasoning. This is why, even though scientific
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 93

knowledge is distinct from immediately self-evident knowledge of principles,

the former not only presupposes knowledge of the latter but, indeed, it is sus-
pended to this fundamental intuition, not only in the sense that this intuition
is part of scientific knowledge, but moreover, because such knowledge remains
forever actualized by its illumination. It is entirely penetrated and vivified by
it. It depends on it in its own proper certitude and its own proper clarity. Suffi-
cient emphasis is not always placed on the fact that at the heart of every
science, even one that is quite developed, a permanent place remains for this
necessary intuition of its principles. It alone provides science with the means
for escaping the menacing possibility of formalism coming from an overbur-
dening logical apparatus which will overtake it if it loses contact with its living
source. Even if they are attained and manifested through complex logical pro-
cesses, such objects of intuition—the common principles which express the
fundamental laws of being and, likewise, the definitions that are a given
science’s own proper principles—are never, properly speaking, dependent on
such discursive reasoning. They are never “demonstrated.” They are grasped.
Every human science is progressive and is acquired through personal
labor. Therefore, knowledge of its conditions in its terminal and perfect state
will never be sufficient by itself. It is important to analyze its undertakings, its
movement as a whole. The ideal goal of every science is to come to explain a
given datum.5 To explain is to assign the raison d’être, the proper cause which
provides full intelligibility to a truth that is still only formulated in a factual
manner through observation. Obviously, this presupposes a prior phase of
observation and research. Thus, every science, like every intellectual under-
taking, begins with an acceptance of a given order of realities through the
observation of a given datum. Its first task will be to investigate and critique
it, meaning that it must examine the datum in question and formulate it in its
own proper light. This will represent the phase of observation. Thereupon, the
characteristic effort of science as such is to go out in search of causes (this is,
in Thomistic vocabulary, the stage of scientific discovery [invention]), seeking
to reduce the multiplicity of data so observed to the unity of a synthesis around
explanatory notions, namely, causes. Thus, one will come to the stage of expla-
nation (in Thomistic vocabulary, this is the stage of science in its constituted
form, the definitive judgment, enabling the synthesis “in via iudicii”).
3. Different kinds of sciences and the various phases of science.
However, what we here have presented is an idealized schema. In order to
have a concrete and adapted methodology at one’s disposal, it is important
that we understand the many nuances involved here.

5 Obviously, our perspective here is that of St. Thomas and Aristotle, holding that knowl-
edge precisely as such has a purely speculative finality. The proper end of knowledge is
not to enable one to live well but, rather, to enable one to know well.
94 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

And first of all, let us note that there are various kinds of sciences. When
we wish to determine the general idea of science and provide a definition for
it, we consider it in its pure state, according to its perfect typology, quite dis-
engaged from the various, differentiated sciences with which we are familiar.
Indeed, we actually have a great number of sciences, quite unequal in their
perfection, realizing with considerable differences the schema that we have
described. Jacques Maritain rightly notes in The Degrees of Knowledge that
our science not only progresses in extent but also in its “internal noetic mor-
phology.” New disciplines are gradually disengaged from the substance of
infra-scientific knowledge and progressively rise up to the level of science.
Only gradually does their scientific character manifest itself.
The same author notes that according to Thomist logic, the notion of
science finds its most typical natural realization in metaphysics. The descrip-
tion that one gives for it normally undergoes the attraction of this privileged
realization. The other sciences, above all those of the “first degree of abstrac-
tion”—and even more so the “practical sciences”—present more or less pro-
found deficiencies in relation to this ideal notion. By contrast, in the noetic
of most modern thinkers, the idea of science is completely dominated and,
as it were, attracted by the experimental sciences. According to contemporary
terminology, something is “scientific” only if it is experimentally verifiable
or [historically] established by irrefutable documents. Thus, “philosophy” is
today contrasted to this so-called “positive” science. This perspectival differ-
ence is the source of all-too-frequent equivocations—even, as we will see, in
the case of theology. However, this also will enable us to extend the term
“science” to disciplines to which the traditional schema no longer applies,
except in a wholly different manner (for example, to history).6
In the elaboration of science (i.e., science “in fieri”), these two phases
(observation and explanation) closely interpenetrate each other. A continual
back-and-forth takes place from first observations to a fragmentary expla-
nation, sometimes to a provisional explanation (i.e., a hypothesis), then from
explanation to new observations. We certainly do not need to exhaust the
field of observation before proceeding to our investigation into causes.
4. Scientific observation. These remarks lead us to an essential notion
brought to light by Jacques Maritain.7 Observation is part of the science which it
furnishes with data. It is performed under that science’s own proper light. It does

6 In history, the tendency to strive after “explanation” is certainly not absent, but it is no
longer the same kind of explanation [as in the other sciences]. That is, it is no longer an
explanation through something’s essence.
7 See Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald Phelan et al. (Notre
Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pt. 1, ch. 1. Likewise, see Yves Simon,
“La science modern de la nature et la philosophie,” Revue Néo-scolastique de philoso-
phie 49 (Feb. 1936): 64–77.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 95

not fall to some common, prior form of knowledge. On the contrary, an absolute
law of the logic of the sciences asserts that an observation, a “fact,” is of interest
to a science only as something seen under that science’s own light and as critiqued
by it. A brute fact is not a scientific fact. A single scientific observation is of infi-
nitely greater value than many vague testimonies. In any case, it alone is imme-
diately able to be assimilated into the science which is interested in this fact.
Likewise, brute facts or even scientific facts absolutely are not yet “meta-
physical facts.” They will only become such by being formulated in terms of
being.—Any given fact concerning the past is not a historical fact. It will become
such and be able to be assimilated by scientific history only by being critiqued
and controlled by such historical knowledge. There are infinitely more real facts
than those that are historical in the sense just defined; there are many pseudo-
historical facts. Only a fact that is duly controlled by the methods of historical
criticism will be able to be justly presented as belonging to historical science.—
We will see that theology is not exempt from this law. For it too, observation of
its data and of the various facts that are of interest to it are undertaken in its own,
proper light. Whatever it has not previously examined and critiqued (through a
theological critique), strictly speaking, still cannot be assimilated by it.
And we must not believe that basic observation and the scientific obser-
vational determination which is its fruit, would be something easy, a task that
one can perform with ease. Granted, in metaphysics, very simple observations
generally are sufficient. The difficulty lies in the research into causes and in
the passage [from nominal and vague definitions] to real and distinct ones.
However, in many sciences, observation by itself requires great labor and the
employment of meticulous, refined methods. Merely think of all the experi-
mental labor required in the natural sciences in order to discover a truly sci-
entific fact. Likewise, think of all the meticulous work involved in historical
criticism. With all its resources and with full awareness of the proper require-
ments of the science that it pursues—in short, under this science’s light—what
is applied to this task is intelligence, an intelligence which also has (above all
when it is a question of unique observable facts) what contemporary language
might call a “flair,” something presupposing, beyond a given amount of imag-
ination, a kind of instinctual connaturality which increases in the mind
through the presence of a scientific habitus in relation to its object.8

8 These very brief, summary remarks find their full justification only in a complete [philo-
sophical-theological] exposition of a doctrine taking everything into account. The reader
can refer to the commentaries by St. Thomas and Cajetan on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics
and to John of St. Thomas’s Ars Logica. From the perspective of the more particular
remarks that we have made, it would be appropriate for one to develop the doctrine con-
tained in the following texts: Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, bk. 2, chs. 1 and 2 (on the four
scientific questions and their interrelations), along with the commentaries by St. Thomas
and Cajetan on these passages. Likewise, see Gaetano San Severino, Philosophiae
96 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

II. FAITH AND ITS OBJECT

5. The light of faith. The “subject” which our theology strives to study is
God. As we have said, it is not God as He is manifested to our reason through
His creatures but, rather, such as He has revealed Himself, that is, such as He
knows Himself, such as He is in Himself. And, secondarily, this revelation,
while always referring to God, will also be all of His works inasmuch as this
revelation illuminates us regarding them: creation and creatures’ ascent to
God, as well as the providential economy in which all the things that God
wills are inscribed: the Incarnation, the Redemption through the Cross, the
Church, the Sacraments, and so forth. . . .
All this constitutes a strictly supernatural object for our minds: God’s inti-
mate life and the ways it is participated in by creatures. Such an object will be
a “datum” for us only if we are elevated to know it by a light that is propor-
tioned to it. No more than a sense power could grasp an idea, our reason, left
to itself, cannot enter into the secrets of the Divine Being. And in order for us
to have authentic knowledge here, it will not be enough for us to merely have,
in human terms, an external presentation of these mysteries which exceed our
reason. We would stand before such knowledge like the archeologist who dis-
covers a tablet covered in still-undecipherable characters: he sees the writing
quite well enough, but it remains utterly meaningless for him. Supernatural
revelation implies an interior aid given to our mind, a grace-given illumination
that elevates it to a superior level of knowledge. In truth, the only created light
that is adequately proportioned to this Object, the Divine Being in itself, is
the light of the Beatific Vision, the “light of glory.” God will then present Him-
self “to be discovered.” We will see Him face-to-face, “as He is,” in accord with
what is promised in Scripture. And in this light, our knowledge of God and
even our very theology, which our mind constructs to its own measure (in
the way that we will come to discuss in what follows below), will reach its per-
fect state, that of full evidence and complete clarity.
Here-below, we are presented with the same supernatural Object
through God’s revelation. However, it is not seen directly but, rather, is
described to us by God Himself. God gives us His testimony concerning it.
Revelation’s mode of expression is quite different from vision. In relation to

Christianae cum antiqua et nova comparatae, [vol. 1 (Naples: Apud Officinam Bibliothecae
Catholicae Scriptorum, 1873)], 166–86, and more specifically, the invaluable elucidations
provided by Jacques Maritain in the first part of The Degrees of Knowledge.
[Tr. note: The reference to San Severino is to “vol. 3,” which does not correspond to
the section devoted to logic in the edition consulted to fill out this citation. The pagination
given corresponds to the beginning of the 3rd part of the logic, devoted to methodology.
However, this ends in the middle of the particular section. See pp. 166–209 for the com-
plete section “methodologia.”]
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 97

the state of glory, our current state is a kind of apprenticeship, an initiation:

before knowing what God is, we must begin by believing in Him. To the
ensemble of statements through which God makes Himself known to
humanity, constituting objective revelation, there is added, in the mind of
those “who hear the word of the Father,” the grace of light and adherence that
we call supernatural faith, infused faith.9
This light is essentially supernatural. It is so not only because God is the
one who gives it or because the statements in which it is formulated also come
from God. It is supernatural in itself and by the nature of the knowledge that
it procures precisely because the proper object that it attains in these state-
ments is God in His intimate life and because the motive by which it enables
one to adhere to them is the very testimony of God—a testimony which is
not perceived by reasoning based, for example, on the observation of miracles
(thus remaining wholly in the natural order) but, rather, is perceived by faith
itself as something included in the presentation of the supernatural object.
The motive of divine faith is neither rationally seen nor deduced. This motive
is itself supernaturally believed. Faith is altogether supernatural in both its
object and its motive. And if it is perfectly true that revelation does not lack
testimony which it can offer before the eyes of reason and indeed, much to
the contrary, offers reason the most solid [motives of] credibility, it is no less
certainly true that, in the theology of St. Thomas, the only sufficient motive
for a supernatural and infallible adherence is itself supernatural as well.
We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by the use of the word “light”
in describing faith. We most certainly are still here concerned with faith, not
evidence, and therefore with something totally different than a scientific light.
Faith neither reasons nor proves. It adheres to the truth of what God tells us
about Himself and His works, doing so under the impulse of the will, moved
by Him, on account of the Divine Veracity. This role played by the will in the
act of faith is essential. Faith is not the simple profession of particular ways
of looking at things, the intellectual acceptance of particular ideas; it indis-
pensably presupposes the engagement of the free will, a personal acceptance.
The Divine Object is not presented to us clearly enough for the sight of it
alone to suffice for discovering its truth. We must have a relationship with
Him who proposes it to us, and this cannot be brought about without an
affective motion of confidence in this incomparable Witness. Certainly, this
testimony is proposed to the intellect, and the intellect will be the essential
dwelling place for the supernatural virtue which will enable it to grasp this

9 See [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 3: “Though the assent of faith is by no means
a blind impulse of the mind, still, no man can ‘assent to the Gospel message,’ as is nec-
essary to obtain salvation, ‘Without the illumination and inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
who gives to all delight in assenting to the truth and believing it’” (Denzinger, no. 3010
[old no. 1791]).
98 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

testimony at the same time as it grasps the objects whose truth it affirms.
However, its adherence to this truth is definitively explained only through
the will’s own free choice, itself supernaturally elevated and bearing the mind
to faith by an initial love which is both a desire for the beatitude thus
announced and a form of confidence in Him who announces it. If, through
adherence to revealed truth, faith is found at the foundation of every form
of progress undergone by our supernatural knowledge of God prior to the
Beatific Vision, through this first engagement of our personal freedom, it also
lies at the foundation of this profound and intimate life of supernatural affec-
tions which the other virtues will come to constitute and develop, though, it
will include in itself the very first movement of these other virtues.10 It is in
continuity with this first impulse, surpassing it without suppressing it, that
the will, receiving yet again from God the virtues of hope and charity, will
be borne toward Him with all its weight and, through an inevitable rever-
beration, will come to affirm and animate the very adherence of faith as well
as its supernatural penetration.
However, what does faith bring about in the intellect itself? Its precise
role is to secure it, making the intellect hold as absolutely certain a given
ensemble of supernatural truths which our science and experience could not
reach or verify on their own. Without faith, the very terms in which these
truths are formulated for us would be directly intelligible for us only in their
natural signification, in their signification in the language of created being,
which is our own, in accord with its categories, like the archeologist looking
upon the undecipherable tablet and seeing only the characters without grasp-
ing their meaning. However, illuminated by the light of faith, these terms
take on a supernatural signifying value when they are set before the believer’s
mind. Instead of only bearing the mind to their natural significate, they lead
it to their supernatural significate, functioning as the means for a knowledge
that terminates in the divine reality in its very character as something

10 One of the difficulties involved in our analyses, requiring us to carefully distinguish

what we must not confuse, is the fact that they force us to sometimes seem to forget ele-
ments that are not of immediate concern for our study. This is to be feared in the definition
of our supernatural knowledge had through faith. If our attention turns too exclusively
either to its intellectual side or to its volitional element, we risk inflecting research toward
concerns that are correct but partial and, perhaps, not well-enough aware of their limi-
tations. The very aim of the current article will require us to insist much more on the intel-
lectual character of faith than on the indispensable role played by the will in its consti-
tution and progress. Bear in mind that this emphasis is not due to some kind of disregard
for this volitional side or due to a lack of esteem for its importance but, rather, flows from
methodological necessities facing us here. On the contrary, we think that it is through
this first and essential dependence [upon the will] that love renders faith amenable,
through the intervention of the other virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, to its full
fructification in mystical, experiential knowledge of the Triune God.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 99

reserved and naturally unknowable by every creature. This adds absolutely

nothing to their conceptual content but quite precisely enables these terms,
united by the verb to be, which expresses our adherence, to truly become for
our mind the formal means for attaining the supernatural, Divine Reality. As
regards every natural form of knowledge that is not a simple logical or gram-
matical reflection on the statement itself, we can truly say, with St. Thomas,
that it does not terminate in the statement but, rather, in the signified reality:
non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem.11 However, for faith, we have this
new sense that the reality in question is nothing other than the Supernatural
God such as He knows Himself and is not naturally accessible to any created
knowledge. Infused faith enables our knowledge to truly attain its terminus
in this reality. This is why, properly speaking, the term “faith” is used equiv-
ocally when applied to supernatural faith and to a human form of faith by
which one would assent to a revealed truth on account of its natural cred-
ibility or for any other motive [than revelation by God who reveals super-
naturally] (for example, the heretic’s human faith). These are not at all the
same kinds of knowledge, even though the truth might be expressed on both
sides in completely identical terms.
What grandeur and poverty are involved in our formulas of faith!
Marked with the infirmity of human language, they are the infinitely deficient
translation of a Reality which exceeds them on all sides. They are an inferior
kind of packaging given to a supernatural knowledge that will find its true
proportion only in the face-to-face knowledge experienced in the Beatific
Vision. Consequently, they are, for the whole of our supernatural life, the
principle of an infirmity characteristic of the time of trial that we now are
passing through. However, let us not overlook their grandeur: they truly lead
our mind to this Sovereign Reality which exceeds them; this is what they con-
form it to; this Object is what our intellect is assimilated to through them.
Thanks to them, this relation of indisputable conformity, speculative truth,
is established between us and this Object. Through them, this inaccessible
Reality is validly expressed within us. It enters into the domain of our super-
elevated reason, penetrates it, and dwells within it—yes, according to the par-
ticular modality of reason, but in a way which still fully realizes the very
notion of speculative truth. Our conceptual statements become expressions
of it. Yes, they are deficient because they are human, but nonetheless, they
are purely and simply valid, objectively conformed, despite their poverty, to
what is in God, to what God is.
6. The object of faith within the Church. Nonetheless, our faith does not
rest upon a direct revelation, made to us in the form of a private revelation.
Rather, it remains in contact with a public revelation which was a temporal

11 ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.
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event (or, rather, an ensemble of temporal events, for it took place over a long
period of time and developed in an extremely slow and progressive fashion).
What God said is not directly infused by Him into our intellect. It is trans-
mitted to it, through the divinely instituted living body that is the Church.
The Church has received the objective deposit of divine revelation; it falls to
her to propose it to all generations and to each human intellect. The very life
of the Church assures the continuity of this deposit. We do not need to rees-
tablish a connection to it as to a dead letter that is so distant from us in its
written form that we would forever remain anxious concerning the exactness
of the historical and archaeological means by which we would reestablish
such a connection. No, in the Church today, the living Church, we find it pre-
served, illuminated, and infallibly proposed. She holds the treasure of the
Sacred Scriptures. She is utterly enriched by the great memory of Tradition.
It is only through her that we arrive at this treasure as a source of faith.
Nonetheless, we should not believe that the Church’s authority is the true
and fundamental motive for our supernatural adherence. This infallible
authority is needed for an authentic [objective] presentation of the revealed
truth in various times and places, indeed, here, with the great distance sep-
arating us from the divine intervention by which revelation was made. Rather,
what motivates our adherence and what, consequently, characterizes it as a
form of knowledge is supernatural divine revelation itself, rendering testimony
to itself in the believer’s own mind. The Church’s mediation is the indispen-
sable condition for us to have an authentic encounter with the revealed truth.
We only receive it through this intermediary, and the latter must indeed be
indisputable in the very order of truth and, therefore, infallible. She cannot
take the place of revelation nor substitute herself for the Testimony of God
who reveals, on which the entire order of faith rests. Thanks to the Church,
continuity is established between our minds and this Divine Testimony. We
truly are “in her tutelage,” receiving the truth from her. Through faith, our
minds directly open out upon the mystery of God and are nourished upon it.
By offering a Credo which she has largely formulated herself, guarantee-
ing its fundamental identity with precisely what God revealed, the Church
does not offer reason an unintelligible book of spells to be accepted submis-
sively by faith. This kind of ascetic and, perhaps, meritorious exercise does
not at all reflect the essential process of the life of faith. Certainly, this life
includes submission (“obseqium fidei”), but we would betray it were we to
define it essentially as a form of obedience. It is truly and essentially, indeed
before all else, a form of knowledge, a conformation of the superelevated mind
to the divine mystery. In this way, it is theological and is the nourishing root
of our entire supernatural life. To the degree that it is possible for us prior to
the Beatific Vision, it enables us to enter into the very knowledge that God
has of Himself.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 101

We have spoken of the “Credo.” This introduces an essential point for

understanding what our faith is, as well as what our theology will be. It suf-
fices to have been in contact with the sources of revelation such as they are
preserved by the Church in their richness and diversity in order to realize
that, while all the statements that they contain, to the degree that they are
revealed, have exactly the same authority and certitude (since they are
attained under the same motive) precisely as forms of knowledge, they none-
theless do not have the same “interest,” the same value in our theological life.
The very way in which revelation was made, the slow and progressive ped-
agogy which it followed in order to gradually enter into man’s mind and
heart, means that its essential object was proposed alongside other truths,
whether natural or wholly contingent. The fact that the latter happened to be
included within revelation is accidental in character. They do not exist in rev-
elation for their own sake but, rather, are there in order to serve the revelation
of faith’s essential object. As St. Thomas tells us, this object of faith is, in sub-
stance, that Reality who will be our beatitude when we see Him [in glory].12
To use the same example as he does: if divine inspiration guarantees that
Abraham had two sons, this does not suffer any more doubt for a believer
than does man’s vocation to salvation; however, whereas the latter truth is
essential to the object of faith, which would be incomplete without it, the
former has only a factual connection to it. Man’s vocation to supernatural
beatitude is part of the very substance of faith.
This “substance” of the object of faith is not an indistinct, uniformly
obscure (or uniformly illuminated) object. It is an organic whole, in which
we can discern a certain number of fundamental truths—or, let us say with
St. Thomas and the whole language of Christian discourse, “a certain number
of articles.” These articles are the more explicit formulations which are ren-
dered necessary by a specific obscurity existing in the essential object of faith,
a specific account of the mystery. And they are what is presented in summary
fashion to us in the Creed organized and defined by the Church. What we
said above concerning the formulas of faith must be understood in particular
for the articles of faith. In them, we find in full form this supernatural value
and worth for our theological life, a value elevating us to divine knowledge.
There, we find our spirit’s true and profound nourishment. Now, it falls to
the Church to define these formulas, to fix their true meaning, and to explain
them authentically. Thus, they appeal to her authority, and from this per-
spective, they become dogmas. The notion of dogma is not exactly the same
as that of an article of faith. The former places the accent on another note,
that of the Church’s own definition and universal proposition of that truth.
A newly defined dogma is not necessarily a new article of faith. It can be a

12 See ST II-II, q. 1, a. 8.
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new aspect of an already-formulated article and can even be a less essential

truth. However, the two notions are close neighbors and must not be sep-
arated. If we focus on the fact that a given definition has a particular formula
as its object and insist on the authoritative character and precise obligation
connected to dogmatic formulas (as though faith were first and foremost a
form of obedience), we risk placing in the shadows dogma’s own proper value
as a supernatural truth and as part of the Christian life. Nonetheless, we must
conversely take care not to overlook the immense benefit which we draw for
our spirit, even from the perspective of its theological life, from a more pre-
cise formulation of the faith. The object of faith acts within our soul as a truth
and not in virtue of a blind act of acceptance, and our mind is elevated so
that it may be conformed, in the order of supernatural truth, to the divine
being precisely through notions whose deficiency comes from their inferior
character [as statements by finite creatures], not from their precision. To be
able to say with the full certitude of divine faith that the Son is consubstantial
to the Father does not do away with the mystery but, rather, for this faith in
men’s minds, represents a true and important form of progress in comparison
to the prior, unformulated state in which the same truth assuredly was
believed, though without being distinctly specified.
This last example introduces a new consideration: progress in the further
elaboration of the faith. Through its presence in the Church, the object of our
faith entered into history. By the very force of things, it has taken on a new
“dimension.” The history of revelation, properly so called, came to its comple-
tion with Christ and the Apostles, in whose teaching it found its consumma-
tion. Incomplete for millennia, taken up in certain periods and progressively
brought to its completion, it thus has reached its goal. Henceforth, revelation
is closed, becoming part of the past, no longer having a history.13 However,
another history then begins. The revealed object was entrusted to the Church.
It has entered into her life and will forever be present in her, not as a kind of
memory handed on from generation to generation but, rather, as an ever-
active yeast within the dough of humanity, as an ensemble of truths, ever-
announced yet ever-new. The Church possesses these truths and preaches
them. She proposes them and adapts their formulas to the intellectual needs
of human groups as individuals and as different generations. She preserves
and explains. She defines. And after the history of revelation, which came to
its close with the death of the last Apostle, what began was the life (and, con-
sequently, the history) of dogma. The object of faith gradually becomes more
dogmatically explicit, in accord with the Church’s own progressive awareness

13 See the proposition condemned by the Decree Lamentabili: “Revelation, constituting

the object of the Catholic faith, was not completed with the apostles” (Denzinger, no.
3421 [old no. 2021]).
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 103

of it. The divine truth in the Church preserves itself only by living, though liv-
ing after the manner of an organism which retains its identity, even through-
out its most considerable developments. No more revealed truth exists today
than did in the 2nd century of the Church. However, the revealed truth is
more distinctly known and more explicitly proposed: eadem fides magis expos-
ita.14 The true author of this progress most assuredly is the Church, infallibly
assisted by the Holy Spirit. Just as it falls to her to formulate and order the
Creedal expression of the faith,15 it will fall to her, through the course of the
ages, to render explicit a given aspect of the faith that remains implicit when
she finds that reason has run into an obscurity, into a specific mystery, which
St. Thomas presents as the motive for the distinction of the articles of the
Creed. However, various occasions give rise to such development. Perhaps the
most profound one, though less visible than the others because its activity
takes place continuously, is the very development of civilization and culture.
Such progress cannot take place without new questions being posed concern-
ing the meaning and scope of the divine teachings, and the Church responds
to them through her ordinary Magisterium well before having recourse to the
solemn exercise of her teaching power. “Every civilizational fact can be the
point of departure for doctrinal development [mouvement] in the Church.”16
And in its own turn, this doctrinal development [mouvement] can be the occa-
sion for an increasingly distinct formulation of a given truth of faith. As has
often been noted, the most ordinary thing occasioning this is heresy, and St.
Augustine teaches that if God permits heresy, He does so because He draws
this great good from it: “Obviously, the disapproval of heretics makes what
your Church thinks and what sound doctrine holds stand out boldly.”17 A truth
already present in the revealed deposit but still latent in the Church’s awareness
is thus elevated to explicit precision.
Therefore, we can indeed say that the presentation of the revealed truths
to the human intellect arouses intense mental activity. In fact, our intellect
cannot remain indifferent to statements whose truth is solely guaranteed by
faith (though with their intelligibility also being offered to it), statements
which, moreover, are concerned with the most nourishing objects the mind
can have, those which are the most “interesting” for it, indeed, the most deci-
sive objects for human life. It will exert its full strength in developing this
intelligibility. Returning to the words of classical theological terminology, we
can say that the believer will seek to understand through his intellect what

14 ST II-II, q. 1, a. 10, ad 2.
15 See ST II-II, q. 1, a. 10.
16 Ferdinand Cavallera, “A propos de la vie du Dogme,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésias-
tique (April–June 1942): 69.
17 Augustine, Confessions, bk. 7, ch. 19, no. 25.
104 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

he already holds through authority. In other words, he will go out in search

for the “intellectus fidei.”

III. THEOLOGY
A. The Structure of Theology
7. The birth and structure of theology. Thus will theology begin. How
will this “understanding of the faith” come to birth and develop?
Will this come about through the exercise of the virtue of faith itself?
Impossible. For faith does not reason, nor does it analyze nor make one
“understand.” It adheres.
Will this come about though a simple application of a purely rational
light (the light of the first principles) to the data of faith, along with definite
logical methods? No more can this be the case, for it would have no propor-
tion to the data of faith. One would merely erect a chimerical metaphysics of
the sacred, wholly dependent on its own proper rational categories and, at
the very most, proportioned to the natural, human faith spoken of above.
Instead, this will be brought about through supernatural faith placing in
its service all of our intellectual resources with the goal of bringing, as far as
is possible, the intelligibility of the truths of faith to the perfect state of knowl-
edge which we call science. Such is the role and ambition of Theology. This
discipline’s structure and various functions require great delicacy in order to
be grasped in a fully precise manner. I would like to briefly define its elemen-
tary procedures and proper light.
Its datum, the theological datum, is the very same as faith’s: the revealed
God, that is, “materially,” the ensemble of supernatural truths guaranteed by
God and transmitted by the Church. This ensemble has its value as data for
a discipline aiming to be a science only by being attained through faith, a liv-
ing faith, the theologian’s infused faith. Faith alone provides the certitude of
the principles serving as the foundation upon which theology will construct
itself (on the logical model of subalternation). Without this faith and its per-
manent adherence, no theology is possible, and all that one could then have
would be a purely natural explanation, a wholly human commentary con-
cerning historical and theoretical truths (as would be had, for example, in a
theology of Islam or of Buddhism). To suppress infused faith is to suppress
every form of theological science, allowing it to nod off into the somnolence
of an overly formal scientific development, eluding its own light and instincts.
To do so would lead one to lose contact with the living source of theological
knowledge, like a science that would suffocate its very life-breath, the pro-
found intuition of its principles.18

18 See p. 93 above.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 105

However, if this light of faith is absolutely indispensable for the birth

of theology and for all of its development, it does not suffice for explaining
it, for once again, faith’s light does not have a scientific character. Now, the
objective light characteristic of theological science will emerge from the
first acceptance of the data of faith with a view to then intellectually elabo-
rating it. (The habitus of theology, specified by this light, will be born
emerge only after the first such acts and will then develop.) Therefore, what
is this objective light?
It is exactly this: concepts and propositions that, through faith, were
solely held as being guaranteed by God, solely as objects of adherence, are
now considered as objects of an intellectual activity that introduces (under
faith and its irradiation) a rational consideration with the aim of explaining
these concepts’ own, proper intelligibility, manifesting how these propositions
are interconnected, becoming aware of the temporal and historical conditions
involved in their revelation to man and in the progress undergone through-
out their successive formulations, grouping certain ones around those which
explain them, manifesting through reasoning all of their intelligible impli-
cations, and so forth. . . . In short, they are now considered as being engaged
in the characteristic activity of the human mind striving after knowledge.19
Here we have a new kind of intellectual light. It is no longer that of faith,
for rational consideration and inference are mixed in with it. It is not that of
reason alone, for without the influence of faith upon it, not only does every
form of certitude disappear but also all of theology’s notions and propositions
lose their formal representative value concerning the supernatural divine
reality. The intellect is here stimulated by the intelligible virtualities of essen-
tially supernatural truths (and objects of faith), giving rise in it to an appro-
priate type of consideration. In other words, the truths of faith play the role
of principles in theology.20

19 “Inasmuch as it is scientific in character, our knowledge of God makes use of the Deity,
so to speak, as a cause of those things it knows to belong to God; inasmuch as this knowl-
edge is faith, it uses the Deity as Him who testifies to this knowledge.” (Cajetan, in ST II-
II, q. 1. a. 1, no. 8).
20 We can characterize the essential activity of this new discipline by means of the fol-
lowing logical schema. According to Thomism’s Aristotelian vocabulary, in a scientific
demonstration, the middle term is attained by two habitus. Inasmuch as it is part of the
principles (an attribution of the definition to the defined, to the subject), it is known by
the habitus of principles, to which every form of immediate knowledge falls. Inasmuch
as it explains the attribution of the predicate to the subject on account of being a cause,
it is known by the scientific habitus and is reached through its radiation in the (mediate)
conclusion which it guarantees. However, its entire explanatory value depends on the
fact that it is held under the light (and, as it were, within the extension) of one’s grasp of
principles. This also holds true in theology. However, here, the habitus of principles is,
precisely speaking, the habitus of infused faith, which clearly plays an essential and
106 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

A science suffers from infirmity when one only has faith in one’s princi-
ples, not evidential knowledge. Here we see the greatest weakness befalling
our theology, indeed, its congenital infirmity. It finds itself to be in a dimin-
ished state. Thus, it naturally aspires to the glorious state in which its princi-
ples will themselves be known in a better light. Then, they will no longer be
furnished by faith, by a form of knowledge having the character of belief, but
rather, will be a perfect form of knowledge, the very knowledge [science] of
God which the beatified mind draws upon in the vision of the Divine
Essence. Thus, this humanly elaborated theology will depend on it, holding
from it its own original light. To use the technical term, theology will be sub-
alternated to that knowledge. It will be wholly penetrated by evidence, wholly
traversed by this great, luminous current which will illuminate its principles.
It will not know the danger of drawing back from it, of becoming merely an
artificial construction.
Here-below, it is brought into continuity with this blessed science through
faith. It must remain wholly penetrated by supernatural faith, faithful to its
still-obscure light, though a light superior to every other. In this light, it finds
its spiritual environment and the wellspring whence it ever pours forth. The-
ology still must beware of the danger of sometimes throwing itself into certain
clarities that are too readily available and too immediately satisfying for the
reasoning mind. If it loses the sense of mystery, it runs the grave risk of deploy-
ing its energies in a purely rational technique, in a wholly natural form of
investigation, whose objective measure no longer is this intelligibility-appeal
presented within faith by an essentially supernatural truth but, rather, gives
way to a measure that is solely founded on the light of rational principles. By
following this path, theology deteriorates into nothing more than the afore-
mentioned extrinsic application of rational considerations to the deposit of
faith. It loses its original light and its entire proper scientific consistency.
8. Developments in theology: complexity and unity. It is important that
we understand that in our intellectual awareness’ first grasp of the deposit of
faith, no longer in view of adhering to it but, rather, in view of understanding
it (intellectus fidei), we find, in embryo, the whole of theology, with all the
various lines of reflection that it will follow, coming to explicitly manifest
their requirements and own proper structure only in an established body of
doctrine: a critical investigation of the data in order to determine what is

actual role in every theological elaboration. Therefore, the light of theology will be super-
natural in its origin and natural in its substance. It is radically the light of faith and sub-
stantially the light of science. However, theology is so profoundly rooted in faith that it
constitutes a science that is wholly set apart and superior to every other, not only through
its object, but also through its certitude, even though it finds itself in a very imperfect
state here-below.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 107

truly revealed or to what point a given statement benefits from the authority
of revelation (an sit revelatum); historical reflection on the presentation of
revelation and its concrete development (quomodo revelatum est); and spec-
ulative reflection in view of setting forth the proper intelligibility of revealed
truths in their interconnections and their implications, as well as in view of
constituting their scientific synthesis (quid sit quod revelatum est). In the work
of investigating a given datum, the methodologies of each of the two others
are necessarily mixed in as well. First, there is criticism of facts, texts, and
notions. Then, we have historical reflection on the past history of the data of
faith currently proposed by the Church and on its concrete presentation in
time as well as its development. As a whole, such reflection provides an enor-
mous service in determining what is revealed and in understanding it, but
its immediate goal is to grasp how the Church’s contemporary faith was itself
revealed, as well as the nature of the progress through which it was elaborated
without adulteration or change in meaning. Speculative reflection, which
benefits from all of this work, while also serving in this very work, strives to
understand what the revealed realities are in themselves (through analogy,
while remaining within the mystery). Normally, if it arises from charity and
is brought to its completion there, it will lead to this ultimate fruit of theo-
logical activity: (theological) contemplation. The term “Speculative Theol-
ogy” is used for this last type of reflection and for the body of doctrine to
which it leads. For the other two (though not sometimes without impreci-
sion), the term “Positive Theology” is used.
Considering the overall arrangement of the discipline thus constituted,
positive theology emerges as being logically prior, above all in its first work:
the theological observation of the revealed datum currently presented by the
Church. Logically speaking, speculative theology is a terminal activity, a
crowning achievement. However, we know21 that in a science still in the midst
of being elaborated—and theology will always find itself in such a state here-
below, more or less so depending on the treatises in question—there is a con-
tinual back-and-forth between observation, on the one hand, and investiga-
tion into causes and explanations, on the other. We do not need to completely
traverse the entire field of positive theology in its multiple developments in
order to then begin our reflection on the intelligibility of the revealed datum
as well as on the possibility of developing it into a science. This reflection
begins with the first acceptance of this revealed datum, and this acceptance
presupposes only that it be actually proposed by the Church and that one
have the light of faith. At the same time, historical and critical reflection will
develop themselves along with their own proper methodologies. If both
remain theological, each will benefit from the other’s progress.

21 See p. 94 above.
108 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

Therefore, theological wisdom is a complex discipline. The particularities

of its object (one that is strictly supernatural: God such as He is in Himself)
and those befalling its state (it receives its principles in human statements
guaranteed by the light of faith, presenting them in the context of a given his-
tory) require theology to have functions that are carefully differentiated in
their methods. We have briefly characterized the two principal ones: positive
theology and speculative theology. They are not the only ones, and we can
immediately note another: theology must heed how its supernatural object
presents itself to the eyes of reason alone, highlighting to reason the credibility
of this object. This new development, Apologetics, belongs to theology itself,
for it alone is qualified to reflexively grasp the true proportions of its object
and to present them to the intellect.22
Moreover, in order to understand the complexity of speculative theology
itself, one merely needs to consider the immense breadth of its domain. The
scientific synthesis built up by it will embrace within the universal extension
of its secondary object (the way that the divine life is participated in by His
works) objects of knowledge which, when studied in the light of our reason,
require reason to develop fundamentally different disciplines. The theological
synthesis will pass from the level of metaphysical consideration and vocab-
ulary to that of psychology or to that of morality. The use it will make of
sciences that are already constituted (moreover, in many cases furnishing
them with the opportunity to undergo development through such use) will
not prevent it from entering into their own proper ends in their meticulous
procedures, taking over their methods for its own use as well as their own
ways of responding to their own particular objects. It will develop an entire
psychology and an entire morality.
Nonetheless, none of these differentiations will break up its scientific
unity. In theology, all of these partial objects are offered to our mind under
one and the same illumination, where it develops into a stable and scientific
form of knowledge the intelligibility that revelation enables our mind to grasp
in these objects. All these various, relatively autonomous methodologies, each
in its own domain, are in turn utilized for the same end and in the service of
the same intellectual research, though none is adequate to everything that the
revealed deposit invites us “to know.” These various investigations ultimately
remain under one and the same light, which we have described as being rooted

22 On this notion of Apologetics, holding that it is a part of fundamental theology, see

Ambroise Gardeil, La crédibilité et l’apologétique, 2nd ed. (Paris: Lecoffre, 1912); Reginald
Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, 2 vols., trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville,
Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2022).—Note, from Fr. Gardeil, this final profession made in
the preface to La structure de l’âme et l’expérience mystique (Paris: 1927): “Apologetics
is a task of theology. . . . The Apologetic task of theology. . . , itself founded on faith,
therefore is indeed a work of faith, despite its rational texture.”
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 109

in faith, enabling us to reach something deeper in things than their own phys-
ical or metaphysical necessity: the necessity that they have as objects of God’s
knowledge [science], to which we are truly assimilated by theology.

B. The Work of Theology

Theological Observation
9. The observation of theological data. A science observes its data in
its own light. In other words, the characteristic light of this science dawns
with this observation and already guides the mind’s reflection upon it. The-
ology is not exempt from this law. It must consider its data and place them
on its own level.
However, does not faith sufficiently perform this task for us? Precisely
speaking, no. From this first acceptance by theology, the truths of faith pres-
ent the mind with a different appearance than that of being mere objects of
adherence. Henceforth considered in their intelligible virtualities, such data
of faith become “theological data.” The same truths which, on the one hand,
are purely objects of faith, will come to find themselves now engaged in an
intellectual activity, which is that of knowledge’s own investigation, striving
to establish a science where they will play the role of being truths that are
either explanatory or explained (i.e., by other data of faith). They are at once
truths of faith and also theological truths.
This activity will embrace a number of moments in its development.
1 First, there will be the initial phase which is prior to any constituted the-
ology, while simultaneously being the very seed of theology itself: the accept-
ance of an actual datum of faith, no longer from the perspective of adherence
but, instead, from the perspective of intellection (intellectus fidei). 2 Then,
there will be the entire critical effort striving to determine more precisely
what is revealed, in what circumstances, according to what progress, and so
forth. Logically speaking, in the ensemble of theological science’s activities,
this critical research comes first. In point of fact, however, given that it is gen-
erally reflexive, it will only slowly develop, following upon many doctrinal
elaborations, in the form of a “return to the sources.” Thus, it uses everything
that has already been acquired by positive theology (for critiquing facts and
texts) and speculative theology (for notional criticism), both critiques
remaining entirely theological. We are not here faced with a confusion of
levels and methods. Rather, what we have is a correct sense for the interpen-
etration of theology’s various functions at this stage.
Revealed data are proposed by and in the Church. But how are we to
completely recognize what the Church proposes as being something de fide?
Nothing is more common than an undue over-expansion [majoration] of the
Church’s teachings. And while theology’s goal throughout its entire scientific
110 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

activity does not lay in the work of distinguishing what is De fide from what
is not (for, instead, its task is to “understand” what the faith teaches us, “intel-
lectus fidei”), this discernment nonetheless is one of its first preoccupations.
It is one of the primordial goals of positive theology, which must discern and
weigh out “auctoritas.” Here, a theological critique of the proposal of the
object of faith will need to be established, rigorously applying the rules of the
methodology that has received the name “De locis theologicis.”
This criticism takes us so far that it will subsequently lead to a magnificent
development in positive theology, an entire historical theology ordered to the
same ultimate goal of understanding the faith, though constructed with its
own proper methods, finding its methodological inspiration in the historical
sciences, and theological reflection no longer will be able to manage any of its
tasks without it. Indeed, it happens that in the documents serving as the
sources for the most authentic data of faith, we find this data mixed together
with a conception of the world (or even an imagery) which we must not allow
to deceive us. Certainly, speculative theological criticism will play its own role
in this matter (for example, detecting certain anthropomorphisms in order to
distinguish analogies of proper proportionality from the purely metaphoric
analogies so frequently encountered in the Bible). This discernment is what
was lacking in the desert monk spoken of by Cassian, tenaciously holding on
to the idea that the God spoken of in Genesis was a white-bearded old man.
However, historical-theological criticism will above all be needed in order to
determine the exact scope of certain teachings by taking into account
influences of this kind, which influenced their formation: the dominating pre-
occupation of given texts, their literary genre, and so forth.
In this way, through an infinitely strenuous labor, we have the development
of the three great parts that can be assigned to organized positive theology.—
1 Positive theology concerning scriptural documents: quite clearly, revelation
is proposed in Scripture (in particular in the Old Testament) in the context of
a popular conception of the world which is not the same as the outlook elabo-
rated by the most certain data of our sciences—indeed, such a scientific per-
spective would only have been possible if God had simultaneously wished, at
the same time, to reveal purely scientific truths, something which would be,
however, completely contrary to the normal workings of His Providential econ-
omy. Infinitely progressive in its nature, revelation finds itself engaged in the
concrete becoming of a people, adapted to its various levels of culture. In fact,
it used a great variety of literary genres, concerned only that they be compatible
with the divine truth. Some of these genres (e.g., apocalyptic writings), flour-
ishing in a given era and adapted to a given culture, can be mysterious and
confusing for other eras. Thus, textual, literary, and historical criticism, as well
as a theological criticism using all the other forms of criticism, under the
Church’s supervision, clearly are indispensable: we must fashion a positive bib-
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 111

lical theology organized according to its own requirements and its own proper
methods.—2 A positive theology of the witnesses to tradition. First of all, there
is Tradition, properly speaking, a source of faith prior to Scripture and broader
than it, having come to its close with the death of the last Apostle. By definition,
it is unwritten. However, the documents of the first Christian centuries and
Patristic writings form a “tradition-transmission” in which we hear the echo
of this Tradition and a testimony to what the Church’s faith was at her begin-
nings. Interpretive difficulties analogous to those which are encountered in the
exegesis of the Holy Books are found again here in the study of these ancient
documents. They are almost always texts written for some particular circum-
stance, highlighting only one part of the traditional teaching, according to the
given necessities of the moment, and the goal of historical investigations is to
enable us to reconstruct them. Here again, we stand in need of a positive the-
ology, here focused on the writings of the Fathers of the Church.—3 Positive
theology concerning the teachings of the ecclesiastical magisterium. Most [of
the Church’s] official documents are also texts pertaining to certain circum-
stances. Their general intent is to highlight some aspect of doctrine which has
been misunderstood. Usually, they are responses, not expositions. Clearly, they
can be understood only if one takes the trouble to understand what they are
responding to and what circumstances gave birth to the question at hand. Here
too, we find ourselves faced with an immense part of positive theology which
must be developed: positive theology concerned with ecclesiastical documents
(“symbolic” theology).
In these various parts, positive theology uses the results of exegesis and
history. It constitutes itself into a discipline whose organization is not that of a
speculative theological synthesis. It will not consist in grouping a certain
number of texts or documents in connection with the particular needs of the
various assertions made in systematic theology. Positive theology can be used
like this; however, in order to be valid and secure, such use of positive theology’s
data presupposes that such positive theology has already been constituted in
its own proper dimensions, and within these dimensions, it is closely bound
to the concrete development of revelation and to the progress undergone by
dogmatic formulas. And if we in no way need to await the completion of such
work in order to indulge in speculative theology (which most often finds suffi-
cient data for its essential treaties by turning to the common data of faith which
are utterly simple and most secure, such as they are proposed by the Church
in our own days), it provides a great benefit, both in terms of verification and
of enrichment, namely, the benefit of being aware of the solidity of the treatises
that have already been substantially constituted, now reflecting on them anew,
with such knowledge as is afforded by positive theology.
By undertaking as integral a study as is possible concerning these
immense domains of positive theology, we already are able to draw the great
112 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

advantage of preserving the theologian against certain temptations to nar-

row-mindedness and hardening. A given controversy, at a particular time
and place, does not necessarily emphasize what is most important, intrinsi-
cally speaking. Many contingencies can place in the foreground of theological
preoccupation certain points of doctrine which in themselves are less essen-
tial and, in fact, sometimes even quite secondary. Indeed, the doctrinal fer-
ment thus aroused can itself result in an intervention by the Magisterium
which, in its own turn, placed this particular point in a brighter light. Too
rapid a study of historical theology can lead one to overestimate the place in
Christian doctrine rightfully assigned to data thus set in the foreground by
the accidents of history. Such a perspectival error, which is certainly not just
something deceptively dreamed up by some people, finds an excellent cor-
rective in a more-open and more-integral knowledge of all the various wit-
nesses that tradition has transmitted to us.
10. The observation of facts and of data which are of interest to the-
ology. The revealed datum is the only formal source for theological science.
However, since theology is a form of wisdom, using not only all the
resources of our reason but also standing in need of all of our knowledge in
order to better understand divine revelation, it finds indispensable ancillary
information in many disciplines. Because its proper object, in every one of
its domains, finds itself engaged in history and in the various activities and
achievements of human life (merely consider, for example, the whole of
moral theology), theology has the duty of observing and gathering the facts
and data that can be of assistance in understanding its object, in whatever
domain that such facts may present themselves. In this way, just as every
important form of progress in the order of science or civilization can furnish
an occasion for a more explicit formulation of a dogma, so too it can, a for-
tiori, furnish an occasion for progress in theological elaboration.23 Certainly,
here too, theology will be able to assimilate these data, doing so in its own
proper light, by critiquing them in a rigorous manner in accord with its own
principles, using them as a means for more fully understanding everything
contained in revelation.
Progress in medicine and experimental psychology have enabled us to
understand with the greatest of nuances the complex characteristics of the
human activity that grace supernaturalizes, as well as the reverberations that
certain mystical states have on the body. We can no longer write treatises on
demonology in the style of 16th and 17th century works devoted to such
matters nor treat of diabolic possession as did authors from that era.24

23 See p. 102–3 above.

24 See the all-too-brief but excellent little book by Joseph de Tonquédec, Les maladies
nerveuses ou mentales et les manifestations diaboliques (Paris: Beauchesne, 1938).
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 113

Here, history is particularly informative: the history of societies, of doc-

trines, of civilizations, and of cultures. We do not give to a treatise on the
Church the accent and formulas that would have been employed by a 1st-
century Christian, living with the conviction that the Parousia was immanent.
This event’s delay, leading to a more profound understanding of what the
Lord meant when He said that neither its day nor its hour are known, led to
progress for Christian awareness and thought. Likewise, if we are comment-
ing on the Church, we must take into account facts like the Greek Schism,
the Great Western Schism, and the Reformation. They require us to be even
clearer in our theological explanations concerning the exact nature of the
assistance that the Savior promised to give His Church. In the same order of
ideas, it is clear that after the awakening of the European nationalities, Leo
XIII spoke about the powers of the Roman Pontiff with more-explicit dis-
tinctions than those that were employed by Boniface VIII. Therefore, we must
admit that the important facts of history provide instruction for theology
and that her observations also must take such matters into account. This does
not provide theology with a formal source which would be added to the
revealed deposit but, instead, furnishes an invaluable means for explication.
The discovery of America furnished the occasion for new developments in
international morality (e.g., in Francisco de Vitoria) and since then has
acutely posed a problem which has been made even more urgent with the
discovery (or quasi-discovery) of the great Indian and Chinese civilizations,
namely, the problem concerning the salvation of non-believers and how to
understand the nature of implicit faith.
We could easily come up with more examples like this. It is more impor-
tant, however, to draw from them the precise lesson they teach us. Nothing
highlights this lesson more than does knowledge of the “crises” through
which Christian thought has passed. Without going all the way back to
Origenism and the very first crisis provoked by more profound contacts with
Greek thought, the history of theology (or, more broadly, that of Christian
thought) offers a great number of telling examples. They immediately reveal
the benefit that theology draws from a broad contact with culture, with all
aspects of intellectual life and of human life, as well as the danger that this
contact can easily introduce.
The progressive introduction of Aristotle into scholastic thought is a cap-
ital fact in the history of theology and the example of a crisis (whose full
acuity we do not perhaps realize) which, happily resolved, led to magnificent
progress thanks to St. Albert and St. Thomas.—Later on, it came to represent
an outlook concerning the physical world which to most minds (and even
to some theologians) was one with the Christian teaching, an outlook which
the great scientific developments of the 16th century brought to ruin. Galileo
remains the witness and the symbol of the gravity of this crisis. In place of
114 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

the idea of an earth necessarily occupying the center of the universe (and
above all bearing the prodigious sense that the drama of sin, the Incarnation,
and Redemption unfolded upon it), these scientific developments gradually
came to substitute the idea of an unremarkable planet, a rather secondary
part of a solar system which itself is lost in the immense expanses of nebulas.
Through this change, an ensemble of concrete views and conceptions came
crashing down, outlooks that had given many dogmas of the Catholic Credo
a framework that seemed completely natural. The new outlook certainly was
not contrary to the faith, as theology thereafter showed, and Christian
thought has perfectly assimilated this datum whose appearance was, at first,
scandalous. Nonetheless, this conflict is very instructive concerning the
duties and difficulties involved in a theology that wishes to be at once solid
and well-informed.
Remaining in the domain of thought itself, one of the great facts (and
doubtlessly, the greatest fact of the last century and our present one) is devel-
opment in the domains of methodology and the historical sciences. Is it an
exaggeration to believe that here too an entire outlook concerning the world’s
history is in the midst of collapsing, somewhat akin to how the ancient con-
ception of the solar system came crashing down? At the very least, we must
admit that the horizons of this history, along with its broad outlines, have
significantly changed and that Christian thought is led to conceive with
greater nuance the providential economy of God’s supernatural education
and of the salvation of humanity. It must look upon this as furnishing an
opportunity to achieve new progress. It is clear that the theology of the cre-
ation of man and that of original sin cannot be disinterested in the discoveries
of prehistory and that, given the knowledge that we have today concerning
primitive civilizations, however fragmentary such knowledge may be, we can
no longer have the same historical perspective and chronology as what is
found in [Bossuet’s] “Discourse on Universal History.”
Theology must remain attentive to all of this. These new facts and data
raise questions that cannot be indifferently left unanswered. The modernist
crisis, at once the fruit of the legitimate expansion of critical studies and of
an aberrant philosophy, made this fact quite clear. Nonetheless, however
beneficial this observation may be, it is not lacking in its own danger. The
benefit that can be drawn from it is what we have already tried to emphasize:
a more profound or renewed understanding of a point of traditional doctrine.
The danger is that of an insufficient theological critique, a premature assimi-
lation of a given fact which has not yet been sufficiently sized-up by theology
for want of adequate examination by it in theology’s own proper light and
according to the analogy of faith. This will bear fruit in an inconsistent intel-
lectual liberalism or a superficial and ephemeral harmonizing. Here again
we have an absolutely necessary application of the principle of scientific
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 115

observation: any given fact, whether scientific or historical, is not yet a theo-
logical datum. It will be such, thus being for theology a datum that is assim-
ilable or even a problem that can be resolved, only if it is examined and
critiqued in theology’s own light, grasped and formulated in all the propor-
tions which it thus takes on in this light. Such a critique presupposes a living
theology, fully in possession of all of its principles. It is not by sacrificing
these principles or by trivializing traditional positions that this assimilation
will be brought about. It has been justly written, of doctrines and organisms
alike: “Assimilation is possible only if the organism is whole and intact.”25
And, let us repeat: theology must remain in contact not only with the
scientific and historical disciplines but, indeed, with the entire universe of cul-
ture. This too will come with its own dangers: one can easily slide from a
strictly scientific form of reflection, necessarily requiring precise techniques,
to an amateur form of reflection which is more accessible and less demand-
ing. Theology must inflexibly retain the lofty level of its scientific effort.
(Obviously, this does not exclude the choice of a genre of expression adapted
no longer to the finalities of science but, instead, to those of a form of teaching
concerned with providing a path for minds that are more or less prepared.
No, indeed, it calls for such a pedagogical form, though it is important to
heed the fact that it no longer lays within the order of rigorous research but,
instead, in that of exposition.) However, precisely by holding to this lofty line
of conduct, theology must make sure it remains human and living, and for
this to be so it is infinitely important that it not become enclosed within a
scholarly problematic, having become more or less bookish. Theology is not
a study undertaken by detached bureaucrats. Life itself will set before it, if
theology observes it, questions which, requiring it to rethink some traditional
teaching, will lead it to develop some new aspect of the inexhaustible riches
of its object.
This necessity is particularly urgent for the entire moral part of theolog-
ical reflection. In every moral discipline, experience plays a fundamental role,
and just because a form of knowledge is theological, this does not mean that
experience thereby is useless. Like other forms of human knowledge, experi-
ence will be critiqued, elevated, and taken up under a loftier light, that of rev-
elation. Nonetheless, experience is indispensable for a profound knowledge
of man, as well as his individual and social activity. Everything that reveals
man, whether in his loftiest spiritual activities, or in the physical conditioning
of his supernatural life itself, will be information for an attentive theology.
Personal experience, which is necessarily restricted at once by the circle
wherein it takes place and by the qualities of the observational powers of him
who amasses it, will be supplemented by the vaster and more penetrating

25 Jacques Maritain, Le Docteur angélique [Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1920], 111.

116 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

experience of man which is contained in great human, philosophical, or even

literary works as soon as they attain a certain density. Many of these works,
although they are perhaps, in themselves, rather remote from every kind of
theological consideration (and despite their sometimes-enormous defi-
ciencies and errors from the perspective of moral rules), are extremely rev-
elatory concerning the human heart, bringing to light particular dimensions
thereof, for their authors were exceptionally clairvoyant: Montaigne, Pascal,
Stendhal, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, etc. Without speaking of the wholly desir-
able benefit that the presence of a more efficacious theology can bring to cul-
ture and to human life, this knowledge is, for theology itself, a source of
sometimes-unforeseen questions, hence providing an invaluable ferment.

Theological Explanation
11. The task falling to speculative theology.26 The observation of theo-
logical data and the establishment of a positive and historical theology, as
well as the observation of the progress of doctrines and cultures, provide an
immense field of activity in which theology has experienced remarkable efflo-
rescence during the last few centuries. However, this is far from the whole of
theology, which will exercise its superior, terminal, and properly scientific
(in St. Thomas’s sense of the word) function only through an effort that is
oriented toward the ultimate question: what are the revealed realities in them-
selves? After having observed and amassed an ensemble of data, it is impor-
tant to pass on to the investigation into causes. Then, once these causes are
known, making use of the procedure of analogy, which plays an essential role
here, we must pass on to explanation, connecting to these causes all the data
that depend upon them. And contemplation will be achieved precisely by
connecting all these matters to what we thus know about the most profound
character of the Divine Being (the Trinity of Persons in the unity of His
Essence) or about His most fundamental Providential decrees, thus having
in such contemplation the characteristic fruit of theological wisdom.27
12. The investigation undertaken by theological explanation. Once he
possesses all of his essential data, the speculative theologian’s first task—one
that is neither the least lengthy nor the least delicate among the tasks facing

26 In the sections that follow, what we say should be considered in parallel with ques-
tions already treated in the Revue Thomiste by Fr. Gagnebet (1938). We await from him a
work which will develop, illustrate, and draw up in final form the essential positions taken
up in his articles, to which we owe a great debt.
[Tr. note: See Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet, “La nature de la théologie spéculative,”
Revue thomiste 44 (1938): 1–39, 213–55, 645–74; “Un essai sur le problème théolo-
gique,” Revue thomiste 45 (1939): 108–45.]
27 “Theological” contemplation, not, of course, “infused” contemplation.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 117

him—is precisely that which, in his science, corresponds to the “investigation

into causes,” that is, the slow work of “theological discovery.”
Here, the theologian is faced with the task of examining and inventorying
the data of theology, no longer aiming to specify what is and is not revealed,
what participates more or less distantly in the authority of revelation—this is,
on the whole, a task falling to positive theology—but rather, aiming to explain
this data, establishing it as a body of scientific doctrine, that is, as an organic
grouping of notions enabling the best possible intellectual assimilation of
Revealed Reality. Here, the theologian is no longer tasked with discerning his
data from the perspective of formulas but, rather, looks on them precisely as
realities [choses], distinguishing what is accidental from what is necessary,
properties from essential qualifications, and effects from causes.
As was his wont, St. Thomas borrowed the logical instruments for this
investigation from Aristotle. Such instruments would first of all include the
procedures of dialectic (the “Topics,” no longer in Cano or Cicero’s sense of
the term, as we find in the De locis theologicis,28 but rather, in Aristotle’s sense,
which differs significantly from how they spoke of this branch of logic), its
discussions and investigations leading to common or probable explanations
until, at last, it discovers the true cause for the matter under investigation
(i.e., the necessary middle term). Then, there will be the particularly impor-
tant procedures involved in the investigation into definitions, matters which
are developed and examined in detail in the second book of the Posterior
Analytics.29 This analysis’s goal is to take our at-first-vague, non-critical, and
non-explicit notions of the first datum grasped, and bring them to the state
of having real and distinct definitions expressing these notions.
However, besides this entire logical apparatus, this speculative function of
theology will henceforth make use of that great instrument of thought: the anal-
ogy of proper proportionality, which is utterly distinct from merely metaphorical
analogy as well as from a mere comparison of things. Thanks to the virtue of
faith, analogy properly so called has a completely different scope in theology
from what it has in Metaphysics, even though, as an instrument of knowledge,
it takes on exactly the same shape and is subject to the same imperfections. As
we said above,30 by faith we not only adhere to truths that surpass our own
abilities (this would already be true for the case of an acquired, human faith),

28 Albert Lang has shown quite well that Melchior Cano depended much more on Cicero
(through the intermediary of Rodolphos Agricola) than on Aristotle. See Albert Lang, Die
Loci Theologici des Melchior Cano und die Methode des dogmatischen Beweises
(München: Verlag J. Kösel und F. Pustet, 1925).
29 It is clear that, according to St. Thomas, the integral methodology of theology is not
at all reduced to a form of “Topics” in the Aristotelian sense but, rather, uses the whole
of the “Analytics.”
30 See pp. 98–99 above.
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but beyond this, the notions that express them, united by the copula which
articulates our adherence, take on a formal signifying value concerning the super-
natural divine reality. They cease to tell our mind only what is contained in
their natural sense. Or rather (for the difference is not at all of the order of con-
ceptual content formed by the first act of the intellect alone [la difference n’est
nullement de l’ordre du contenu conceptuel]), they no longer solely lead our mind
to the natural realities which they normally represent by themselves; now, they
bear it onward, as it were, to the true terminus which it reaches in the Super-
natural Divine Reality. This will also fall to theology inasmuch as it remains in
continuity with infused faith, and moreover, it is only on this condition and to
this degree that it will remain a science. Without faith and without this super-
elevation, not only does theology no longer have certitude; it quite literally no
longer has an object. For what theology also claims to make us reach is indeed
God such as He is in Himself, God considered from the perspective of His
Deity. This is its proper object, its “formal object.”
This is why our analyses of the analogical content of the notions of per-
son and nature undertaken in order to represent the Divine Nature to our-
selves are not empty mental games but, rather, provide us with a “very fruit-
ful” entrance into the mystery of God. To develop the theory of the
production of the [intellectual] word and of the spiration of love in order to
clarify the revealed notions concerning the Trinitarian Processions is to
develop an analogy properly so called, one that enables us to know and con-
template what the intimate life of God is in itself—doing so quite imperfectly
and in a way requiring us to deny all the created conditions befalling our
manner of conceptualizing this notion. This does not at all make the analogy
thus developed, as well as the explanation that it enables, enter into the
domain of faith (unless it also happens to be revealed on its own behalf).
However, it does make it enter into the domain of theological science, which
is indeed a much loftier domain than that of mere opinion.
13. Theological explanation. Having thus analyzed and critiqued the
notions at hand, and, to the degree it is possible, having determined them in
their essential content, we still must pass on to the task of explanation by
effectively connecting to the notion of the subject (whether it be the central
subject of the science or its partial, secondary subjects) everything that
depends upon it. Here, we are not concerned with discovering new truths
but, rather, with taking up given statements (which were already formulated
on the level of an already more-or-less probable and more-or-less assured
factual knowledge) and now elevating them to the level of perfect, scientific
knowledge by connecting them to the cause which explains them and man-
ifests their necessity. This is the decisive stage of theological demonstration.
On this subject, there are certain prevailing confusions, which Fr. Gag-
nebet has happily noted. These truths, which theological demonstration
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 119

connects to given prior ones, are perhaps ones that were already themselves
revealed. However, as an object of faith, they were not at all believed on
account of the connection grasped by the intellect. The Gospel suffices as our
testimony to the fact that Christ has a human will. However, this datum finds
its explanation in a loftier notion as soon as it has been analyzed with suffi-
cient precision: the fact that Christ had a perfect human nature. Viewed as
depending on this principle, the existence of a human will in Christ is a theo-
logical truth. As something already revealed by itself, it was and remains a
truth of faith. However, in other cases, the statement thus connected by a
necessary middle term to a truth of faith is something that has not been
revealed. Such is the case in the analysis of a revealed notion when the mind
grasps something required by that notion, having no other reason to hold
this new truth with certitude except in view of this inference. In order to
express the fact that the theological inference attaining them is the only rea-
son that they are admitted, modern theological vocabulary designates these
statements by using the term “theological conclusion” in the strict sense.
Strictly from the perspective of “auctoritas” ([i.e.,] from the perspective
of positive theology) this difference is considerable, but it remains accidental
from the perspective of speculative theology. The latter’s function is not at
all a kind of mere deduction of propositions lying outside of the revealed
deposit. In that case, we would need to say that theology begins where faith
comes to an end. On the contrary, it works on the datum of faith in its
entirety, each of whose statements, at the same time that it is, under the light
of faith, purely an object of adherence, becomes, under the theological light
defined above, a theological truth, viewed in its connections with the others,
in its intelligible virtualities, as truths that explain or truths that have been
explained. And it strives, in this light, to lead this entire ensemble of truths
to the perfect state of scientific knowledge.
The essential logical procedure here is demonstration, such as St. Thomas
himself analyzed in his commentaries on Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. In
no way is demonstration an instrument of discovery (a confusion which for
many minds seems to remain connected to the term “deduction”). Rather, it
is the connection of an already-known proposition (of an infra-scientific
form of knowledge) to the principles which manifest its raison d’être and, by
that very fact, its necessity. According to St. Thomas’s vocabulary, its end is
judgment (iudicium) not discovery (inventio). Whether the proposition thus
connected as a conclusion to a revealed principle already is a truth of faith
held by revelation or is one that has been learned in a completely different
manner, the process remains the same: it is a purely scientific procedure using
inference and in no way as such, authority. The latter is involved in the pro-
cesses of speculative theology in order to assure its principles but not at all
in order to then demonstrate its conclusions.
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Nonetheless, it remains the case that if speculative theology as such does

not appeal to authority in order to “demonstrate” its conclusions, the theo-
logian himself is quite interested in knowing whether, at the same time that
these conclusions are placed before his mind as being connected to truths of
faith through a necessary middle term, they also are revealed elsewhere, or
at least, already “authorized” either by some important tradition, by the com-
mon assent of theologians, or by some indication expressed by the Magiste-
rium. This is why he will be led to add to his own theological undertaking
the results of positive theology concerning the same point by invoking
Scripture and Tradition. Left to their own concerns and their own proper
dimensions, speculative theology and positive theology develop into distinct
treatises, having completely different appearances and organizations, just as
they have two different methodologies.31 However, an integral theological
culture requires us to know how to unite them.
14. Theological Synthesis. Taken as a whole, speculative theology aims
at as definitive a scientific synthesis as possible, just as it strives to attain a
definitive explanation in each of its demonstrations. This was the essential
effort undertaken by the authors of the “Theological Summas.” However, the-
ology will never be perfect nor ever fully achieved here-below.
As we already noted above,32 in the sciences, there often are provisional
explanations based on first observations. Such explanations are commonly
called “hypotheses,” meaning an apparent explanation that still must be con-
fronted with all the available data in order to verify whether or not it is con-
firmed or broken by them. A generalized hypothesis will form an explanatory
theory confirmed by a certain number of facts or reasons, although it will
not yet be grasped as being necessarily the only explanatory principle.
Speculative theology also has its own hypotheses and theories. In the
vast field of theological investigation (the domain of the “investigation into
causes”), wide latitude is provided for this mental effort, as well as for the use
of opinion and probable knowledge. However, hypothetical elements which
are more or less proximate to scientific knowledge will inevitably enter into
the very systematization of theological science, such as it is found in this
theologian or that School. Not everything in such systematizations is defin-
itive. It is possible that notions which are not sized up according to their true
dimensions can come to be offered to faith as an instrument of explication.
Along these lines, theological views that were imprudently associated with
Aristotelian physics (e.g., concerning the localization of heaven and hell)
obviously need to be revised. Of even greater importance, it can happen that,

31 See Ferdinand Cavallera, “La théologie positive,” Bulletin de litterature ecclesiastique,

(Jan. 1925): 20–42.
32 See p. 94 above.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 121

within the most profound perspective commanding a given synthetic organ-

ization, some less-essential perspective may have been chosen [as a guiding
principle for that synthesis’s outlook], leading to the production of distortions
in the very systematization itself because of one’s desire to remain faithful to
a restricted intuition or to an impoverishing technique. Hence, a number of
great theological syntheses in fact exist, and they are notably different from
each other in their overall élan, their general spirit, and in a significant
number of their conclusions.
Merely because the word “system”—a word that, alas, is equivocal—is
used for such syntheses, it would be quite inexact to think of them as being
so many broad hypotheses, constructed out of theologians’ “opinions.” In
truth, each of these systems claims to present the whole of theological science,
along with hypothetical prolongations, doing so with varying degrees of suc-
cess. In speculative theology, the criterion of the scientific state of an ensemble
of explanations can be neither the agreement of all theologians regarding
them nor even the number of more-or-less important votes cast on their
behalf. Such considerations, which are in fact quite necessary, fall to positive
theology, which aims at describing a given teaching from the perspective of
“auctoritas.” However, it will add authority’s own guarantee to an explanation,
whose own proper means of proof are different, and which reaches its scien-
tific state by different paths.
On this point, many good minds are in the grip of a tenacious prejudice,
one that is even fed by the terminology used in the logic of the sciences which
itself has become “positivist,” as well as by the idea commonly held today that
“science” is opposed to “philosophy.” By giving itself an object that is unknow-
able (from the perspective of reason), speculative theology would supposedly
be the domain of that which is subject to opinion, where certitude could only
be had through external consecration expressed by an “authority.” From this
perspective, it would seem that on all the points of doctrine where theologians
are not in agreement, we could only speak of opinion and not of certitude.
Consequently, we could speak not of demonstration but of hypothesis, not of
science but of “systems.” Now, it is in fact the case that what definitively
removes a theological truth from discussion by theologians is hardly ever an
argument but, rather, is an intervention by the Magisterium (whose customary
practice, moreover, is to enter as little as possible into traditionally debated
questions). Only one step—indeed, one that is often taken—separates this fac-
tual point from the conclusion that one can hold as “certain” in theology only
what the Magisterium has more or less explicitly pronounced to be so.
This represents the confusion of the certitude of authority with that of
science, as well as the confusion of the characteristic intellectual movement
of faith with that of science properly so called. Now, theological science is
not faith. Yes, it is rooted in faith and is entirely nourished by its light and
122 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

fixed upon its object. However, what characterizes it as a science is the fact
that it has recourse to properly intellectual procedures and determines its
conclusions in the evidence of the explanatory activity of connecting [prin-
ciples and conclusions]. It is not imposed by authority but, rather, is grasped
by the intellect.
Certainly, in contrast to what takes place in human sciences, authority
does play an utterly important role in theology. However, this is because faith
assures theology’s principles. If it then intervenes [in theological questions],
by the same token (and to the degree that it makes some pronouncement) it
makes the truth that belongs to the domain of pure science (as the conclusion
of a demonstrative syllogism) depart from that domain in order to connect
it to what must be held to be true on behalf of faith’s own requirements—if
not always on behalf of the theological virtue of faith, at least on behalf of a
particularly weighty and well-placed faith, since it is given to the Church’s
Magisterium. I do not say that intervention by authority makes the truth that
it imposes pass out of the domain of theological consideration, for this
domain covers the same domain as faith. I say that from the perspective of
the assent that we must give to it, it draws this truth back from an adherence
which would be solely determined by the intellectual grasping of an evident
connection (i.e., scientific adherence) so as to place it on the level of those
truths which are admitted because they are taught by a competent authority.
Disagreement is no longer permitted concerning these latter: authority
has intervened with sufficient clarity. Concerning the former, disagreement
could be avoided solely by force of the evidence involved. And everyone
knows that in theology, as in philosophy, indeed for analogous reasons,
evidence does not present itself in the same way as it does in mathematics,
and to St. Thomas’s eyes this does not prevent either theology or philosophy
from being true sciences. Above the domain where we find likelihoods and
probabilities, where we can establish only opinions, and below, where an
authoritative intervention removes a truth from discussions by requiring us
to adhere to it in way that is more or less immediately and explicitly con-
nected to faith, there is the utterly vast domain of theological science, where
the intelligibility of the truths of faith, with increasing penetration, is led to
the state of science properly so called solely by the intellect’s own labor and
by its own proper means.
The outlooks that we find ourselves fighting against profoundly under-
rate the powers of the human intellect and cast suspicion on everything that
is a “conceptual construction.” These attitudes are connected with quite differ-
ent currents of thought than those animating St. Thomas’s own and, indeed,
clash with what quite obviously was his constant practice as a theologian.
Thus, the problem must be transferred to philosophy’s terrain and, most espe-
cially, that of the critique of knowledge. It lies outside of our present concerns
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 123

to enter into that issue in this article, for we here presuppose a position which
accepts St. Thomas’s principles.
This difference of philosophical outlooks, which—without always being
explicit, is profound—is not the only motive for the low esteem many have
for the great theological syntheses and, along with them, for speculative the-
ology itself. Many join to it a desire that testifies to their Christian sense and
their zeal for God’s House: does not speculative theology run the risk of
incorporating a “philosophical system” into Christian doctrine? Will this not
involve (and compromise) the faith in our speculations? Given that all phi-
losophies remain human, with none of them being imposed upon revelation
(which exceeds them and remains perfectly “free”), revealed truths, on
account of their infinite transcendence, could perhaps be expressible to our
minds in the vocabulary of wholly divergent or even incommensurable sys-
tems, like different geometries. For example, they could be expressed in line
with a philosophy that acknowledges the principle of identity just as much
as in line with one that does not recognize it.
Such an outlook completely misunderstands the proper nature of theol-
ogy and the character of its light, as we have tried to analyze it up to this point.
In point of fact, what theology claims to offer to faith as an instrument of sci-
entific explanation is not the doctrine of this or that author—Aristotle, Plato,
Confucius, or Shankara—but, rather, those notions which best assure us of
attaining definitive truths and imperishable values, whose scope is not tem-
poral or relative but, instead, supra-temporal. “When I have indeed known
the truth,” said Montaigne, “It is no more known as something held by Plato
than as something known by me.” What theology wishes to use (and, more-
over, what the Church likewise uses in the more precise formulations of her
dogmas) are not truth values that are relative to a given author or to a given
time. Rather, she wishes to use absolute truth values, by which one reaches a
particular, unchangeable aspect of reality. Here, the fact that such truth values
do indeed exist is still a philosophical problem whose resolution depends on
the notion that one forms for oneself concerning the intellect and its scope,
as well as concerning the unity and permanence of human nature.
15. The history of theology. It at least remains quite certain that specu-
lative theology’s task is altogether formidable. And we would be far too opti-
mistic toward human nature and human intelligence were we to think that
theology could be carried out without “accidents” or that every theology
would be perfectly faithful. This is obviously not believable a priori, and the
history of theological thought abundantly illustrates the need for such reserve
in these matters. The exceptional value of St. Thomas lies precisely in the fact
that he attained, for a considerable and truly amazing number of data, a max-
imum degree of impersonality, atemporality, and absolute certitude. Still, we
must not dogmatically maintain that this is necessarily the case for all of his
124 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

assertions. Quite clearly, some of them are invalid precisely because the
notions that served in their formulation and justification did not have this
absolute truth value but, instead, in fact depended on the outlook of a given
author or era. Here, we clearly see the great benefit that must indeed accrue
to theology through a profound knowledge of its own history and of the his-
tory of doctrines. We no longer are speaking of the use of history in consti-
tuting a positive theology but rather, of the knowledge that an already-
evolved and long-established science indispensably must have concerning its
own past. Theology has become far too developed as a science for historical
methodology, understood precisely in this self-critical sense, not to be some-
thing far more than a necessary supplement: it is an irreplaceable instrument
for speculative reflection itself.
This is because, however independent we may think that a given theo-
logical formulation is from historical contingencies, it always and inevitably
is impacted by the circumstances that originally surrounded it: the preoccu-
pations of its era, errors to be combatted, influences undergone, aspects that
are primarily emphasized, the worldview and culture common in a given era,
place, etc. . . . It will always be important to discern within an ensemble of
notions and within a group of assertions their strict scientific scope, their
permanent value, and the great halo of historical connections they have either
with the context in which they originally were proposed or with other asser-
tions that were common at that time but which did not have the same value.
Such discernment requires an infinitely refined touch and a culture that is at
once theological and historical. A mind that is too exclusively that of an his-
torian will end up emphasizing, above all, the changes that it perceives, poorly
grasping the formal difference which separates notions from facts, imperish-
able essences from the conditions of temporal existence, and ideas from their
histories. It will fall to the theologian, if he is well-informed, to take and use
this idea, now understood more fully through historical reflection, though
itself independent from the whole of history as regards that idea’s own essen-
tial notes, so that he may present his theological science in its permanence.

CONCLUSION
16. Theology is a science of reality. Through all its entire scientific activ-
ity, it is neither a form of grammar, nor of exegesis, nor of logic. What it
claims to know are neither texts, nor words, nor an organization of concepts
but, rather, God. Its state here-below often requires it to use the science of
words, that of texts, and that of concepts. It never does so in order to tarry
there, whatever benefit it may draw from them. It forever stretches out
toward a better fruit: the understanding of the things of faith, the knowledge
of things divine.
T H EO LO GY: F A I T H S E E K I N G U N D E R S TA N D I N G 125

On several occasions, we have used the expression, “theological contem-

plation.” So long as theology does not forget its most profound orientation,
its labor will indeed lead to a form of contemplation. It realizes to the highest
degree what St. Thomas teaches concerning the intellectual virtues: “They
perfect [man] in the contemplative life, which is not ordered further on to
another form of life, whereas the active life is ordered to it.”33 And again:
“They are a kind of draft sketch [inchoatio] of perfect beatitude, which con-
sists in the contemplation of the truth.”34 Undoubtedly, this is not yet “infused
contemplation” but, rather, is the analogical realization of the notion of con-
templation that is found at the terminus of every true form of wisdom as soon
as it is inspired by love and leads to it.
Moreover, if there is indeed a form of contemplation that is in some way
“terminal,” being a kind of fruit in relation to the work of theological specu-
lation, it is clear that in relation to the supernatural knowledge established
in us through faith and in which theology itself is rooted, such theological
contemplation cannot be fully “terminal,” and, far from being satiating, if it
is true, it opens up the desire for a superior form of knowledge and itself feels
the need to give way to infused contemplation or, at least, to be crowned
therein, letting itself be directed by it. Then, the believer’s mind will have a
new “understanding of the faith,” though one that is directed solely by the
Holy Spirit.

33 In III Sent., d. 33, q. 2, a. 2, qla 2.

34 ST I-II, q. 57, a. 1, ad 2.
 2
A Theological Dialogue
Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger, OP

I
n an age such as ours, when war and politics have set up hatred and lies as
necessities, it would be good to raise man’s intelligence to the highest
disciplines, those which, instead of dividing man, can unite him in the
search for, and possession of, the truth. Spiritual goods do not allow for envy,
for they abound more fully through communication to others. In a world
wherein intellects have been so violated, hearts so debased, and bodies so
trampled, it is perhaps not fanciful to imagine that theology should also take
up responsibility for man’s misfortune and help him maintain his first dignity,
namely, his ability to strive to understand his own destiny so that he may live
in accord with it.
Theology is a science. However, because it is the loftiest of the sciences,
it is a form of wisdom, that wisdom which is spoken of by the Scriptures, a
wisdom which stands at the crossroads, calling out to those who wish to
drink from her consoling cup. Theology is a science, but since it is
subalternated to the vision had by the blessed in Paradise, its lights are loftier
than those of human understanding. Like the angels in heaven, theology
speaks of God and with God; and marked with the infirmities befalling
human language, it continues here-below the same dialogue that is being held
among the elect in glory. The “Dialogues of the Dead” by Lucien or Fénelon
are only literary fantasies, whereas, for the believer, God speaks in a language
that is truly accessible in the treasury of Revelation and dogma, and this
enables us to apply the understanding of our faith to this supernatural
revelation and to systematize its concepts, thereby fulfilling a need felt by our
human reason.
If, as it has been said, civilization is born of dialogue, indeed if its very
characteristic trait is the fact that it is such a dialogue, theology can and must
provide human civilization with the most concentrated form of dialogue, that
dialogue which is most freighted with those truths which bring peace and
the greatest reconciliation among men. If theologians were altogether equal
to their task—that is, if they profoundly understood the data of revelation
and the human condition, while also knowing how to speak to their fellow
men—theology would then introduce a maternal serenity into the dialogue
of civilization.

127
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In any case, the reality is that this is what theology must be: a maternal
wisdom for man’s restless spirit. And if it fails to be such, we cannot simply
resign ourselves to this state of affairs.
In recommending St. Thomas as the teacher par excellence of Catholic
theology, the Sovereign Pontiffs surely did not intend to bind up modern
understanding within a straightjacket. We are always a little embarassed when
we give praise to St. Thomas, and Albert the Great’s own words concering St.
Thomas come to mind: “It is not for the dead to praise the living.” For the
good that nourishes the human intellect is the truth, and a doctrine has vitality
not through its timeliness in publication but, rather, through its truth value.
St. Thomas is a universe of the mind, harmonious and solidly organic.
We believe that, on the whole, he carried theological investigation to its
loftiest scientific perfection. We do not say that he cannot be surpassed. He
does not mark an endpoint. However, precisely because his work exists upon
the scientific level of knowledge, this work must first be understood and
carried on if theological science wishes to make forward progress—just as
no physicist has ever dreamt of neglecting the discoveries acquired by prior
thinkers, even though he all the while assesses the truth of such past findings.
However, in the scientific order, what is proven is acquired. Otherwise, we
would still be standing alongside Archimedes. We refuse, indeed absolutely,
to accept this sort of intellectual backsliding.
When one speaks of St. Thomas as though he were like an obsolete style
of architecture, one has every right to attempt a theological exposé in French,
for example, in another language and a different turn of phrase from that
deployed in the Summa. We do not reconstruct cathedrals—though, for all
that, neither do we despise them. However, with St. Thomas, theological style
is not the sole matter at hand. More importantly still, there is the scientific
value of his work. In Greek temples as well as Romanesque and Gothic
churches, in the Palace of Versailles and Baroque monuments, we see various
expressions of the identical and invariable laws that constitute the universal
code of architecture, at least as regards the elementary laws of gravity and
resistance that a native applies instinctively when building his hut and that
Mansart observed in designing the Palace of Versailles. And without the
application of these laws, neither hut nor castle would ever exist.
The same is true for St. Thomas. His value does not consist so much in
having constructed a magnificent theological edifice in an admirable style
which is now, however, outdated. Rather, his value lies in the fact that, more
than any other thinker, he made greater progress in theological knowledge,
in its scientific systematization, to the point of having written the manual par
excellence for the theologian, a text that will always be of use in order to purely
and simply become a theologian, just as one goes to school in order to
become an architect.
A T H EO LO G I C A L D I A LO G U E 129

The full meaning of the debate opened here by this brief introduction1
comes to light as soon as one considers the fact that it is concerned with the
rigorously scientific character of theology, with the the bonds of formal
causality that unite the principles of faith to the most minute of theological
conclusions. We remain outside the domain of theology if we refuse to enter
its process of drawing rational connections. Without this, one can have
impressionism or semtimentality, but not science.
All the same, we cannot renounce this characterization of theology as a
science on the pretext that our contemporaries have more or less
monopolized science in the physio-chemical order, where man’s intellect,
despite everything, dominates its object from on high. Still, a theologian
could draw wonderful lessons from scientists as regards their respect for their
object, their modesty, their humility, as well as their gratitude towards the
researchers who came before them and towards their masters. The
theologian’s respect for his object is his personal devotion to God. However,
in the end, this is not something subject to verification. Indeed, we have no
example of a theologian being struck down by God for an inconsistent
conclusion. However, from ancient Icarus to modern test pilots, matter
quickly takes its revenge on a wrong calculation.
It is the honor and burden of the mind that it be sensitive to error.
Theology has neither laboratories nor test fields in which to give wing to its
theories. However, there is free discussion. And who does not see that
without this free discussion and dialogue, the de iure impunity of the
theologian who is mistaken would be but a scientific fraud? Or would we
instead need to appeal immedialy, each time, to the Magisterium, asking her
to settle the debate by way of authority, which in the end would again be a
mere cop-out? A theologian’s honesty is measured by the intellectual effort
he expends, illuminated by faith, and by the stubborn rigor of his reasoning.
All the rest is [mere] literature.
That being said, theology does not depend on St. Thomas’s authority,
just as the law of gravity does not depend on Newton who discovered it. If
someone were a Thomist only as a matter of [ecclesiastical] discipline, we
could say that he misunderstands what Thomism is. Our dedication to St.
Thomas is subject to a more exacting law, the law of logical necessity.
Indeed, it is exasperating to continually hear the repeated remark that the
Church did not canonize Aristotelianism when she canonized Saint
Thomas. Neither did she canonize the syllogism. However, when someone
chooses to cast the syllogism into the sawmill, he is nothing more than a
witless fool, for the syllogism is the natural form of reasoning in its exercise
of understanding.

1 [Tr. note: That is, to the Dialogue théologique volume.]

130 R AY M O N D - L ÉO P O L D B R U C K B E R G E R , O P

Theology is not Revelation. It illuminates Revelation, systematizes its

data, extends its consequences, and puts it in contact with all that is of interest
to the mind. Theology is—or, at least, should be—the permanent and uni-
versal presence of Revelation in culture. Revelation was given once and for
all and now has come to a close. However, it is characteristic of the things of
the mind that they be forever active. Likewise, the conditions in which this
supernatural Revelation was made will never change. It is forever true that
the supreme good for everyone who comes into the world is found in
knowing, loving, and serving God, thus meriting eternal happiness. It is
forever true that the intimate knowledge of God exceeds the natural powers
of the human intellect and that we stand in need of Revelation, on the one
hand, and the gift of faith, on the other. However, it is forever true that most
men are hindered in the pursuit of divine truth either because of their
inability to undertake metaphysical reflection, the concerns involved in day-
to-day life, or because of their mental laziness. It is also forever true that
human passions in general stand in conflict with the divine truth. And it is
increasingly true that our contemporaries do not have the time to be
concerned with God. Hence, Revelation brings an appreciable benefit to
mankind, and there is an immense need that there be a theology continuously
connecting man and divine Revelation, through a teaching that respects the
latter while accommodating itself to the former.
There is only one Revelation, and as long as theology is to be scientific
and rationally legitimate, there can be only one theology. Nothing can
bewilder it, so long as it remains divine Revelation itself exercising all of its
virtualities and intellectual fecundity and, consequently, in all the details of
taking up a position. In the debate that follows, there will be discussion, for
example, concerning two contemporary philosophies, existentialism and
Marxism. We find in an article from fifteen years ago several pertinent lines
written by a thinker who has always been held to be extremely faithful to the
spirit and letter of St. Thomas:

To the question, “Why do the necessities of laws, the objects of science,

not extend to each of the particular events which unfold here-below,”
we must answer: The world of existence in act and in concrete reality is
not the world of mere intelligible necessities. Essences or natures are
indeed in existent reality, from which they (or their substitutes) are
drawn forth by our mind; however, they do not exist there in a pure
state. Every existent thing has its nature or its essence. However, the
existential position of things is not implied in their nature, and they
undergo mutual encounters which themselves are not natures and are
not required by anything inscribed, in advance, within any nature.
Existent reality is thus composed of nature and adventure, and this is
why it has a direction in time and constitutes, by its duration, a history
A T H EO LO G I C A L D I A LO G U E 131

(which is irreversible). History must have these two elements. A world

of pure natures would not budge in time. Platonic forms have no
history. No more would a world of pure change have an orienation.
There is no history for thermodynamic equilibrium. (Jaques Maritain,
Philosophie et science expériementale).2

We think that the theology of St. Thomas is the most perfect theology
of adventure and, simultaneously, of natures and essences, thereby having a
just and complete sense of history. While it has become conventional to point
out how Marxism cannot overcome the difficulty involved in the fact that
history is made by man while the latter is himself simultaneously the product
of history, in point of fact, man’s nature is above history. It gives him
direction, just as it defines his existence.
And to continue in line with our present subject, theology also can and
must have its adventures. It has its own history precisely because it has a
complex but rigorously defined essence which ranks it as being the supreme
degree of human scientific knowledge. Only strong natures undertake great
adventures, and from this perspective, we can foresee wonderful
developments in St. Thomas’s teaching, provided that our Good God gives
the next generation of Thomists an intellectual constitution which is as strong
as their theology.
“Man does not live on bread alone, but on the word of God.” The
horrendous famine that ravages part of Europe today gives a tragic sense to
these words of Christ and, perhaps, makes this debate seem absurd.
Newspapers tell us that while granaries in America are full of enough wheat
to feed entire nations, thousands of children are starving in Romania. The
problem is not only that of transport but also that of human malice and
stupidity. When one believes the truth of salvation extended to all contained
in the Word of God, and when one knows that theology has the formidable
and permanent duty of irrigating the whole of human culture and indeed all
human cultures, of assimilating and making available to intellects that starve
for their own good, namely, the truth of salvation, and when one knows,
through faith in what the Popes teach, as well as on the basis of one’s own
study, that St. Thomas is precisely the master who most properly enlivens
man’s intellectual nature and nourishes it with the milk and honey of revealed
truth, then there is no pride involved in calling oneself a theologian nor
insolence in calling oneself a Thomist. Rather, one should experience heart-
rending shame and distress upon seeing how little has been done, as well as
everything that remains to be done in order that theology might take up the

2 [Tr. note: This can be found in Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Ger-
ald B. Phelan et al. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 29. The trans-
lation above is our own, from Fr. Bruckberger’s text.]
132 R AY M O N D - L ÉO P O L D B R U C K B E R G E R , O P

position that is rightfully hers in the intelletual world, that of being the
supreme wisdom which nourishes man, the supreme and maternal wisdom
which brings support to the starvation which men experience for the truth,
a starvation which kills souls as little children die on the frozen plains.
Thus, let nobody see arrogance here in the debate which we are
introducing. Though limited by personal circumstances, it is important, for
it calls into question the scientific nature of theology and, thereby, its power
both of continuity and of assimilation. This debate can at times resemble a
dialogue between the deaf. However, neither of its parties are deaf, and
perhaps the great excuse for our quarrells lies in the fact that each of our sides
is attentive, with all of our strength, to the distress calls sounding forth from
a humanity who is worn out as much from lies as it is from hardships and
sorrows.
If at that age when great vocations and ardent fidelities emerge some
ardent youths meditate on these pages and receive from them some taste and
ambition for the task of theology, this exhausting labor in service to the divine
truth, both will be well rewarded. For in an age of horrible famines—both
material and spiritual—the words of the Gospel resound with an ominous
tone: “The harvest is plenty, but the laborers few.”
 3
Theology and Its Sources
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP

A
mong(a) the many works that encourage Christian thought to return
to its sources and increase its historical consciousness, few have been
more interesting or more promising than the collection Sources Chré-
tiennes, under the direction of Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou. Ten vol-
umes in this series have already been published, presenting translations of
works that are particularly representative of the Greek tradition, accompa-
nied by careful, extensive introductions and suggestive annotations. On its
own, this first set of texts constitutes a quite wonderful achievement.
Although publishing difficulties have prevented them from providing accom-
panying original texts, they have promised to provide us with these as soon
as possible. May this indispensable compliment not be too long in coming!1

(a) This piece occupied a modest place in the Revue thomiste. Offprints of it, followed by
a piece written by Marie-Joseph Nicolas concerning the theology of the Church, were
made, as we have done for other articles and critical reviews that are a somewhat long
in the Revue, with the usual number of such offprints being twenty-five, with twenty going
to the author and five to the editor of the Revue. Because there were two authors, fifty
offprints were made, and we sent them to some interested parties and friends. However,
their distribution did not exceed thirty-five copies. Our opponents call this a “call to arms”
[brochure de combat] disseminated in “an unusual way.” See “La Théologie et ses
sources, Réponse,” in Dialogue théologique (Saint-Maximin: Les Arcades, 1947), 94
(hereafter cited as “Résponse”). It is true that this offprint was published before the issue
of the Revue to which it belonged and, in particular, before this booklet was distributed
in France. The Reverend Fathers are not obliged to know that my preceding article (“La
Théologie, intelligence de la Foi”), which attacked no one, was published in the same
conditions and even more urgency [précocité]. Here again, I pushed the publication for-
ward because I wanted to let Fr. Daniélou know as soon as possible that his article in
Études, which every day sounds forth new echoes, has been noted by those for whom he
manifested such apparent disdain. (1947)
1 Sources Chrétiennes, Editions du Cerf, Paris. Up to today, we have received ten volumes:
Gregory of Nyssa, Contemplation sur la vie de Moïse, intr. and trans. Jean Daniélou,
S.J.
Clement of Alexandria, Protreptique, intr. and trans., Claude Mondesert, S.J.
Athenagoras, Supplique au sujet des chrétiens, intr. and trans. Gustave Bardy
Nicolas Cabasilas, Explication de la divine liturgie, intr. and trans. Severien Salaville,
A.A.

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A recent notice gives us hope that significant developments, if realized, will

make this magnificent enterprise a unique work which cannot be praised
highly enough. The collection will also present works from the Christian
West, as well as certain non-Christian works considered as being “sources”
on account of their importance for theological development and reflection.
Our current discussion here covers only the first ten volumes, and it is pos-
sible that the wider scope promised to us through an expanded team of col-
laborators on this project will amend these characteristics and, by helping to
balance it out, enrich the spirit and identity of the project which has already
been so clearly established, above all in those works which have the very
directors of the collection as their authors.
Although this enterprise is reminiscent of the collection of classical
studies undertaken by Guillaume Budé, it differs from the latter in two ways.
First and of lesser importance, many of the works are not, precisely speaking,
critical editions but, instead, carefully curated working texts. Although we
greatly desire full scientific rigor, we will not reproach the directors for this
state of affairs. Rather, we are grateful that they did not feel obliged to wait
for the outcome of lengthy scientific labors in order to place in our hands
such precious texts, which are based on substantially guaranteed contempo-
rary editions. Second, the collection is clearly oriented by a common spirit
and intention aiming to directly support certain theological positions, and
this aim animates several introductions and commentaries. This spirit, as
well as the theological positions that we will discuss in this article, express
something quite different than a merely historical concern with presenting
ancient authors to the reading public.2(b)

Diadochos of Photiki, Cent chapitres sur la perfection spirituelle, intr. and trans.
Édouard des Places, S.J.
Gregory of Nyssa, La création de l’homme, intr. and trans. Jean Laplace, S.J., notes
by Jean Daniélou, S.J.
Origen, Homélies sur la Genèse, intr. Henri de Lubac, S.J., trans. Louis Doutreleau,
S.J.
Niketas Stethatos, Le paradis spiritual, text, trans, and comm. Marie Chalendard
Maximus the Confessor, Centuries sur la charité, intr. and trans. Joseph Pégon, S.J.
Ignatius of Antioch, Lettres, text, intr, trans, and notes by Thomas Camelot, O.P.
2 Fr. Daniélou characterizes the intention of the collection very well by contrasting it to
the one which was formerly directed by Hemmer and Lejay: “For the earlier series, the
primary goal was to publish historical documents, witnesses to the faith of the ancients.
The new series holds that we can ask even more of the Fathers. They are not merely true
witnesses to a past state of affairs; they are also the most up-to-date nourishment for
contemporary men, because here we find precisely a number of categories that are the
categories of contemporary thought, categories which scholastic theology had lost”
[emphasis Labourdette’s]. “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études
249 (April 1946): 10. This intention, strongly illustrated in Daniélou’s introduction to the
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 135

Other journals have discussed (or will do so) the technical qualities or
defects of these translations. They will recognize the critical value of the
edited texts, as well as the historical truth of their introductions and com-
mentaries. Although we are not uninterested in this, we would like to stress
the great riches offered to speculative theology by these texts, many of which
are venerable and the product of human reflection on the truths of the faith.
Although we shall examine several of them later on, our primary concern
will be with the overall plan of the project rather than with the details of its
particular volumes. This will enable us to tackle some more general problems
which we think are more pressing for contemporary theology.
Indeed, our discussion should not separate the collection Sources Chré-
tienne from the recent Théologie collection (Éditions Montaigne) directed by
the Jesuits of Fourvière. Frs. de Lubac and Daniélou are so profoundly
engaged in this project that here too they seem to be its organizers.3(c) There

first volume, happily, does not appear in several others which have striven solely after
the greatest exactitude and remain models of honest work which are not directed or
underpinned by any ulterior motive.
(b) I highlight the character of Sources Chrétiennes because it is interesting, not because
it scandalizes me. My sole critique is that its aim (in itself excellent) to provide texts
written by ancient authors is not unalloyed but, rather, is inflected by an apologetic con-
cern of adaptation to contemporary tastes, toward the choice of the best works for man-
ifesting the contemporary insufficiency of scholastic theology. What I have called the
“ulterior motive” of the collection was, in fact, declared by Fr. Daniélou in a way that we
are entitled to called “authoritative” given that he, with Fr. de Lubac, is the director of
the collection Sources Chrétiennes. Let the reader take note of each of the precise criti-
cisms leveled against me: he will note the same deformation. (1947)
3 The collection Théologie (Editions Montaigne, Paris) currently contains eight volumes:
Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce in St. Thomas Aquinas. Étude historique.
Jean Daniélou, Platonisme et Théologie mystique. Essai sur la doctrine spirituelle de
saint Grégoire de Nysse.
Henri de Lubac, Corpus mysticum. L’Eucharistie et l’église au moyen-age.
Claude Montdésert, Clément d’Alexandrie. Introduction à sa pensée religieuse à partir
de l’écriture.
Gaston Fessard, Autorité et bien commun.
Jean Mouroux, Sens chrétien de l’homme.
Maurice Pontet, L’exégèse de saint Augustin, prédicateur.
Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel. Études historique.
(c) The response article protests: “Thus, in order to understand the hidden meaning of
innocent translations of the Fathers, they should be interpreted on the basis of a collec-
tion of theological studies” (“Réponse,” 78). I respond to this as follows. 1. In order to
understand the “hidden meaning” of the collections Sources Chrétiennes, I have no need
of another collection, for the express declaration of its director suffices (see previous
note). 2. Merely from the list of published volumes, any reader can see how far the shared
society of authors and subjects between these two collections goes: Fr. Daniélou, who
136 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

are parallels between the two collections, which share a common spirit, and
although we feel that we must register some grave reservations concerning
them, they manifest a positive and constructive design which is more impor-
tant than the defects which tarnish their aim. It presents a theology which is
more conscious, at once, of its rich sources, the diversity of its historical
expressions, the conditions of its historical development, and the most press-
ing and contemporary of human realities. Let us state up front our full agree-
ment and complete sympathy with these aims.(d)
*****
What is most striking to us when we read these ancient texts (which, in
the collection Sources Chrétiennes, stand out all the better by being high-
lighted by the translator’s annotations) is the fact that most of our problems
are found in said annotations. However, these problems are caught up at a
point where nothing yet has been fixed in too literal a formulation. It is
almost run-of-the-mill to note—and this is easily confirmed—that on many
points the problematics involved in our theology have become [overly] aca-
demic. I mean, it is something learned and often remains bookish in charac-
ter. Such theology indeed lends itself to reflection and real solutions, but non-
etheless, it lacks a kind of dynamism. It is freighted, too hastily presuming
itself to be completed and perfected. Only with difficulty does it escape the
temptation to indolence and ease, merely resting on its past achievements.
And, in my opinion, this observation applies beyond the teaching coming
from the historical scholae in Catholic theology [l’enseignement des Ecoles].
There is a certain way, indeed one that is authentic and solid, of posing theo-
logical problems—even with reference to scriptural sources or concerns with
contemporary life—which ultimately does not extricate itself from the
received problematics, precisely because the questions themselves are for-
mulated in accord with traditional categories, which have not been handled
in such a way as to fully restore the value of intuition [into the very problem

in Sources Chrétiennes presented a volume of Saint Gregory of Nyssa and annotated a

second of the same Doctor, published in the Théologie collection a lengthy work on the
same Father. Fr. Mondésert, who translated the first Protreptic of Clement of Alexandria,
published in the second a study on Clement. Fr. de Lubac, who in Sources Chrétiennes
pled for the symbolic exegesis of Origen, published in Théologie a volume (Corpus Mys-
ticum) wherein he highlighted indulgently [avec complaisance] the impoverishment
involved for theological reflection by the way that the symbolic methodology of the
Fathers was replaced by that of “dialectic” and “ratio” (by which scholastic theology was
constituted). And, moreover, the close connection between the two collections was made
by Fr. Daniélou himself in Études (“Les orientations présentes,” 10). (1947)
(d) We ask that this declaration be read as bearing witness quite openly to something
more than a mere empty formula. No, it represents the exact expression of our thought.
(1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 137

at hand]. Anyone who has had to teach theology will have had ample oppor-
tunity to experience this mental laziness, more the friend of formulas than
of apprehension, more eager to rest on what has been achieved than to seek
the first apperceptions of such truths so that one might then trace out anew
the whole subsequent course of thought, doing so in a wholly personal way.
This is why it is so excellent a practice, solely from the perspective of
speculative theology, to experience a set of problems which are quite different
from those with which we are accustomed. For Latin theology, this is the case
with the most important works of the Greek tradition. No doubt, the editors
of this invaluable collection intend to “shock” those who read the volumes,
and we thank them for having so quickly offered us so rich an assortment of
readings for our meditation. We do not think that the theological wisdom of
St. Thomas will be shattered by this shock4 or that, confronted with other
types of genuinely Christian reflection, it will be dispossessed of its place in
the Church. If this comparison is indeed made, we do not believe that it must
lead one to profess that all human expressions of divine truths are, by their
very essence, relative in nature, implying that for every human expression of
that which is divine (except, without a doubt, the formulas of faith) one
would need to seek out a truth that expresses the ineffable realities of man’s
experiences, not one that is found in conformity with what actually exists in
God or in supernaturalized man.
Truth be told, this poses before us the entire problem of theology and
its claim to be constituted as a form of knowledge properly so called. In
another article, we have discussed how we believe that this problem must be
resolved.5 One of the most significant challenges to this resolution is found
more in the contemporary “mentality” than in explicitly formulated theories.
By this very way of posing the problem, we thus go beyond the expressions
that can be found in the books that furnish us with the occasion for taking
up this discussion. Let it be understood, however, that our precise goal is to
illuminate, by way of opposition, these various solutions which we will be
striving to bring to their most explicit formulation; however, we do not attrib-
ute to anyone, precisely in the form in which we will present it, the theory
that we here are opposing. And even though a number of its tendencies seem
to us to converge toward this end—so much so that, instead of remaining an
ideal solution, it receives from it an “overall truth”—we would believe our-
selves to be placing tendencies on trial were we to attribute this end to

4 For many, it is a settled matter, and Maurice de Gandillac in the 3rd issue of Dieu vivant
definitively endorses the death of Neo-thomism, in fact, doing so by relying on the verdict
delivered by Fr. Hans Urs von Balthasar. It would be futile to plead against his judgment.
Just as movement is proven by walking, life must be manifested by its fruits, and to put
it mildly, we would indeed be half-dead [agonisants] if we did not accept the challenge.
5 See Michel Labourdette, “Theology: Faith Seeking Understanding,” in this volume.
138 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

someone in the absence of texts which formally declare on the matter or on

the basis of a group of lines taken out of context.6(e)
*****
However, before registering any words of criticism, we would like to note
the great achievement that we ourselves see in Jean Mouroux’s book, The
Meaning of Man, the sixth volume in the Théologie collection. Our intention
is not to exclude this beautiful text from what we called the “spirit” of this
collection, and it would not be overly difficult to show how it fits into it,
indeed corresponding to its best ambitions. However, it seems to us that it
quite precisely represents what is excellent in this spirit, without manifesting
the questionable aspects found in certain other works animated by this same
spirit.(f)
Mouroux’s intention was to write neither a scholarly book nor a theo-
logical exposition whose technical character would have made it difficult for
the uninitiated. He remarks, “This book’s only desire is to be a testimony.”
However, do not let this modesty deceive us. It is true that Mouroux’s
approach does not limit itself to the level of scientific analysis but rather, func-
tions as, in his own words, “a lengthy theological reflection.” Nonetheless,
this reflection is nourished and filled throughout by the living sources of
Christian thought, especially the Word of God and, above all, St. Paul. His
command of these matters would have been impossible without meticulous
study, giving him long familiarity with the matters he discusses.
An analysis of this book would be materially easy; it is clear and pro-
gresses along distinctly established lines. For as nuanced as they are, the
author’s views are neither vague nor concealed. However, an analysis would
ultimately fail to capture both the richness of what he develops, as well as

6 This article is concerned with the collection Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie as
wholes. (We will return later to the most characteristic volumes in this series.) Now, this
generality might itself lead one to believe that throughout our remarks we are question-
ing, in all these pages, the personal thought of Frs. de Lubac and Daniélou, who direct
the first series and are the most representative collaborators in the second. However,
this is not our aim, or at least when it is, we will make this clear. Frs. de Lubac and Danié-
lou know quite well what they intend to say and do not stand in need of interpreters. If,
however, it seems to them that, while going beyond their thought, we nonetheless take
aim at them again, we will always be quite happy to receive their corrections and adjust-
ments. This could provide an opportunity to prevent their readers from falling into certain
misunderstandings, some of which are dangerous.
(e) I explain later on, at the end of my Reply, the meaning of this point, which is not at all
what has been attributed to me. (1947)
(f) I did not praise the intentions [propos] of the Théologie collection only in the abstract.
It represents one of its excellent accomplishments. And I contrasted nothing that I praised
in Mouroux’s text with the aims of the collection. To the contrary, I said that it cor-
responded to these aims. (1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 139

what seems most novel and indeed deserving of praise in his work, namely,
his method, along with a concentrated fervor bearing witness to the lengthy,
meditative maturation of his thought, as well as to the profound generosity
of his Christian spirit. Nonetheless, let us provide a broad outlines of the text.
The work, dedicated to the subject of man, is divided into three unequal
parts: first, temporal values (ch. 1, The Temporal; ch. 2, The Universe); then,
in three chapters, bodily values (ch. 3, The Grandeur of the Body; ch. 4, The
Misery of the Body; ch. 5, The Redemption of the Body); and finally, at
greater length, spiritual values (ch. 6, The Human Person; ch. 7, Spiritual Free-
dom; ch. 8, Christian Freedom; ch. 9, Love; ch. 10, Charity). Despite its
appearances, this last part seems to be the most novel—not on account of
its subject, for it is concerned with eternal problems, but rather, because
of its synthetic method, joining together speculative reflection and history,
the most traditional teachings and the most cherished insights drawn from
contemporary thought. A conclusion, whose proper subject is without a
doubt too quickly touched upon, presents man as a sacred being.
Mouroux does not misuse his notes and references, though a number of
them are quite useful and subtly testify to an erudition which does not weigh
down and limit his own thought, and the reader of his volume will draw great
benefit from internalizing this erudition in his own turn. Indeed, the author
unites deep knowledge of the documents of the Christian tradition (Patristic
literature, liturgy, and conciliar teachings) to contemporary currents of
thought [information nouvelle]. The various problems that he poses are
addressed from within the framework whence most of our contemporaries
draw the most common data of the modern sciences, philosophy, and litera-
ture. We do not get a sense that Mouroux is a specialist—clearly his specialty
is theological reflection—but we appreciate this openness to such cultural
currents, something which has genuine worth, and he does not rush to the
first mirage of novelty so that he can then proclaim his agreement. Rather,
he is concerned not to lose any positive acquisition, while at the same time
taking care not to connect the presentation of eternal truth to forms of
expression that come from an outdated culture which, instead of opening the
way to understanding, only serve to set up obstacles to the contemporary
mind. Even more than in the first chapters (which seem to be the most
recently written ones, though to our eyes, the least profound in the volume,
even though they are full of very interesting suggestions), we believe that this
work contains commendable studies on the individual, freedom, and love.
All of this presents a theology at once of great beauty and full of life, and
if its author expresses such depth in so effortless a manner, we have no doubt
that this is due to his mastery of speculative theology. He handles it with an
utterly correct sense of things and with constant exactitude. Whether discus-
sing the union of soul and body, the person considered in his subsistence or
140 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

in his openness to God, the historical situation of man between the first and
second Adam, original sin and the forces left to fallen nature, natural love of
God and the love of charity, or the problem of selfless love, Mouroux’s mas-
tery is undeniable. We do not say that we accept all his assertions. This would,
in any case, represent thin praise. The theological reflection presented here
is too personal for the author not to present original insights which call for
further examination, and we will not fail to thank him even when it seems
that a different solution must be sought out. However, what we appreciate
most is the fact that when he innovates—or at least, when he sheds greater
light on some aspect of a topic which normally receives less emphasis [by
others], ultimately founded on theological themes which are at once wholly
classical and nonetheless profoundly assimilated—he nonetheless is always
judicious, fully aware of what he is doing, conscious of the positions that he
is abandoning, and forever serious in weighing out what is at stake in them.
For example, many theologians will perhaps not be comfortable with his
treatment of original sin and the state of fallen nature.7 However, we do not
think that anyone could blame him either for disregarding or failing to care-
fully consider certain aspects of the problem. This gives his work a solidity
which, in such a text, could have been inflected toward much simpler argu-
ments, given the work’s apologetic aims (by which I mean that its obvious
end is to find a reading among minds which have been penetrated by the
spirit of modern culture). Mouroux provides us with a proof that Christian
thought can enter contemporary discussions without the spirit of resignation,
shame for her past, as well as without a sense of superiority, and, in all frank-
ness and loyalty, awareness that she has much to learn, for she remains forever
young. He shows us that theological thought can remain wholly precise and
retain the richness of its traditional acquisitions by seeking to formulate this
thought in a new manner. We will forever be grateful to the Théologie collec-
tion for presenting us with works of this caliber.
*****
Moreover, nothing that it presents to us is without value, as we will have
the occasion to say, at least in future reviews. However, we regret to see that,
in several of these volumes, the emphasis upon the riches of the patristic tra-
dition, along with the editors’ efforts to find more contemporary formulations
[for the theological matters at hand], is accompanied by an obvious depreci-
ation of scholastic theology.(g) Far from opposing the latter either to the

7 We do not feel such concerns, however, for the author seems to maintain quite correctly
the equilibrium (which is, in fact, somewhat “paradoxical”) between the opposed exag-
gerations of Jansenism and of naturalistic humanism.
(g) I am made to say: “But, let one not claim today still to search in these remote times
for some directly-assimilable intellectual nourishment. In so doing, one would manifest
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 141

breadth of tradition or to attempts at a renewed presentation (as though this

could only be a dangerous undertaking for it), for our own part, we believe
that scholastic theology, precisely in the form given to it by St. Thomas, rep-
resents the truly scientific state of Christian thought. This implies no disdain
for what came before it, a patrimony which can never be valued too highly,
and surely the Thomistic synthesis will be the first to benefit from it. This
does not imply, moreover, that the teachings of St. Thomas must be simply
repeated word for word. It is all-too-true that it would thus remain inacces-
sible to many, and we would deprive ourselves of the wonderful and genuine
progress resulting from later Christian (and non-Christian) thinkers.8(h)(i)

‘an evident devaluing’ of the work that followed them” (“Réponse,” 84). What has not been
cited from me? In short, the text where we lament the fact that, quite unnecessarily, this
devaluing accompanies the highlighting of patristic riches (and certainly, with the goal of
nourishing us upon them, with making us directly assimilate them). We are made to say
that the mere showcasing of the Fathers constitutes a devaluing of scholasticism. (1947)
8 The question concerning the progress of theology and its adaptation to new data arises,
therefore, in our opinion, in a completely different manner than the way Fr. Daniélou
states: “To these two abysses, historicity and subjectivity, we must add something shared
by Marxism and existentialism: their clear perception of our coexistence, the way each
of our lives causes reverberations in the lives of others. Therefore, these two abysses
require theological thought to broaden itself. Indeed, these categories are quite obviously
foreign to scholastic theology. Its world is the immobile world of Greek thought, where
its mission was to incarnate the Christian message. This conception retains a lasting and
ever-valuable truth, at the very least because it consists in affirming that the decision of
human freedom and its transformation of life’s conditions do not represent an absolute
beginning; man’s freedom is not a form of self-creation, but rather, a response to a voca-
tion from God, which is expressed by the world of essences. However, scholastic theology
makes no room for history. And, on the other hand, by placing reality in essences more
than in subjects, it neglects the dramatic world of persons—concrete universals that tran-
scend every essence and are distinguished only by their existence, that is, no longer
according to the intelligible and intellection, but rather, according to value and love, or
hate.” Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 14, emphasis Labourdette’s.
Scholasticism does not stand before modern thought as a closed system built upon “cat-
egories” which are irredeemably closed off from assimilating any new data. Its per-
manence is not that of a completed construction that has seen its day and whose scope,
consequently, would remain limited strictly to problems historically considered, to solu-
tions already given and to formulations that remain forever fixed. On the contrary, we
believe that it is a perfectly living way of thinking, one that is both ambitious and capable
of entering into and understanding new problems, able to assimilate everything con-
tained in the most modern of doctrines. However, it has too much respect for the truth
and is too concerned with its scientific rigor and with avoiding facile conformism for it to
adorn itself immediately with ideas and “categories” that it would not have first carefully
examined and critiqued. Without a doubt, this was the restoration that Leo XIII wanted,
and if it did not meet his hopes, this is doubtlessly because such a restoration would
have needed to find more numerous and better laborers, not because scholastic theology
is a mode of thought that is henceforth exhausted. (See note i as well.)
142 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

Nonetheless, it remains the case that these forms of progress, on pain of ruin-
ing their own foundations, presuppose the previously-existing edifice, build-
ing upon it, neither destroying nor replacing it. They represent expansions
of a synthesis, not a total recovery seeking to build a new “representation” of
the world according to the categories of modernity, judging everything that

Daniélou is free to devote himself to “dramatic” theology, which is quite legitimate for
the specific aim, not of developing the divine message on the level of speculative truth,
but rather that of making certain concrete data of the situation of the Christian in this
world “sensible to the heart.” We will applaud his success. Moreover, no less than he,
do we desire the development of historical theology and, just as much as he does, desire
that speculative theology appropriate for itself a sense of history. Far from believing it to
be incapable of doing this, we think that marvelous developments are possible in this
venture, because it has, in this respect, virtualities that many do not seem to suspect. It
is also equally clear that theology must draw closer to culture and indeed remain in con-
tact with various cultures, anxious to learn everything that they reveal concerning man,
his historical situation, and his existential dimensions. But theology must not lose its
primordial concern with remaining the rigorous scientific expression of Christian thought
concerned with focusing on the truths of the faith. This is what St. Thomas calls us to,
both by his example and by his doctrine. The enlargement desired by Daniélou—accord-
ing to his own expressions—would ultimately end in an infinitely deplorable loss: the
loss of that achievement in which we find our most precious intellectual treasure and the
reduction of scholastic thought to the state of being nothing more than a historical wit-
ness to a bygone era (no doubt, a permanent witness, though akin to a statue in a
museum). Thomism also claims to be alive, no less than do existentialism, Marxism, or
the evolutionism of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin.
(h) Here again our thought is skillfully deformed: “Fr. Labourdette professes to have ‘no
disdain,’ he assures us, for the first twelve centuries of Christian thought.” Let us note
already that the ridiculousness of this phrase comes entirely from the adjustment made
to an assertion which here only has two words cited from it. We said: “this (i.e., the affir-
mation of the scientific character of scholastic theology) does not imply any disdain for
what preceded it (i.e., a still-prescientific theology).” The response article continues:
“However, he hardly seems to appreciate them, except only insofar as the Thomist syn-
thesis has drained them of their substance. Since this synthesis represents the ‘truly sci-
entific state of Christian thought,’ why linger in its pre-scientific state?” See “Réponse,”
84. We do not deny the dialectical procedure consisting in undertaking a reductio ad
absurdum on the basis of our propositions. Still, one should not have the appearance of
charging us with having said it ourselves and, instead, should show that absurdity follows
from what we had truly written. Now, what we wrote was: “[it] can never be valued too
highly, and surely the Thomistic synthesis will be the first to benefit from it.” This is pre-
cisely the opposite [of what is imputed to our words], for it is clear that the benefit will
consist in integrating new elements that the synthesis has not yet absorbed, and I believe
this is in fact the case for many texts from the Greek tradition. (1947)
(i) We are reproached for claiming that Daniélou said that scholastic philosophy is a mode
of thought that is now exhausted, but did he not say that it is foreign to contemporary
categories of thought? How can it continue to bear fruit in a world that is no longer “the
immobile world of Greek thought, where its mission was to incarnate the Christian mes-
sage?” (1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 143

has preceded it as being irredeemably outmoded. Yes, there are many things
that have become outmoded, but what we cannot admit is that form of aging
which, in fact, reaches down more deeply than the level of mere formulations:
the idea that the entire worldview characteristic of a certain cultural milieu
could also reach down into the very truths of theology. What we cannot
admit is that theological wisdom would be swept away by the flood of imper-
manence(j) and that its acquisitions could not be held as being definitive. Now,
this does not mean that they are closed and no longer subject to further
refinement but, rather, implies that they are capable of progressively assimi-
lating new insights and reflections. I know quite well that this conception
poses problems, indeed, more than we can address in this simple article. We
will have the opportunity to return to it, especially to the splendid efforts of
missionary theology. However, is careful enough attention given to the fact
that the greatest difficulties hold true just as much against dogmatic formu-
lations themselves as they do against the idea of theological knowledge, which,
yes, is incomplete and forever perfectible, but nonetheless has its own kind
of stability as well: indeed, certitude in its central teachings, possessing an
indefectible truth, and in a good number of other positions, a knowledge
which it affirms with increasing probability?
*****
Contemporary thought experiences the permanent temptation to judge
all systems of intellectual expression first and, indeed, ultimately, in terms of
the historical context and experiences of its author and the era in which he
lived, not essentially in terms of their conformity with the reality of what is.
(For it is asked: how can we reach it?) It is said that the mystery of subjectivity
is of greater interest to it than is impersonal truth. What is above all looked
for in a given work is its meaning and the scope of its “witness,” its sincerity
and depth of experience, along with the vibrating energy with which it
remains charged. Hence, its logical coherence, along with the properly intel-
lectual (or so-called “conceptual”) meaning of the analyses or syntheses it
presents, seems to be secondary. No longer will we need to speak of our con-
cepts being analogical in character but, instead, will find that we must say

(j) Astonishment is expressed at the fact that we felt the need to reject the claim that wis-
dom would be carried away by the flood of impermanence: “Nothing warrants anyone of
suspecting that we desire this, and none of our texts are quoted supporting this claim”
(“Réponse,” 76). I did, however, quote texts from Fr. Bouillard, among others, that bear
clear witness to this: “When the mind evolves, an immutable truth is maintained only
thanks to the simultaneous and correlative evolution of all the concepts, in which the same
relationship is maintained. A theology that would not be contemporary would be a false
theology” (cited on 150–51 below). This is a remarkable claim [idée] concerning the per-
manence of theological assertions, namely, that all their notions are perpetually recast, to
the point that their content in one given era will be regarded as false in a later one. (1947)
144 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

that they are symbolic, judging them in terms of how they express the “living”
reality in man—expressions which, as soon as they take on their logical sig-
nification, appear so impoverished, desiccated, and reified in comparison
with the experience from which they flow forth, like what one might perhaps
call waste-products rather than fruits. How can life be enclosed within con-
cepts? Above all, how can we enclose within them this kind of life which
exists in a relationship with God, culminating in the obscure awareness of a
mysterious contact which we claim is grounded upon a true experience? Bey-
ond the truth that is transmitted by clear teaching, does there not exist one
that is more precious, namely, the truth testified to by spiritual experience?
And must we not turn our attention this way, if we are to discover the mean-
ing of great intellectual works, at least those whose object is knowledge of
man and of God?9
It seems to me that two kinds of habits of the modern mind provide this
temptation with a unique source of power. One is born of training in the his-
torical disciplines, something which is of infinite value. We need not empha-
size the fact that we believe that the progress undergone in the latter represents
an invaluable gain for human knowledge.10(k) Thanks to such studies, we have

9 Speaking of the demands that one finds in “contemporary theology,” Daniélou writes
in the article already cited: “it must treat of God as God, not as an object but as the Sub-
ject par excellence who manifests Himself whenever and however He wishes and, con-
sequently, must above all be permeated with the spirit of religion” (“Les orientations pré-
sentes,” 7, emphasis Labourdette’s). We are quite fine with the fact that Fr. Daniélou
speaks using a different vocabulary than our own, though we still lament the fact he so
clearly is anxious to enter into the vocabulary of contemporary philosophy without our-
selves benefitting from the same effort at [intellectual] sympathy. However, does he not
know that the notion of object, in theological language, excludes neither the “spirit of
religion,” nor, as he says later on, “the sense of mystery,” (“Les orientations présentes,”
16), and that to say that our intellect has as its objects the very mysteries of faith is not
only an expression of this “rationalized theology,” namely, “neo-Thomism,” but, indeed,
is an expression consecrated by the solemn teaching of the [First] Vatican Council in state-
ments which certainly have neither the intent nor the result of emptying the mystery of
its meaning, even if they do not refer to Kierkegaard’s categories: “The perpetual common
belief of the Catholic Church has held and holds also this: there is a twofold order of
knowledge, distinct not only in its principle but also in its object; in its principle, because
in the one we know by natural reason, in the other by divine faith; in its object, because
apart from what natural reason can attain, there are proposed to our belief mysteries that
are hidden in God that can never be known unless they are revealed by God” (Vatican I,
Dei filius, ch. 4; Denzinger, no. 1795 [3015]).
10 We are far from agreeing with the judgment of Fr. Daniélou: “The notion of history is
foreign to Thomism” (“Les orientations présentes,” 10). If one wishes to speak of the use
of critical methods, we will admit that the historical preoccupation, properly so-called,
was not awakened in modern thought until well after St. Thomas. We do not think that
the idea of evolution, for example, is in itself foreign to a Thomistic outlook concerning
the world and its becoming, which command St. Thomas’s philosophy and theology. It
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 145

become increasingly aware of an authentic “dimension” of man and of human

things. There is nothing human—and certainly not even the most impersonal
ideas or sciences—which fails to bear the mark of this spatio-temporal engage-
ment and which, consequently, fails to be infinitely better known when its
essential structure has been penetrated by tracing out its progress—a genesis
that so often is slow and groping, a successive formation taking shape through
the most unexpected of detours. Fr. [Marie-Joseph] Lagrange liked to recall
the words of Aristotle: “the best means for understanding is to consider things
in their origin and follow their development.”11 That is why we whole-heartedly
applaud the historical accuracy of the collections under discussion here, and
we congratulate their authors for the substantial contribution which they have
made through their work, indeed placing us in their debt. We will mention
once again the high opinion we have for such fine studies as those, for exam-
ple, written by Fr. Daniélou12 and Fr. von Balthasar13 on Gregory of Nyssa,
along with the questions that they raise for our reflection.
Nonetheless, historical methodology is one thing, and the philosophy
with which it is often unwittingly weighed down, constituting a pseudo-

is true, however, that this idea, as it has become familiar to us (much more often as a
myth than as a precise notion), stands outside St. Thomas’s own personal perspectives.
However, if one understands the term “history” as referring to the sense for events which
occur, the meaning of that which is a de facto economy, one need only skim through the
Summa with a superficial glance in order to see clearly how history, and with it the whole
historical development of humanity, fits into it in the Tertia Pars. Is it not St. Thomas who
maintains quite precisely the perfectly “historical” character of the Incarnation, which
no a priori reason requires but, rather, exists only as part of the providential economy
involving the concrete becoming of a sinful and redeemed humanity? (See note k as well.)
(k) “Why be so indignant at hearing it said that, historically considered, (the work of St.
Thomas) lacks a certain sense of history?” See “Réponse,” 87. Fr. Daniélou did not say
that the work of St. Thomas, historically considered, lacks a certain sense of history,
which I would not have contested in any way, for I indeed admit this fact. Rather, he said,
and I quoted him literally, “that the notion of history is foreign to Thomism.” This is what
I criticized. He has the right to say that he was mistaken or that his expression exceeded
his thought—here, it would be by much!—but he has no right to replace his previous
assertions with a new one so that he can claim to have been unjustly attacked. A basic
honesty is at stake here. (Besides, I do not question him personally, because I have good
reason to believe he did not compose the anonymous response. I speak only about the
method of its composer.) (1947)
11 Aristotle, Politics, 1.1.2.
12 See Daniélou’s introduction in La Vie de Moïse and the annotation in La Création de
l’homme by St. Gregory of Nyssa in Sources Chrétiennes; also see, by the same author,
Platonisme et Théologique Mystique in the Théologie collection (Paris: Aubier, 1944).
13 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence et Pensée: Essai sur la philosophie religieuse de
Grégoire de Nysse (Beauchesne: Paris, 1942). Also, see the work in Sources Chrétiennes
by Claude Mondésert on Clement of Alexandria.
146 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

philosophy that many believe to be provided by history itself, is another

matter altogether. Great care must be taken in order to maintain the intel-
lectual purity required by a highly specialized methodology. We have been
burdened with pseudo-metaphysical assertions elaborated by physicists and
biologists who here apply to metaphysical problems methodologies which
have indeed produced excellent results in biology and physics but which,
upon application to philosophy, result only in poverty. (Such pseudo-meta-
physics remains a way of doing metaphysics rather than of denying it, a way
of speaking about it without getting into its details.) Is not methodological
autonomy demanded by the very laws that rule the pursuit of true knowl-
edge? Certainly, historical awareness offers ample matter for philosophical
reflection. Indeed, the philosophy of human activity and of culture cannot
do without it. However, if it is true that this philosophy presupposes the rig-
orous use of historical methodologies, this must come after it, as a kind of
reflection which is rather different in character, indeed proceeding from com-
pletely different principles. The pseudo-philosophy which unknowingly is
inspired by historical methodologies is “relativism,” in the strong sense of the
term, indicating a theory, or even more so, an intellectual attitude that
replaces the metaphysical notion of speculative truth with the more modest
notion of historical truth, as the more or less complete expression of the men-
tality and experience of an era or group of men. The very idea that our mind
could, in its most-assured notions, come to grasp and identify timeless truth
becomes, strictly speaking, unthinkable.(l) The idea that this truth could rep-
resent a definitive gain for human understanding and could be transmitted
to distant men separated by time and culture seems absurd. If humanity only
progresses by going beyond itself, is it not contrary to the very movement of
life to ascribe an absolute intellectual value to statements which bear the clear
mark of the era in which they were formulated, the cultural milieu wherein
they were born? Is this not just like the adult who wishes to wear the clothes
which were adequate for him in his childhood?
However, in that case, we must renounce any notion of a valid and uni-
versal teaching, any function of the permanent Magisterium, and along with
the notions of acquisition or gain, the very notion of progress vanishes. In
any case, intellectual progress quite clearly cannot be conceived as being an
unwavering, linear ascent. Like civilization, thought experiences tragic

(l) The response article proclaims its agreement and is indignant that we would have
judged it good to recall such elementary truths. However, in my opinion, this exercise in
recollection is fully justified by the text cited further on from Fr. Bouillard, to which these
paragraphs serve as an introduction. I am critiquing him—and no response has been
extended to me concerning this very matter—for falling for a pseudo-philosophy that is
unconsciously inspired by the methodologies of history, to the point of no longer daring
to conceive of the permanence of a notion. (1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 147

periods of regression. However, how can one claim that nothing remains of
all that the mind had previously gained, and that everything that was pre-
viously formulated, if it still has the value of furnishing an example for what
we must do when faced with new problems, cannot have any value as fur-
nishing an objective teaching? We strongly agree with Fr. de Lubac14(m)(n) that
the differences between theology and dogma are quite evident and that pro-
gress in theology cannot be likened unto that of dogma. Still, how can one
fail to see that the arguments adduced in order to combat assurance in theo-
logical progress, in the interest of defending the claim that our notions con-
cerning God in accord with the diversity of times and of cultures, would
retain all their force even were they applied to claims that would reduce to
unacceptable proportions the progress of dogma itself within the Church?
This is because the most fundamental of these arguments (illustrated by the
interpretation of history, but ultimately coming from views other than his-
torical knowledge) is the depreciation of the intellect, the postulate common
to any nominalist philosophy, holding that our reason, when it has knowledge
that is clear and expressible, attains nothing but notions, themselves being
empty abstractions, logical frameworks whose value is wholly pragmatic. We
do not agree that such a caricature of the life of the mind, one that in fact
destroys the notion of theology as a science, is better adapted to the idea of
dogma proposed by the Church, an idea which enables us to render account
of the place which truth-values hold in Revelation and in Catholic preaching.
Moreover, it suffices that one consider what this would mean in relation to
the notion of orthodoxy, something which is still quite capital, not only in
the Church’s teaching, but also in her practice and life. It is commonplace to
accuse the Roman Church of intransigence regarding dogmatic questions.
However, does this constant character of her practice evade the corrective
action of the Divine Spirit who animates her? Is it only the merely human
weight of a certain form of culture, and does it, in fact, distort the essential
mystery of the Christian life? We readily agree that the very idea of orthodoxy

14 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1946), forward (p. 5). Having been received
just recently, this book will be reviewed later. Corpus Mysticum, by the same author is
analyzed and appreciated by Marie-Joseph Nicolas below [in this issue of Revue thomiste].
It is one of the most remarkable books of the collection, but while its beauty enriches it,
it also accentuates its reactionary character against the speculative theology elaborated
by St. Thomas. See annotation (n) below.
(m) Further on, in my reply (p. 176 below), I explain the scope of this citation. (1947)
(n) Fr. de Lubac has misread this note. He reads the last sentence in it as referring to his
text Surnaturel and is triumphant in showing that it does not apply to it. See “Réponse,”
80. Every reader will immediately see that this phrase logically and grammatically refers
to Corpus Mysticum, and I believe that the evaluation expressed therein is perfectly
valid. (1947)
148 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

and the practical attitude that it commands are often quite improperly
extended by Christian thinkers to assertions which do not belong to the
revealed teaching that has been transmitted by the Church, thus giving rise
to the deplorable habit of wanting to resolve questions by appealing to
authority rather than through serene discussion, and we have no sympathy
for this form of argumentation. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the divine
message is addressed to our intellect, meaning that this message consequently
presupposes it, and that, even in its distinct and expressible [formulable]
knowledge, there must be enough [surety] in order to make possible the sol-
emn affirmation required by Pope Pius X:

Thus, I hold steadfastly and shall continue to hold to my last breath the
faith of the Fathers in the sure charism of truth that is, has been, and
always will be “in the succession of the bishops from the Apostles,” not so
that what seems better or more suited according to the culture of each
age should be held, but so that the absolute and immutable truth, which
from the beginning was preached by the apostles, “should never be
believed, never be understood, in a different way.”15

As holds true in every other field of knowledge, we believe that it is infi-

nitely valuable in theology to know the minute historical details of its notions
and doctrines, even those which are now taught with the greatest of theolog-
ical certitude.16 Often, through this means, we can draw a distinction between
the permanent intelligible content of an idea and a host of contingent aims
that have been more or less profoundly associated with it through the course
of history, in accord with various cultural milieux, in line with this or that
worldview of a particular era or thinker, wherein this idea may have been
embedded within a vast referential network, which often can be disentangled
only with difficulty. No theological synthesis can fail to provide immense
gains for our understanding by offering more precise knowledge concerning
the time when it was born and the cultural milieu that gave rise to it and cir-
cumscribe it. However, if it is true that intellectual activity is a form of life
and that, in the midst an entire subjective conditioning of logical relations,
it reaches extra-mental reality through the concept which actualizes this life
(and it is quite obvious this question does not fall within the purview of his-
tory), every idea expressed is of interest because of something very different
from its historical characteristics, calling for a different kind of appreciation:
appreciation for its truth, pure and simple. Here, we have a judgment that

15 Denzinger, no. 3549 [old no. 2147].

16 This is why we wish, a priori, that studies like those by Fr. de Lubac will multiply in
number. Their great usefulness is all too obvious, and they will be of use all the more to
the degree that they are not too hasty, too partial, or too committed to a “thesis.”
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 149

does not fall to history, even though it is often made only by those who have
exact knowledge concerning history, and this judgment refers to criteria
belonging to a different order.
The question we are here discussing is found in Fr. Henri Bouillard’s
recent volume, the first in the Théologie collection.17 This work’s conclusion
is animated by a preoccupation similar to our own: to show how historical
methodology need not lead to a form of complete relativism.(o) Within theo-
logical development, Bouillard affirms the permanence not only of “defined
dogmas, that is, those propositions which have been canonized by the
Church, but also everything that is contained explicitly or implicitly in Scrip-
ture and Tradition.” And, moreover, he adds to these: “the invariant or abso-
lute of the human mind, those first principles and acquired truths which are
all necessary in order for dogma to be thinkable.”18 However, truth be told,
we do not fully understand the explanation he provides, which consists in
distinguishing a set of absolute affirmations from the notional or notional
systems in which these affirmations come to be incarnated. Said notions are
the domain of “representation,” which is necessarily intrinsically affected by
temporality in a way that entails that this domain is radically contingent in
nature. Now, these two elements are not separate, and our mind cannot iso-
late them from one another. We do not reach absolute affirmations alongside,
or as something above, the overall representation that we form for ourselves.
In other words, we can reach and think these affirmations only in such
notions.19 When the latter change—and they cannot fail to change—what is
established along wholly new lines is the entire system of representation,
though translating, in this new system’s own manner, the same eternal affir-
mations, by means of this system’s own [conceptual] relationships.
This laborious explanation testifies to a praiseworthy attempt to avoid
relativism, but we are not sure that Bouillard is successful, and to our eyes,
some of his formulas manifest his failure all too clearly. If these two elements
interpenetrate each other, so much so that we attain the first only in and
through the second—because such is “the law of incarnation,”20—how can

17 See Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez saint Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier,
1944).
(o) I emphasize, however, that my “negative criticism,” recognized and maintained Fr.
Bouillard’s intentions [propos]. What I contested was the value of his explanations. (1947)
18 Bouillard, Conversion, 221.
19 “It is essential to understand that these invariants do not remain alongside and inde-
pendent of contingent conceptions. They are conceived and expressed within them. But
when they change, the new conceptions contain the same absolute relations, the same
eternal affirmations” (Bouillard, Conversion, 221).By what miracle, and with what guar-
antee, is this so if these elements are inseparable for the mind?
20 Bouillard, Conversion, 220.
150 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

we distinguish them? The only way we will be able to do so will be through

our “notions,” taking place in our “representation”21 and, therefore, as some-
thing which is obsolete like them. Thus, we will find it impossible to specify
what truths are taught to us by faith, as well as those “acquired truths which
are all necessary in order for dogma to be thinkable.” If we could specify
them, they would form an ensemble of enduring affirmations set alongside
and above our passing representations. Will we entrust to the Church, who
is divinely assisted, the task of clarifying, within a system of representations,
which conceptual relations safeguard “the eternal affirmations” and which
compromise it? However, is the Church charged with the task of guaranteeing
for us, in addition to “defined dogma,” “those first principles and acquired
truths which are all necessary in order for dogma to be thinkable”?
In the explanation offered by Bouillard, the very idea of truth is quite
contradictory, and although this would possibly not be disturbing for a Hege-
lian conception of history, it is dangerous not only for theology but also for
the Christian faith. The same notions would need to have actual solidity as
the means enabling us to reach and think of eternal affirmations (by which
they are true today) and, at the same time, an instability which requires them
to give way to other truths which are essentially different, by which they
become false for another era or for a mentality which has a different “rep-
resentation.” Therefore, not by way of distraction, as we had at first thought,
but instead by the very exigencies, perhaps obscure, of a profound logic, after
having defined the schemata proper to St. Thomas’s theology in opposition
to those formed by modern theology,22 Bouillard is led to say, three pages

21 “Christian truth never remains in a pure state. I do not mean by this that it inevitably
presents itself as being mixed with error but, rather, only that it is always embedded
within contingent notions and schemata that determine its rational structure. It cannot
be isolated from them. It cannot free itself from a system of notions except by passing
into another. . . . The truth is never accessible outside of all contingent notions. This is
the law of incarnation” (Bouillard, Conversion, 220, emphasis Labourdette’s).
Fr. Bouillard’s formulas here doubtlessly go beyond what he actually thinks, for he is
indeed required four pages later to make allusion to the possibility that we could separate
absolute truth and contingent notions from each other: “In order for theology to continue
to provide meaning to the mind, to fertilize it and progress with it, it must also renounce
these notions. Unfortunately, it is not always easy to separate them, without error, from
the absolute truth which they cover over [recouvre]” (Conversion, 224). But is not “to sep-
arate” to set apart? When we mentally separate things, do we not “think them independ-
ent of each other” [“penser indépendamment”], thus violating “the law of incarnation,”
which is dear to Fr. Bouillard?
22 “We can see how St. Thomas conceived and expressed Christian truth according to
notions and schemata borrowed from Aristotle. He was simply following the craze of his
age. When we compare his theory to that of the Fathers or to modern theology, which
has been influenced by him, we will notice what is contingent in the conceptions and sys-
tems in which the divine Word is successively incarnated” (Bouillard, Conversion, 216).
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 151

later: “When the mind evolves, an immutable truth is maintained only thanks
to the simultaneous and correlative evolution of all the notions, maintaining
their inter-relationship. A theology that would not be contemporary would be
a false theology.”23 This means, at least for those who are naïve enough to still
believe in logic, that the notions in which St. Thomas expressed his theology
of grace constitute a theology that was true for his time, but today is false.
Then Bouillard raises the question concerning the notions implied in con-
ciliar definitions. When the Council of Trent used the notion of formal caus-
ality against the Protestants, did it not thereby incorporate this notion into
the dogma it declared?

By no means. It was certainly not the intention of the Council to can-

onize an Aristotelian notion, nor even a theological notion conceived
under Aristotle’s influence. It merely wanted to affirm, against the Pro-
testants, that justification is an interior renewal and not simply an impu-
tation of Christ’s merits, the remission of sins, or the favor of God. To
this end, it made use of notions that were common to the theology of
that era. However, others can be substituted for them without altering
the meaning of its teaching. This is demonstrated by the fact that the
Council itself much more often made use of equivalent notions derived
from Scripture.24

However, are the “interior renewal” (which is affirmed) and “the imputation
of the merits of Christ” (which is ruled out as being insufficient by itself) not
themselves notions? Would we find there, by chance, in a pure state, one these
“eternal affirmations” that Bouillard assures us exist, though they are only
accessible in notions, in an essentially temporal and alterable representation?
And if these expressions are indeed still notions, do they escape the fate befal-
ling all other notions which, although true for a time according to the system
containing them, are false later on when the mind’s evolution comes to force
the system of representation to change? If at least this affirmation of renewal
remains permanent, or “irreformable,” why not that of the statement holding
that sanctifying grace is the unique formal cause of justification, “unica for-
malis causa”? We willingly agree with Bouillard that the Council of Trent
intended to canonize neither Aristotle, nor his philosophy, nor this or that
notion precisely as Aristotelian, any more than it intended to canonize Tho-
mistic notions precisely as Thomistic. However, if it is true that the human
intellect reaches the universal and that this is something other than a merely
shared name, if the concept refers essentially to an objective reality which, in
its essential notes, is independent from temporal existence, then a notion

23 Bouillard, Conversion, 219, (emphasis mine).

24 Bouillard, Conversion, 221–22.
152 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

contains something other than a reference to the author who expressed it,
something other than the contingent modalities of its formulation, namely,
an element which is perfectly timeless because it expresses an essential neces-
sity. Here, we can draw a distinction between what a Council uses (for the
divine truth is expressed to us in a language which is indeed human) and what
it does not consecrate. In this regard, a notion is no more Aristotelian or Tho-
mist than it is French, German, or Greek. It is purely and simply human. Is
not this distinction one of these “acquired truths necessary in order for dogma
to be thinkable”? And I know quite well that distinguishing the essential
contents of an idea from its contingent connotations is often a difficult affair
and that these lines of distinction can be poorly drawn. That is why the Church
exercises her wisdom with such great mercy, avoiding, as much as possible,
in her dogmatic formulas, words and notions which are at the center of [theo-
logical and philosophical] controversies. However, she does not always avoid
making use of them and has made her own various words and notions: person,
nature, transubstantiation, and other precise terms. None of them are subor-
dinated either to Aristotle, Athanasius, or Augustine, but instead, they come
from the need to express divine things in human language. Here in the full
light of day, we can see the benefits proper to historical methodology, whose
services we appreciate no less than does Fr. Bouillard himself, though they
certainly are not ordered to the resolution of the [philosophical] problem con-
cerning [the nature of] universals. Yes, it’s true, this brings us back to ancient
debates concerning [the distinction and relationships between] nature and
the individual, existence and essence, and the abstract and the concrete. We
believe that these problems are still raised today, with the same necessity as in
past days, and that there has been no change in how they must be answered.
Granted, these debates are not popular today, but the categories of old and
new are not a criterion in metaphysics. We are sensitive to the apologetic
intentions25 of many of the collaborators in the Théologie series; however, we
believe that it is important to maintain, above all else, truth-values and that
conformism of any kind serves truth poorly.26(p)(q)

25 As regards the schemata used by medieval thinkers, schemata which according to

Bouillard have become unusable, he writes: “They served in their era by transmitting the
mystery and, as such, are venerable. But like an old-fashioned garment or an outdated
tool, they hamper the process of theological reflection. They prevent those who do not
understand them anymore from grasping the exact meaning of Christian doctrine” (Con-
version, 224, emphasis Labourdette’s). Therefore, do they not hamper those who under-
stand them? And is it not precisely the task of the theologian to explain them?
26 We will pause only briefly to make remarks concerning the book by Fr. Fessard, Autorité
et Bien Commun (Paris: Aubier, 1946). Its proper subject is too distant from our present
considerations. However, his methodology is relevant, given his explicit concern to
undertake a more complete adaptation to the needs of contemporary understanding:
“For long, philosophers have held that the notion of the common good is the keystone
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 153

*****
Another habit of the modern mind reinforces the relativism easily pro-
fessed by the historian with regard to systems of ideas: the habit of interpret-
ing the term “conceptual” not so much from the perspective of its objective
significate (that upon which, logically, it claims to measure itself) but, instead,
first and foremost from the perspective of the subjective life it translates.(r)
Everyone knows the emphasis given to this method by the Freudian doctrine
concerning dreams. Roland Dalbiez has admirably analyzed this topic in his
already-classic work Le Méthode psychoanalytique et la doctrine freudienne.27
Certainly, without drawing any comparison between psychoanalytic tech-
niques and a form of reflection which is dependent on many other
influences and is applied to another matter, we belief that this rapprochement

of every social structure. Then, when citizens became aware of the rights which are the
privilege of human nature, it was dethroned and returned to the shadows. Today, it is
beginning to emerge from the oblivion into which it had fallen. However, those same
jurists, philosophers, and theologians who bestow on it new honors typically clothe it
only with the garments of the thirteenth century, a vesture which make its advancement
difficult (Autorité et Bien Commun, 8, emphasis Labourdette’s). We see that this clothing
metaphor, already famous at the beginning of the century, itself retains its currency. We
have encountered it in the writings of Fr. Bouillard. Is there any need to emphasize its
impertinence as regards the question of assessing the permanence or decrepitude [cadu-
cité] of those notions which are essential to St. Thomas’s theology? (See note q as well.)
(p) It is regrettable that the response article, while accusing me of having raised, wholly
unprovoked and without any precise analysis, the problem of historical and doctrinal rel-
ativism, does not speak of the objections made to Fr. Bouillard’s texts. In all honesty, were
we wrong to consider this book as representative of the spirit of a New Theology? (1947)
(q) Now, here is the response made to the criticism which we raised: “Our aim here is
not to reject the traditional notion of the Common Good as though it were outdated cloth-
ing; quite to the contrary, we look to restore its value. The whole work attests to this fact.”
Now, we do not accuse Fr. Fessard of wanting to reject the notion of the common good
but, rather, the philosophy in which it took shape in the thought of St. Thomas, the “garb
of the middle ages” that stands in the way of its advancement. (1947)
(r) In response to our assertion, our critics write: “Again, what they have in their targets
is a ruinous historical relativism that threatens the very idea of truth, fearing that certain
historical studies are less interested in ‘the objective significate’ of the thought they ana-
lyze than the ‘subjective life’ that this thought manifests“ (“Réponse,” 89). Here, two
tendencies find themselves blocked together, though they are carefully distinguished in
our study, the first of which we might call historical relativism, which we analyzed at
some length, first doing so in general, in the way that the contemporary mentality has a
tendency to introduce it into theology (pp. 144–49 above), then in the characteristic form
that it takes on in Fr. Bouillard’s book (pp. 149–52 above). The second tendency is sub-
jectivist relativism, which we briefly analyze as being a simple reinforcement of historical
relativism, as exemplified in Fr. Daniélou’s account of a book by Gilson. (1947)
27 Roland Dalbiez, Méthode psychoanalytique et la doctrine freudiene, vol. 1. ch. 2,
(Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1936), 51–201.
154 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

is enlightening. What is of interest in dreams is not their objective meaning,

which is usually incoherent, thus sufficing by itself to denounce the vanity of
the idea that they represent an expression of the truth. This interest must not
be looked for “from the front” but, so to speak, a tergo [from behind], on the
side of its subjective causes, in the life of the instincts and affections which
are symbolically projected within the dream. Surely, many contemporary
minds experience the profound tendency to consider every conceptual or
imaginative expression as being, first and foremost, something that symbol-
izes our interior life and experience:(s) a more-or-less-rich and more-or-less-
authentic experience, concerning which one will need to ask oneself whether
the symbolic expression is a valid witness to it instead of remaining merely
a verbal amplification thereof.
Thus, the idea of speculative truth, which of itself expresses a relationship
of conformity between one’s statement and things, will find itself bent in a
very different direction: that of one’s sincerity in this testimony and its expres-
sion, as well as in the direction of authenticity in the formation of one’s
experience. The interest of a philosophy or theological synthesis will no
longer be its overall meaning, considered in the coherence of its assertions,
or in its teaching value for transmitting permanent truths. From this per-
spective, is not every system of ideas subject to aging and death? Its interest,
if it was a great and truly human philosophy, if it was an authentic theology,
is first and foremost found in the inner experience from which it emanates,
in the “spirituality” from which it arises and draws its true value.28

(s) One speaks here “of a brilliant tirade in which the virtuosity of its author finds a way
to appeal to the Freudian doctrine of dreams and to the psychoanalytic method, in which
it is only a question of providing an illuminating rapprochement.” One should reread our
text and tell us whether it wouldn’t have been more “illuminating” to likewise cite this
sentence: “Surely, many contemporary minds experience the profound tendency to con-
sider every conceptual or imaginative expression as being, first and foremost, something
that symbolizes our interior life and experience.” All readers would have understood the
purpose of bringing to light the deep constants of contemporary psychological trends.
Every reader would have also seen that we are not here denouncing any of the Reverend
Fathers but, instead, have our sights set upon one of the categories of modern thought
to which there is an attendant tendency—one that is quite widespread among contem-
porary theologians (and not only among them)—to hold that theology is only the concep-
tual expression of a given spirituality. (1947)
28 In his review of a little book by Etienne Gilson, Théologie et Histoire de la Spiritualité
(Paris: Vrin, 1943), Fr. Daniélou writes: “It is true that theology has a right to give us prin-
ciples, whereas history provides facts, but, still, we must be careful not to apply the prin-
ciples of this or that theological school indiscriminately to any given spirituality. It is
clear, for example, that the relationship between contemplation and action in the phi-
losophy of St. Thomas can in no way account for spiritualties like that of St. Francis or St.
Ignatius. Consequently, if theology can help us understand spirituality, spirituality in
turn will, in many cases, burst our theological frameworks and force us to conceive of
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 155

We would not dream of denying that theoretical elaboration can be

influenced by the “spiritual climate” within which this theology is con-
structed. Even less would we deny the influence which various experiences
have exercised upon the orientation of different theological syntheses.
(Here, we have an all-too-evident datum which is dear to the historian of
doctrines and valuable for theological reflection itself.) However, what we
cannot admit, from such an outlook, is the complete evacuation of the idea
of speculative truth. And if someone were to ask us whether we believe that
the truth is something accessible to us, we would have the naivety to
respond, “Yes.” We hold that [speculative] truth is the conformity of the
knowing intellect with a reality which is something given to it, something
which in no way is a “construct.” It is true that, for us [humans], this con-
formity is brought about through impoverishing categories, given that they
are the fruit of an activity which is abstractive in nature; however, we

various types of theology. This is one of the great benefits we can expect from the devel-
opment of spiritual theology. If Gilson did not speak about it, his whole work gives
evidence of it, showing us that to each great spirituality there corresponded a great
theology, and that St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventure each
had a theology drawn from their spirituality” (Révue du Moyen-Age Latin 1, Jan.-Mars.
1945, 65).
We are not in the position here to set out Gilson’s authentic thought; however, we are
grateful to him for having spoken with more nuance. We do not think that his very fine
studies, referred to by Fr. Daniélou, studies which to our eyes seem methodologically
excellent from the perspective of the history of Christian thought, entail such a simple
conception, even to the slightest degree. Great benefit can be drawn from understanding
a theological synthesis, appreciating its profound orientations, and grasping the spiri-
tual climate in which it was elaborated, as well as what experience and fundamental
intuition it responds to. However, when this passes over to the level of intellectual for-
mation, this fact in no way prevents this theology from being appraised in light of per-
spectives coming from outside of the spirituality from which it emanated. This elabora-
tion is not automatic and infallible, and the assertions it contains do indeed claim to be
measured on an objective reality. It therefore raises the question of speculative truth.
Shall we say that in the theological order two systems of contradictory statements can
be true at the same time? Certainly, it is valuable to understand the source of their var-
ious tones and, perhaps, the source of the distortion undergone in the rational devel-
opment of one of them. However, it necessarily follows that if one assertion is true and
that another rationally contradicts it, then the second is not. And it is clear, precisely
because an entire work of analysis and synthesis has presided over this elaboration,
that the unfavorable judgment made concerning one or another of his statements does
not disqualify, for all that, the spiritual experience of the theologian: the latter may very
well have been—and forever be—perfectly authentic. And if it were true that St. Thomas’s
theology cannot account for the experiences to which Fr. Daniélou refers, we would
simply need to conclude from this that it has not, in this regard, attained the universality
required by a true science, thereby remaining too narrow. However, we are still waiting
for this to be demonstrated to us.
156 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

believe that, by means of these categories, things are reached by an authen-

tic intellectual intuition.
In other words, we hold that Saint Thomas’s philosophical explanation of
the problem of knowledge presents us with a timeless truth. It is valid, not
precisely because we have received it or because we have been given the mis-
sion to defend it as an expression of orthodoxy, but instead, because we believe
that we grasp within it a permanent truth, something much more living than
contemporary theories—from which, however, we also certainly drawn
instruction for ourselves, for we grasp their value, alongside (at least to our
eyes) their defects. Without a doubt, greater respect is found, I believe, not
only for the truth, but also for various teachings, when we frankly recognize
a disagreement which allows for sincere discussion, than when we have the
constant disposition—however well-intentioned it may be—to take advantage
of the smallest convergences in order to affirm an agreement [between various
thinkers] which would be at once substantial and miraculous.
On this point, despite the esteem that we have for the apostolic inten-
tion of his work and the high value of much of his research,29 we find our-
selves asking whether Fr. Daniélou, in the somewhat-cavalier manner that,
thanks to the efforts of Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, he looks to annex to con-
temporary theology the benefits of Marxist reflection, existentialism, etc.,(t)
does not fall into the most unfortunate kind of ready harmony [concord-
isme], drawing immediate connections between [homologuant] the most

29 This is why we excuse ourselves for giving so much importance to an article written,
as a matter of fact, for “the general public” and which possibly belongs—Alas!—to that
genre, flourishing so vigorously today: propaganda. However, this article contains such
stances and so naïve [ingénu] a disdain for contemporary Thomism that the Revue tho-
miste was forced to stand up and respond. For example, see Daniélou, “Les orientations
présentes,” 6–7: “Faced with the danger of agnosticism, neo-Thomism again blamed
theological rationalism. . . . There was need of warding off the dangers created by mod-
ernism. Neo-Thomism and the Biblical Commission provided guardrails, but guardrails
obviously are not answers.” And even more than its particular assertions, the article’s
tone bears witness to his assuredly low estimation concerning a mode of thought he con-
siders to be obsolete, though it is one that we consider to be forever valid, one to which
the Revue thomiste seeks to be wholeheartedly faithful.
(t) Here, I correct this unfortunate editorial lapse, both elliptical and embarrassing. The
very quotation I used in the reference shows quite clearly that I had no intention of mak-
ing Teilhard du Chardin into an existentialist! I was concerned with the way that Fr. Danié-
lou uses him on behalf of the annexation of Marxism. [C’est pour l’annexation du marx-
isme que le P. Daniélou l’utilise.] (The response article, with more skill than honesty,
replaces this word with an ellipsis.) I only wanted to say that I thought that, as regards
existentialism, Fr. Daniélou is up to the task by himself. I ask pardon for this incorrect
wording and ask that it be read as stating: “thanks to the efforts of Teilhard de Chardin,
the benefit of Marxist reflection, and, through personal efforts that I believe are illusory,
such as existentialist reflection, etc. . . .” (1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 157

superficial confluences [of thinkers and ideas].30 Frs. de Lubac and Daniélou
seem to enjoy placing into question positions which are all-too-easily taken
for granted. And in this regard, we ourselves share, to a large degree, in their
outlook. The Church draws great benefit from this kind of critical spirit.
Through her whole host of institutions, she possesses such great power for
conservation and “tradition” that we must rejoice to see, at the same time,
this kind of constant concern for verification exercised within her very
bosom and, to our eyes, with such fidelity to her true spirit. We have enough
confidence in the Church’s truth to believe that she has no need of our
deceptions and that many of our “prudent” concerns are, in fact, forms of
cowardice. However, precisely what we are looking for is a critical spirit
when we see Fr. Daniélou’s eagerness lead him to make so many data drawn
from modern philosophy, indeed, things still remaining quite equivocal,
converge toward a renewed theology.
*****
Without a doubt, the powerful thrust of irrational philosophies is the
principle cause of the offensive undertaken against scholastic philosophy
unfolding before our eyes. It is not the only one; or, rather, the experience
that gave birth to it is also expressed in other domains. Far be it from us to
deny that this experience has value and that it can be assimilated into theo-
logical thought. Indeed, we feel its human meaning. However, we believe
that the categories in which it is expressed must not elude criticism, and we
refuse to see theological thought assimilated by it, in accord with formulas
that are eminently contestable. It is easy to note that in our day philosophy
has often descended to the level of literature, and thus we ourselves have
been led to appreciate it according to the same standards as those holding
for poetry and art. I am quite well-aware of how, to many, it seems naïve to
say that philosophy could be conceived as being an exact science concerned
with technical rigor and precision. I admit that this conception has been
compromised by the Cartesian idea of unified knowledge spread out upon
a [single] level of immediate clarity, along the lines of the type of knowledge
found in mathematics. This conception, preserved by classical rationalists,
is also opposed, to the greatest degree, to St. Thomas’s view of the matter.
Likewise, far be it from us to agree, for example, with the claims made by

30 “It is deserving of note that the dogma of original sin quite precisely places us in the
presence of these two abysses: that of history and of the goodness of the world, and that
of freedom and the absurdity of the world, which, as we have just seen, are precisely the
abysses that Marxism and existentialism open up before us. We see that the Christian
mystery is the place where the conflict of modern thought finds its supreme expression
and, therefore, that to be present to our time, theology need only pursue its own
requirements to the fullest, holding at once to St. Irenaeus and St. Augustine, to Fr.
Teilhard and Kierkegaard” (Daniélou, “Les orientations,”16).
158 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

Julien Benda,31 and we appreciate neither his often very-curt judgments con-
cerning our great masters in contemporary literature, nor his idea of “phi-
losophy,” which is wholly traced out along the lines of sciences that, in fact,
belong to a different level of knowledge. In truth, this represents an over-
simplified form of philosophy, despite its demands for precision. Nonethe-
less, bearing in mind these [qualifying] remarks, we are grateful to him for
pleading for clarity and rigor, for denouncing the use of a vocabulary which
floats upon the surface of a cultivated equivocation, and for recalling the
basic distinction which exists between genres. This distinction does not rep-
resent an arbitrary classification but, rather, is the expression of spiritual
activities that fundamentally differ from each other through the very prin-
ciples and criteria to which they refer.(u)
No more than metaphysics, theology is not amenable to being judged in
accord with the categories of aesthetics. I do not mean in its expressions but,
rather, in the value of the universality and permanence of the truths that it
defines. This flawed but brilliant and superficial page, written by a most dis-
tinguished author, provides a good example. Although it does not belong to
one of the works of the two collections that we have discussed, it finds a nat-
ural place in our discussions here:

In a present so ambiguous, between a death that is being consummated

and a life that is being born, what can the theologian do? What ought
he to do? His first move will be to return once more to the past. This

31 Julien Benda, “De la mobilité de la pensée selon une philosophie contemporaine,”

Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (Juillet 1945): 161–202.
(u) We again note this passage: “concerning this matter, the reference (following Benda)
to ‘the powerful thrust of irrational philosophies,’ introduces a touch of humor into this
allegation.” If Benda, alerted to this strange reference, rushes to read our text, he will
see that he is neither accused of drawing irrational philosophies in his wake nor even
with denouncing their thrust, but instead, is simply praised for reminding everyone of
[the importance of] precision and the drawing of distinction among genres.
This way of citing us raises much greater concerns for us—we must acknowledge this
fact—regarding the attention with which we have been read, than whatever concerns we
might have regarding our critics’ benevolence. Nonetheless, a note proves to us that
some portion of our thought has been retained: “Let us likewise note that there is some
arbitrariness involved in claiming for the same theory both the characteristic of rigorous
scientific methodological sophistication as well as a perpetual openness and extreme
plasticity.” We do not believe that scientific theology is something closed [and complete].
Instead, we think that it can be revised, indeed frequently, not in order to replace an idea
that was fashionable in the thirteenth century with one that is fashionable in the twen-
tieth century but, rather, in order to benefit from the informative labor and reflection
undertaken through the centuries, forever striving to attain a greater amount of truth.
More than the rights of St. Thomas’s teaching, what we uphold are the rights of theology
as a science. (1947)
T H EO LO GY A N D I T S S O U R C E S 159

return will be beneficial but only on one condition: that he understand

well that history, far from dispensing us from creative effort, imposes
it on us. Our artists, and in particular our architects, all acknowledge
this. A Greek temple, a Romanesque church, a Gothic cathedral all
merit our admiration, because they are witnesses to a beauty and truth
that are incarnate in time. But to reproduce them now in our present
day would constitute an anachronism, all the more appalling to the
extent the copies were more minutely exact. The intent to revive them,
to adapt them to the needs of the time, would be even worse. Such an
effort could only beget horrors. All attempts at “adaptation” to current
tastes are doomed to the same fate. No more than architecture does the-
ology escape this universal law. In neo-Greek style, the column of antiq-
uity loses its original qualities of simplicity and becomes an intolerable
imitation. And the same may be said of Saint Thomas: “A great and esti-
mable doctor, renowned, authoritative, canonized, and very much dead
and buried” (Péguy). We should not imagine that there are other esti-
mable figures who in our eyes are better capable of withstanding such
treatment! We have turned our gaze on a more distant past, but we have
not done so in the belief that, in order to give life to a languishing sys-
tem of thought, it would suffice to exhume the “Greek Fathers” and
adapt them for better or worse to the needs of the modern soul. We are
not ingenious enough to prefer a “neopatristic” theology to a “neoscho-
lastic” theology! There is never a historical situation that is absolutely
similar to any of the ones that preceded it in time. Thus, there is no his-
torical situation that can furnish us with its own solutions as a kind of
master key capable of resolving all the problems that plague us today.32(v)

But can we be so certain that a historical period necessarily knows only

particular problems and always refuses to rise to those that are simply human,

32 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of
Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Mark Sebanc (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995), 9–10.
(v) One can see in “Réponse” the complaint our citation suggests (“Réponse,” 80). Now,
we maintain that this text contains exactly what we critique in it. The fact that he likens
the Fathers to St. Thomas does not reassure us at all. It is not only opposed to the adapt-
ing of an old doctrine to the tastes of the day but is also opposed to its “exhumation.”
The comparison between theology and architecture is inadmissible, for it forbids us from
returning to ancient thought, as we have suggested, on the pretext that no historical sit-
uation is absolutely similar to any of those which preceded it, as if thought has never
ascended, and could not still ascend, to that which is eternally human [à de l’éternelle-
ment humain], to that which is timeless. This justifies our protest: “For our part, we
believe that definitive intellectual acquisitions take place in the domain of [human]
knowledge.” Any theology worthy of the name tends, with more or less success, towards
such acquisitions. As regards the burial of St. Thomas, it would take no less than all the
resources of figurative exegesis in order to exonerate Fr. von Balthasar for having so
readily proclaimed it following Péguy (whom we love for other reasons, though we do not
hold that he is a significant authority in this debate). (1947)
160 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

problems whose data and solutions will reach up to the level of universal
truth? And while it is indeed the case that truth and beauty converge and are
really identical in being, expressing for us riches that are found in being but
that are not sufficiently explicit in our own first knowledge thereof, nonethe-
less, precisely speaking, the notions of truth and beauty have different mean-
ings, thereby calling for different spiritual activities on our part and, thus,
fundamentally different attitudes. We expect a teaching to do something
more for us than merely to awaken within ourselves a sense of beauty or
merely to expose us to what is, in the end, an incommunicable experience. If
it does this as well, we will be all the more indebted to such a teaching.
However, its first responsibility is to raise us up to perceive—certainly, yes,
with our own personal and living intelligence—truths that others have per-
ceived before us, truths that have the same value for us as it had for them.
We should not look upon theology as though it were a series of museum dis-
plays that, in the end, only function as an invitation for us to do something
similar in our own era. For our part, we believe that definitive intellectual
acquisitions are found in the domain of [human] knowledge. Nonetheless,
no matter how much one might believe that something represents a form of
progress, not all cases of apparent advance have in fact represented true steps
forward. Many illusions and regressions can be found in the history of
thought, but those cases of progress that have been tested and proven by time
are to be counted among the most valuable riches that our culture has
bequeathed to us. And if St. Thomas is so dear to us, this is because, to our
eyes, he is the theologian who best introduces us—at once with the greatest
of self-effacement and true boldness—to “a most-fruitful understanding of
the mysteries,” something which, according to the [First] Vatican Council,
constitutes the very nature of theology (Denz. 3016).
 4
Criticism in Theology:
A Response
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP

[Prefatory note in the volume Dialogue théologique:] The solemn and public
character of the response [that, in the volume Dialogue théologique, directly
precedes this essay1] did not permit us to wait for the next issue of the Revue
thomiste [in order to respond in turn]. Given that the response by the Jesuit
fathers was not signed, we believe that each person we critiqued, even if only
in passing, takes full responsibility for the response. Therefore, we have
named Frs. de Lubac, Daniélou, Bouillard, Fessard, and von Balthasar. If, here
and there, we happen to single out one of them—for example, Fr. de Lubac—
the reader should understand this as being solely a stylistic device, bearing
in mind that we do not mean to split them up.
*****

T
he most recent issue of Recherches de science de religieuse in 1946
presented a collective response to the criticisms I formulated in the
Revue thomiste (May–August 1946) regarding certain orientations in
the collections Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie. The authors did not sign
their names to the work, intending thereby to show that the article was
written as a shared enterprise, aimed at what they consider to be an act of
agression. I need only remind you of their names—Frs. de Lubac, Daniélou,
Bouillard, Fessard, and von Balthasar—in order for you to see that we are
dealing with a formidable contingent. The fact that this opposition is so
capable a group renders it quite unlikely that we intended for our earlier
article to be a “summary execution” of these men.
I would like to begin by thanking my critics for giving me this
opportunity to explain myself more fully. All this discussion, they say, has
been “uneven”2 [en porte à faux], or so they would have us believe. However,
we believe that it is quite easy to show that this state of affairs has arisen solely

1 [Tr. note: The response penned by the Jesuit fathers can be found as “Response to ‘The
Sources of Theology’” in Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook, ed. and trans. Patricia
Kelly (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), 73–82.]
2 Dialogue théologique, 94.

161
162 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

because they have shifted the focus of the debate and that it could be—that
it can without a doubt always be—the starting point of very useful
clarifications, not only concerning our respective positions (which after all
are not so very important) but, moreover, concerning much broader
questions pertaining to theological methodology. In any case, I believe that
this is the only real matter of interest to be considered, and it alone provides
my most worthwhile excuse for continuing to speak about these matters to
our readers. I would have preferred for these discussions to remain solely on
this ground. Thus, I apologize for needing to begin by explaining certain
grievances which have no bearing in this present intellectual debate. Indeed,
personally, I would normally not allow myself to introduce them into a
theological discussion.

I. AN ENORMOUS EXTRAPOLATION
The great reproach registered against me is that I followed a deplorable
methodology that supposedly had as its essential principle—or its result—
the constant exercise of “extrapolation.” I will elaborate on this further on.
However, I would first like to point out that, in their own self-defense, the
five aforementioned authors commit all kinds of utterly unpardonable
extrapolations: not one that, remaining within the field of ideas, erroneously
universalizes, mixing together two different levels of knowledge, without
respecting the differentiation of various noetics, but rather, a form of
extrapolation that makes a debate over ideas into a personal affair, implying
that a theological discussion in fact involves some kind of rivalry between
religious orders and attempting to explain a purely doctrinal position in
terms of machinations and the designs of who-knows-what sort of intra-
ecclesiastical “politics.” I am quite obliged to address these insinuations,
which surely are the saddest part of this Response, sad not so much for me
but for those who come to reflect on the “mores” [moeurs] involved in
theological controversy.
1˚ They speak (granted, in very veiled words) of conversations held in
certain circles close to us, of private correspondences (!), and of the “unusual”
publication of our booklet prior to the publication of the volume of our Revue
in which this article was to belong,3 thus looking to insinuate that we are, if
not the organizers of a “larger plan,” at least the accomplices or the
implementors thereof.4 What lies underneath these insinuations? Do they
know much more about these matters than do we? And thus, are they sure

3 How can one use the expression “a call to arms” [brochure de combat] for a simple off-
print that had a distribution of only 35 copies?—See note (a) in the previous article.
4 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” in Dialogue théologique (Saint-Maximin: Les
Arcades, 1947), 94.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 163

concerning machinations that we have the honor of being unaware of? If so,
then why mix us up in these affairs? Or, perhaps they voice suspicions and
are referring to certain agitations that we have in fact encountered, and in
that case, I can tell them that they may well be astonished (at least in the state
of mind they manifest in their writing) if they knew what we actually think
regarding these agitations. We respect the Magisterium too much to muddle
it up with our quarrels. It falls to it alone to assess whether it needs to
intervene. I have had the occasion to write to one of our interlocutors and to
convey to him that our specific intention was to place the debate on the field
of fair and public discussion oriented toward clear explanations, believing
that nothing was better suited to removing it from the atmosphere of covert
suspicions and denunciations, which, alas, all-too-often ends up bogging
down theological controversies. Would they have prefered us to circulate
anonymous papers, like those with which France is currently awash? We do
not condemn anyone, and it is too easy to return an anathema against him
who levels it without authority. We have remained solely on the field of ideas,
and our adversaries were the ones who left it by resorting to methods that,
to say the least, are uniquely suited for lowering the level of this debate.
2˚ The Response does not fear to expand this debate into a rivalry
between religious orders. I have “attacked a certain number of Jesuit
theologians”! (I wanted to take up anew the “disputes of another age”!) This
group is the one who responds to me, but they let me know—and I
understand all too well the trouble I have gotten myself into!—that they have
the support of the censors and superiors of the Society of Jesus, “without
whom [they] do not publish a single line.”5 Did I have the slightest intention
of accusing the Society along with its censors and superiors? I have the most
sincere admiration for it, its saints, its great spiritual writers, certain
theologians, apostles, and missionaries, and I am well aware of the great loss
the Church would suffer if the Jesuits were to disappear. Merely in terms of
Catholic publications at present, and only in France, this would lead to the
disappearance of a great share of the best works being put into print. Indeed,
for Thomism itself, this would involve the absence of studies of the highest
quality, such as, merely to give one example, Fr. Joseph de Finance’s recent
book, “Être et agir.”
But such a thought never crossed my mind! I do not think the authors
I have named would engage the Society in this dispute any more than I
would engage the Order of St. Dominic, which, even if I wished to do so,
certainly does not lend itself to such mobilization. I have mentioned neither
the name of my order nor the province to which I belong, nor the name of
the house of studies where I reside, nor even the name of the Revue thomiste,

5 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 95.

164 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

whose editorial board, granted, is homogenous enough for its members to

recognize themselves in the idea I have defended, though, nonetheless,
theologians and philosohers who are entirely indepedent collaborate in its
work as well.
Moreover, is it not common knowledge that the collection Sources
Chrétiennes, directed by Frs. de Lubac and Daniélou, is edited by a team that
has connections to our own Dominican brotherhood and, moreover, that for
our own part, we feel frank admiration for its inventive spirit and energy,
even though, with good reason, I did not think it would feel that it was being
persecuted merely because we would exercise our free right to register
criticism concerning this or that publication in the collection?
3˚ In connection with the first insinuation (still not about my person,
“we want to say,” but about my “environment”) and through an “overreach”
[dépassement] that is no more forgiveable, the authors of the Response come
to speak of the resurrection of “fundamentalism” [“intégrisme”]. If this
involves specific facts or attitudes, let them tell us about them! Otherwise,
we are entitled to assume that this game of labels is akin to that played by
parties who mutual accuse each other of being “fascists” and “communists.”
May God grant that the example offered here by the Reverend Fathers not
be followed and that these mores [moeurs] not be introduced into
theological controversy! If a fundamentalist party exists, we are not
members of it. We belong to no party, for we refuse to consider Thomism
as being a party.
4˚ The Response presents an entirely dramatized account of my critical
intervention. It seems that I consider myself a “judge” charging a defendent
upon the stand or an “examiner” bullying timid defendants. Is it not enough
to repeat that the defendants in question are Frs. de Lubac, Daniélou, Fessard,
and von Balthasar, all who have been well-known for some time as the
authors of important and justly-praised works, which have recieved the most
complimentary [flatteuses] reviews in most journals? For heaven’s sake, next
to them, who am I! I did not think that my position as director of the Revue
thomiste could make an impression on them and arouse such feelings of
“persecution.”
5˚ Finally, should we not mention, in a debate that could have remained
entirely objective, the constant shift (extrapolation, as they say) towards
arguments that engage circumstances or personal qualities (or, alas, even
flaws!)? Below, we will discuss how it is that we conceive of the role to be
played by criticism in theology, a modest role, perhaps, but how necessary
indeed. We are also asked to produce “works” ourselves. This is our desire
and our ambition. We are striving to do so with our own resources, but none
of us thinks we have rendered the Church services that would equal those,
for example, of Fr. de Lubac. (I say this without a hint of irony.) Leave it to
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 165

others to tell us again and again that our means are poor and results
nonexistent.6
Once again, I ask pardon of our readers for this kind of controversy,
which we greatly desired to spare them, given that it is fruitless and, really,
uncalled for. I did not desire for the debate to be lowered to the level of
polemics, but I am obliged to raise it and give my response. My excuse will
be that often made by the great Cajetan after certain debates: “Stultus fui:
Durandus me coegit. I was foolish: Durandus forced me to it.”

II. CRITICISM IN THEOLOGY

Let us attempt to elevate this debate. We have yet to explain ourselves or to
respond to some severe criticisms raised against us. At the very least, this
response will be on the level of ideas and made in the hope of a reaching a
result belonging to a more universal order of things. It will not be useless to
reflect on certain general principles that underlie the legitimacy of criticism
in theology as well as on the qualities or disadvantages of certain
methodologies that, in the present case, are called into question.

A. The Legitimacy and Meaning of Criticism

The article for which I am being critiqued was presented as being a critical
study. This type of work is nothing new, and while it requires as much
seriousness as any other, I do not think that its general utility is questionable.
Still, we must recognize its own particular requirements.
1˚ By its very nature, a critical study involves the assessment
[appréciation] of certain doctrines. If the critic desires to perform something
other than a mere review of the information, he must take a position and
begin a debate that, perhaps, will call for discussion. One may think that
many discussions are useless, but isn’t this true for all kinds of works? Were
criticism only to inspire authors to do the best they can and to overcome
facile mediocrity, it would deserve to be cultivated. However, how can
someone undertake such a task without expressing and defending his own

6 Allow me to address but one point, for it is indicative of the tone of the Response,
showing how its authors interpreted what I meant by stating my desire for greater
rigor in thought and greater care to be exercised in the specifying of terms. They pre-
tend to believe that I was proposing myself as a model and add that I do not hold a
monopoly in this kind of rigor and that, moreover, when understood along the lines
that I seemed to conceive of it, such rigor is, rather, a form of illusion and the mark
of an unfortunate confusion. However, I am ready to say, just as much as they are,
they all have what it takes to be more rigorous, more profound, and more precise
than I. I will even use superlatives here for them, for I refuse to get involved in this
ridiculous competition.
166 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

thought? Does the fact that one defends it and continues to manifest its firm
foundations necessarily imply the desire to “impose” it?
The Reverend Fathers have, in fact, resorted to raising a protest which is
all too easy to make. (And why do so in this tone?) It seems that I gave in to
the temptation to “monopolize the truth in its contents, as well as in its very
form.”7 On the other hand, they will never consent to “reduce the boundaries
of orthodoxy to that of (their) personal thought in its most systematic
expression.”8 We thank them for this. However, do I really need to point out
the quite-obvious fact that I don’t claim to be infallible? None of the editors
of the Revue thomiste, and especially I myself, refuses, in turn, to be subjected
to criticism. I agree to be measured with the same measure that I use and
will be convinced of my errors when I am mistaken! If my interpretation was
not accurate, perhaps it was at least a beginning. If I am guilty of some
confusion, perhaps many others have fallen into the same confusion. Isn’t
this simply an opportunity to explain one’s reasoning? Has the dramatization
presented by the Reverend Fathers become a hallucination, leading them to
look upon me as though I were clad in a judge’s robe?
2˚ Not only did I express my thoughts on points pertinent to my
opponents’ work, but, moreover, it seems I did it with “negative critiques.”9
What does this mean? If I understand things aright, a critique remains
negative when it is systematically destructive, remaining unconcerned with
discerning the true from the false or the good from the bad. Its only aim is
to contradict without any concern to direct the mind towards solutions, or
at least toward principles of solution, which will be brought to light by the
discussion itself. Now, does this describe our critique? I don’t believe it does.
We expressed our admiration for Jean Moroux’s book, The Meaning of
Man. I could have been tempted to contrast this book with the “spirit” of the
Théologie collection, but on the contrary, I expressly noted that it obviously
belongs to it and offers a model of what it might give us if its intention, which
is indeed excellent in the positive claims that it makes, were not vitiated, in
several other volumes, by a visible tendency to depreciate scholastic theology.
Certainly, this is my personal thought, but why should I be forbidden to
express it, if I justify it (as I believe I have done)? I did not attempt to define
the authors’ intentions, which I certainly do not know, but rather what,
objectively, appears to a reader of the first volumes as being the general plan
of the collection: “a positive and constructive design which is more important
than the defects that tarnish their aim. It presents a theology that is more
conscious, at once, of its rich sources, of the diversity of its historical expres-

7 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 92.

8 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 97.
9 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 93.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 167

sions, of the conditions of its historical development, and the most pressing
and contemporary of human realities. Let us state up front our full agreement
and complete sympathy with these aims.” Do we not see such “entirely
negative criticism” wholly on the side of a “response,” which holds that these
were empty praises, choosing, instead, to focus on my reservations—which
I myself, however, declared to be secondary (pp. 135–36 above)—as though
they alone had determined the reflexive response of a wounded sensitivity?
The Response speaks (Dialogue théologique, p. 86) of my “scandal at the
thought that, in contrast to the Budé collection of classical texts, someone
might dare to try to give life, in some way, to the writings of Christian antiq-
uity.” My text makes no such claim. I appreciate this design, and I praised it.
In my opinion, the benefit and timeliness of the Sources Chrétiennes collection
are obvious. Did I hide this opinion? Here again, why was it necessary to pass
over my praises and mention only my reservations? The critique that seemed
unacceptable had none of the meaning given to it in the response. I said, and
do indeed think, that we can never value ancient Christian texts highly
enough. I see no drawback in translating texts in order to “highlight” them
by “bringing them to life” or by understanding them from within. I only
expressed my reservation on one specific point involved in the orientation
of Sources Chrétiennes, namely, the desire to emphasize, above all, “categories
that are those of contemporary thought, which scholastic theology had lost.”
This “ulterior motive,” which is already quite noticeable in several volumes,
happened to be formulated in express terms by one of the directors of the
collection, Fr. Daniélou. Did I not have the right to question it and prefer
either a pure historical methodology or less preoccupation with finding ready
harmony [concordisme] with contemporary thought. How does this remark
go beyond the rights of criticism and render “entirely negative” an overall
assessment that is, in fact, substantially positive?
Although I refrained from saying it so bluntly, I also think that certain
apologetic concerns, certain ways of making connections with “contemporary
thought,” reflect—objectively and despite whatever might be the personal
intentions of the authors, something I have never questioned, not for a single
moment—an intolerable form of dalliance. This assessment can be debated.
But is this criticism also entirely negative, and do we not have the right to
think that theology would gain much by ridding itself of attitudes that, to the
eyes of many unbelieving thinkers, seems like a vulgar inferiority complex?
Supposedly, my bias to criticize at any cost led me to present reflections
regarding the “clothing metaphor,” which contradicted earlier statements
made by the Revue thomiste. I persist in thinking—for they do not even bother
to point out my error—that this metaphor is objectionable, not because it is
utterly incapable of having an acceptable meaning, but rather, because it is so
freighted with historical connections (given how it has been used over the
168 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

course of the last fifty years) that it today calls to mind the most questionable
ideas10 I have already written about why the ideas of Fr. Bouillard clearly seem
questionable to me, giving this metaphor an unacceptable sense. I noted it in
the preface by Fr. Fessard, where I believe it has a similar meaning in relation
to the Thomistic notion of the common good. It is not without paradox that
this book presents itself as being dedicated to “restoring the value” of this
notion, written by a convinced Thomist, whereas the entire effort expended
in the work aims to ground the notions that he proposes by placing them on
the foundation of a fully Hegelian dialectic, thereby giving them new meaning.
In no way do I deny Fr. Fessard the right to not be a Thomist, but I reserve
the right to critique his effort in the pages of the Revue thomiste, doing so from
the Thomistic perspective, and to say that the use of this metaphor represents
a cavalier way of casting aside St. Thomas’s authority in theology.11
3˚ I finally arrive at a capital point: I am essentially being accused of lit-
igating matters of orthodoxy. What is the basis for this reproach?
I will not go back over the insulting insinuations, which I will leave to
my readers to classify (conversations in circles close to us, correspondence,
etc. . . .). If this were the only thing one could think of, then I would deny
them outright, though not without strongly protesting against the publicity
given to such suspicions.
Could this claim be founded on the tone I used, in which my opponents
heard the desire to “impose” my own outlook? I have already explained
myself concerning this accusation, and I must reiterate that such sensitivity
surprises me. I believed myself far too puny, especially in comparison with
the authors I criticized, to think I would be given an authority other than
that which properly belongs to my arguments.
Therefore, this claim can only be founded on the arguments presented.
But, in that case, our plaintiff ’s protest rests on an enormous misunderstanding.
It is true I said that certain assertions, pushed to their consequences, do
not seem to me compatible with the Church’s teachings. But these teach-
ings—that is, the objective determination of the faith or of truths more or
less close to faith—are the very principles of theology. What would theological
discussion or theological criticism be if we did not have the right to compare
consequences with their principles, to strive to show their disparity and thus
to detect the illogicality involved in the theological reasoning being proposed?
Does this challenge the theologian’s personal faith and his intention to remain

10 See “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 85n1. My own assessment can be found
in the words of another author who is completely uninvolved in the present discussion,
writing in 1930: “To judge that Thomism was a garment worn in the thirteenth century
but now is out of fashion, as though the value of metaphysics were time-dependent, rep-
resents a truly barbaric way of thinking.” (Jacques Maritain, Le Docteur Angélique, 14).
11 If this study was not theological, why would it be in the Théologie collection?
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 169

orthodox? This represents an entirely different domain, and I have in no way

permitted myself to go there.
I said, and continue to think, until the contrary is shown to me, that the
way Fr. Bouillard explains the progress of theology, as well as the permanence
of dogmatic formulas, is incompatible with the demands of the latter.
However, I also said, and am convinced, that he believes that he sees this
compatibility, and his intent was even to escape the very relativism that, in
my opinion is implied by the formulas he uses (p. 149 above). All I want is to
be convinced that I have made a mistake. If his explanations are victorious,
it will bolster the clarity of his own formulations and will be of aid to myself
as well. But God forbid I should think—or even more so, insinuate—that any
of the Frs. de Lubac, Daniélou, Bouillard, Fessard, von Balthasar, or anyone
else, intend to reject Catholic orthodoxy! I affirm that I very clearly think the
opposite is the case and that, in my opinion, any unprejudiced mind consid-
ering their works will admire the Christian spirit and apostolic zeal animating
them and will surely only be able to find its wellsprings in a living faith. May
God grant that we may emulate them in this!
This conception of criticism is not unusual. What do we reproach a phi-
losopher for if not for having poorly observed, poorly reflected upon, or
poorly reasoned, and consequently, for presenting conclusions that can be
denounced for their inconsistency or illogicality? Does this call into question
the soundness of his mind or, a fortiori, his mental health?
Instead of debating my “errors,” the Fathers, invoking this time all the
“censors” and “superiors” of the Society, ask me if I consider them all to be
so blind as to not realize that they would, in fact, bring about dogmatic dev-
astation?12 But what would they say of a philosopher who would simply reply
to any criticism of his ideas that if his opponent were right, he himself would
have been intelligent enough to see his error? Can we not reject an opinion
without implicitly considering its author blind or unintelligent? In truth, this
represents quite a unique conception of the life of the mind, its complexity,
the difficulties it encounters, and the thousands of occasions for it to fall into
error. Or would this not be to fall into that subjectivism for which I am cri-
tiqued so much for having spoken of, a subjectivism which ultimately shows
itself to be incapable of considering a set of objective statements independ-
ently of the qualities or defects of its author?
4˚ Perhaps it would remain to be seen whether criticism thus conceived
is actually useful, useful precisely inasmuch as it is demanding. But here we
encounter, under our opponents’ pen, a confession which is not lacking in
ingenuity: “Securi loquebamur.”13 Were they then forgetting the point they

12 See “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 95.

13 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 83.
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quite rightly make further on, that “the first rigor to be exercised in dogmatic
matters is a rigor against oneself ”14?
Yes, we believe that the security of approval and praise numbs this
requirement and rigor and that one of the important roles played by criticism
is that of requiring an author to preserve and exercise it. It is certainly less
compromising and more comfortable—especially when speaking about
works by a person so widely lauded [aussi flatteusement connu] as Fr. de
Lubac, for example—to use only holy water and express only admiration,
which indeed is justified in many ways. But were we merely to limit ourselves
to expressing praise, would we really render any service, even to his thought
and to the quality of his works? I doubt it.
Just as our criticism does not intend to be completely “negative,” to no
less degree does it mean to express some bias, especially one that would be
personal. We do not feel the slightest pain in proclaiming that Fr. de Lubac
wrote an admirable book on Proudhon, indeed, one that perhaps he alone
could ever have written. However, we do not believe we are dispensed from
saying with no less force that Corpus Mysticum,15 under the guise of present-
ing a historical account, introduces points concerning the role played by
“ratio,” reason, in theology and scholastic methodology that are contestable
and tend of themselves—once again, we are not placing motives on trial!—to
depreciate St. Thomas “in a matter in which he is the doctor.” We will also
say that Surnaturel, alongside solid historical studies, presents summary and
hasty generalizations,16 wishing, out of an allegedly “historical” concern, to
lead us back to a St. Thomas, whom he sees through the lenses of a very con-
temporary school of thought, which has drawn significant inspiration from
the ideas of Maurice Blondel. He is free to defend himself against such criti-
cism, but why should he be content with being indignant about it?
5˚ We will summarize the intention of the critical studies published in
the Revue thomiste by saying that our aim is to render services, not judgments

14 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 97.

15 I note here a misreading that would lead us to doubt the attention with which we have
been read. Fr. de Lubac refers (“La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 80) to an assess-
ment I made concerning his book Surnaturel that, in fact, was expressly directed against
Corpus Mysticum: “A book that also accentuates the reactionary character (of the Théol-
ogie collection) against the speculative theology elaborated by St. Thomas” (p. 147n14
above). It seems Fr. de Lubac is not upset for giving the impression that we did not read
his books before commenting on them. What, then, should we think about the indigna-
tions he registers against our “methodologies” [procédés]?
16 Fr. Jacques de Blic, who does not publish “a line without the approval [en dehors des]
of the censors and superiors of the Society” has recently noted an example of this in
“Quelque vieux textes sur la notion de l’ordre surnaturel,” Mélanges de science religieuse
(1946): 359[–62].
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 171

(Péguy). We are not infallible, nor do we believe ourselves to be so. If we stake

out clear positions, rather than wandering around in doubts, we in no way
do so in a spirit of imposing them on anybody. Anyone who wants to con-
tradict us has at his disposal the same types of arguments as do we. If there
are “parties” (even here!), we do not belong to any of them, for we refuse to
consider Thomism as being a party, or a church, or a fortiori, a chapel. If it
happens that we compare an author’s conclusion with what seems to us to be
the requirements of objective determinations of the faith, this is because theo-
logical argumentation could not abandon this kind of reasoning without
thereby itself vanishing. However, our reasoning has no other authority than
itself, and it stands freely in the open for anyone to show that we are wrong.
And such debates must in no way involve personal accusations, nor claims
concerning the quality of their interlocutors’ faith, nor their intention to
defend Catholic orthodoxy! It took no less than so huge a misunderstanding
by our opponents to make us judge it useful to proclaim this obvious fact.
We are entitled to ask more of the critique registered against us. It would
be a major reproach to say that it is aggressive or systematically negative. In
order to avoid the appearance of attributing any superiority to ourselves—
on what grounds?—we will not speak of “benevolence”; however, we will
speak of “sympathy,” something that we do not think that we have lacked.

B. On the Methodology to Be Used in Criticism

The grievances we have raised so far lie at the roots of the most serious mis-
understandings, at least those that have done the most to displace this dis-
cussion and to lead it into a domain we wish we had not been forced to enter.
Nonetheless, one of the most specific criticisms raised, one I would most will-
ingly accept if it were supported by arguments and not mere indignation, is
that of having followed a seriously flawed methodology. However, I am sorry
that I am not convinced by the swift pages17 dedicated to this subject, indeed
pages that manifest unbridled imagination. They would make even those who
are more convinced than we are skeptical concerning the scope of so many
brilliant psychological reconstructions in history!
My “most unusual methodology [procédé],” the one “woven throughout”
my entire critical study is, it seems, “the method of overreaching.”18 I believe
this is what is called later my “boldness in extrapolation.” Here is how it is
reconstructed. [The authors of the Response claim that] after having forged a
heretical monster on account of my “preoccupations” [prévention d’esprit], I
looked for traces of it in the most diverse writings “without bothering to

17 See “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 77–79.

18 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 82.
172 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

analyze any of them”—nor even, perhaps, to read them?19—commenting on

them in light of one another. As a result, I was led—such was the “slope” that
did not fail to lead me into the “abyss”—even to the point of supposing “ulte-
rior motives,” even where I could not see anything objectionable.
Do I need to say that, in my opinion, a study animated by such a spirit
does not even have the right to be discussed? Do they impute this spirit to
me so that they may dispense themselves of the need to engage in a discus-
sion? It would seem so from reading the pleasant presentation that is then
sketched out—in broad strokes, rest assured!—concerning the “results” to
which this methodology led me.
But I must first explain myself concerning this very methodology, whose
origins and development my opponents wanted to present from its roots (and
from within?), and since they seem willing to be interested in the approach
guiding my work, I will simply explain it to them.
During the years of silence that the war and occupation imposed on the
Revue thomiste, we received relatively few books. The announcement of the
Sources Chrétiennes collection seemed to me to be a considerable event. I fol-
lowed it book by book without yet having any definite plans for review, allow-
ing myself, to the contrary, to take in the incomparable charm of these ancient
texts, along with the new-found freshness and savor of their Christian sen-
timent. I felt a fundamental appreciation for the founders of this collection,
along with the warmest gratitude. I have not withdrawn any of these sen-
timents. This doesn’t mean, however, that I didn’t have my reservations. I will
unequivocally confess that even the introduction of the first volume20 seemed
to me so evidently written with an aim to please, so concerned with being in
close connection with “contemporary categories,” and in this way, from the
outset, with orienting the reader’s mind towards something other than merely
providing a nourishing contact with an admirable text, that I was sorry to
see this overly “apologetic” inflection. To my eyes, this seems be a danger for
the collection. The drawback to these kinds of accommodations is that what
they render very contemporary for today begins, in but a day, to show its age
by the very same token.
I did not feel less hesitant upon the subsequent publishing of Fr. de
Lubac’s introduction to Origen’s Homilies. This plea for reinvigorating fig-
urative exegesis did not persuade me that it was wise to seek from the Greek
Fathers, among all the many riches that they offer us, something that, in my
opinion, is less excellent in their thought [ce que. . . ils ont eu de moins bon].
Again, this is a point we can debate, so why raise one’s arms in the air as
though one were being attacked?

19 See “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 81.

20 St. Gregory of Nyssa, Vie de Möise, intro., trans., and notes by Jean Daniélou.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 173

Thus, little by little, a body of data was amassed, not new, of course, but
brought up to date with the latest developments, which seemed to me to pose
a much larger problem having a more general scope, one that possibly was
even decisive for Christian thought: the relationship between our developed
theology, which is indeed perhaps too fixed, and its sources. And I confess
that this problem seemed to me even more interesting than the particular
data that gave it a renewed urgency.
In the meanwhile, the Théologie collection was beginning to appear. The
first volume, written by Fr. Bouillard, on the occasion of a particular point,
though one of very great importance (for it concerns the very way that we
must conceive of grace), devoted an entire conclusion to the general problem
of the development of Christian thought. At the very least, his response
seemed, to my eyes, obscure and confused, though clear in the assertion that
since the historical position of St. Thomas differed fundamentally from that
of modern theology it was now false.21
The second volume, written by Fr. Daniélou, after the disappointment
caused by a title that was broader than the actual object of the book (the truth
would have been better served by swapping the title and subtitle), gave the
reader more substantial satisfaction, in my opinion, than the slightly limited
study by Fr. von Balthasar also on Gregory of Nyssa. Fr. Daniélou at least
approached, frankly and in a most interesting way, a problem that had already
been posed elsewhere by, among others, Fr. Arnou, S.J. and Fr. Festugière,
O.P. Contrary to these thinkers, Fr. Daniélou wanted to show that literal Pla-
tonic formulations, or more profoundly, schemata, had been, in reality, so
deeply rethought and taken up again on a new plane by Gregory that they
are, as far as he is concerned, purely and simply Christian. Far from having
been a burden for the thought of the great Doctor, remaining like a defect in
his formulations, they were quite successful in expressing an essentially
Christian experience. I have no grounds for taking sides in this debate.
However, without deciding whether he was right or wrong concerning this
particular point, I noticed that in his reasoning, Fr. Daniélou greatly dimin-
ished the importance of conceptual constructions in order to be, above all,
attentive to the authenticity of experience and of spirituality, which gave for-
mulations their true value, using with a kind of pleasure the word “symbol-
ism” to describe this claim.
Moreover, how can we fail to read this work alongside the two volumes
in the Sources collection that translate texts of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the first
entirely presented by Fr. Daniélou and the second annotated by him? How is
it improper for us to compare books by the same author? And does the mere
fact that they belong to different collections mean that we have no right to

21 See “Theology and its Sources,” pp. 150–51 (above).

174 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

speak about them together? (“Thus, in order to understand the hidden mean-
ing of innocent translations of the Fathers, they would need to be interpreted
in light of a collection of theological studies.”22)
Shortly thereafter, a third volume appeared in the Théologie collection. It
was by Fr. de Lubac and strove to provide a historical account of the ancient
meaning of the expression Corpus Mysticum. So greatly did the supple talent
of its author animate the work that it remained unburdened by the austerity
of its unabashed erudition. However, under the apparent delimitation of its
precise object, what problems his book raises! It implies nothing less than a
radical alteration in the methodologies of theological reflection. Moreover,
such observations are perfectly assured, but they are not delivered here merely
at the stage of observation. The author connects the discussion with some of
his cherished ideas, in particular all those concerned with the role played by
symbolism in ancient thought. In the age of scholasticism, [we are told,] it
happened that theology became rationalist. Interests shifted to new problems,
resulting in considerable impoverishment. Thomism, which doubtlessly was
one of the most successful fruits of this new method, was itself only a begin-
ning, later far surpassed in the line of such rationalist desiccation. Let him
who can conclude from Fr. de Lubac’s presentation that this development
brought substantial progress along with it. The obvious meaning—not of all
of the erudition with which this book abounds, but of the idea, the historico-
theological position that underlies it—is, much rather, that this was the source
of a great misfortune. Not total misfortune, of course. Fr. de Lubac is not a
personal enemy of St. Thomas—far from it! His declarations on this point are
not only sincere (which we have no right to doubt); they are well-founded.
However, his admiration is accompanied by the greatest of sorrow. Fr. de
Lubac maintains an active nostalgia for the Patristic age and its methodologies,
which he, in fact, excels in sharing. He has an absolute right to hold this opin-
ion, but do we not also have the right to tell him that we see things differently?
Do we not have the right to tell him that the historical arc he presents to us
concerning the development of Christian thought seems, to our eyes, partially
skewed, obscuring the profound meaning of the progressive constitution of
theology as a science, properly so called? Do we not have the right, indeed an
elementary right belonging to criticism, to see the continuity that exists
between, on the one hand, this book and, on the other, the argument he offers
on behalf of symbolic exegesis in the volume of the Sources Chrétiennes col-
lection dedicated to Origen? Here again, the two collections meet again.
Where is our “overreaching”? Where is our “extrapolation”?
Perhaps it is now clear why we thought we should speak about the
Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie collections in one and the same critical

22 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 78.

CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 175

study. It is purely and simply false to say that I began by seeing “a heretical
monster appear before my eyes”—maybe with the sole aim of attacking Jesuit
theologians?—and that I searched in disparate and unconnected books, with-
out “analyzing any of them,” looking for anything that could give some plau-
sibility to my naïve bogeyman.
But I will go even further with the explanations I never thought I would
need to provide. Nowhere did I say that I wanted to present a simple review
of the two collections that I mentioned. I was writing a critical overview [une
chronique] dedicated to the problem posed by the relationship between theology
and its sources, the problem concerning the very progress of this theology and,
thereby, the problem concerning its permanence. Ideas expressed elsewhere
thus entered into the scope of my study. In particular, the most recent Revue
du moyen-âge latin came to my attention. With my attention piqued by the
problem that Fr. Daniélou himself led me to pose with greater acuity con-
cerning the relationship between spirituality or experience and theological
expression, how could I fail to note the review of Gilson’s small book written
by Fr. Daniélou in that issue? What prevented me from using this text? I have
always believed that the best interpretation of an author should be sought
out from that author himself when, by chance, he has explained himself in
other places than the particular works being given more specific considera-
tion at a given time. In order to be true to the proper nature of a review, must
we avoid speaking of the author’s true thought? I do not mind the expression
being less controlled and the writing quicker, but does this mean we must
pay no attention to it?23 That would be quite a unique conception of criticism!
This is how most texts spoken of in my critical study came together. (I
shall speak of the others later). Their authors did not share merely a “family
resemblance,”24 something which, by the way, is true, though it is only of sec-
ondary interest to me. What was more, they objectively converged toward
the same problem—treated here in passing, albeit in express terms, and there
more fully, sometimes alongside Patristic studies and at other times alongside
studies of St. Thomas or his predecessors. In short, it was the problem of the-
ology itself, considered in its development, in its relationship with its sources,
whether historical or subjective. Did we not have the right to discuss the ideas

23 I said that the terms Fr. Daniélou uses in this note concerning the relationship between
spirituality and theological expression imply relativism in the latter, which would find its
true measure in the former, likewise commenting that such relativism leads to subjectiv-
ism. The author’s statements to the contrary are sufficient to convince me that he pro-
fesses neither relativism nor subjectivism. I gladly acknowledge this, but I still have the
right both to think and to say that the explanation that he offers is quite insufficient. I
am delighted to have given him the opportunity to dispel such an equivocation, which
doubtlessly would have caused him grief first of all.
24 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 78.
176 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

expressed on this point by various authors? The anathema launched against

the “overall presentation”—a considerable argument: it is comparable to a
“synthetic portrait”!—does not convince me that it was illegitimate. I remain
persuaded that this methodology is perfectly suitable and presents serious
advantages, despite the fact that it does have certain drawbacks. But isn’t this
true of every methodology? Which one would suffice on its own without con-
tinuous mental vigilance?
So, what remains is the way I used it. I will write neither a panegyric nor
even a complete apology on behalf of this point. I recognize that, despite my
intentions, as well as the precautions I believed I had taken, a given remark
addressed to one of the authors unduly spills over upon the others. I will
gladly take note of their protest and pass it on to my readers. I do not con-
tradict myself in doing so, for I asked for it (p. 138n6 above). However, I
should consider myself satisfied by the very way that this protest is made,
since the five authors whom I named collectively defend all the passages of
each of the authors where I raised a criticism! Can this fail to surprise: such
solidarity, not only in protest, but in ideas, at the very moment when these
authors solemnly proclaim their independence? I was prepared to say that I
was wrong for having cited Fr. de Lubac (on p. 147 above) and for failing to
specify that the further, much more general, discussion following that citation
was not aimed at him. Moreover, it is not very difficult to see that this further
discussion simply serves as a leadup to my critique of Fr. Bouillard’s book.
But now, by the very form of the Response, Fr. de Lubac seems to endorse Fr.
Bouillard’s ideas. If this is true, I will say, therefore, that without having tar-
geted him, my criticism nonetheless also hit him, for I continue to believe
that this critique remains valid against a system of ideas that alone would
explain Fr. Bouillard’s assertions. He speaks of “overreaching” and of “extrap-
olation.” Improper overreaching would consist in attributing to the author
the conscious acceptance of this system of ideas. I took great care not to level
such a charge, but since when does the critic not have the right to assess a set
of assertions and to point out their objective implications and consequences?
I deny that the least amount of extrapolation was involved here. Rather, this
represents an elementary methodology involved in any discussion. Getting
indignant does not resolve the question, and no more does a broad declara-
tion of contrary principles serve to resolve it either.25 The only valid response
is to discuss my arguments.

25 This declaration of principles resolves only a personal problem I never posed, namely,
that of Fr. Bouillard’s intentions and those of his personal philosophy. I only spoke about
his published statements and tried to spell out the philosophy objectively implied by
these declarations. I did so without claiming any infallibility.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 177

III. WHAT IS AT STAKE IN THIS DEBATE

However, it is very clear that the debate goes deeper still and engages ques-
tions which are more serious than those of methodology or even of the mean-
ing of criticism in theology.
The Response speaks about my “preoccupation of mind” and “grave con-
cerns.” Well, yes! Doubtlessly, I have them in a different sense than they think,
but I must admit the claim is true. The work of reflection that I have described
thus far, even using the method of “overall presentation,” would not have
reached the text of my critical study in the form in which it was read [by them].
Another current of reflection, this one charged with concern and anger,
brought with itself more tumultuous waters. My work was already mostly com-
posed (and in a wholly different tone) when Fr. Daniélou’s article was published
in the April 1946 issue of Études, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée reli-
gieuse.” In this exposé—which, in a delightful understatement, the Response
calls, “a wide-ranging piece with formulas that are sometimes rapid in charac-
ter”26—I read, “faced with the danger of agnosticism, Neo-thomism has again
accused theological rationalism.”27 (Will Fr. de Lubac perhaps tell me that it
should be understood that he has “indicted” it and that I should be grateful to
the author for this great praise?) A little further on, I read, “There was need of
warding off the dangers created by modernism. Neo-Thomism and the Biblical
Commission provided guardrails, but guardrails obviously are not answers.”28
Alongside these disdainful appraisals, I saw spreading forth that same desire
to be pleasing and the intention to attract others that I noted above in connection
with the same author’s introduction to St. Gregory of Nyssa’s The Life of Moses:
“theological speculations separated from action and engagement have run their
course.”29 Like Marxism or existentialism, we would have a “thought engaged
in life [une pensée engagée].”—Without in any way renouncing either action or
life, do we not have the right both to consider and to say that neglect of the spec-
ulative finality of knowledge as such would represent a great loss for Christian
thought and that agreement with existentialism and Marxism on this specific
point would be lamentable. Do we not have the right to fear this kind of intel-
lectual engagement? Several times, the same author criticizes Thomism and
scholastic thought for being too closed off from history.30 And, obviously, by

26 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 81.

27 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249 (April
1946): 6.
28 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 6–7.
29 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 7.
30 The Response states in summary: “Why be so outraged upon hearing that, histori-
cally considered, it (St. Thomas’s oeuvre) lacks a certain sense of history?” (Dialogue
178 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

this he means that reflection on history will only be integrated into contempo-
rary Christian thought by utilizing a philosophy that wholly differs from Tho-
mism. We have the right to hold that Thomism can be something more for us
than a mere historical datum, an object of scholarship, and that, considered in
its present life, it has something to offer to this reflection on history.
This instructive reading even taught me that scholastic theology (and,
therefore, Thomistic thought), fixed as it is in the “immobile world of Greek
thought,” puts “reality in essences more than in subjects,” and thereby
“ignores the dramatic world of persons.”31 But its great sin is that it treats God
as an “object,” whereas He is “the subject par excellence.”32

théologique, p. 87). Such a moderate and, in fact, unquestionable affirmation is, in no way,
the source of my “outrage.” Rather, my outrage is aimed at claims that are quite different:
“the notion of history is foreign to Thomism” (Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 10);
“Scholastic theology is foreign to these categories. The world which is its own is the immo-
bile world of Greek thought. . . . Moreover, it makes no room for history” (Daniélou, “Les
orientations présentes,” 14, text cited in whole, above, p. 141n8 above). “To lack a certain
sense of history” and to be entirely “foreign” to it, making “no room” for it, are by no means
the same thing. Moreover, Thomism is not only for us “the work of St. Thomas . . . histori-
cally considered.” It is a living doctrine that extends to truths that St. Thomas did not see,
a doctrine that, of course, is also stripped of much adventitious data, outmoded concep-
tions, and forms of narrowness all inevitably connected to a number historical influences
and to the state of medieval culture and science. We believe that Thomism is perfectly open
to the notion of history and that starting points for this sort of reflection are not lacking,
even in the work of St. Thomas himself, “historically considered.” With the method of alter-
native theses and skillful retreats one can distort all discussions and then solemnly declare
that discussion is “uneven” [en porte à faux]. Is this fully honest?
31 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 14.
32 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 7 and 16. Nowhere have I ever said that one is
forbidden to be interested in “subjective life” (Dialogue théologique, 89n1). I believe quite
the opposite, but I said that this very legitimate interest tends, in modern thought, to detract
from, or overshadow, the consideration of timeless truth. On the other hand, the Response
registers against me, on this point, a critique that would lead me to believe that, once again,
its authors have been careless in reading me. I recalled that to consider God as an object is
not something specific to this rationalized Thomistic theology but, rather, constitutes an
attitude and vocabulary consecrated by the [First] Vatican Council. In that regard, they speak
of “a war of words” and exclaim: “doesn’t everyone, however, see at first sight that the
meaning is not the same for both sides?” (Dialogue théologique, 94n2). Everyone? I do not
know. But at least for my own part, I had seen it quite clearly and I say so in this very text:
“We are quite fine with the fact that Fr. Daniélou speaks using a different vocabulary than
our own” (p. 144n9 above). And our criticism meant that one is not free in theology to assign
meanings to words willy-nilly. Moreover, it meant that if traditional theology is critiqued for
treating God as an object, either it was actually understood in a different sense than what it
itself intends, meaning that one thus committed a deplorable equivocation, or it was under-
stood in the same sense as it itself intends, meaning that the Vatican Council was also in
one’s crosshairs. True, “there are many ways to be wrong.” However, thoughtlessness or
clever tactics cumulatively add much to this end [en cumule beaucoup].
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 179

Did they think these assertions would leave us indifferent, we who profess
Thomism and do not hide the fact that we still have some interest in “theoret-
ical speculations separated from (and uninterested in) action”? Should we
thank the author for the sympathy he showed us and accept the brilliant future
prospects that he traced out for Thomism? [It seems that we are told:] who
has not understood, as we have, that Thomism doubtlessly played an honor-
able role in the past, but it was incapable of handling present difficulties,
indeed, perhaps even of being aware of them? It would be a beautiful museum
piece, covered with the most flattering, though archaic, labels, ones which,
however, are though as unsuited to the current demands of the mind [esprit]
as the heavy armor of the knights of old would be in our modern wars. Shall
we say that these ideas were foreign to those that arose for us upon reading
the other books by Fr. Daniélou, Fr. Bouillard’s “conclusion,” and the preface
written by Fr. von Balthasar? Who does not see their convergence?
I do not attribute to all these authors all the ideas held by each of them
individually. I do not suspect any kind of prior agreement. Rather, I am con-
cerned with how the ideas expressed, as well as the expressions themselves,
objectively converge towards a cluster of ideas: that Thomism is not fit for
contemporary difficulties; that scholastic theology has had its day; that we
must ask others, modern thinkers, for the philosophy faith needs in order
for theological explanation to be possible; that, therefore, theology has never
reached the state of science properly so called; and that what is needed here
is a new theology.
I now believe I have said enough to bring the scope of the debate out
into broad daylight. I have been critiqued for going beyond, in my Critical
Study, the books that make up the Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie collec-
tions, and my critics obviously would have preferred me to present these dif-
ferent volumes one by one, a methodology that would have led me to treat,
all at once, quite diverse subjects (or rather, would have prevented me from
presenting them all at once). And, yes, it is true that this would have been
much less offensive. However, what would have been striking was how a
number of them—and we must say, indeed, those that are most significant
among them—converge in their concerns. Therefore, I decided to focus my
examination on this point of convergence. For that reason, I did not confine
myself to the two collections I mentioned. The article by Fr. Daniélou—are
not its echoes and repercussions well known?—fell directly within the scope
of my study.
180 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

IV. CONCLUSION
I believe that the clarifications being demanded from me could very well have
been found by carefully reading my Critical Study. However, if I can hope
that this reply will be read more fully, then I will provide more explicit ones.
I have not spoken in the name of any authority, nor have I received any
directives. I have no other purpose than to bring to light, with a view to discus-
sing them in the open, ideas in circulation and cropping up in some texts. My
object has not been to determine the exact thought of each of the Frs. de Lubac,
Daniélou, Bouillard, Fessard, and von Balthasar. When they take their place in
the tale of history, future writers will be charged with doing so. However, be that
as it may, I was not charged with undertaking any fact-finding mission into any
of them. Reflecting on publications in which they themselves pose the same
question, I have posed this important problem concerning how theology is
related to its sources, be they historical or subjective, as well as that concerning
its permanent value in its scientific formulation. I tried to bring to light those
principles which, in my opinion, command this debate and to define, by con-
trast, doctrinal positions which I necessarily formulated in the most explicit
terms possible. Thus, knowing full well what I was doing, I took care to inform
them that I was not attributing these positions precisely as such to anyone.
What direction was taken in the discussion with the authors whom I
attacked? Very precisely that of saying that each of them, in various forms
and with more or less commitment, had expressed, in the very writings that
I cited at length,33 ideas which could only find their true consequences or
principles in the false positions that I was fighting. No extrapolation is
involved here. Rather, it is nothing other than that process that is essential to
any discussion of ideas: objectively showing the logical implications of an
assertion. The logic of these implications is what needs to be discussed.
Instead of this, we were presented with a common, solemn declaration of the
principles that the authors profess, something I have never called into ques-
tion.
Since it is desired that I explain myself on each point, I wished to say the
following, and I will maintain it until the opposite is shown to be true:
1˚ That the Sources Chrétiennes and Théologie collections complement
each other in a common effort, which has a substantially excellent intention.
I am not the only one to draw this connection, for Fr. Daniélou himself drew

33 In citing them, I did not take gleanings from here and there, drawing on expressions
which were detached from their immediate context, as is done in the “Response.” I gave
precise references. For Corpus Mysticum, the citations were made by Fr. Marie-Joseph
Nicolas in the critical overview [chronique] which followed by own in Revue thomiste 46
(1946): 383–88.
34 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 10.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 181

it in the April 1946 issue of Études.34 This was already externally and super-
ficially apparent given that the two directors of the former gave to the latter
“important works” (Daniélou, loc. cit.), which to this point in time represent
the most significant volumes in the latter collection.
2˚ That the intention of the Sources Chrétiennes collection, such as it
was explicitly defined by its directors, is inflected toward an orientation that
I criticize without, for all that, ceasing to heap great praise upon this same
intention, as well as its realization. This orientation, I repeat, consists in want-
ing to bring to light, most of all, “those categories which are those of con-
temporary thought, categories which scholastic theology had lost,”35 some-
thing which amounts to wanting to show the present inadequacy of scholastic
theology. I have the right to prefer that one “give life” to the writings of the
Fathers with a less restrictive concern and to think that this very concern is
characteristic of a shared spirit and common mentality.
3˚ That the way Fr. Daniélou, in his article in Études, speaks of Thomism
and scholastic theology in general ranks both of them as belonging to a stage
of now-outdated Christian thought, a fact that explains their inability to
assimilate new categories, in particular, those of history and subjective
experience, which is expressed by existentialism.
4˚ That the way Fr. Daniélou himself, in a text I cited at length, speaks
of the relations between theological systems and various spiritualities leads
him to look to measure theological expressions not by the objects that they
wish to propose but, rather, by the theologian’s religious experience, a claim
that inflects the very notion of speculative truth, which is classically defined
as being conformity with the object, turning it, instead, towards the idea that
truth is found in conformity with subjective life. I am delighted to know that
Fr. Daniélou thinks the opposite, especially since he wrote me [to tell me so]
(and in a different tone, thanks be to God, than that of the collective
Response), and I duly note this. Nonetheless, I maintain that his formulas can
be objectively explained only by inflecting the claim in that direction.
5˚ That the two books by Fr. de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum in the Théologie
collection and Introduction aux homélies d’Origène in Sources Chrétiennes,
are connected with the same concern that I already discussed, the first vol-
ume by presenting the introduction of dialectic into theological reflection
(the very thing that gave birth to scholastic theology) as though it were an
impoverishment, the second one also by arguing for a return to symbolism,
though this time in exegesis. I do not denounce any heresy, nor do I even
denounce any excessive claim. I only say that this is debatable and that, objec-
tively, these assertions go in the same direction as those that I already noted
and that Fr. Daniélou himself willingly highlighted. I say, “in the same

35 Daniélou, “Les orientations présentes,” 10.

182 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

direction,” but without themselves going as far, by a long shot. If, in spite of
my explicit warning, other ideas have been attributed to Fr. de Lubac solely
on the basis of my Critical Study, I object to this and publicly retract every-
thing that could have led to it.
6˚ That Fr. Bouillard’s book, which opens the Théologie collection, pres-
ents in its conclusion a general theory of the development of theology that,
in spite of its declared intentions, leads to the denial of the permanent value
of theological science and even of dogmatic formulas. Since the Response
makes no allusion to this discussion, despite the fact that it is lengthy, I am
content to refer the readers to pages 149–52 above of the present edition of
this debate.
7˚ That Fr. Fessard’s preface to a book in which he wants to provide the
foundations for an essential theological notion in a way that is valuable for
our contemporaries, by utilizing a dialectic that is entirely Hegelian, casually
casts aside St. Thomas’s justification for this notion by appealing to a “clothing
metaphor.” The obvious meaning of the book is that Christian doctrine today
will only find its explanatory instrument in a metaphysics that is not that of
St. Thomas—in this case, in a Hegelian metaphysics. I do not denounce a
heresy in this, but here in the Revue thomiste, I do defend the position of St.
Thomas—and it just so happens that in the same volume this position is mar-
velously highlighted by Jacques Maritain.36
8˚ That Fr. von Balthasar, in the introduction to his book on St. Gregory
of Nyssa, Presence and Thought, says that the present task of theology will
involve refashioning it for our times, indeed, in a completely new way, the
very thing done by the Greek Fathers or by St. Thomas for their times. I have
by no means attributed to Fr. von Balthasar all the ideas expressed by other
authors concerning the Fathers, and the fact that he puts the Greek Fathers
in the same category as St. Thomas (minus the insolence) does not reassure
me. What worries me in this text is his very conception of theological tradi-
tion and its meaning, concerning which the Response gives an answer that is
as unexpected as it is soothing. (I note that, as regards the assessment of con-
temporary Thomism, an author who is entirely unengaged in our contro-
versy, and with good reason, understood it in the same sense as I have, in
fact, in order to approve it, namely, Maurice de Gandillac in the third volume
of Dieu Vivant.37)
9˚ That the article by Fr. Daniélou in Études considerably increased the
evidence that these various works objectively converge towards a new con-

36 [Tr. note: This is likely referring to Jacques Maritain, “La personne et le bien commun,”
Revue thomiste 46 (1946): 237–78.]
37 Maurice de Gandiallac, “À propos de Grégoire de Nysse,” Dieu Vivant 3 (1945): 123–
34.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 183

ception of scholastic theology.

The Reverend Fathers invite us to renounce this type of discussion in
order to dedicate ourselves to the magnificent tasks proposed recently by His
Holiness Pope Pius XII. We have no trouble in joining them in this desire,
and we will be happy to do our part in helping them. However, we do not
believe that all these discussions are sterile, at least if we can abstain from
lowering them to personal polemics. And if it is true, as the Holy Father also
assures us, that a kind of “new theology” is currently spreading in minds,
leading them astray, then it is quite a fine task, indeed, namely, that of com-
bating this theology in order to better emphasize the permanent fruitfulness
of traditional theology. All we ask is that we might fight this battle with them
in brotherhood.

POST-SCRIPT [BY FR. MARIE-JOSEPH NICOLAS]

Since my lengthy analysis of Fr. De Lubac’s Corpus Mysticum was called
into question quite briefly and summarily,38 I believe it necessary that I
respond, at least briefly. “The only thing for which we reproach Fr. de
Lubac” in this beautiful book, which we cited in abundance and admired,
“is the fact that he looks upon the forgetting of Eucharistic symbolism as
though it were the necessary consequence of the scientific form taken on
by theology in the Middle Ages, holding that this scientific form represents
the expression of an outdated mentality that is perhaps less accessible to
minds of today, though, which in any case, is less traditional than the sym-
bolic mentality of the Fathers.” Certainly, I could have been mistaken in
my interpretation of the chapter entitled “From Symbolism to Dialectic.”39
And possibly I had a poor grasp of his supple and brilliant thought, which
I, nonetheless, was pleased to follow very closely. He is the one who speaks
of scholasticism as being a form of “Christian rationalism”40 and of those
“syntheses which are more scientific than religious”41 which replaced Patris-
tic theology at that privileged moment of intellectual history [l’histoire de
l’esprit], when “intellectual research and spiritual tension coincided, par-
ticipating in the same impulse and drawing the same curve.”42 He is the
one who exclaims, in expressing his conclusion concerning the replacement

38 See “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 97.

39 Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: The Church and the Eucharist in Middle Ages, trans.
by Gemma Simmons (South Bend: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 221–47. [Tr.
note: Other direct citations come from the French.]
40 de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 273.
41 de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 298.
42 de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 268.
184 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

of “the dialectic of sign and thing” by that “of substance and accident and
of quantity as a vice-substance43”: “What ravages have thus been caused
now by the very heresy that has been conquered! What unfortunate men,
we might say by returning to a phrase from Pascal, who led the defenders
of the faith to turn away from the core of religion so as to direct all specu-
lation concerning the Eucharist to external apologetic problems!”44
Moreover, we have not dramatized this interpretation of theological pro-
gress. When I wrote, “The life of the mind may indeed be a form of life, but
it does not develop in the way that a vegetable or animal does, renewing itself
by making its successive forms pass through the indefinitely repeated cycle
of birth, youth, maturity, and aging,” I certainly did not say that Fr. de Lubac
had written this. I will even say: it is because I know he cannot hold such a
position that I raised it to him as an objection because of how it lays in line
with texts like the following:

No two great thinkers, no two great mystics, can pose essential prob-
lems in the same terms. Each of them, even within one and the same
doctrinal or spiritual tradition, communicates to us the sentiment—if
we know how to question it—concerning the perpetual discovery that
is necessarily the life of the mind, along with, as it were, the way that
its frontiers must perpetually be shifted. None of them passes without
his action remaining inscribed upon the very regions where we believe
ourselves to be in the presence of eternal categories. Happier than the
greatest captains and the greatest builders of empires, they manage to
make us forget the previous state of the spiritual world that they have
managed to recast. But also, through the inevitable vengeance of things,
as soon as their work, in turn, is “outdated,” it is immediately misun-
derstood. We lack the imagination, even if the text is still between our
hands, to reconstruct their mental universe. In order to do so we would
need to support ourselves upon the very thing that, deep down within
ourselves, has just been reconstructed.45

It seems to me that critiques like those I have allowed myself to perform

have the benefit of provoking very useful explanations and clarifications. How

43 [Tr. note: This, language, of later scholastic provenance, refers to the way that quantity
functions in place of substance as the foundation for the other accidents in the appear-
ances of bread in the Eucharist. See ST III, q. 77, a. 1, along with Cajetan’s commentary
on this. Also see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, De Eucharistia (Turin: Berruti, 1948), 161:
“In commenting on this article, Cajetan notes that the bread’s quantity hence comes to
play the role of substance (quantitas panis fit vice-substantia); that is, it takes on the
mode, power, and property of substance.”]
44 de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 279.
45 de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum, 268–69.
CR I T I CI SM I N T H EO LO GY: A R ESP O N SE 185

could one not grasp the profound sympathy of phrases such as these: “Why
spoil his magnificent effort of openness and ‘theological reinvention’ through
a perpetual fear concerning the ‘fixity’ of the truth?”
We should add, I have not, for one second, heard criticism of Fr. de
Lubac for having spoken of St. Thomas so little in a matter in which he is the
doctor. On the contrary, I thought it necessary to explain why I believed that
St. Thomas’s theology was attacked in a historical study aimed directly at the
High Middle Ages.
 5
Theological Progress and
Fidelity to St. Thomas
Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP

B
ut let us now set aside our critical study. Every reader having before
himself the Response written in answer to it will judge the complaints
we provoked, as well as those that we ourselves raised in our turn. Let
us turn to the explanations given to us. We would insult the Reverend Fathers
were we to think that these summary pages provided a complete presentation
of their thought. In fact, they have told us that they plan a series of studies in
theology and history, and we are sincerely delighted to have provoked this
project. Slightly disappointed at having received a joke in response to our
concerns—the tale of the wise man who felt that to affirm three persons in
God represented a tendency to affirm four1—we will leave this story aside so
that we may ask ourselves what position they ultimately hold regarding both
Saint Thomas and theology itself.
Let us begin by seeing what the Thomistic fidelity of the Reverend
Fathers will not be.
It will not exclude the study of the first twelve centuries of Christian
thought. Nor will this study be limited solely to historical studies concerning
the genesis of Saint Thomas’s thought. In these remote times, one will seek
out any Christian food that can be directly assimilated. One will take up the
progress made in later centuries without fear of bringing about, in certain
cases, a “recasting,” for St. Thomas’s synthesis is not definitive, nor its cate-
gories eternal. More work lies ahead than merely placing some adornments
upon it and drawing some conclusions from it.

1 [Tr. note: In their response, the Jesuit fathers told a tale that came to their minds in the
face of Fr. Labourdette’s concerns regarding the tendency he saw in their writings: “One
day, a wise man said to his friend in a delicate situation, ‘Oh unhappy man, beware of
carelessly proclaiming that there are three persons in God! If you exaggerate but a little,
you will come to say that there are four persons in Him. And, in fact, in speaking of three,
do you not already manifest some tendency to posit four in Him? Why cast forth the high-
est number all at once? Say, instead, simply that there are two persons in Him. This is
incontestable, and here at this universally reassuring golden mean, you will have the
advantage of not advancing toward the very edges of the truth, where one finds oneself
in such close proximity to error’” (Dialogue théologique, 82).]

187
188 M A R I E- J O SE P H N I CO L A S , O P

Our authors continue: By assimilating the tradition for his own part, St.
Thomas does not exhaust all of the nourishment that can be drawn from it.
Even after him, we must return to the past. Likewise, later progress should
not confine itself merely to making additions to what has been received.
“Scientific systematization” carries the risk of causing impoverishment
and partiality. The same can be said concerning the fact that something was
conceived in a given century when many of our means of knowledge were
lacking, in particular, a kind of sense for history. In order to remain a living
theology, Thomism must expand. It must integrate into itself a number of
more concrete elements that have been overlooked in its efforts at systema-
tization, elements that, moreover, are not opposed to it. Theological progress
is not a straight line always passing from one conclusion to the next. The law
of the mind is that it only truly progresses and deepens its knowledge by a
rhythm that periodically refers back to the origins of its thought. By returning
to St. Thomas’s sources we will enable ourselves to discover, in his own
thought, virtualities destined for enabling wonderful developments. Like
Sacred Scripture, the Fathers are perpetually replenishing wellsprings, pour-
ing forth even today.
Now, with the exception of a few expressions, we are in agreement with
our critics on all of these points, which they seem to hold as though it were
opposed to our own position. Moreover, they recognize that we have said—
or even better, practiced—analogous things. Nonetheless, let us not exagger-
ate the scope of this agreement concerning what Thomism must not be. We
would like to see what is left of St. Thomas, and without a doubt this will bring
our disagreement more clearly to light. In their Response, what do our critics
say about the permanent value of Thomism? We learn that they do not hold
that Thomistic thought is “exhausted.” They do not say, “We cannot there find
any principle, any ‘toothing stone,’2 open to new constructions.” However,
only one positive aspect of the Thomistic system is questioned, and moreover,
it is the most apposite for the group of problems discussed: St. Thomas’s intel-
lectualism. Rightly enough, our authors distinguish between intellectualism
considered as a doctrine that accords the highest ontological value to intel-
lectual activity (and they declare themselves divided on this point) and intel-
lectualism considered as a doctrine that accords the intellect the power of
grasping the truth, loudly professing this intellectualism, though on the con-
dition that it be rightly understood:

There can be, in theology, a kind of intellectualism, against which we

don’t hesitate to take a position. It is that which would tend to make

2 [Tr. note: In architecture, a “toothing stone” (pierre d’attente) is a projection from a

wall that allows future construction to be built in continuity with the foundation of the
older construction.]
THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND FIDELIT Y TO ST. THOMAS 189

Christian Revelation into the communication of a system of ideas,

whereas it is first of all and forever the manifestation of a person, of
Truth personified. Christ is simultaneously the bearer and the object
of the divine message. The Word of God in its unique and definitive
fullness is the Word made flesh. This does not mean that Revelation
would not need to be expressed in concepts, nor that the course of time
does not require this conceptual expression to be clarified or amplified,
nor that we can only expect it to give us aid in the practical order, with-
out the value of truth properly so-called. To those who in virtue of some
scruple or a misguided reflection would be led to doubt the human
intellect’s ability to grasp the truth, the Incarnation of the Word brings,
on the contrary, new motives for confidence. However, it follows that
Catholic Truth will always exceed its conceptual expression and, a for-
tiori, its scientific formulation in an organized system. This is what
Christian thinkers of all times have instinctively felt. This is what
allowed someone like St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas, without
renouncing their differences, to understand each other, even through
something other than merely a spirit of charity.3

Let our critics rest reassured! This page which we just cited does not
reveal to our eyes any abyss of murky complications. We do not ourselves
confess the kind of intellectualism just laid forth in this critique. We simply
remain unsatisfied and want more.
To shed some light on the debate, this is the question we should ask: Do
you believe that the metaphysics of St. Thomas is true—and not only as a
kind of hypothesis or as an expression of a mentality but, rather, objectively
and in the nature of things? And the second question would be this: Do you
at least believe that effort must be expended by Christian thinkers in order
to grasp it, so that, thanks to it, the faith could be articulated in the most
complete and most universal theology?
Yes, certainly, Revelation is essentially the revelation of a Person, though
of a Person who has spoken and who has, therefore, expressed concepts
enabling the analogical grasping of that reality which is ineffable and infinite,
concepts that, granted, are profoundly engaged in the concrete whole that is
made up of images, feelings, experiences, examples, and general environ-
ments, though ones that the Church has a mission to draw forth and specify,
not without having recourse to philosophical reflection and, consequently,
to other concepts that do not directly come from the Word of God, though
she guarantees their ability to explain the Word of Christ to the human intel-
lect. We are profoundly persuaded that these concepts, even those that the
Church has thus fixed and guaranteed, are simultaneously true and yet also
insufficient for expressing everything, not only concerning the Divine Reality

3 “La Théologie et ses sources, Réponse,” 90–91.

190 M A R I E- J O SE P H N I CO L A S , O P

but even concerning the real content of the living Word of Christ. We also
say that this insufficiency is the cause of the one-sided character of all theo-
logical thought, even that of St. Thomas.
However, we do not think that two contradictory theological theses can
be simultaneously true, except in those aspects where they mutually comple-
ment each other and do not stand in opposition. While willingly admitting
the need to revise St. Thomas’s theses, we think that, given how his general
viewpoint represents the most essential one, his fundamental theses are true
and that his synthesis represents the foundational synthesis needed for all
solid theological construction. However, if a truth coming from elsewhere
could not be integrated into this synthesis without the need to modify its
essential data, we would salute this new theology and would frankly leave
our Master behind rather than renounce the truth, the meaning and infinite
breadth of which he himself teaches us above all.
We do not believe that one and the same truth, however infinite and
elevated above all our concepts it may be, could also be truly expressed by
means of a fundamentally different metaphysics. Certainly, all the various
philosophies used by Christians contain shared truths, and although it would
perhaps be too optimistic to attribute this fact to perceptions arising from
common sense (for the latter is not the most widespread thing in the world),
they are perhaps, rather, discovered precisely in virtue of what is required by
faith, which seeks out an intellectual world in which her lungs may find breath-
able air. However, this “philosophia perennis,” this minimum common datum
of Christian philosophy is not enough for a perfect theology. Was not Saint
Thomas’s particular glory and historical significance the fact that he traced
out the essential lines of Christian metaphysics?
Let’s discuss this frankly, for ambiguity in this matter is not good. What
would cause us the greatest concern would be if we felt that one were placing
in question the very possibility and objective existence of a Christian meta-
physics and, thereby, that of a scientifically elaborated theology, one which
is never finished in its task of integrating new knowledge and new perspec-
tives, along the way freeing itself from what “was neither gold, nor silver, but
rather, straw.”
Nonetheless, in response to anyone who would dare deprive St. Thomas
of the glorious role that we recognize for him, we would not fear to oppose
those reasons and intellectual possibilities that we have at our disposal, cer-
tainly not in defense of some kind of family property or even of one of our
long-established and dear habits of thought, but instead, we would do so out
of the conviction that the abandonment of the central positions of St. Thomas’s
metaphysics would lead, little by little, to the ruin of the faith. Maybe we are
wrong in feeling that St. Thomas is so absent from the new theology. Perhaps
this reservation simply comes from the well-justified persuasion that our con-
THEOLOGICAL PROGRESS AND FIDELIT Y TO ST. THOMAS 191

temporary mentality is too impregnated with idealism, existentialism, or evo-

lutionism for Thomistic language to be rendered understandable, even if it
were expressed in language that is fashionable today. Perhaps one feels, in fact,
that Thomism is too much the property of a particular sort of mind that is
closed off to history, science, and contemporary sentiments for it possibly to
be used freely. Perhaps the need to Christianize certain intellectual subjects
that hold an all-powerful sway over contemporary minds is judged to be far
too urgent for us to spend time waiting until Thomism manages to integrate
this into its metaphysics without denaturing the latter.
All this is possible. We also believe there’s something more. Thomistic
metaphysics cannot be true without being simultaneously convinced that
modern thought is fundamentally flawed and that, however assimilable it
may be on a number of points, it remains fundamentally opposed to Tho-
mism. For men who, justifiably, are profoundly men of their times, this oppo-
sition to modern thought is bitter indeed. It is likewise such for us, who are
not at all “displaced persons” [émigrés] and who dream, like our brothers, of
engagement and incarnation. Perhaps the vivacity of our criticism bore the
accent of the bitterness experienced when one feels so lonely in holding an
intellectual outlook that we, however, feel intellectually and morally impos-
sible not to take, an outlook that we, in the end, believe holds the greatest
promise for success, while modern thought increasingly unveils before all
our eyes all the profound vices that corrupt it.
We do indeed think our opponents are happy to see us remain faithful
to Thomistic thought. Without a doubt, they will not be less liberal toward
us than toward others. Even if this were necessary (though the opposite is
what, in fact, is needed) for winning souls for the faith, they would not fail
to flatter us. However, it is more difficult for us than for them to accept all
intellectual outlooks that differ from our own. When considering matters
from the perspective of faith, we are no haughtier than they. We will never
confuse Thomist metaphysics with the Church’s defined dogmas, nor even
with her ordinary teaching. However, we think other certainties than those
of faith exist and that merely because a position is not condemnable does
not, however, mean it is above criticism. Intellectualism, which without con-
fusing its system with dogma knows how to speak with assurance and how
to affirm (and therefore to deny), has a kind of unpleasant savor about it. We
mourn the wounds we could inflict and the irritation we might cause.
However, let it be known that we are not guilty of excessive self-confidence.
We know how to recognize our errors and forever will do so. Believing in the
truth does indeed sometimes communicate a bit too much assurance to one’s
words. While we strive never to confuse, on the one hand, the human mind’s
general aptitude for reaching certitude with, on the other, the truth of our
own judgments, we will not be overly scrupulous in saying what we think,
192 M A R I E- J O SE P H N I CO L A S , O P

beseeching those who read us not to see in our criticism verdicts uttered by
a judge or even appeals to a sacred tribunal but, simply, the free and frank
expression of our sentiments. Moreover, we know quite well that our most
useful work will be to prove the possibility of movement by walking and to
resolve the questions that every contemporary Christian thinker asks himself
with anguish, doing so with the assistance of St. Thomas’s thought.
 6
The Analogy of Truth and the
Unity of Theological Science
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP,
and Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP

I
n an article entitled, “L’analogie de la vérité: Réflexions d’un philosophe
sur une controverse théologique,” Fr. Jean-Marie Le Blond, S.J., returned,
in Recherches de Science Religieuse (34, no. 2, 1947, pp. 129–41), to one of
the points lying at the heart of the debate that recently found its first expres-
sion in the texts gathered together in our Dialogue théologique. He does not
name any of us, nor does he cite any of our comments, instead only referring
to “the debate which recently has opened up.” However, he claims to show
that the omission of “elementary points, admitted by all,” and for the most
part expressly taught by St. Thomas himself, led us to form “premature judg-
ments and summary condemnations.”1 By issuing this reminder, he intends
not only to justify the expressions placed into question in our controversy
(in particular, those of Fr. Bouillard) but even to launch the accusation that
we are unconscious rationalists, forgetful of the supernatural character of
faith, opposed to the contemporary missionary directives of the Church, and,
in any case, guilty (like Spinoza) of univocity, as it were, serene dogmatists
who argue on behalf of the permanence and timeless character of Thomist
philosophy and would have there be but one, single theology.2 Needless to
say, we feel no more accused of not submitting to the Church—for this would
be implied in the accusation, as well as a humiliating mental vice—than we
ourselves had the desire to make the accusation of heterodoxy against those
who themselves hold a new theology.
Nobody desires more than we do to remain on the level of serene
exchanges of opinions concerning a discussion that has all-too-quickly
turned into a polemic. Indeed, our intention is to renounce the latter.
However, Fr. Le Blond’s response has the advantage of posing the question
in a way that provides us with too apt an occasion for adding precision to the
ideas that we defend for us not to seize the opportunity to present a general

1 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 129.

2 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 138–41.

193
194 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

statement of our position. Indeed, like Msgr. de Solages3 before us, he places
the entire weight of the debate upon the analogical character of truth.
We will first present a summary of this article, which was well-written,
despite the fact that it is too influenced by its author’s desire to justify one by
one the expressions that were implicated in “Theology and Its Sources” con-
cerning the relativity and invariability of conceptual expressions of the truth,
the relations between “contemporary relevance [actualité]” and “truth,” the
inseparability of what is unchanging and what is mutable [in our conceptual
expressions of the truth] etc. . . . After this summary, we will then examine,
on its own terms, the problem thus raised.

I. THE ANALOGY OF TRUTH AND THE DIVERSITY OF

SYSTEMS, ACCORDING TO FR. LE BLOND
Fr. Le Blond’s argument is based on an application of the common doctrine
of the analogy of being to another transcendental, namely, truth.
Only the Divine Truth is perfect, “absolutely absolute.”4 “All other truths
are complex and deficient. They imitate the simple truth, but in their multi-
plicity, they cannot equal it. They are, in a word, truths that are analogous to
the First Truth.”5 Thus, just as the multiplicity of creatures imitates the sim-
plicity of the Divine Infinite without any of these fragmentary images on its
own and without the contribution of others, being able to claim that it is the
perfect image, so too the multiplicity of truths imitates the Simple, Infinite,
Eternal Truth, which infinitely surpasses each of these truths.
Consequently:

In order to safeguard the transcendence of Divine Truth and to avoid

any danger of ontologism or proud rationalism, [we must] here-below
maintain an unbridgeable divide between our judgments and human
systematizations—even if it is the clearest and best constructed sys-
tem—and the Subsistent Truth . . . [t]he best human system . . . will
never be the best possible, quo verior cogitari nequit, a claim that, in the
order of truth, as well as in that of perfection and being, remains the
divine prerogative. . . . Thus, it does not seem very reasonable to speak
of an absolute system, a unique system. The Thomistic synthesis itself—
a sure synthesis, consecrated by the use made of it by the Church,
prescribed by her for the formation of her clerics, and moreover a

3 See Bruno de Solages, “Autour d’une controverse,” Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique

48 (1947): 3–17.
4 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 132.
5 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 130. The emphasis is ours (Frs. Labourdette and
Nicolas).
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 195

singularly open synthesis—cannot equal Subsisting Truth and does not

express all its riches. In fact, alongside it and below it, in the Middle
Ages, for example, there were other syntheses, those of Saint Bonaven-
ture, Blessed Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez, syntheses that were
perhaps less firm and less well-constructed, though complementary
rather than opposed to it. They too are part of the treasury of Christi-
anity, expressing aspects of it that Thomism is aware of, though it does
not illuminate them as brightly. In the future, too, other attempts will
be ranked alongside it as well, all continuing man’s asymptotic endeavor
to approach the absolute, which we hope to possess in the next life. As
powerful as it is, Thomism forever remains one system, a unified mul-
tiplicity, irreducibly different from absolute simplicity.6

As is clear, Fr. Le Blond, a bit too much a philosopher, does not even
maintain the distinction between theological science and a theological system,
a distinction held so firmly by Fr. Chenu, as Mgr. de Solages emphasized in
his “Pour l’honneur de la théologie.”7 In his opinion, every intellectual con-
struction, precisely because it is a “unified multiplicity,” is a system.
Therefore, every human judgment is relative to the absolute. However,
it is not itself absolute. Nonetheless, it is true, in the analogical sense of the
word “true.” What it has in the way of truth in itself, that which tends toward
the absolute, is the given way it participates in the Divine Truth, namely, as
an affirmation. Given that the multiple and changing matter underlying this
affirmation limits the latter, as essence limits the act of existence: “The abso-
lute character of our truths comes not so much from the representations to
which they are applied as from the affirmation itself. These representations
cannot entirely restrain it within their limits; rather, the assertion goes bey-
ond them and stretches forth toward the absolute.”8
Here, we recognize the formulas used by Fr. Bouillard concerning affir-
mations, which can remain self-identical, while the notions united in such
an affirmation would change. However, the author wishes to show, through
an application of the theory of analogy, how the truth can be affirmed in an
absolute way through such relative and replaceable representations. Just as a
created being is constituted by the union of a finite essence with the act of
existence, which participates in the Pure Act that is God, though in a way
that is limited by this essence that receives it, so too, a created truth is con-
stituted by the affirmation-representation complex, wherein the verb to be
affirmed by the act of judgment, participating in Subsistent Truth and striving

6 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 132–34.

7 Bruno de Solages, “Pour l’honneur de la Théologie. Les contre-sens du R.P. Garrigou-
Lagrange,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 48 (1947): 65–84.
8 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 134.
196 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

to reach it, plays the role of the act of existence, whereas the representations
connected to each other by the verb to be would play the role of essence.
Have we understood this aright? And has our effort of analysis gone bey-
ond an outlook which, at the very least, finds us outside of the original inten-
tion to remain content with elementary notions that are admitted by all? Let
us retain at least this: by its act of affirming, the human mind tends toward
absolute truth [l’absolu de la vérité]. However, what it affirms is irremediably
affected by all the relativity implied in finite, deficient representations. There-
fore, let us return, as the author himself does at this point of his exposition,
to this element of relativity involved in human truths, namely, our “represen-
tative,” “conceptual,” and “fragmentary” way of grasping the truth, as well as
our thought’s dependence on language, concerning which the author indeed
does not hesitate to say: “Our thought . . . is expressed by composing and
dividing the schemata imposed by various languages, schemata which do not
remain wholly external to thought itself.”9
“This is the truth that we can reach in our present state: an endeavor
towards the absolute, an affirmation of this absolute, but ultimately a human
endeavor and affirmation, limited by the human condition, having a given
ancestry, situated in a particular environment, coming at this or that time in
the history of the world and of ideas.10 Therefore, one can quite rightly speak
“of successive aspects of the truth.”11 The truth is not studied outside of his-
tory. This is so much the case that we can say that “contemporary relevance
[actualité] contributes to defining the truth,”12 certainly not in Fr. Bouillard’s
sense, meaning that the truth would change alongside the mind’s devel-
opment, but rather, that we cannot fully know human truths without con-
sidering contemporary relevance (i.e., the relative aspect of human state-
ments). Nonetheless, we do not believe that Fr. Le Blond here wishes to limit
himself to saying that, given the fact that we cannot study objective, unchang-
ing truth without being assisted by thinkers who predate us and guide us, we
must historically study such thinkers in order to understand them, so that
thereafter, or by means of such study, we would then attempt to see the truth
as it is in itself. For indeed, I too, thinking today, find myself to be “in a situ-
ation,” and all of my insights are affected by this fact. “Each era, each school,
and even each man has his own original way of tending to the absolute and
of drawing an image of it, convergent tendencies and images which are anal-
ogous but which remain differentiated by their starting points.”13

9 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 134.

10 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 135.
11 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 135.
12 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 135.
13 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 136.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 197

However great St. Thomas might have been, He was a man of his own
time as well. He too is dated. He can only be understood historically, and thus
in studying him, what one will grasp is not the truth but, rather, the Thomistic
manner of grasping and expressing it. In point of fact, it is not clear whether
such Thomistic truth has heretofore been truly grasped. Many have wrongly
presented it as though it were supra-temporal, and throughout the centuries,
there has hardly been any progress in coming to understand this thought:
“Granted, in the last twenty years, objective and exact knowledge of the Tho-
mism of Saint Thomas has made progress”14; “a work which has, in fact, only
now begun to take shape.”15 Though, fortunately, this fact does not prevent the
author from presenting the whole of his own study as though it were an
expression of St. Thomas’s teaching concerning truth and analogy—even
before a full examination of medieval manuscripts has been completed.
However, in any case, it is impossible to consider, on its own, the invariant
[aspect] of human truths in order to thereby establish an absolute and unique
system. The tendency toward a single theology embracing all systems by find-
ing a place for what is true in each of them represents a pretense that is wholly
suffused with modern rationalism’s own tendency to seek out a single
Science.—For the record, let us repeat once more that this assertion excludes
the possibility of there being any distinction between a theological science and
particular systems. Theological science, in St. Thomas’s sense, no longer exists.
The clear upshot of all of this is the fact that the Church must adapt her
teaching not only to various languages but even to various concepts, and if
she wishes to do away with the gulf that exists between her seminaries and
the world of learning [l’Université], she must “make it relevant” [“actualiser”]
by truly taking up the “situation” of contemporary thinkers. In any case, since
[such a particular situation] is needed and will ultimately affect the pure truth
expressed therein, is not the most “just” and the most “true” one (humanly
speaking) the one that imposes itself upon us in our present circumstances?
Granted, we have added this last point to Fr. Le Blond’s own considera-
tions, though we find ourselves to be impelled toward it by the very move-
ment that he impresses upon us. . . . And we will allow ourselves to be
impelled even along still. Indeed, is it not clear that if we are destined to con-
tinually affirm the absolute without ever grasping it, we will find more satis-
fying results by remaining content to study history and the various forms of
truth found in human minds through the passage of the ages than with
searching for the truth in itself and for its own sake? In order to arrive at the
synthesis that the human mind, in its incorrigibly “systematic” bent, ever
seeks, we will even be tempted to consider the “situations” in which man

14 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 136.

15 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 136.
198 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

successively finds himself from generation to generation and there see some-
thing more than an “analogy”: [perhaps] intellectual filiation, progress, and
a form of ascent, with superior forms absorbing inferior ones, or, at least, a
dialectic in which our mind’s “drive toward the absolute” could push forward,
closer and closer to its goal, proceeding from one opposed thing to another?
Again, we are saying something more than Fr. Le Blond himself, drawn
along by the very élan impressed upon us by his thought. There are minds
who will abandon the idea of a unified theology only to then replace it with a
systematic interpretation of the history or “genealogy” of theologies. Would
it not be completely normal for someone who adopts the “situation” of a mod-
ern thinker (who is much more concerned with seeking out a philosophy of
the human mind than a philosophy of reality) to establish a theology of the
Christian mind in place of a theology whose concern is with reality itself?16

16 We have not included in our exposition a rather-astonishing paragraph written by the

author. This paragraph is striking because, by itself, it would seem to nullify so much of
the efforts he expended in order to maintain at least the analogical character of human
truth. Moreover, the profound agnosticism it contains is attributed to St. Thomas:
As far as sensible beings themselves are concerned, . . . their specific, substantial
differences remain unknown to us. This modest assertion—expressing something
quite different from what we see in the serene dogmatism of some contemporary
scholastics—means that most of our concepts do not have, at their root, properly
speaking, an intuition of nature, but rather, a group of schemata, a collection of
sensible representations whose intersection enables us to establish a kind of pro-
visional label by which we designate the quiddity. In this case, the quiddity, as the
name implies, designates a kind of questioning of a substance rather than a true
understanding thereof: the existence of this substance is posed without the nature
being grasped. This is the ultimate source of the precarious, reformable character
of many of our definitions, and their connection either with the metaphor (a con-
nection which, most of the time, is not entirely broken), or with extrinsic methods
of classification (Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 139–40).
We admit that these remarks contain a truth. However, let us immediately note that for
St. Thomas, all of our knowledge is based on our knowledge of sensible beings and
depends upon it. Indeed, in reading these lines, one would think that St. Thomas himself
fell into the nominalism denounced by Emmanuel Mounier:
Must we, for all that, consider every dogmatic formula, every conceptual definition,
as being a mere sign placed upon an unknowable reality, a symbol rebelling against
every form of content that could be elucidated? The modernist critique tended
toward this kind of nominalism, which annulled the entire continuity of the faith
(Esprit (Sept. 1947), 440–41; see the discussion of Mounier’s observations in “Dis-
cussion Surrounding our ‘Dialogue Théologique,’” p. 263–64 above).
Fortunately, the author emphasizes, in a note, “according to Saint Thomas, this concerns
the specific quiddity, not more general concepts” (Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,”
140n1). Therefore, we are reassured that all our concepts of being, substance, cause,
movement, end, person, etc. (in the end, all our metaphysical concepts) have true ade-
quation to reality. And even though we can only form analogical concepts concerning
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 199

It is now our turn to consider a problem of the greatest importance, as

much for the formulation of dogmas as it is for the missionary apostolate, as
well as for the possible idea one can fashion for oneself concerning the nature
of theological science.

II. THE SPECIFIC UNITY OF THE HUMAN MIND

AND OF HUMAN TRUTH
However, we now find ourselves faced with an immense subject, indeed, one
that is quite difficult to fully get our arms around. We do not at all believe
that “certain elementary notions admitted by all” could suffice for us. When
St. Thomas, in his famous quarta via, declares that all things are more or less
beautiful, noble, and true, he does not furnish any explanation concerning
this last point. Therefore, is truth susceptible to grades of more and less? In
other words, is this a concept which is analogically realized through a par-
ticipation that is more or less proximate to the Absolute Divine Truth? Yes,
certainly, but it is important to carefully consider in what sense this is the
case, before too hastily drawing consequences from it.

I. Logical Truth and Ontological Truth

Let us begin by distinguishing ontological truth from logical truth. Fr. Le
Blond does not do so, though, he does say in one place: “Obviously, were
there no mind, there would be no truth.”17 This statement is true, for truth is
a relationship between mind and being, a relation which is called “adequ-
ation.” Created beings are true in relation to the Divine Mind, the source of
every created being, since the [Divine] Idea presides over the creative action.
This means that it corresponds to the idea that God has of it; its entire essence
is to be this correspondence [cette réponse]. A given being’s truth is to be as
God thinks it. Here, greater or lesser truth can only be thought of in terms
of greater or lesser being, inasmuch as it depends on the Divine Intelligence,
which is fully and completely expressed only in the Divine Word.

spiritual realities, Fr. Le Blond will surely not deny that we often can, through such con-
cepts, successfully reach their essential realities (and not only a collection of phenomena
tagged by a word or an image) as, for example, when we speak about our soul and about
moral realities. After this, it is all too obvious that we can define the specific essences of
beings that surround us. However, I do not believe that this “modest affirmation” would
be “quite different from the serene dogmatism of certain contemporary scholastics,” at
least of those who affirm the permanence of St. Thomas’s metaphysics. Therefore, here
again, in order to explain the element of relativity involved in human knowledge, we must
limit ourselves solely to the analogical aspect of the concept of truth when it is applied
to the human mind.
17 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 134n1.
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Logical truth is the truth that characterizes the mind in its relation to
being; it is the adequation of our thought with things. Between human
thought and the Divine Thought (which we also say is true) only an analogy
exists, not univocity, despite the fact that we use the same words to refer to
each. Nonetheless, there is knowledge of the same thing, of the same (onto-
logical) truth. Neglect of this elementary point has important consequences
here. Between the Divine Mind and our own, there is the mediation of things.
In these things, our mind finds the principle of the truth which properly is
its own: “The truth of our intellect is taken in accord with its conformity to
its principle, namely things, from which it receives its knowledge” (ST I, q.
16, a. 5, ad 2).
The thing is measured by the Divine Idea, wherein it finds its ontological
truth. However, in its own turn, it measures the representation that we make
of it, in which our mind finds its logical truth. And, of course, the thing exists
in the Divine Mind in a completely different way than it does in our own.
Properly speaking, only an infinitely distant analogy exists between the way
it is known by God, who causes and measures it, and the way that we, who
are measured by it, know this same reality. And likewise, an infinitely distant
analogy here again exists between the truth of angelic knowledge and the
truth of the divine knowledge, even though this angelic knowledge comes
from a participation in this divine knowledge and not from things. And just
as things have more ontological truth to the degree that they have more being
(and in this sense, we can say that they are more or less true, in accordance
with the ascending dialectic of the quarta via), so too created minds [esprits]
realize in their knowledge a more or less perfect logical truth through which
they likewise draw more or less close to the only Perfect Truth, the Sovereign,
Uncreated Truth—though, ever remaining infinitely distance from it. In
angelic truth, there is more truth than what is found in human truth, while
being infinitely less than that which is found in the Divine Truth.

2. Human Logical Truth

However, this overview only teaches us that, on the scale of intellects (i.e.,
human, angelic, and divine), truth is only realized analogically, that is, in a
way that is at once proportionally the same and essentially different. We still
must ask what this truth is in each of them. In particular, let us study the case
of the human mind. If we have understood him correctly, Fr. Le Blond
believes that he can account for human truth by means of this proportion:
our affirmation, participating in the Divine Truth, is related to the notional
representation[s] with which it is concerned, while being simultaneously lim-
ited by it, as existence, which participates in Pure Act, is related to essence,
which that existence realizes while being limited by it. Truth has a value for
our mind through this affirmation (because it is a drive for the absolute); it
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 201

is limited and precarious on account of the notions with which this affirma-
tion is concerned. Therefore, the value of our truth is entirely found in this
drive for the Divine Absolute, in this participation in the Divine Truth. This
analogical resemblance is what measures it. Thus, we see why nothing is com-
pletely absolute; we can always say: there is more truth.
Is this presentation exact? Alas, it forgets but one thing: the object! St.
Thomas said to us, “The truth of our intellect is taken in accord with its con-
formity to its principle, namely things, from which it receives its knowledge.”
And, yes, this is one of his elementary teachings. The affirmation of human
truth is directly measured by the object that founds it.18 Granted, instead of
grasping, in a single gaze, the whole of intelligible reality (as is the case for
pure spirits), the human mind only grasps piecemeal that which bestows full
intelligibility on each known element, recomposing it in an ever-incomplete
manner, arriving at knowledge “from within” through knowledge coming
“from without,” and therefore arriving at what is more certain and more true
(ontologically speaking) through what is less certain and less true. And this
is why (logical) human truth reaches its perfection only after lengthy efforts.
Nonetheless, the fact remains that this relation to the object is essential.19
Now, what the human mind forms concerning the objects it knows are
concepts that have the ambition of being valid for all men. Below, we will come
to speak about all the various elements that come along to limit this ambition.
There, we will insist on the differences and variations that follow therefrom.
Here, however, we are speaking about the normal activity of the intellect
as such. For things that are within its scope, it forms concepts that enable it
then to fashion affirmations or negations whose own, proper truth is meas-
ured by these things. It is certainly the case that God knows them in a different
way than we do and that the Divine Mind’s truth is infinitely superior to our

18 Given that it stands outside of our purposes here, we are setting aside the case of
practical truth, by which the human intellect, by contrast, measures the actions that it
directs or to the works for which it provides the idea. In our exposition here, we are only
concerned with the truth pertaining to the speculative intellect.
19 What we write here seems, to our eyes, to be connected to a frankly realistic theory of
knowledge. He who would conceive of our representations, our concepts, as being a kind
of “copy” of reality and would define truth as being a mere intra-mental relation which
more or less approaches the Divine Absolute, could indeed suppose that our concepts
are themselves only “analogical likenesses” of the elusive reality which the external
object would be. Moreover, this would require us to renounce the claim that we have any
kind of direct knowledge. However, if a concept has no other content, no other “essence,”
than the intelligibility of the object which it makes known, if it is wholly one with the
object in the intelligible order, if, in a word, it enables us to directly reach reality, it is
impossible that it would not contain its immediate significate (which can indeed be very
partial), moreover passing (subjectively speaking) from extreme vagueness to the most
precise distinction. This is what leads to the diversity found in human conceptions, as
well as the difficulty involved in trying to arrive at a broad possession of the truth.
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mind’s own truth. However, we do not read the truth of things in Him, with
each of us only forming various but analogically true conceptions of such
things. What we know directly is not the Divine Truth. Rather, we directly
know things, doing so with our human intellects. We form more or less uni-
versal concepts of these realities, grasping them either in their accidental and
common elements, or in properties, which reveal an essence that, in fact, still
remains hidden, or in generic essential elements, or (granted, more rarely)
in their specific difference. These concepts enable men to have a certain
number of common truths, not only de facto truths but de iure ones, enabling,
as well, the establishment of human sciences that hold for all men.
However, all beings are not within our grasp in this way, for our intel-
lectual knowledge comes from our senses. A whole other order of realities
exists, those that are purely spiritual, as well as God Himself, attained only
by way of analogy with the realities we first directly know. These latter realities
stand before our reflection as the bearers of perfections that they themselves
do not exhaust, perfections that they, on the contrary, exhibit in an inferior
and limited condition, implying that they have their cause in a Being wherein
this perfection is fully realized. On the basis of the first object thus directly
known and conceived as an inferior analogate of a perfection that is realized
in other modes, we form an analogous concept of this perfection. And it is
thanks to this analogous concept that we affirm the realization of this per-
fection in God, as in its Cause, in an eminent manner, for which none of the
created conditions of the inferior analogates hold. This philosophy can indeed
be contested; it obviously depends on realist premises. However, our goal
here is not to justify it but, rather, [1] to recall that it underlies the entire Tho-
mist treatise concerning the existence of God and His attributes and [2] to
see how it requires us to understand [the notion of] human truth.
Thus, we form a certain number of negative and affirmative judgments
concerning God. We affirm that He exists. We deny He has any imperfections
that creatures have: He is not composite; He does not change; He is not finite;
He is not multiple; and so forth. . . . We affirm that the perfections with which
He has endowed creatures are also realized in Him, though in a way that
eludes us: He is true; He is good; He is intelligent; He loves; He is omnipotent;
and so forth. . . . What provides the measure for the logical truth proper to
these judgments that we say are true? It is not measured directly upon the
truth of the Divine Intelligence, precisely because the latter does not directly
fall under our knowledge. They are all judgments that are conclusions. There-
fore, they presuppose the prior, human, logical truth of affirmations that are
directly concerned with created realities, and by way of analogy with these
realities, we then demonstrate what the human mind can know concerning
God. The truth in question is forever human in character. It is all too evident
that God knows Himself in a different way than how we know Him and that
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 203

the truth of the knowledge that He has of Himself is completely different

from the truth expressed in the knowledge that we have concerning Him.
However, this in no way invalidates the fact that everything that we say about
Him is necessarily subject to the laws and exigencies of human logical truth.

3. The Unity of the Human Mind

Fr. Le Blond appealed to the analogy of being in order to explain the analogy
of truth: composed of essence and existence, various creatures realize being
only analogically in relation to the Divine Being. At the same time, various
created truths, composed of affirmations, tending dynamically toward the
absolute, and of fragmented representations, only analogically reflect the
Divine Truth. However, the analogy of being in no way implies that created
beings, which are analogous to the Divine Being, would all be analogous to
each other: otherwise, no two of them would univocally possess the same
essence. I do not know whether Fr. Le Blond would accept such a form of
nominalism, but I am sure his historical probity will not allow him to claim
that St. Thomas held such a doctrine. Yes or no: are there beings that univo-
cally realize one and the same essence? They will certainly all be analogous
to the Divine Being, but this will be according to the same analogy, and they
will remain univocal in relation to each other. And similarly, the fact that the
truth of the human mind is only an analogous reflection of the truth of the
Divine Mind—so that each time a man’s mind rises upward to affirm a truth
or to deny an error, it here finds itself, in its own, infinitely deficient manner,
similar to the Divine Mind, Perfect Truth—in no way implies that human
truths would be purely analogous in relation to each other, thereby being
mutually incommensurable. Or, rather, this would be implied only if the
human mind were not a single nature having a specific unity.
Therefore, we must ask whether the human mind is one, univocally one,
specifically one. Do men only analogically participate in human nature or,
rather, is this nature specifically the same in each of them? (And even if the
latter is true, we should note well that this leaves open an immense field for
individual differences.) In the end, this is what the debate comes down to, at
least in the form given to it by Fr. Le Blond. If the human mind is one, specifi-
cally one, its own human manner of being adequate to reality, of being true,
and of being analogous to the Divine Mind, will also be univocally one. We
have never desired to deny or place in doubt the fact that logical truth, such
as it is realized in the human intellect, only presents an infinitely distant anal-
ogy with Truth such as it is realized in the Divine Intellect. This is not the
issue here. Rather, what is at stake is whether the human mind has a nature
that is specifically one and, consequently, whether its own way of being true
and of affirming the truth is specifically one. This is what we are accused of
overlooking, thereby failing to accept the “human condition.”
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It is because we advocate on behalf of this unity (which exists in the

midst of the diversities that we will speak of below) that we maintain that
human truth concerning God does indeed have a unity, one toward which
theological science itself tends. In comparison with the Divine Truth, our
concepts are terribly deficient. However, if they are formed with precision,
they hold true for all men. The analogous concepts in which we conceive this
Truth are no less human than are univocal concepts. Ideally speaking, there
is only one perfect and adequate human way of conceptually representing
the Divine Truth to oneself, and thought’s own efforts are undertaken pre-
cisely so that one may elevate oneself to these conceptual heights.

4. Revealed Truths
Does the fact that the supernatural divine truth is revealed change the situ-
ation of the human mind in relation to it? This question leads us to another
consideration, one that is of capital importance in the subject facing us,
indeed, a question that one runs the risk of forgetting when one intervenes
solely as a philosopher in a debate concerning the nature of theology. The
datum that the theologian analyzes and explains is not the Divine Essence
(concerning which he could form only necessarily-impotent concepts).
Rather, his datum is a revelation that is made in human concepts, in statements
whose truth—which is supernatural and guaranteed by God—is a truth that
has the typical form belonging to human, logical truth. The Divine Truth that
measures theological science is a truth that is already translated and
expressed in human concepts and language by God, indeed, by God alone.
God alone reveals, and He reveals by speaking. The Church does not reveal
and, a fortiori, nor does the theologian. The Church preserves and transmits
by clarifying and adapting, though doing so by preserving the same super-
natural meaning entrusted to her in human formulas, by preserving the same
truth: eodem sensu, eademque sententia. Here, we have human statements
that speak to us of the mysteries that are found in God. God is the one who
guarantees these statements’ relationship with the mysteries themselves. It is
His revelation, something we cannot grasp on our own. And this is why the
only thing in our mind that can respond to this revelation is an assent of faith:
the motive of our assent of faith is the authority of God who reveals, leading
us to believe what God has told us about Himself and about what He has prov-
identially arranged for our salvation. An essentially supernatural light is what
enables us to assent in this way, enabling our superelevated mind to attain
its object: not the formula, but rather, the supernatural reality expressed by
that formula. However, it attains it by means of the formula, and the latter
alone is what expresses, in a way that is valid for man, the truth to which the
intellect adheres. All of the statements that were progressively revealed up to
the death of the last Apostle—statements organized into a Credo, which is
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 205

not a philosophy but, rather, the Word of God made present to humanity in
its own language—are all entrusted to the Church. How does Fr. Le Blond
conceive of its simultaneous development and permanence? Will it suffice to
say that the human concepts used in these revealed statements by God, who
has translated the Divine Truth by means of such concepts, would then be
replaced by other concepts, ones that are only analogous to the first ones, a
claim that would quite exactly mean, in technical scholastic language, con-
cepts that are proportionally alike but essentially different? Does the per-
manence involved here only hold for the affirmation, conceived of as being
a drive for the absolute, independent of what it expresses, independent of the
“notions” with which it is concerned? If this affirmation suffices, then,
through the course of the ages and in different cultural milieus, one will slip
underneath it meanings that are only analogous to each other—that is, mean-
ings that are proportionally alike but essentially different.
Now, continuing to voice our concerns as theologians, we will say that
such an outlook—one to which Fr. Le Blond’s theory would lead us if it were
pushed to its logical conclusions—is manifestly incompatible with the clearest
and most solemn affirmations pronounced by the Ecclesiastical Magisterium
from the [First] Vatican Council to the anti-modernist documents.20
We can never emphasize too greatly, in relation to the transcendent
divine reality, the congenital deficiency that befalls the human statements in
which the object of faith is offered to us. Indeed, a calling to another kind of
knowledge is grafted upon it, knowledge that is essentially obscure: mystical
knowledge of the Supernatural God Himself, a knowledge had by means of
love. Indeed, we must go even further still. In order to express His mysteries
in human language, God had to choose one or several particular human lan-
guages. Let us not Platonize concerning “human language” any more than
we do for man in general. By revealing in this way, He made use of the pos-
sibilities inherent in this language, be it Hebrew or Greek, elevating it to an
even loftier purity and truth; however, He also accepted its own, proper lim-
itations. It is possible that in order to express this or that mystery, another
cultural genius—and, consequently, another language (India or China here
comes to mind)—would have offered Him other resources. However, what
He has already done is not to be refashioned—and, in any case, He alone
could refashion it. Just as, upon choosing to become incarnate, the Word of
God took on a human nature that was necessarily individual, thus meaning
that Christ is and forever remains a Jewish craftsman who lived at a precise

20 Must we repeat what we explained in our volume Dialogue théologique, namely, that
we do not intend, by this theological argument, to say or insinuate that Fr. Le Blond would
not fully accept the documents of the Magisterium? It is precisely because he accepts
them that this argument seems to us to have all of its power. It falls to him to show that
his conception of human truth does not in any way entail these consequences.
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historical moment, in a quite determinate cultural milieu, expressing Himself

in the language of His own time and not even in the language of Greece or
of Rome, which was so much more universal in His era (and we know, non-
etheless, that the Incarnation involves all of human nature precisely because
this nature is one), so too the Word of God expressing Himself in a human
fashion was in fact spoken in Hebrew and in Greek, and from the death of
the last Apostle, this revelation, which must be conveyed to the ends of the
earth up until the end of time, is closed as a revelation properly so called.
Consequently, whatever language into which it happens to be translated,
whatever the cultural milieu that it will impregnate, whatever development
humanity will undergo through the course of millions of years—if it still
remains after millions of years—and however this revelation comes to be
expressed, such expressions will need to remain entirely consistent with these
Hebraic and Greek expressions, conveying the same meaning and the same
humanly formulated truth that was so formed by God alone. Some might feel
it is unfortunate that God did not wait for the complete “planetization of
humanity” before bringing His revelation to its completion; but, once again,
we need not, under the pretext of a historical spirit, refashion history.21

5. Theological Truth
By maintaining the debate upon this terrain, we neither identify nor confuse
theology and dogma with each other. However, the idea that one fashions con-
cerning theology wholly depends on the idea one has concerning the nature of
faith and dogmas. Theology is not a “philosophy of dogma”; it is not, as it were,
the external application of philosophy or of a philosophical system to the
revealed deposit. It has its own, original light. It responds to the intelligibility
appeal that the believer’s mind experiences in the divine affirmation as soon
as one passes on from simple adherence, now considering the Divine Word
in order to seek to understand it. Fides quaerit intellectum. This intelligibility is

21 Fr. Daniélou, in an otherwise truly remarkable article, “La pensee chrétienne,” Nou-
velle revue théologique 69 (Nov. 1947): 930–40, remarked that “the memra, the Hebraic
word, is something completely different from the Greek Logos by which it was tran-
scribed. And thus, the Christian logos is a new category, which is the biblical datum
refracted into a cultural reality which gives it new harmonics” (p. 933). Or, more generally:
“We are [only now] barely discovering, by turning back to knowledge of the Bible, how
much our Western Christian thought is a Hellenized revelation.” And in saying this, he is
quite correct. However, he cannot purely and simply conclude, “Thus, the incarnation of
Christian thought will be brought about in other great cultures, the unique message of
Christ being thus refracted into these various forms, with each of them manifesting more
aspects of this message.” [This cannot be true in an unqualified sense,] for there neither
was nor will be a Christian revelation in other cultures, and all of them, if they are to know
the Supernatural Truth, are dependent upon the “Greek” concepts in which God was
pleased to “recount” it to us.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 207

what the theologian strives to bring to the humanly perfect state of knowledge
that we call science (in a sense that differs, we must repeat, from the modern
use of the term “science” in contrast to philosophy).
Undoubtedly, the theologian’s essential desire is to know God. He strives
to understand, to the degree that it is possible, what supernatural realities are
in themselves; however, he can do so only by referring to the teaching that
has been revealed by God, to the statements that express revelation in human
language, so as to grasp, as fully as possible, the content that is intelligible for
us, as well as its implications. What he studies are these divine truths, which
have already been humanized in their formulation. Their meaning is what
he analyzes and explains. And our theology is measured by them, not by the
truth of the Divine Mind. The theologian does not see God. He does not bene-
fit from any new revelation. What he strives to attain is the fullest knowledge
that can be had concerning God by the human mind—and we do not cease
to proclaim this mind’s unity of nature, even in the midst of all its historically
diverse forms—striving to do so by means of these truths that are already
formulated in human language. This is why we advocate on behalf of the
unity of theological science. In no way do we deny the existence and (nec-
essarily unequal) value of various theological syntheses and systems. We only
say that, to the degree that they are different, each of them represents a more
or less successful effort in reaching the state of science, in elevating theology
to the human unity that is its congenital ambition. And this certainly does
not mean each of these systems, or even theological science itself, strives to
make itself equal to the truth of the Divine Mind. Rather, it means that they
strive to reach the best possible state of formulation for human truth con-
cerning God on the basis of what His own revelation teaches us. In no way
does it aspire to become dogma! It will always remain something human
whose value will depend at once on faith and on the quality of the human
reflection involved in theological knowledge. It will forever be nothing but
an infinitely distant analogy of the Divine Truth, and I am not aware of any
scholastic theologian who has ever dreamt of the contrary! He knows it
remains human, that is, poor and deficient, a shadow of the Divine Truth
more than a reflection of it. However, he quite precisely thinks it aspires to
have worth for the human mind as such, that is, for all men and for all times.

III. THE VARIOUS DIVERSITIES BEFALLING THE

HUMAN MIND AND HUMAN TRUTHS
In order to show the fundamental unity of human speculative truth, we
appealed to the specific unity of the human mind, which implies the specific
community of laws which make up its adequation to reality. The truth of our
conceptions is not measured directly in relation to the divine truth, more or
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less approached in the utterly distant analogy that we maintain with it. Rather,
it is measured in relation to the requirements of the human mind in its taking
possession of its object.
However, it would imply a rather superficial and partial understanding
of Thomist thought if one were to believe that its conception of the character-
istics of human truth is confined to this “serene dogmatism.” Perhaps it has
emphasized this unity precisely because it has felt its full worth: is this not one
of the values it has the mission of preserving?22 Nonetheless, Thomism
remains perfectly aware of the manifold variations befalling the human mind,
and for our own part, we believe that it has, in its own principles, sufficient
resources for explaining these variations, indeed more profoundly than they
can be explained by a more empirical philosophy with a less ontological focus.

A. Individual, Racial, Cultural,

and Historical Diversities
Quite appropriately, in relation to the analogy of being, Fr. Le Blond recalls to
us the composition of essence and existence, as well as essence’s character as the
limiting component in this composition. Act is only limited through potency.
Being is limited by an “ability to be,” and this is what enables it to be multiplied:
unreceived existence is unique; it unfolds in fullness everything that existence
on its own can be when it is not limited to this or that partial realization.
However, potentiality can enter more or less distantly into the composi-
tion of a created being. It is always there from the perspective of the created
being’s essence. However, this essence can be a pure form. In that case, it is
simple, and here all multiplicity is impossible precisely on the level of the
degree of existence and of the divine resemblance represented by this essence.
Given that such an essence is only a form, every differentiation involves spe-
cific differentiation. This is why St. Thomas taught that each pure spirit, each
angel, is a species, a species that cannot have multiple individuals. The form
cannot be multiplied in individuals precisely because it is not “received,”
because no capacity limits it to a particular realization that, not exhausting
its own, proper virtualities, would enable it to be realized elsewhere in a dif-
ferent manner. In other words, the angel does not participate in its nature
according to a certain receptive capacity. It only participates in existence.

22 It may be advisable to recall that the danger of forgetting this is not a fanciful fear if it
is true that, as Pius XI said poignantly with regard to racism and the Jewish situation:
“We have forgotten the doctrine of the universals.” Let us add that, in speaking here of
“Thomist thought,” I do not intend to exclude Scholastics who did not belong to the his-
torical Thomist school. On these great questions, the whole of scholastic thought is unan-
imous in agreement, with more or less profound nuances. We say, “Thomist,” because
this is properly speaking the perspective that we ourselves take in our justification and
explanation concerning these matters.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 209

However, it fully realizes, in a necessarily unique realization, the degree of

existence and of participation in God that defines it.
The case is completely different for creatures engaged in the conditions
of material existence.23 Matter enters into the very essence of such beings.
Here, we no longer have a pure form. In such creatures, the form itself is only
an act that is limited to a receptive capacity, and the matter-form composite
is a limiting potency in relation to existence. It determines the degree of being
in accord with which existence will be participated in. Consequently, every
material species is indefinitely susceptible to plurality, able to be multiplied
into distinct individuals. Each of these individuals not only (like every created
being) participates in existence, which it does not have of itself, but moreover,
even participates in its own, nature, its proper form. It does not exhaust this
form’s virtualities. It presents only one particular realization of it, certainly
retaining the same formal principles, univocally and specifically possessing
the same form, but doing so in a realization that cannot deploy all of its vir-
tualities. It belongs to the community of a given species. As an individual, it
is a more or less successful realization of the nature that characterizes it. This
nature is realized nowhere—except in its Divine Idea—in its ideal purity, in
its exhaustive fullness. Here, we have the realist, though anti-Platonic, solu-
tion to the problem of the universals.
This is the case that applies to man. Certainly, his soul is spiritual. Non-
etheless, it is the form informing a matter, with which it composes a single
being, a single substance.24
Here, we meet up with the Thomist explanation of individuation by
matter. We will not set it forth at greater length. We merely need to draw
from it consequences that often are not given sufficient consideration. Based
on the fact that the soul, even the spiritual soul, is individuated only on
account of its relationship to the body, we must wholly avoid concluding that
one man differs from another only through his body and bodily dispositions.
The soul is individualized in order to make this body a single being. It is

23 Obviously, we are here speaking of “matter” in the precise sense that this word has
in the philosophy of nature, a resolutely ontological sense that is completely different
from the meaning that the word has for modern scientists seeking to identify the observ-
able physical constitution of material being, often with the aid of mathematical symbols.
24 A theologian cannot fail to note here the formulas of the Ecumenical Council of Vienne:
“Furthermore, with the approval of the holy council, we reject as erroneous and contrary
to the truth of the Catholic faith any doctrine or opinion that rashly asserts that the sub-
stance of the rational and intellectual soul is not truly and of itself the form of the human
body or that calls this into doubt. In order that the truth of the pure faith may be known
to all and the path to error barred, we define that from now on whoever presumes to
assert, defend, or obstinately hold that the rational and intellectual soul is not of itself
and essentially the form of the human body is to be censured as a heretic” (Denzinger,
no. 902 [old no. 481]).
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wholly itself individualized, according to all of its powers, even those that are
spiritual, thus being substantially distinct from all other individual human
souls. The unity that remains, the unity we insisted on so strongly in our pre-
vious section, is purely formal. It is the community of [intelligible] notes that
make up the species. Each person realizes the human species, but none
exhaust it, none is the Ideal Man, fully exhausting all of the virtualities of
humanity.25 The individuation of the human spirit and its realization in a
multitude of beings who are truly distinct and different from one another are
of such a nature as to reverberate over the unity of human truth.
In26 this sense, it is true to say that the species exceeds each of its indi-
viduals: it is the form that each one strives (metaphysically speaking) to real-
ize as fully as possible. However, because this is impossible, it has an inclina-
tion to transmit itself, by means of generation, to other individuals, who will
prolong its existential realization beyond its own life, each of them taking up
anew for himself the temporal adventure of human existence. In this sense,
one can speak of a great, species-wide life that, beginning with the first indi-
viduals of that species, is then pursued throughout subsequent generations.27
This successive realization of the species involves successes and failures, as
well as many average and mediocre realizations.
This multiplied instantiation [plurification] of the species is not a frag-
mentation into individuals without anything in common except for their

25 A logician will here note the possible equivocation befalling the word “accidental.” In
the logical sense of the term, it is perfectly correct to say that individual differences do
not reach the essence, the pure, essential definition of man, thus meaning that such dif-
ferences remain accidental. However, it would be completely false to conclude that, meta-
physically speaking, they only pertain to accidents in contrast to substance. These differ-
ences first and foremost attain the substance itself, according to its effective realization.
What makes Paul distinct from Peter is accidental to the human species, without which
they would not have the same nature. However, Paul’s difference from Peter is substantial
in nature. It remains true that an unconscious Platonism remains the temptation and
danger experienced by realism in opposition to nominalism. The Anselmian speculations
on original sin, a sin of nature, remain a telling historical witness to this fact.
26 [Tr. note: We reproduce these next few paragraphs, somewhat naïve and dated, with-
out approving of any possible negative applications of them. As the context makes clear,
Frs. Labourdette and Nicolas themselves distance their words from any racism. They
merely intend to begin this discussion of differentiation by considering the level of bio-
logical diversification within one species. For a recent study of the hard-scientific and
social-scientific literature taking this question seriously, in the face of opposing trends,
while attempting to avoid falling into reactionary excesses, see Charles Murray, Human
Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (New York: Twelve / Hachette, 2020).]
27 Here, we cannot take up the problem posed by the theory of the biological evolution
of one species from another. On this point, the reader can find invaluable remarks made
by Jacques Maritain in this very periodical, in his article, “Coopération philosophique et
justice intellectuelle,” Revue thomiste 46, nos. 3–4 (1946): 442–43.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 211

essential nature. It is a well-established fact of experience that sub-specific

groups exist within this proliferation, gathered together, nonetheless, through
a certain number of common characteristics. However obscure it might
remain, biologically speaking, in its true amplitude and proper causes, the
notion of race obviously designates an important fact discovered upon obser-
vations, one that prehistorical discoveries confirm in a striking manner. The
ideas of heredity and kinship lead us to conceive of the same reality. By taking
individuation in an obviously analogical sense, one can speak of “collective
individuation,” that is, within a given species, the establishment of more or
less numerous racial groups. It is true that categories taken from a solely bio-
logical perspective (indeed, ones that even in that domain are insufficiently
precise) are quite inadequately applied to a given human fact. Nonetheless,
already on this level, whatever might be the case for the intermingling of the
various races within humanity itself (leaving this word open to all the possible
fluctuations it involves), we must say that for racial groups, as for individuals,
none of them represents humanity in its ideal form; each of them represents
a particular, non-exhaustive realization of it. And just as, in the case of indi-
viduals, we spoke of successes and failures, so too we must speak of these in
the cases of racial realizations. Of course, we do not mean that they would
not have the same human nature—and, consequently, the same essential dig-
nity. Rather, we mean quite precisely that all the various races do not repre-
sent the same successes. History makes known races that are better endowed,
and among those that reveal themselves as being the best endowed, to judge
them as a whole, their talents still are quite diverse, with aptitudes turned
toward quite different sorts of human realizations.28
However, with such obviously inferior concepts, how far still do we
remain from the true fact of human experience! These biological differenti-
ations are only a doubtlessly rather distant substructure of the diversifications
of human history. In order to understand the latter, we must have recourse
to other notions. Because man is an incarnate spirit, not a pure one, he does
not possess the intuitive intelligence that pure spirits enjoy. His intelligence
is discursive, reason. And because he is rational, he only attains his full devel-
opment gradually, with the aid of other men. He needs them, even for what
is most human and most personal in him! Precisely so that he may receive
this, a type of characteristically human community comes to be formed: the
social community, properly so called. This is something completely different
from community of species or race. It is a society organized in view of human

28 Here, we doubtlessly find the element of truth that was able to bolster the great error
of racism. It is an error because it has misunderstood, on the one hand, the weight of the
primordial and foundational unity of the specific nature, and on the other hand, the tran-
scendence of the human person and his destiny in relation to all individual and communal
conditions.
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life. Consequently, the individual man finds himself caught up within the
framework of human realizations that ultimately surpass him. If we reflect
on his malleability, within the relatively lengthy time that is needed in order
for him to become a man, the meaning of the influence of a human environ-
ment over the various members of a group becomes clear. It is an influence
that is more or less overcome by particularly powerful personalities, but it
remains ever-active in some way. A family, a city, or a social and political
organization: all of this, understood in its most human sense, must be essen-
tially ordered to elevate man toward the fullest realization of humanity, where
he comes into contact with the loftiest and most universal values. Nonethe-
less, how greatly, and in how many other ways, is it freighted with psycho-
logical and moral pressures, as well as various forms of social determinism!
Thus, human groups form with more or less homogenous characteristics
under the influence of an ensemble of circumstances, thereby coming to be
profoundly different from other groups. In this way, various civilizations and
cultures come to be constituted, each tending toward the greatest human
truth, though inevitably individuated, characterized in space and time.
Here too, we must say that no civilizations exhaust the virtualities con-
tained in human nature. None of them ever bring it to its full perfection.
However, some are more successful at this than are others. And if it is true
that each civilization can learn much from others, thereby rectifying its own
deficiencies, there are some that have managed to more fully express per-
manent elements of man and of thought.
Finally, let us add to this all-too-brief reminder of truths that call for
many further developments one final point: in contrast to pure spirits, indeed
because he is engaged in the conditions of material existence, man lives and
acts in time. He only comes to self-realization gradually and progressively.
Thus, all human realities are marked by temporality. Human life is not only
an individual reality whose arc is immediately evident: infancy, youth, matur-
ity, old-age, death. It is also a social reality, one of the central conditions
involved in the realization of humanity. This is what gives history its reality
and its profound human significance, without implying either that it is nec-
essary—a whole cluster of contingencies are united therein to natural neces-
sities, and freedom is at work in history alongside many blind forces, which
are more or less deterministic and more or less discernable—or that it has a
de facto orientation toward progress or decadence.
If at least from the perspective of biology, the arc of individual evolution
is simple, by contrast the evolution of humanity, with all the differentiations
we described above, will necessarily be quite serpentine. In this case, the
curve of evolution is a slow conquest of man by himself: here knowing suc-
cesses, there failures, sometimes, through the confluence of favorable circum-
stances, marvelous efflorescence, and sometimes, through the overpowering
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 213

strength of the forces of dissolution, terrible periods of decay. Indeed, while

the destiny of a group is to tend, by its own means, to the best realization of
what it is to be human, nonetheless, many forces at work in history, starting
with sin, tend, instead, toward the dissolution of human society and to its
degradation into infra-human patterns, rather than toward the perfect real-
ization of humanity. Doubtlessly, in the course of such evolution, something
is gained, a kind of human experience, an ever-more-penetrating prise de
conscience of man himself and of his “situation” in the world. Ethnology is a
science that today is sufficiently developed so as to enable philosophical
reflection to understand to what extent man changes while remaining within
a fundamentally immutable nature, how much a primitive person differs in
how he considers the world, how he imagines things and life itself, in contrast
to how these things are considered by a man who is the heir to a long history
of civilization and culture. Moreover, this does not represent a value judg-
ment, for this evolution is not inevitably progressive, except along the lines
of technique, whether of art or of science, but in no way on the level of pure
intelligence, moral conscience, and the loftiest human values.
However, it remains the case that, after taking into account all of these
differentiating factors, one can consider things from the opposite perspective
and show under this incredible multiplicity the extent to which man always
and everywhere remains the same, each bearing within himself, “the entirety
of the human condition.” The difficulty is found not in holding one of these
two complementary truths but, rather, in not forgetting the one in favor of
the other and in knowing, on the contrary, how to unite them if one wishes
to philosophize concerning history.

B. Diversity in the Ways We Attain

and Express the Truth
What we just said concerning the differentiations found in the human mind
[esprit] right in the midst of the same specific nature already enables us to
glimpse in what sense and for what reasons various human minds, consid-
ering one and the same objective truth, can form for themselves representa-
tions that are not identical with each other without, however, thereby exclud-
ing one another. There is no such thing as Human-Mind-as-Such. There are
only given human minds, particular realizations of the same spiritual nature.
This multiplicity is only due to matter, and the mode of knowledge proper to
such a spiritual nature is affected by its condition: the human mind composes
and divides, after first having “abstracted” [what it knows from sense experi-
ence, elaborated by the “internal senses,” which furnish the objective instru-
ment of human cognition]. This presupposes a kind of “slicing up” of reality
so as to arrive at a mental “recomposition,” an “order” that reproduces the
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unity of reality, thanks to a series of rationate relations [i.e., relationes

rationis]. These successive and complicated operations of the mind, slowly
reaching their result, are not performed without the possibilities of error or
of some shortcoming appearing at each step along the way.
The mental expression of a truth, which by its very nature cannot be
obtained all at once, “tota simul,” will by its very essence be susceptible to
admixtures [mélanges], to progress as well, and indeed, to greater or lesser
perfection. From one mind to the next, from one generation or group of
minds to the next, it will be able to vary without absolutely falling into con-
tradiction. However, this in no way prevents there from being an ultimate
object for the whole of philosophical research, a universal truth, though
human in character, a truth whose essential elements at least can be (or one
day will be able to be) considered, without falling into a naïve dogmatism, to
have been attained, indeed, definitively.
And this bodily condition of mind [esprit] in man involves not only this
abstractive and successive mode of knowledge but, also, as we have said,
involves “individuation,” the multiplication and temporal succession of
human intellects (which, as such, would tend toward unity and fullness).
Thus, it also seems essential that truth, precisely to the degree it is possible
for man, will be affected by these individuating conditions that come to char-
acterize and limit our intellectual nature. The truth—which is a mind’s rela-
tion with being—whose typical form varies with the nature of this mind, will
be found in man bearing the mark of both his essential unity and his nec-
essarily multiple and changing character. This can be deduced a priori from
his nature. However, we would like to show this in greater detail by examining
the various acts by which, in the concrete conditions of life, the human mind
grasps the truth, along with the conditioning which these acts cannot avoid.

1. The Various Degrees of Truth in Human Judgment

It is far too vague to merely speak of “human truth,” that is, of the truth of
human knowledge. For man, conceiving is one thing and judging another.
Now, the mind’s truth formally exists in judgment. It is in the affirmation of
an object of thought as existing, as real, that the mind’s truth is simulta-
neously affirmed. To say, “This is,” (or, “this is such”) is the same as saying,
“It is true that this is” (or “is such”), which ultimately implies: the thought
that I now form concerning this object is conformed to reality. Logical truth
is, by definition, self-aware and self-affirmative. Its difference from ontologi-
cal truth is found in this fact. Consequently, a judgment is more or less imme-
diately true to the degree that its truth comes to light more or less immedi-
ately in the mere combining of that judgment’s terms. There are judgments
whose truth I see through the mediation of other judgments, which step-by-
step bring me to evidential knowledge, to immediate vision of the object.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 215

These non-immediate judgments, which are conclusions, the fruits of rea-

soning, are themselves more or less perfect, with a truth that is more or less
immediately grasped and affirmed inasmuch as my mind, through its power
of deduction or through long habit, more quickly and more synthetically per-
ceives all the “reasons” involved, that is, the intermediary propositions that
lead it to its conclusion. Our judgments are by far not equally radiant with
the truth, for they are not all scientific in character. Some are “opinions” or
“hypotheses.” Certainly, they either are or are not materially conformed to
the truth. However, this conformity is not always visible merely by combining
their terms, nor seen in necessary reasons. And how many “conclusive” prop-
ositions are said to be such, wrongly, on the basis of quite correct principles!
One can hold truths whose consequences have not yet been clearly perceived,
though they nonetheless continue to press upon one’s thought, with dimly-
perceived implications, even while the same person explicitly denies such
implications or even professes positions that contradict them. Therefore, in
one and the same knowing subject, a false judgment can coexist alongside
true judgments that logically undermine it. Perfect “coherence” within one
and the same mind is obtained only rarely, though it remains the condition
for perfect human truth. Therefore, one can quite well say that, concerning
every object, there is a perfectly and essentially true judgment that the mind
seeks to form, one that can be called “the truest possible” (in terms of the
kind of truth that belongs to what the human mind can obtain, a truth that
in no way equals the Divine Truth, which is infinitely truer than this).29
It is likewise clear that even judgments that cannot be called purely and
simply true are often far from being entirely false. They occasionally hold
true in what they affirm and not in what they deny. They are false in their
universality, while remaining valid in this or that category of case whose par-
ticularity and proper character [raison propre] still evade our insight. When
we discuss something “sympathetically,” do we not essentially “distinguish”
the terms at stake, specifying their various possible senses in order to retain
the only sense that alone would enable the given judgment to be true? Many
opinions could be true “in a certain sense,” which is not always explicitly

29 One might wonder whether this “more or less” to which the concept of the truth is
susceptible when it is applied to our judgments is the sign of an analogy. . . . However,
even when this would indeed be the case—and we believe that between the truth of opin-
ion and that of a scientific assertion there exists the same kind of analogy as that which
exists between virtue properly so called and the mere disposition to virtue—this would
not prevent the first analogate of such an analogy from being the scientific judgment that
man can form, and even better, the human judgment of immediate evidence, which
would, in its own turn, be the lowest analogate of this much vaster analogy having the
Divine Truth as its pinnacle. Certainly, it is because it is a participation in the Divine Truth
that human truth realizes its own, proper concept with more or less perfection. Nonethe-
less, a pure and perfect type of human truth does exist.
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excluded by those who profess them. However, this leads us beyond a direct
consideration of judgment so as to turn our attention toward the elements
from which judgments themselves are formed, namely, our representations,
our concepts.

2. The Various Degrees of Truth Involved in

Our “Conceptualizations”
Even though, strictly speaking, concepts are neither true nor false, truth (or
the appearance thereof) comes from their combination. In other words, the
truth of our judgments depends on the value of their relationship with reality.
Indeed, we can speak of conceptual truth, which involves a concept’s rep-
resentation of the intelligible object. So long as this representation is not, of
itself, affirmative and cannot be broken down into a subject and a predicate,
we cannot yet speak of logical truth but only of this kind of ontological truth
of the mind, namely, its fidelity to its nature, with the nature of a concept
being to contain its object just as the truth of this object is to be itself.
However, clearly, this ontological truth belonging to concepts prepares for
the logical truth belonging to judgments. And moreover, more or less implicit
judgments are frequently mixed in with this work of “conceptualization” and
“definition,” which forms the philosopher’s own first scientific task.
However, what exactly is meant by the verb “to conceptualize”? “To con-
ceptualize” is to form a concept, to represent and express in a concept what
our intellect grasps concerning an object. An outlook concerning the nature
of conceptualization, one differing from our own, has been widely dissemi-
nated by Bergsonian philosophy. According to the latter, the mind [esprit]
first grasps its object at a level that is deeper than, and prior to, the distinction
between the intellect and the will, doing so by means of a faculty that is com-
pletely different from that of conceptualizing and discursive reasoning. This
“intuition” of the object, this living experience, is what we would seek to
express and formulate in “concepts,” in static, solid “images,” whose repre-
sentative value in relation to changing reality is less assured than is their prac-
tical value, having only a provisionally-assured correspondence with the liv-
ing intuition whence they proceed.
We hold, however, that our intellect’s first insights are in no way prior
to our concepts. The human mind does not think without forming con-
cepts about what it thinks, even in the case of the very first intuitions of
being, substance, and of its own existence. A mental fabrication inasmuch
as it is a psychological entity, the concept is such—that is, representative
of a given thing—only in virtue of a determination impressed upon the
mind by the “thing” in question, by the object. The concept is a pure inter-
mediary, “rendering present” the object inasmuch as it is intelligible within
the intellect. However, the first concepts, those that are immediate, though
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 217

not yet reflected upon, being neither elaborated nor compared with each
other, are “vague” [confus]. Similarly “vague” are the first generalizations
by which we seek to group together our experiences and particular
notions, which are insufficiently intelligible because they are insufficiently
universal.
Comprising in actual fact, at least virtually, a number of interwoven con-
cepts, aiming at many realities without distinguishing them from one
another, they lend themselves to judgments that remain equivocal and con-
tain both truth and falsity. The use of vague concepts in our reasoning is
extremely dangerous, for we risk passing almost unconsciously from one
sense of the term in question to another. “To conceptualize” reality by means
of a mental effort of reflection is to obtain a clear, precise, and distinct con-
cept, from a vague one. This is what the ancients referred to as defining.
Through this activity, undertaken within the ambit of the mind, we bring to
light a notion that is unifying and capable of explaining others.
This is indeed brought about by consulting, in some way, one’s own mind
concerning what it truly thinks, by interrogating it, by requiring it to, in the
words of Socrates, “give birth” to the proper concept of the thing inasmuch
as it is distinct from everything else.
There is nothing pejorative involved in this word, “conceptualization,”
nothing that, of itself, indicates a translation of a superior type of knowledge
into an inferior one, nothing that would bring to mind a kind of “degraded,”
“deficient” representation of a transcendent reality, a representation adapted
to our needs and feelings. On the contrary, it involves the perfecting of
knowledge as such.
To an extent, it is true to say that there is more in our vague knowledge
than in our clear knowledge. At this level of immediacy and non-explana-
tion, concepts and sense experience are mixed together. . . . A kind of more
comprehensive view often involves a corresponding, very-strong sentiment,
for as St. Thomas saw quite well, although knowledge precedes love, “one
can love perfectly that which one knows imperfectly” (ST I-II, q. 27, a. 2, ad
2). The feeling of life often intensely accompanies our vague concepts and,
along with it, all those connaturalities that give knowledge at least more
savor, along with a different kind of evidence. Sedimentation and impover-
ishment are the price paid for conceptualization, which will need to be
pushed to a lofty level of perfection in order for the mind to once again have
this feeling of “fullness” in its view of reality, as well as the impression that
it has immediate contact with it.
A clear concept is, indeed, always partial. It represents this or that aspect
of reality, indeed, not always the most essential one. There are generic con-
cepts, and there are others that are specific. Both of these are univocal.
Others attain reality only through analogy with another that is more directly
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graspable, through which we form an analogous concept that is imperfectly

abstracted from its inferior analogates. Every complex being lends itself to
quite diverse representations of itself. This fact becomes striking above all
when we are concerned with conceiving of simple but superior realities.
Goodness, truth, intelligence, love—all of these are various “views” of the
one Divine Reality. A fortiori this holds true for concepts wherein supernat-
ural truth is revealed. In a revealed mystery, we forever find ourselves con-
fronted with two “faces” that, at first glance, seem to be opposed, the famous
“two ends of the chain,” spoken of by Bossuet, two “faces” whose reconcili-
ation is hidden to reason’s glance. Quite clearly, the order in which these
concepts are present in the human mind, themselves not calling for one
another, can vary, thus resulting in different perspectives that nonetheless
do not necessarily exclude one another and will both come to be integrated
by a perfect theology.30 Within one and the same domain, there can also be
two different analogies that both would have been of use for enabling us to
conceive one and the same reality, such as, for example, that of the “Mental
Word,” and that of “Son” used for enabling us to conceive of the Second Per-
son of the Trinity. However, far from being able to hold that these two anal-
ogies are equivalent and interchangeable, they complement each other and
are mutually illuminative.
Saint Thomas says that the more a being is elevated in the order of intel-
ligence, the less numerous are the ideas that it forms, for such a being has
the power to unify its objects of thought or, rather, to perceive their unity. In
other words, the more perfect they become, ideas lose their partial character.
Intellectual natures that are superior to us see the same things as we do, but
they do so in a much vaster ensemble, with all their references to the whole

30 A classic example will make our point clear. Faith teaches us of God’s absolute unity
and, nonetheless, also of the Trinity of Divine Persons. We can first conceive of God’s
unity and seek to deduce from it the non-impossibility, from a given perspective, of the
Trinity of Divine Persons. Or, by contrast, we can first conceive of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit as being God, and look to find in these Three Persons the unity of the
Divine Nature. These two conceptualizations of the revealed datum do not allow any
aspect of the mystery to be overlooked and are equally legitimate as expressions of faith,
though not as a principle of scientific explanation. They will provide the foundations for
Trinitarian theologies that have unequal explanatory values and unequal coherence,
though the notions and conclusions on either side could possibly not, of themselves—
and all the while appearing within a different perspective, expressing an unequal preci-
sion—not be opposed to each other, nor mutually exclusive (without, certainly, however,
them being able to be true at the same time). The advantage of the coexistence of these
two conceptualizations and systematizations is precisely their ability to check each other
and mutually enrich each other. Both can be thought by one and the same mind and, ulti-
mately, can be integrated into a single synthesis. The reader will note that, in the chosen
example, the difference befalling our conceptualizations has its foundation in the com-
plexity of the revealed datum itself.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 219

in which they are parts.31 From one man to the next, we also find such differ-
ences in conceptual perfection. We realize that they do not truly bear witness
to oppositions and incompatible views, that many non-perfect conceptual-
izations of a complex reality can exist, and finally that it is often quite difficult
to take one judgment formed by one human mind concerning a given prob-
lem and then set it in contradictory opposition to a judgment formed by
another without needing to find some kind of analogy, properly so called,
between their representations.
Up to this point, we have spoken only about one kind of limitation inher-
ent to every form of conceptualization, namely, their partial character.
However, very often, we will find it necessary to speak of a kind of error, at
least one that is virtual and implicit. When I implicitly attribute to the whole
of a group of realities, vaguely perceived, a given definition that to my eyes
seems to represent their common essence, their deep, essential character
[essence profonde], while in fact not wholly attaining them, my conceptual-
ization is false and paves the way for an error in judgment.32 However, it does
not follow that every concept that is inadequate to the object it claims to
define would necessarily be unfit for founding true judgments, nor that two
concepts aiming at the same reality, vaguely grasped by two minds, would
be contradictorily opposed to each other, as would be the case for two judg-
ments—one yes, the other no—concerning the same object. If a given con-
ceptualization is imperfect because it has not grasped that which makes up
the common essence of a vaguely gathered group of notions or because it has
only elaborated a non-essential (though, perhaps, commonly shared) aspect
of it, this conceptualization is not, properly speaking, false. It is perhaps appli-
cable to one portion of the notions I wanted to define or perhaps from a given
perspective. In judgments that are indeed true, we can make use of imperfect
concepts, utilizing all the truth they do contain. This is what explains the

31 See ST I, q. 55, a. 3:
Do superior angels understand through more universal species than do inferior
ones? Yes. And we can see this to a degree by way of example with something that
can be found in us. For there are some who, on account of the weakness of their
intellect, can grasp intelligible truth only if it is explained to them part by part in
every detail. However, there are others who have stronger intellects and can grasp
many things from a few.
32 It is possible that the univocity that Scotus attributes to being is not the same as that
which St. Thomas denies of being. However, no more is it the case that Scotus’s univocity
is St. Thomas’s position on analogy. One of their conceptions must have been poorly for-
mulated since, in the presence of the same data concerning unity and diversity vaguely
felt and perceived, they arrived at different notions. And consequently, their conception
of being also will differ, or Scotus considers it to be univocal whereas St. Thomas holds
it to be analogous. The captivating thing to investigate is the precise moment, and on
what point, their minds begin to diverge.
220 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

possibility of using imperfect philosophical concepts in order to arrive at

truths through reasoning that uses such concepts. The use of philosophical
concepts in theology provides a particularly illuminative example of this fact.
Indeed, there, the philosophical concept is, in truth, only at the service of a
truth of faith that desires to be clarified, often coming to rectify “in actu exer-
cito” the human concept in question, making use of the truth that it does
indeed contain.
Jacques Maritain showed this in detail for the case of St. Augustine,
though emphasizing that this theologian’s use of imperfect philosophical con-
cepts which, in themselves, were weighed down with errors, presupposed
that his faith was illuminated by the gifts of the Holy Spirit.33 What is so man-
ifestly true for St. Augustine’s case can likewise be said in general for the
whole of the patristic era of Christian thought, whose specific mission as
“builders” and defenders of dogma implied a form of assistance from the
Holy Spirit, and their less-scientific methodology likewise implied more
intermingling of loving contemplation with rational “discursus.”34
Therefore, our “conceptualizations” involve more or less exactness and
success. Nonetheless, let us suppose our mind were to fail in forming for
itself a precise and exact concept of what it first thought of in a vague
manner. Let us suppose a conceptualization that is actually false, at odds
with what I had vaguely in mind. Quite often, in wishing to specify some-
thing, I actually deform it. In such a case, it is not necessary that my clearly-
defined idea eliminate the vague concept that was prior to it, indeed, pre-
siding over its elaboration.
How often have we come to a halt with a given formulation, a given con-
cept, only then to realize that not only did it fail to account for what it was
but even for what we in reality thought. Thus, quite often, we continue think-
ing something that is vaguely true by means of conceptualizations that are
in fact scarcely adequate to reality, thereby, at least when we use them, wield-
ing them in our judgments, discourse, and investigations, quite often
implicitly rectifying them, understanding them somewhat differently from

33 See Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald Phelan et al. (Notre Dame, IN:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), ch. 7 (Augustinian Wisdom). To appreciate the
degree of truth in Augustinian wisdom, Maritain, in this remarkable chapter, makes allu-
sion above all to this differentiation of “levels” and “dimensions” of knowledge, which
we will stress below.
34 Those who, quite in contrast with our own position, attribute an imperfection of the
same sort, perhaps one that is graver, to the Aristotelian concepts used by St. Thomas,
should have recourse to the same explanation to justify their correspondence with dogma
and even their relative truth. However, these concepts cannot be wholly deprived of some
grasp on reality. For example, one cannot say that the notion of substance corresponds
only to a figmentum mentis without simultaneously professing that the use made of it in
theology is wholly devoid of truth.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 221

how we do when we consider them in themselves. This is precisely where we

stand in need of Socrates and his method.
Here again, our observation, which could be given infinitely more
nuance, holds true quite exactly in the domain of theology. Theology repre-
sents an effort of analysis and explanation concerning revealed concepts. This
explanation is submitted to the vicissitudes of the rational work undertaken
by our mind. However, whatever may be the more or less welcome and suc-
cessful conceptualizations we manage to form, the revealed concept defined
by the Church found at the point of departure of theological thought remains
present in our mind. And given that its intelligible content infinitely surpasses
the more-precise conceptualizations we could form concerning it, and like-
wise, given that the light proper to it is the light of faith, an infused light that
absolutely transcends the rational light of reason, a light that is the proximate
principle of infused contemplation, therefore the psychological phenomenon
we noted earlier is observed again, more easily: a poor conceptualization ulti-
mately leading to false judgments, without however destroying the truth that
I perceive in a vague, obscure state, through the concepts of faith. A theology
that is false in many of its conclusions and outlooks can very well coexist
with a faith that is objectively identical to that which presides over an entirely
true theology.35 This brings us back to what we said above concerning the
very imperfect consistency habitually befalling the human mind.
Up to this point, we have held that these differences in conceptualizations
concerning the same object are formed at the same level of intelligibility. Thus,
we can just as well obtain complementary representations of reality or ones
that are more or less clear and complete. However, our abstractive way of
knowing gives rise to even more profound differentiations within it. The con-
ceptualization formed from one and the same immediate datum can, in fact,
exist at multiple levels of abstraction. One and the same objective reality can
give way to multiple orders of representations, to multiple systems of concep-
tualization, to multiple sciences or types of knowing. The physicist who con-
siders being inasmuch as it is realized or realizable in the sensible universe
looks upon the universe under a different light than does the pure mathemat-
ician who considers it inasmuch as it is submitted merely to the laws of
number and quantity, likewise looking at the universe under a different light
than does the metaphysician who considers being—even while indeed observ-
ing it in the world of that which is sensible—precisely by focusing on that
aspect of this reality that transcends matter, quantity, [and so forth]. . . .

35 Another example: it is difficult to completely adhere to the Cajetanian conception of

personality and not simultaneously perceive that Scotus’s conception of it renders a true
Hypostatic Union unthinkable. However, at the same time, we can readily admit that both
a Scotist mind and a Cajetanian mind both share the same vague insight (which both of
them seek to analyze) concerning what Christ’s personal unity is.
222 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

The danger of error here is to fail to heed the conceptual registers

involved, reducing everything to one’s most familiar system of conceptual-
ization. In order to speak about realities that reveal themselves only to meta-
physical understanding, a physicist will be tempted to retain his experimental
language. The metaphysician will be exposed to the risk of reducing every-
thing to concepts that are far too general, thus presenting inadequate
responses to questions posed by the mind on a lower level of abstraction.
Therefore, a given proposition will be “true” if one reads it as being found at
a given “register,” within a given conceptual “lexicon.” According to the sense
and, so to speak, the degree of the word “being,” two propositions, two appar-
ently divergent world systems, will be equally true, though on different levels
of knowledge. The very scope of the word “reality” will not be the same in a
science that seeks out the law of observable facts and in that which seeks out
the very essence, the “quiddity” of things. We already encounter this differ-
ence within one and the same order of abstraction. Between experimental or
“empiriological” physics and ontological physics, the qualitative difference
in knowledge is clear enough for certain minds to experience the tendency
to reduce the latter to metaphysics, reserving the term “physics” for the
former. To these two different types of knowing, there correspond, for one
and the same object, systems of conceptualization that are not contradictory,
though they are fundamentally different: the same words thus encompass
quite different notions thatcan give way to definitions and propositions that
are disparate and seemingly mutually exclusive. However diverse they may
be, these notions nonetheless play analogous roles. The “quiddity” spoken of
by the philosopher will be replaced by the physicist with “the possibility of
observation,” and “conditionality” will be substituted for “causality,” properly
so called. To reduce observed, measured phenomena, whose laws and con-
ditioning one seeks after, to a philosophical concept of cause will seem to be
an absolutely non-existent pseudo-response. The “conceptualization” of a
problem that seems to be the same, [for example] that of the “intimate con-
stitution” of matter, will be completely different on the empiriological level
in contrast to the ontological level of conceptualization. This is because the
very idea of “the constitution of matter” is different on these two levels. By
contrast, the empiriological physicist is easily subject to the attraction of
mathematics—rightly so, given the possibility of translating observable phe-
nomena in terms of quantity. Given that the type of truth he arrives at is
mathematical in nature, defined, instead, as a kind of symbolic representation
of reality, he will come to form concerning the physical universe propositions
that we will need to know how to read in the appropriate register, and in this
very register, they remain true.
Let us not insist any further on these matters, though they be of such
great importance, matters set forth with great depth and at length by Jacques
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 223

Maritain in his Degrees of Knowledge. They are of capital importance on the

level of the philosophy of nature, and they enable us to perceive the durability
not only of medieval metaphysics but also of its natural philosophy, even
through the tremendous development of physics on the levels of empiriolog-
ical and physico-mathematical conceptualization. These same principles help
us to perceive, in relation to one and the same revealed datum, the possibility
of there being a profound difference in conceptualization when one considers
this datum on the level of ontological reflection, in contrast to that of morality
or mysticism.36 St. Thomas does not stand in opposition to St. John of the
Cross, or even to St. Augustine, as he does, however, to Duns Scotus.
Moreover, our multiple conceptualizations of reality are reduced to unity.
Every time we extrapolate concepts from the level where they are elaborated
and understood to a level that is foreign to them, we will ultimately fall into
equivocations and errors. And whenever we positively disregard one level of
knowledge, we will implicitly fall into error concerning the deep structure
and possibilities of the human intellect. In the end, metaphysics (on the
merely natural level) and speculative theology (on the level of knowledge of
the revealed datum) have the power of reflecting on all the modes and
degrees of knowledge, as well as that of constituting a synthesis of the whole
of our various forms of knowledge.

3. Conceptualization and Formulation

Still, something is lacking in what we have thus far said concerning the var-
ious elements involved in the relativity of human truth. We have not
addressed the question of language. And nonetheless, there is no more
important equivocation to be dispelled than that involved with the words
“expression” and “philosophical language,” which are not always clearly iden-
tified as referring either to concepts or to words. It is all too clear that great
difficulty is involved in trying to separate a concept from the word that serves
it both in the mind as well as in its external transmission. However, if a given
reality surpasses the concept formed concerning it, the latter is at least a nat-
ural representation of it, whereas the word is never anything other than a
conventional sign of the concept. A word is truthful only to the extent that it
adequately expresses the idea it intends to express. However, the fixity of its
signifying value comes from its usage, being wholly assured only in practice
thanks to its perpetual contact with concrete things and acts. As soon as one
looks to elevate words to the level of signifying general ideas, a kind of fluc-
tuation in their signifying value, along with a kind of arbitrariness in the use

36 Here too, in the Degrees of Knowledge, in relation to St. Augustine and St. John of the
Cross, Maritain has provided principles for solving this issue, and what he says there
deserves wider recognition.
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made of them, remain possible. However, what are we to say when it comes
to naming philosophical concepts, which have been slowly formed over time,
through great difficulty and at the cost of reflections seeking to probe their
depths? What are we to say about the person who looks to designate to some-
one else something that is perhaps being conceived of clearly for the first time
ever right here and now? Quite obviously there is something relative involved
in the value of philosophical vocabulary. We must forever strive to reach the
idea behind the words we use. A given vocabulary does not impose itself with
the necessity of absolute truth. However revelatory we may find the analysis
of words expressing, in a given language, some notion arising from sponta-
neous philosophical knowledge, it can only serve as a point of departure for
the explanation of a concept. But, while the meaning of words does depend
in some way on what the philosopher wishes to make them say, we must also
conversely note that the philosopher’s own thought will inevitably experience
the reverberations of the words at his disposal at his particular time and place.
It is difficult to use words that are characteristic of a given philosophy so as
to express thereby concepts that are different from those usually evoked by
such words. However, far be it from us to assert that human thought would
be essentially dependent upon a language that is essentially variable from one
century to the next, as Fr. Le Blond seems to state: “Our thought is expressed
by composing and dividing the schemata imposed by various languages,
schemata which do not remain wholly external to thought itself.”37 Much to
the contrary, thought attains reality only to the degree that it knows that lan-
guage must serve only as an instrument. The powerlessness of words is its
great obstacle, something the historian ceaselessly detects, though the phi-
losopher himself strives to eliminate it.38 The more one has a sense for the

37 Le Blond, “L’analogie de la verité,” 134.

38 The great obstacle the “word” poses to the idea is its power to substitute itself for
the latter. Who will say how often words and images substitute themselves for concepts
in imperfect thought? This is why one can very well make coexist within one’s own mind
vague truths and immediate intuitions alongside conceptions which claim to deny them,
though one does not truly “think” them because they are not thinkable. However, sadly,
it is quite frequently the case that one does not truly “think”!
This substitution of words for concepts can, moreover, quite well take place where the
latter would be full of reality. One thus comes to reason over mental signs, drained of
their content. Abstraction is all too often mistaken for being this kind of algebra, this
decoupling from reality. In such a case, there is indeed abstraction, though not from the
sensible and the particular but, rather, from reality. In this way, one can end up with
materially true propositions but not with the savor of the truth, which we receive from
contact with reality. Thus, is it surprising that minds accustomed to only maneuvering
about in words would lose this “sense of truth,” which would save them from so many
mistakes, misunderstandings, and ignorance of reality in domains that are new for them,
as well as so many arbitrary limitations on their own terrain?
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 225

natural relativity of language, the more one considers that, in order to attain
the perfection of thought toward which the human mind should strive, there
necessarily should be established a system of signification that is absolutely
objective and fixed, and that we should establish a kind of conventional fixing
of language. . . . At least, this is what the Church does for her dogmas and
what a scientific theology would itself tend to realize.
Indeed, what immense advantage is drawn from having the conventions
of language clearly specified so that we might come to understand each other!
The words drawn from a common language are thus endowed with an
exactly-determined sense; they can evoke the same concept in all minds. The
pitfall is that one can come to play around with them too much, reasoning
[merely] concerning these words, dispensing oneself from [actually] thinking
and taking up anew the vital work of conceptualization and personally grasp-
ing reality. If to philosophize is to enter into personal and direct contact with
the profound truths that are the foundations of life, great danger is involved
in not fashioning a language for oneself. However, to have to express what
oneself has seen, doing so in an objectively fixed language whose signifying
value is given in advance—what a lofty demand! What a victory over rough
approximation! However, [by the very fact of such linguistic expression] phi-
losophy has lost something from its objectivity, its universalism, and its claim
to be definitive and in touch with the atemporal. It tends to become the
expression of a personal manner—indeed, one wishing to retain this stamp
of one’s personality—of seeing eternal realities.
The problem of verbal expression is much broader than that of vocabu-
lary. As soon as a thought wishes to express itself, it immediately obeys cer-
tain laws of expression. It constructs itself in a given order, that which is more
favorable for expression “ad extra” and for communication to others. The
“order of teaching,” the process of placing something into verbal form, and
the interconnection of ideas are all constraints that require thought to specify
itself but communicate to it a kind of rigidity that does not come from its
own proper laws. Here, variations of order, of methods of expositions, and
of style will all intervene. One and the same thought can be exposited in very
different ways, which cannot fail to reverberate on its own internal order.
Differences in formulation can affect conceptualization itself. Here, we could
study the variety found in literary genres and styles. However, it seems quite
clear that rather profound differences in the form given to thought will not
change its intelligible content except, inevitably, in its nuances, and that one
can rewrite, for example, St. Thomas in a less didactic and less neat and trim
[découpée] form, giving his thought a more modern style, without, for all
this, changing his concepts.
226 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

4. Conceptualization and Systematization

Everything we just said concerning the truth of judgments and concepts
becomes more complicated if we come to speak of an organized body of
ideas, judgments, and reasoning, of the rational construction that one calls a
“system.” Here, we are not contrasting “system” with “science.” We understand
the word in a generic sense that embraces every kind of mental arrangement
of thoughts connected to one another, dependent above all upon certain fun-
damental concepts. Moreover, we have not been able to speak about concep-
tualization without already glimpsing the interior constructions of these
mental arrangements, which can go so far as to desire to reproduce the whole
of reality in the human mind in a human manner. However, the truth of a
system of science or wisdom obviously cannot be gauged as simply as that of
a concept or judgment. In order for a rational construction to be assured of
the truth of a great number of the propositions it contains, it suffices that it
have sufficient strength for supporting itself in a mind and in a school.
Obviously—and this is a basic fact—this truth will need to be appreciated in
function of the system’s own proper light. The concepts involved in it can be
understood in their true sense only if they are considered from within that
system. Each philosophical system has its own fabricated language or, at least,
one that is modeled on its own concepts, often influenced by the latter even
where it serves to express common ideas. Clearly, the statements of each such
system concerning the same problems are not purely and simply to be set in
opposition to each other but, rather, are to be critiqued and reduced to their
true meaning. And yet, the point of departure for various systems is, of
course, different. Even when there is only a difference in via inventionis, it is
rare that this difference not reverberate over the overall arrangement.
However, if the author of a system places at the foundation of his edi-
fice something that in reality represents only some secondary aspect [of
reality], he deceives himself in so doing. Nonetheless, many truths remain
open to him and some, per accidens, will appear to him, as it were, with
greater radiance. Methods can also differ and, with them, the way one con-
ceives of the nature of the human mind, science, and wisdom. Even if these
conceptions happen to be false (and given their complex nature, if we con-
sider all the details of their content, not everything in them will be false),
this does not make everything that appears under their sway invalid. If I
deny, for example, the value of the intellect and consequently come to rely
above all on an instinct of heart, I will nonetheless—indeed quite often,
in actu exercito—use my mind as though it does indeed reach reality and
will discover no small number of utterly correct things. If I limit human
thought to empirically observable objects, my worldview will be false
through what it denies, but I will thereby enable myself to greatly perfect
my powers of observation.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 227

Let differences in illumination—that is, differences in formal objects—

come to be added to these manifold causes of differentiation, and we will find
ourselves faced with “positions” before reality whose principal error would
be to mutually exclude each other, including the denial of truths that are
poorly understood because they are viewed under an unfamiliar intellectual
light. A so-called “scientific” outlook (in the modern sense of the word
“science”) concerning the world is often simply a worldview lacking in philo-
sophical illumination, where the only portion of error that is discernable
comes from what is rejected. To put it another way: truth is found in all the
great systems. We apologize for making such a banal point, even though it is
not nothing to have understood what makes this state of affairs possible.
However, this being said, we must come to speak formally not of truths con-
tained in a system but, rather, of the truth of systems as such, of the adequation
of this mental construction—this “unified” construction, with its unique
character and distinction from every other such construction—in relation to
the reality that it claims to render intelligible. In this very precise sense, a sys-
tem will be true if its fundamental principles are true, if they are truly first
principles, if the conceptualization implied in these principles is perfect, clear,
and formal, that is, going to the very essence of things, and finally, if its
method is good, corresponding to the true nature of the mind and its under-
takings. We must add that, in order to remain completely true, a system must
remain “open,” ready to receive all reality, ever-prepared to critique itself and
reconstruct itself. A system always has the tendency to lay claim to the totality
that is, in fact, its essential aim. It is not in error because it does not embrace
the whole; rather, error lies in judging that “the whole” is there, that the whole
of reality has been captured. The mind forever has the tendency to deny wha-
tever does not find a place in the closed synthesis it has fashioned for itself.
Every human mind that remains enclosed within what it has conceived—a
fortiori within what it has learned—by that very fact distorts the truth it pos-
sesses. In its own self-estimation, a system must forever remain aware of that
portion of reality that it has not yet assimilated, a portion that could become
a principle and ferment in its own turn. This is why the truest [system] must
guard against the danger that threatens it precisely because it is a system: to
judge everything that is proposed to it in terms of how it corresponds with
the overall system rather than through their own proper principles and
doubtlessly before long to no longer have a spirit of research but, rather, to
be concerned only with presenting an exposition of already-acquired truths.
Supposing that this method preserves one from a number of errors, in place
of reality, it risks presenting to the mind the system itself as an object, along
with this system’s coherence. By no longer being aware of any other problems
than those that gave birth to this particular system, one risks, through a kind
of immobility, relying precisely on what is contingent and accidental in it, its
228 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

historical conditioning, focusing on what conditioned its historical genesis.

It is not a paradox to say that the “truth” and “life” of a system as such must
proceed together. However, having thus defined the truth conditions for a
system as such, it is obvious that in the face of one and the same object and
on one and the same level of knowledge, only one true system is possible,
and it is in search of it that the human mind labors through its multiple
attempts at synthesis, which time devours only because they have not yet
attained their goal, though, all the while leading toward it, indeed, often by
error’s own path. The word “system” is no longer suitable for describing this
ideal mental construction, which would be the true system, the objective pos-
sibility of which suffices for justifying all forms of dissatisfactions and inves-
tigations. This completely generic word, which above all expresses the inter-
nal coherence of a mental whole, equally applies to the true, the hypothetical,
and the false. A system deserving of this name is an attempt at science. If it
claims it is true and affirms itself as thus, it at the same time declares that it
is a “scientific” expression of reality.
As we have seen, there is no reason why the same could not be true for
theology and metaphysics. The disproportion between the human mind and
its object in theology creates an infinite distance between this object and the
representation that it can form of it for itself, thereby making appeal to a
supra-conceptual form of knowledge purely and directly through faith.
However, this would justify a multitude of theologies only if the human mind
were not specifically one or if the divine truths had not been revealed in
human concepts.
However, the human mind is so made that the essential itself is partial.
No system fashioned by its work can fail to be, in fact, free from error and
lacunae. Nor can any system concretely existing in the mind of a man fail to
bear his own individual stamp and to lose, in him, the pure nature of perfect
science. Although all truths could find a place in the true system, it is often
necessary that certain ones appear in the light of other conceptualizations
and other methods. This is why, next to Science—indeed as long as it does
not come to reach its ultimate state of achievement—there must also forever
be systems that force it to perpetually verify, revise, and supplement itself.

5. Mentalities
Moreover, within one and the same science there remain, in addition to the
various possible mental outlooks spoken of above, the infinite variations aris-
ing from individual mental differences. One mind can completely recopy
another mind only if it is itself in touch with reality. Now, one man will never,
in fact, embrace all the aspects of reality in their own proper order, without
making any personal choice, without any order of preference, without any
reverberation of that which, in him, individuates his intellect. The problems
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 229

he raises for himself, the interest he takes in them, the various kinds of back-
ground knowledge that serve as a point of departure, the various influences
he has experienced—all of this determines the orientation of his intellect,
which can attempt to overcome this order of factors (which, in themselves,
are contingent) only after having submitted himself to them. “Omnis cognitio
humana a sensu.” Man reaches eternal essences only by means of realities
that pass away and change, by way of mental activity that is deeply involved
in the passage of time. Everything that comes from the individual in human
thought is only an accidental covering. However, it is essential to this thought
that it have this covering and that it see it develop. This is what we must look
into more closely by studying, though in a rather summary fashion, what we
can call the “mentality” of a thinker.
Indeed, our reflection here would be all too incomplete if, while being
concerned with situating the different concepts from which our judgments
are formed into the context of great systems of ideas wherein they find their
meaning, we did not place these systems themselves into this even-broader—
though vaguer and more indefinable as well—context: a “mentality.” The
mentality of a thinker, insofar as it is distinct from his system of thought,
involves everything he has in his mind in a non-scientific state, constituting
a kind of atmosphere and, at the same time, something presupposed for his
intellectual effort. It includes judgments that have not been critiqued, ones
that are not scientific or even might be erroneous, general assessments and
value judgments, an overall outlook concerning the meaning of life, an atti-
tude regarding God and the world, along with one’s spirituality. Every new
metaphysics comes to birth within a mentality that it sometimes helps to
transform by developing itself, though slowly.
And, moreover, many of the ideas one might try to use—though with
what difficulty!—to formulate a mentality are themselves accepted ready-
made and are introduced uncritically (because they are admitted by all) into
a system that otherwise diligently strives to render account of its principles.
A “mentality” will not, in fact, ever be entirely defined by a group of ideas
but, rather, by ways of feeling, evaluating, seeing, and imagining the world,
all of which are determined by mores, examples, institutions, and perhaps,
the debris left behind by ideological systems that, despite having collapsed,
nonetheless reigned for many years.
In order to understand what we mean here by the term “mentality,” we
must keep in mind what we said concerning the relations between the indi-
vidual and his race, social category, and general milieu. We forever come back
to this condition befalling man, individuated through his connection to his
embodied nature and thereby multiplied and begotten, aspiring to the fullness
of his nature through union with his fellow men, the foundation of the family
and life in society. The human mind never thinks alone. In his intellectual
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life, he is dependent. He is not alone, standing before the object. There are
already biases that determine him, which he suffers from or has inherited,
and we cannot even always say whether they belong to the order of truth or
that of falsity.
However just and true an idea may be, however coherent and substan-
tially adequate to reality a system may be, it is impossible that references to
the “mentality” in which it is thought would not come to be added to the
pure conceptual datum, marking it with a kind of relativity.
A “mentality” varies even though many of its conceptions remain valid.
It is impossible that each thinker and each era would not have a unique men-
tality, even though the properly scientific attitude of mind seeks to free itself
from it, at least by being aware of it. However, if this “mentality,” precisely as
something transitory, were to affect the essence and “specific nature” of sci-
entific thought, the latter, not having attained the eternal and the necessary,
would not be true. A true thought is only accidentally affected by this rel-
ativity and by these relations to one’s mental context. In it, what is unchanging
can be separated from what is variable in the same way that one can, through
one’s mind, separate what is essential and necessary from something’s indi-
viduating notes.
In any case, when a mind whose “mentality” differs from that of a
thinker from an earlier era thinks the same system, when it has the same
ideas, it must strip them of these references. Otherwise, if it does not know
how to do so, relying on this surface-covering, which nonetheless is acciden-
tal, it renders itself incapable even of grasping the objective reality that past
thinkers grasped and a fortiori of adhering to it.

6. Truth and History

Here, we see the role of history, namely, to aid us in distinguishing what is
variable and relative from what is essential and permanent, perhaps preserv-
ing us from succumbing to the influences of our own era. Far be it from us
to disregard the necessity of history for investigation into the truth. Nonethe-
less, let us here also avoid a strange confusion that so often is allowed to stand
when one speaks about the relations between truth and history. Some say:
we must make the elements of “history” and “time” enter into conception of
human truth. What this meant for Hegel is well known: truth is in the mak-
ing, as is reality itself, which is the Idea. However, for us, only one meaning
is acceptable concerning this affair. There is a history of human thought, a
history of truth such as man has seen it. However, there also is a self-identical,
atemporal truth, which is the specifying object of human wisdom. Truth,
such as a given thinker has seen it, even were this St. Augustine or St. Thomas,
depends on history, on time, on everything that conditions his acts of
thought, and on its own proper limits. However, the ultimate object of our
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 231

wisdom is not the Augustinianism of St. Augustine, nor the Thomism of St.
Thomas, nor the mind of any thinker whatsoever. It is the truth itself. This is
what my own mind must think, aided by those who have contemplated it
before it has, though avoiding their errors, surpassing their limits, and striv-
ing to see for oneself what they themselves saw.
Can anything more be granted to the element of “time”? Can we think
that the duration of humanity, no more than that of the individual, is not
only a succession of instants but, rather, a begetting of instants by one
another? “Time” would thus have an “orientation.” The human species—cer-
tainly not in a continuous manner, not without eclipses, backsliding,
impasses, and fruitless attempts—would undergo a process of development.
On account of its incarnation in individual and manifold matter, the human
mind would thus progressively reach its maturation and its state of adaptation
to its object, its aptitude to see the truth. Man would rise upward toward more
spirit, toward more truth, all according to a kind of law, according to a dia-
lectic, and knowledge of this dialectic would be of use in having a better
understanding of the thought of this or that moment of this evolution.
However, because its nature would not change (nor, consequently, its manner
of knowing reality and of adjusting itself to it), this would not mean that there
would be a kind of analogy among the successive worldviews that humanity
would form. There would only be a progressive elimination of errors, the
development of principles, and the acquisition of new, perhaps essential,
truths that might be lacking in the very foundations of the edifice. However,
we use the conditional mood because facts do not seem to vindicate this way
of interpreting the history of the human mind [esprit],39 and no a priori could
force us to hold that what is new would [necessarily] have more truth value.
It is already much to say that the novelty of discovery gives thought a greater
feeling of life.
In any case, why not see that certain eras are privileged, that certain men
are predestined to see realized in themselves the “decisive moments” of
human evolution? Others, to the degree that they contribute something new,
are only men of their era. The great transcend their era and discover that
which is necessary and eternal. They are the true masters. And once the
essential is attained, in whatsoever domain, the eternal is also, by that very
fact, attained.

39 It would perhaps be more exact to say, with Émile Bréhier (La Philosophie et son passé)
that through so many immense changes, the fundamental attitudes of the human mind
remain constant and few in number.
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IV.—ST. THOMAS AND THE UNICITY OF THEOLOGY

[LA THÉOLOGIE UNIQUE]
As should be clear, we are in agreement with Fr. Le Blond, as with everyone,
no doubt, in admitting that truth can be found in systems of thought and lan-
guage that are quite different from each other and that, in fact, elements of
“relativity” and “variables” are involved in the concrete reality of all human
thought. However, in no way can we explain this by claiming that our various
representations of reality are necessarily analogical in character. First of all,
we find these elements of variability once again in domains where our rep-
resentations are univocal. Likewise, even where reality infinitely exceeds the
proper object of the human intellect [esprit], the unity of the latter reduces to
unity the kind of analogy by which it knows the Infinite. Where our concepts
differ not only through their references to an obsolete system of thought (i.e.,
one that is recognized as being false, in which case we have a mentality that
has been surpassed), but moreover through their essential content itself, we
no longer say that it is the same truth, even when the same words are retained.
We do not think that many systems whose metaphysical foundations contra-
dict each other can equal each other as expressions of reality. We think the
task of the human mind [esprit] is to tend toward the unification of knowledge.
The effort expended in forming a general synthesis of every form of knowl-
edge, forming a complete and unique worldview founded on faith, does not
involve some kind of rationalist tendency but, rather, is an affirmation of the
unity of the human mind set before the truth, even the Divine Truth, as well
as of the objective value of its grasp upon reality, a grasp that, however partial
it may be, nonetheless remains an aspiration toward wisdom.
Will we now say that this one [unique] theology exists and that our only
role is to understand St. Thomas and to repeat what he has said? If this were
the case, we indeed could not be pardoned for not dedicating our strength
to an exegesis of his thought, armed with all the resources of history. Now,
however crucial this work might seem to us, a labor providing enough work
to consume teams—how greatly desired they are!—of specialists, we believe
it is also necessary to continue to contemplate reality in his footsteps. St.
Thomas obviously has neither said everything nor seen everything. He has
not delved down into, nor applied, each of his principles [in full]. He inte-
grated into his synthesis false historical and scientific positions that strongly
influenced a number of his philosophical conceptions. He held in his own
mind many views common in his own era, views that he did not critique,
though they did not depend on his own metaphysical outlook. He paid little
attention to values that now seem to us to be issues of the first rank of impor-
tance. He was not aware of a great number of things that would have inspired
great metaphysical insights and admirable theological explanations. He had
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 233

a determinate end, that of a professor, which slightly inflects even a scholar’s

own goals. His language is indeed admirable, given how he says exactly what
he means, though this language can indeed be significantly enriched. And
then there is his spiritual temperament, one that is marvelously conducive
for the work of a scholar, though it was that of his own, personal holiness.
Finally, if a mortal could be permitted to live for centuries in the full strength
of his maturity, accompanied with the full, lively, and innovative curiosity of
youth, it is clear that he would not have ceased to progress, to draw to himself
for his own self-growth everything that other minds would have felt and dis-
covered concerning the truth. However, St. Thomas is only one man: some
years of thought after twelve centuries of Christianity and how many cen-
turies of civilization? Nonetheless, better than anyone before him, he under-
stood the essential truths, those that are first and most fundamental, and he
knew how to build everything upon them, fashioning a synthesis that is all
the more open to every truth precisely inasmuch as it is more dependent
upon a metaphysics, that is, upon the principles of all things. Something very
new and very crucial in Christianity began with him. In him and through
him, Christian thought succeeded in arriving at a synthesis with the philos-
ophy issuing from mere reason, such as it appeared in Aristotle. How could
those who do not believe in the truth of this philosophy, those who do not
believe that up to then theology lacked its perfect rational instrument, attach
to St. Thomas the importance that we attach to him? We feel how difficult it
is for modern thought to affirm that this philosophy is true and, consequently,
capable of progressing, extending itself, and assimilating into itself everything
that is true, while nonetheless remaining what it is, all on account of the per-
manence of the principles that define it. If it is true, how many things are
false! Yes, even theses that are permitted and taught in the Church. However,
the Church only enforces an opinion concerning that which is de fide or very
immediately connected to faith. Thank goodness! For if this were not the
case, who would be orthodox? “Justice and truth are two points that are so
subtle that our instruments are too blunt for us to be able to touch them with
accuracy. If they reach it, they conceal its very point and press in every direc-
tion, more upon falsity than upon truth.”40
Were we today, in relation to a philosophy that is essentially opposed to
the Aristotelianism used by St. Thomas, to strive to do what St. Thomas did
in his own day in response to Aristotle’s philosophy, we would have but one
option: to ultimately repudiate [nier] St. Thomas. It is here that we see the
equivocation committed by those who speak of imitating St. Thomas by bap-
tizing Hegel or Bergson, Kierkegaard or Marx. For St. Thomas did not intend
to provide Christianity with an expression that is provisionally valid for a

40 See Pascal, Pensées (Brunschvicg, no. 82).

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given time when Aristotle was thought to be true. Rather, he intended to pro-
vide an objectively rational and ever-true expression of a dogmatic whole,
proposed to man’s essentially immutable intellect.41
In what way is this position anti-historical? Are there not decisive
moments in the history of the mind, or are things that are accomplished in
time always and necessarily perishable? Are there not discoveries on which
everything in human history depends? Are they not prepared for by an often-
lengthy evolution that suddenly, in a single stroke, gives birth to a new and
more perfect form? To go deeper still, did not the Church stand in need of a
theology, so that she could safeguard her faith and enable it to bear its rightful
fruit? And consequently, was it not necessary that she discover her own phi-
losophy? Thus, we should not be astonished that the Holy Spirit would have
guided the development of Christian thought up to a point where the faith
of the Fathers would encounter a permanently-true philosophy. For that
matter, why name this or that Father, as well as St. Thomas and Aristotle?
These are men who, in fact, discovered or decisively expressed this or that
truth, placing their stamp upon it. But who thinks of the inventor of the plow?
Nonetheless, the plow exists and has become a perfected machine whose
principles have not changed. Certain ideas and methods are inventions that
are more precious than the plow or any other tool. And I know quite well
that Aristotle and the whole of Greek thought itself seem to represent a rather
partial view of the human mind concerning things when we think of the
world of Hindu thought or even, having become so different from them, that
of modern thought. Nonetheless, it is not for nothing that the Divine Truth
was revealed and first taught in Hebrew and Greek concepts. Without a
doubt, they were adapted to this task and prepared for by the Word who illu-
minates every man coming into this world. And without a doubt, they were,
above all, flexed and rectified, thereby being given more truth, by this Divine

41 In his already-cited article in Nouvelle revue théologique, Fr. Daniélou once again dis-
tinguishes Christian thought and its essential requirements from the various philoso-
phies in which it can be incarnated. To think, as we do, that only one philosophy is true
does not prevent us in any way from admitting as well that Christianity contains in itself
imperious philosophical requirements that risk bursting the very frameworks of all purely
rational systems. These requirements, such as Fr. Daniélou describes them, certainly
burst open historical Aristotelianism in those of its elements that were fixed and ulti-
mately closed off to further development; however, just as well, the genius of St. Thomas
was to fully and explicitly grant this, without, however, losing the benefit of the positive
truths of Greek wisdom. It is true that his God is at once totally independent and—by the
same token, accessible to the creature without possible confusion with it—that his entire
worldview was penetrated by his awareness of the directionality and meaning of history
[le sens de l’événement et de l’évolution vers un but], and that he provides a central place
for the human person in a universe which we today know to be disproportionate. This is
why, in St. Thomas, we speak of an encounter between Christian philosophy and that of
Aristotle.
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 235

Truth that had to be expressed in them. Plato and Aristotle are our masters,
but how transformed are they by the Faith that found in them the concepts
needed for its own human expression!
Therefore, in what way would this position be insufficiently Catholic? We
have said clearly enough that systems that have some error at their founda-
tions, some primordial lacuna, or some confusion between what is secondary
and what is essential still can contain many truths. How much more is this
true, a fortiori, for Christian systems? How much more is this true, a fortiori,
again, for the thought of the Fathers? Their philosophy and methodology
was, perhaps, uncertain, but in them lived the [T]radition, whose first inspi-
ration came from Scripture, which the Holy Spirit illuminated. The fact that
the introduction of their great doctrinal themes sometimes seems to break
various Thomist frameworks merely proves the fact that we often must
deepen the Thomist position in order to integrate them, and we must not
confuse either what St. Thomas explicitly thought with what he suggests nor
the limitations that his individuality necessarily brings to the fecundity of his
thought with the limitations inscribed within the internal possibilities and
essence of this thought.
Moreover, quite often, on many points, Fr. Le Blond is right in what he
says, and we have taken care to analyze the reasons for this. The oppositions
are more so verbal than real, not because the concepts would be equivalent
or analogous to each other but because the same idea is hidden under differ-
ent words, if one knows how to listen to them in the overall light of the system
[in which they are expressed]. It is all too obvious that the human mind,
despite itself, placed before eternal problems, spontaneously forms concepts
that begin to differ from one system to another only after a great deal of expli-
cation has been undertaken or by the relations that one makes them sustain
with the whole, often at the expense of one’s first intuition. It is not always
impossible to translate one philosophy into the language of another philos-
ophy, though it is much better to so translate it into the common language
of culture than to borrow the technical terms of an essentially contrary phi-
losophy. In any case, we must translate into our own philosophical language
many values and realities that have been perceived by thinkers from outside
of our own tradition. It is not at all paradoxical to say that the result of this
“transposition” may well be more fruitful between systems that are entirely
foreign to one another when those systems are not born from a mutual oppo-
sition concerning some common datum.
Nonetheless, for the reasons we spelled out above, to purely and simply
abandon scholastic language, and even its most essential method of exposi-
tion, would involve the loss of one of Christian philosophy’s greatest
strengths. It merely should be enriched, indeed constantly, by everything that
has become common and classic in modern philosophy, which contains
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many things that are susceptible to finding a fixed sense within the overall
Thomist synthesis, expanded as is necessary.
This position commits neither the error of rationalism nor that of exces-
sive intellectualism. By setting before the Christian thinker the goal of work-
ing on the construction of a philosophy and a single [unique] Catholic the-
ology that will never be fully achieved (yet nonetheless has already been given
a solid foundation by St. Thomas), we by the same stroke profess the scientific
character of theology. However, having said this, scientific theology is not
the only form of theology. It is the most perfect kind in the order of pure
knowledge. However, it is not the only means of knowledge offered to the
Christian soul, and pure knowledge is not the whole of man. A savoring
knowledge of the revealed text under the action of the gifts of the Holy Spirit
represents a more direct form of contact with God, a more direct form of
nourishment for faith. This is even more true for the mystical contemplation
of God present in the soul. We also think that “the Word of God in His
unique and definitive fullness is the Word made flesh,” but to reach and
embrace Him as such no longer lies within the ambit of scientific theology.
It lies beyond it. Moreover, charity is beyond all knowledge, not only for char-
ity’s moral value but also for the union with God it brings about. God forbid
that the Church would only contain theologians or that any of us would limit
ourselves to being theologians! Conceptual theology can also be less scien-
tific, making itself apologetic in character, “kerygmatic,” adapting itself to the
needs, possibilities, and (to the degree this is possible within the bounds of
truth) to the ways of thinking of those who are to be saved and nourished
on the bread of truth. The same is true on the purely rational level. Objective,
realistic philosophy, with its scientific structure, does not suppress (and,
indeed, much to the contrary, it in a certain manner frees) a philosophy that
is more engaged in life and experience, the witness of metaphysical experi-
ences, the analyses that guard against stripping their object of its existence
and of everything this existence brings with it, quivering, personal, and
impossible to universalize. There is no great metaphysics that is not, in fact,
born of and sustained by some spiritual experience. It is good that certain
minds [esprits] refuse, for their own count, to become detached from it. Poets
are necessary as well, in order to recover, through their own unique means,
a truth which is not only a truth. Let the wise take heed: “Noli impedire musi-
cam.” But all of these forms of life must not aim to replace a metaphysics and
theology whose rejection would imply, in relation to intelligence and being,
a position that is scarcely compatible with the possibility of fixed and per-
manent dogmas.
Finally, in what way would our position be anti-missionary? Certainly,
“incarnating” Christian thought in cultures that are entirely different from
Latin culture involves great difficulties. However, a great problem is already
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 237

involved in freeing these cultures from what in them is opposed to Christi-

anity. Even then, even under the pure dominion of faith, reason that has been
shaped by Hindu thought would doubtlessly be ill-adapted, in its current
state, to assimilate scholastic theology. Doubtlessly, it would think out its new
faith in its own manner, and, surely, it would introduce fundamental Chris-
tian philosophical conceptions into mental structures that are uniquely its
own, into a vocabulary charged with references to a mentality that is quite
different from our own. But we must think that not everything would be true,
nor complete, nor precise in this theology (even though nothing would pre-
vent faith in the dogmas) until the day when, by dint of its own progress and
perhaps of coming into confrontation with Latin theology, and by dint of the
latter being obliged to deepen itself and perhaps refashion itself on certain
points, indeed, to enrich itself upon everything found in this new contrib-
ution, this theology would itself reach a more perfect age, the scientific age.
What every Catholic must believe concerning the permanence and unity
of dogmatic formulas through various cultures we likewise affirm by way of
necessary consequence in relation to theological science, though recognizing
an important difference, namely, that the latter is still unachieved and is not
necessary for salvation. Allow us here to cite what we said in our study on
the missionary apostolate:

The fact that the absolute truth of the faith could be expressed in the
concepts of substance and person shows that these concepts, in the
sense they are understood by the Church’s own definition, are certainly
true for every man and can be assimilated by every culture. However,
if the Church came, to take root, for example, in India and wished (and
could) express her faith in concepts familiar to Hindus, this is because
these concepts would be true and able to be assimilated in their own
turn with more or less effort by Latin thought. Moreover, western phi-
losophy was much more profoundly transformed by Christian faith
than the latter was conditioned by western philosophy. And the Chris-
tian faith would likewise profoundly transform eastern philosophy. It
would be a factor of unity for the human mind [esprit], which, left to its
own devices, does not find in the unity of its own structure sufficient
power for dominating the countless elements in which human intelli-
gence, in fact, must exercise its power (nor sufficient power for thus
arriving at the fullness of human truth to which it aspires).42

Finally, will we need to say that by being so enlarged our position would
cease to be Thomist? It suffices to recall these fundamental concepts that we

42 Michel Labourdette, “Théologie de l’apostolat missionnaire,” Revue Thomiste 46

(1946): 582–83. [Tr. note: The last parenthesis was added by Fr. Labourdette in this par-
ticular article.]
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said are essential and permanent in order for us to realize that Thomist
thought, however enriched it may be by all of these foreign contributions or
by new observations and reflections, will always refashion itself organically
on the basis of these fundamental concepts, retaining (within a mental
context that is perhaps significantly revised) that which gives Thomist
thought its characteristic place among the philosophies and theologies that
have been known throughout history: the realism of knowledge, its concep-
tion of science, the structure of being, the notions of object and nature, the
doctrine of act and potency, that of causality, its anthropology, the relations
between knowledge and love, in a word, everything that provides the foun-
dation for a logic, metaphysics, [philosophical] psychology, morality, and
finally, the principles and methods that enable it to make use of all this in
theology. Moreover, this is why the best introduction to theological science
consists in the direct, literal, and profound study of the very work of St.
Thomas, in which these principles are implemented in plain sight, principles
that remain such a leaven for him who knows how to penetrate into their
depths. There we have the full meaning of the place assigned to him by the
Church. He is the Master of theological science.

V. CONCLUSION
The pretension to unity and universality implied in the scientific form of St.
Thomas’s theology is, moreover, a need the mind feels by its very nature.
An attitude of extreme tolerance and theological liberalism can only be
provisional. Already, one sees an otherwise-positive ambition dawning.
Indeed, already, more or less consciously, one wishes to replace St. Thomas
with something else, with another worldview inspired by modern science,
by the sentiments of contemporary men, another philosophy and con-
sequently another theology. Why not do for the philosophy of evolution what
St. Thomas did for the philosophy of being: why not rethink Christianity in
light of this new science, one which believes it contains an entire wisdom?
Some still think, certainly, that, thanks to the supple use of analogy, this
renewed view of Christianity will ultimately agree with Catholic tradition
and even with St. Thomas. Perhaps they expect no more permanence from
this “new contemporary expression” of Christianity than from that which St.
Thomas championed. Above all, they dream of “drawing” to Christianity
those who, in fact, imbued as they are with a positive [sic] and evolutionist
mentality, are more comfortable with this sort of conceptualization, so that
the Kingdom of God may not be more closed off to them than to a Middle
Ages that was suffused with the dangerous Aristotle. However, there are some
who have another ambition! They think humanity has finally discovered
“science” and that after twenty centuries, Christianity has reached the
T H E A N A LO GY O F T R U T H 239

moment of evolution and culture that will enable it to realize its full agree-
ment with reason. A great enthusiasm courses through these spirits. They
feel they are in continuity with many Christian themes that were under-
exploited in a world of thought that was too marked by the belief that all
things are fixed. They truly believe that they finally have discovered the truth.
Although they believe it is impossible for us to integrate the results of science
and history into St. Thomas’s metaphysics and, consequently, into what spe-
cifically belongs to his theology, they nonetheless hold in common with him
whom they abandon the fact that they are looking to formulate a complete
worldview through the union of their faith and reason, as well as the fact that
they believe it will be definitive, at least in its essential structure. They should
also hold in common with him the fact that they seek after the scientific state
of soul, as independent as possible from everything that subjectivity and par-
ticularity bring quivering to thought. How can we fail to see that Thomism
finds itself at a critical moment—and along with it, all the traditional theo-
logical schools, for none of them would survive its ruin unscathed, existing
thereafter only in the form of scattered themes taken up and transformed
into brand new intellectual constructions? Is it a gangue to be broken up so
that Christian Dogma may be thereby freely extracted therefrom? Or, by con-
trast, does it remain its most perfect and perfectible scientific elaboration?
In any case, if it could only survive as an “analogical” relic, then, in keeping
with its most essential contention, it would be most appropriate for it to step
aside and allow itself to be replaced.
 7
Closing Remarks Concerning
Our Position
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP

B
y this point, all of our readers are aware of the controversy occasioned
by our critical review, “La théologie et ses sources.” Each of our sub-
scribers has in hand the small volume in which we wished to gather
together the documents involved in this debate. They likewise are doubtlessly
aware of the letters that were exchanged between Msgr. Bruno de Solages and
Fr. Marie-Joseph Nicolas concerning this matter and published in Bulletin
de Littérature ecclésiastique under the title “Autour d’une controverse.”
Regarding this exchange of opinions, which was not taken into account by
our Dialogue théologique, I will here only say that I would like to thank Msgr.
de Solages for having at least having bothered to cite me at length and more-
over would like to thank Fr. Nicolas for understanding me so well and for
providing such a good defense on my behalf.
Today, apart from any discussion, I would only like to take advantage of
remarks that have been made to me and complaints that I have provoked. In
so doing, I merely intend to draw into fuller light certain principles that enter
into the theological positions taken by the editorial staff of the Revue tho-
miste. I have intentionally used the expression, “theological positions” (aware,
moreover, of everything they philosophically imply), for I would need to
speak in a rather different manner were I to take up a strictly philosophical
perspective here. In my opinion, at least, it is important to speak about these
two kinds of consideration separately.

1. AUTHORITY IN THEOLOGY
Among all of our sciences, theology has a unique characteristic, namely, the
fact that authority plays a leading role in it. Essentially ordered to the devel-
opment of the intelligibility of revealed truths, bringing it to the most perfect
state that is accessible to us here-below, theological research absolutely pre-
supposes faith in the theologian. Moreover, in its objective determination,
this faith constitutes a rule, a received teaching, which our mind does not
control but, instead, accepts. This teaching is something more than a kind of
deposit for theology. It calls for something more than obedience from it. It

241
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offers a Truth, a spiritual nourishment, an object of contemplation and of

life. Nonetheless, it is something proposed by a Transcendent Intelligence
concerning a reality that would, of itself, remain beyond our grasp, a reality
we come into contact with only through faith. This is not the place to explain
how, according to what the Catholic Church teaches, this implies a living and
permanent magisterium that is supernaturally assisted and protected against
error. However, this means that it falls to this magisterium, and to it alone,
to determine authoritatively what is to be believed and to rule out what is
incompatible with the true faith.
Theology will need to be particularly attentive to these determinations
by the magisterium. This does not mean that its task would consist in
recording them. Yes, it must do this, but such a task represents only the first
step of theology’s task. Through all that it does, theology is essentially an
effort to understand. To understand what? Not only, on the level of factual
history, the reasons for this or that intervention by the Church, its various
contextual details, circumstances that are of so great assistance in perceiving
its true meaning and scope. Nor does it strive solely to understand, on the
level of the history of doctrines, the coherence of this new determination
with this or that other one that preceded it and with the whole of the revealed
deposit in its various states of authentic proposition. Rather, with all of this
being done (and even before this is fully complete), theology applies itself,
in the end, to the task of understanding more fully, through analogy and
within the mystery, the divine reality itself, which is illuminated for our faith
by these objective teachings—the divine reality that we learn about through
them, the divine reality in which we will find our beatitude in a knowledge
that is filled with joy.
For this effort undertaken in search of theological understanding, every
dogmatic clarification (here, understood in a broad sense, meaning every
authentic determination made by the magisterium) constitutes a principle in
the service of scientific knowledge. In a certain line of scholastic [scolaire] tra-
dition, one that in fact is quite modern, some have held that “arguments from
authority” are the typical kind of argument used in theology, that which char-
acterizes it as a science. By following this line of thought, theological certitude
seemed only to belong to that which is imposed upon all. By contrast, that
which has no other “authority” than reasoning is said to remain in the domain
of what remains free, the opinable, that which belongs to “systems of thought.”
The truth of the matter is much more nuanced. If we consider theology
throughout all of its scientific efforts, we will see the domain properly belong-
ing to authority is that of theology’s principles. And certainly, authority can
intervene regarding conclusions that have been long contested. The precise
effect of such an intervention is to elevate the affirmation in question to the
order of those principles that are involved in theological considerations. Of
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 243

course, this truth, whose certitude henceforth comes to be connected to faith

(or to one of the forms of assent that can be required of us by the ecclesiastical
magisterium,1 forms of assent that are more or less certain and more or less
reformable depending on the character of its intervention), will not, for all
that, be removed from the theologian’s consideration. There remains the task
of scrutinizing it, the task of developing its own, proper intelligibility, both
in itself and within the overall whole of the theological synthesis. Here, we
have the effort of speculative theology, which is not a mere affair of opinions
but, rather, something that aims at constituting a true science. On this level
of speculative theology, authority is not what directly determines the certi-
tude of an assertion. Rather, this certitude is determined by the evidence
offered by theological reasoning, by the rigor of the analysis sustaining it. On
this level, each person will remain “free” in metaphysics to doubt, in the same
sense that one is “free” to be in doubt concerning the transcendental charac-
ter of the good or concerning the privative character of evil—or, to use the
bluntest sort of example, one is “free” here in the same sense that one is “free”
in arithmetic to deny that two plus two equals four. In other words, here, one
is free from every form of constraint that falls short of evidence.
Thus, when the words “free” and “doubtful” are used in relation to theo-
logical assertions, these terms can have two, quite different senses. On the
one hand, the terms mean that, because of the lack of a categorical pro-
nouncement by the Magisterium concerning a given matter, one can opine
on one side of an issue or on the other without thereby running afoul of the
magisterium’s measures and without falling into disobedience, thus coming
to say that everything that is not determined by authority remains doubtful
and contestable. On the other hand, these words simply mean that an asser-
tion has not attained, from the perspective of theological reasoning, a state
of evidence sufficing to exclude doubt in the mind that perceives it. (In other
words, they mean that one has not provided a decisive proof for the truth of
this assertion.) To offer an example, we hold that the theological teaching
concerning the instrumental physical causality of Christ’s Humanity and of
the Sacraments is something perfectly free from the perspective of divine or
ecclesiastical authority. However, we do not in the least hold that it is doubtful
from the perspective of intellectual evidence. Likewise, we are no more scan-
dalized to see it disputed than we are to see the real distinction between
essence and existence in creatures placed in doubt. What is decisive is
evidence, the quality of the arguments offered for this position.

1 To this are related various “authorities,” which have highly nuanced and differentiated
weights: that of the Fathers or of certain Fathers, that of the Doctors or of a given Doctor
(e.g., that of St. Thomas), etc. . . . In these inferior degrees, an alleged authority always
demands respect but forever remains disputable and can obviously be abandoned with-
out fault or error.
244 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

Nonetheless, a difference remains between the domain of philosophy

and that of theology. In the former, the contested teaching rests only on
rational forms of evidence, not only in itself but also in its principles. No
authority guarantees the latter. By contrast, revealed assertions are the tools
of the trade in theology. The theologian’s living intelligence is indeed what
analyzes them. It is what manifests their profound implications and con-
sequences. The light that directs it is intellectual (this is the source of theol-
ogy’s particular weakness), though it is drawn into the illumination of a loftier
light, which is essentially that of a [supernatural kind of] faith. Here, authority
remains present alongside faith. However, it is not in virtue of such authority
that we adhere to the theological inferences we draw. Nonetheless, our adher-
ence is indeed brought about by coming back into contact with this authority
and by analyzing the principles that draw their certitude from it.
Thus, we can see how delicate the work becomes in theological reflection.
Reasoning that is undertaken in positive theology will seek (roughly speaking)
to determine the authority of a given assertion and to weigh out its scope, as
well as the degree to which it is imposed as something necessary. Reasoning
that is undertaken in speculative theology will strive to penetrate the depths
of its intelligibility, to identify its implications, and to integrate it into a vaster
synthesis. In both cases, the theologian reasons, and in both cases, he can be
mistaken. All too frequently, an author affirms that an assertion is de fide
when, strictly speaking, it is not. Sometimes it happens, I believe, that an
author denies an assertion is de fide or proximate to faith when it in fact is.
One might think the former defect is more frequent among theologians than
is the latter, but nonetheless, the latter exists as well. Standing alongside those
who maximize, are there not those who minimize? In a work of speculative
theology, it will likewise happen that an author exaggerates the evidence at
hand while wishing to manifest the connection that he perceives to exist
between a revealed assertion and another assertion that seems to him to be
implied by the first. To present his inference as being rigorous and necessary
is to affirm, by the same token, that one will not be able to deny its conclusion
without, at the same time, denying its principle. And this will be the first objec-
tion of the author to anyone who contests his conclusion.
Grave equivocations will be able to follow from this. On the one hand,
someone who holds that his reasoning has an authoritative value when it, in
fact, does not, will wish to give his conclusion a certitude that is de fide or, at
least, a certitude that is in some way official, meaning that no “freedom”
remains for contesting it. On the other hand, another person, upon hearing it
said that his objection places a de fide principle in peril because it denies a
necessary conclusion, will believe that he is being accused of heterodoxy, being
held in suspicion concerning the integrity of his faith, accused of disobedience
to the magisterium, which defines the deposit of faith by transmitting it. . . .
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 245

To my eyes, this equivocation unquestionably poisons the atmosphere

of too many discussions, which could have remained serene and could have
led to useful developments. If in any part of my critical review, “La théologie
et ses sources”—which I wrongly assumed would be read in the context of
what I said in my preceding article, “La théologie intelligence de la foi,” where
I thought I had been clear enough concerning the same matter that I am here
today explaining at greater length—I seemed to fall into the first kind of
defect mentioned above, I here apologize for doing so. Never did I intend to
say that any of the authors I critiqued have knowingly departed from ortho-
doxy, refusing to subscribe to any of its objective determinations. And I ask
that my assertions, even those expressed in vigorous language, be understood
in this sense. In a theological discussion, I absolutely never wish to contest
or suspect the faith of an author whom I critique. For me, what is forever in
question is his reasoning, his rational analyses. In particular, I did not (and
do not) in any way question the freedom of various theological schools and
various systems.2 Everyone is free to propose his ideas for as long as he
believes they are compatible with the Church’s teaching and the certitudes
presupposed thereby. But, conversely, everyone else is free to say to him—on

2 The Church undeniably leaves various theological Schools to retain their freedom.
However, this means that she does not intend to take a position concerning [their] ration-
ally elaborated constructions, so long as they do not place the faith in danger. This is
neither her role nor her mission. This does not in any way imply that all “systems” are
equal or that, within a domain into which authority refuses to enter, theological reasoning
would not play a decisive role. There is (and can be) only one theological science. Accord-
ing to us, the multiplicity of Christian “theologies” does not come from the impossibility
of making one of them prevail [over the others] (not by authority but by theological rea-
soning). It does not come from some superior reason holding that the human mind could
express for itself divine things only by diversifying itself into mutually-irreducible con-
structions, wherein we would see a testimony to the transcendence of these realities, an
effect of the necessary evolution of the mind, or the exigency befalling our various mental
structures. Rather, this multiplication arises from our weakness, from the groping char-
acter of our research, and from the partial character of our intuitions. The efforts
expended in theological science do not aim to multiply them in order to be adapted to
new cultures or to different mentalities but, rather, to absorb them, little by little, by
elevating itself to a greater level of universality. Even assuming that this ideal terminus
could ever be attained (and, it in fact never will be), even then, theological science would
in no way claim to be equal to its object and even less to exhaust it. It would remain infi-
nitely deficient in relation to it, being only the analogical, very inferior, and distant human
expression of it.—But, in order to justify the equal value of various systematizations, or
at least the legitimacy of substituting one for another, let one not argue, as Msgr. de Sol-
ages does in defending Fr. Bouillard, on the basis of this [so-called] analogical character
of our knowledge concerning divine things. Theology does not “work” directly on the
divine reality, which we could validly express in successively renewed analogies. It works
directly on revealed notions which must remain eodem sensu eademque sententia, and
its task absolutely does not involve replacing them with other notions, even were they
declared to be equivalent.
246 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

the same level and with arguments of the same order—that in his opinion,
this seeming compatibility is illusory and that a true opposition to his claim
can be demonstrated on certain points. I wholly agree that one has every
right to proclaim that an assertion is not de fide and has no other value than
the arguments that support it, but I ask that one have no less a right to say, if
one so thinks, that an assertion is connected to faith and cannot be denied
without compromising it. Both affirmations belong to the domain properly
falling to theological research. A certain kind of demand, asking for a one-
sided freedom, itself involves an intolerance that is no less great than that
which is contested.

2. RECOURSE TO THE MAGISTERIUM

Authority in theology does not reside only in texts. It is represented by a liv-
ing magisterium whose essential role on this point is to conserve the revealed
deposit, to declare it, define it, clarify it, and also to preserve it from errors
that, without being directly related to it, nonetheless compromise it. It falls
to this magisterium to watch over the integrity of the faith, and nobody out-
side of it is authorized to appropriate this office for himself.
We all agree in emphasizing the respect and submission with which the
interventions of the doctrinal magisterium must be received. Even if they
remain encapsulated [enveloppées], more indicative than decisive, they trace
out a way forward or at least can prohibit a path that was heading toward
error, and no theologian will fail to be grateful for this. However, one does
not fail to have either this respect or this submission if one undertakes the
effort of trying to understand it exactly. This is the very role that properly
belongs to theological reasoning. A warning does not intend, by itself, to
break up the élan of a given investigation. A condemnation does not nec-
essarily discredit an author, for in the end, the only person who can be sure
of never being wrong is the person who says nothing. A doctrinal clarification
is not an absolute assertion, requiring theology to be reconstructed anew and
in full. Obviously, vehement discussions have led the Roman authorities to
make pronouncements concerning secondary points, while many more
important truths of faith, truths that are much more central, have not been
the object of any extraordinary, official interventions, or at least of very few
such interventions, precisely because they are held peacefully [by all]. Noth-
ing would be more misleading than to measure the importance of a truth of
faith (or one connected to faith) by merely referring to the number of allu-
sions that are made to it in collections like those of Denzinger or Cavallera.
Nothing would be more injurious to our theological thought than to restrict
ourselves to commenting on these interventions. For example, it is incon-
testable that following the immense benefit drawn from the official deter-
minations expressed by the Council of Trent, Post-Tridentine theology too
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 247

often restricted its concerns, becoming far too specialized in controversy. It

is doubtlessly inevitable that this would be true for every era, with its specific
riches coming to exist alongside its limitations and consequently, for many
minds, its discontents. Therefore, it will always know this ferment of unrest,
which will lead it to place many commonly-admitted assertions into ques-
tion. The Church will nourish in her womb authentic Christians for whom
that which has been acquired is not sufficiently satisfying, Christians who
seem dedicated to adventure, to the great adventures of the mind [esprit].
They seem rebellious and insubordinate; they can be—though not painlessly,
nor without bumps along the road—the principle of fruitful renewals.
But all of this still imperiously calls for freedom of discussion and freedom
to criticize. Forging ahead is not the customary activity of any sort of magis-
terium—this is not its role. It is not its custom to decide questions before
they have been posed and debated. True, the theologian does indeed feel the
temptation to immediately appeal to it because his argumentation inevitably
leads him, in his principles, to find his support thereupon. However, this does
not go without its own dangers. Besides the fact that the attitude of the person
who yields to this temptation is, deep down, much less respectful of authority
than is the attitude of the theologian who refuses to mix authority in with
his own quarrels, this temptation also risks significantly hindering free sci-
entific investigation, to which nothing is more opposed than is an atmosphere
of denunciation.
In my opinion, His Holiness Pius XII formulated the golden rule for
these matters when he wrote in his Encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu:

Let all the other sons of the Church bear in mind that the efforts of
these resolute laborers in the vineyard of the Lord should be judged not
only with equity and justice, but also with the greatest charity; all more-
over should abhor that intemperate zeal which imagines that whatever
is new should for that very reason be opposed or suspected.3

I personally knew and venerate Fr. [Marie-Joseph] Lagrange all too well,
and all too well could I appreciate the quality of his love for the Church and
his admirable submission, not only of heart but also of mind, to the Petrine
magisterium, but I also knew all too well, from his own mouth, the
atmosphere of suspicion in which his scientific work had to be built up, for
me not to be able to feel much closer to those who seek than to those who
condemn without any mandate to do so, closer to those who work than to
those who denounce.

3 [Tr. note: Pius XII, Divino afflante Spiritu, no. 47, https://www.vatican.va/content/pius-
xii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xii_enc_30091943_divino-afflante-spiritu.html
(accessed August 20, 2022).]
248 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

We all submit to the successor of Peter and to the Catholic hierarchy in a

complete, filial manner. We are all ready to hear his voice. However, it does
not fall to any of us to judge in his place whether it is fitting for him to inter-
vene, even less to suggest to him the direction his intervention should take.
However, it is precisely for this reason that we believe free discussion is useful
and truly profitable, indeed all the more profitable because it will be loyal and
open. It should not be difficult to agree concerning a certain number of ele-
mentary rules that make up, so to speak, the “morality” of these discussions.
1˚ Each person should strive only to depend on his own arguments,
accepting the possibility of being wrong and, consequently, of being con-
vinced that he is wrong, without seeking, through personal attacks, to dis-
qualify his interlocutor, to cast suspicion onto him, or a fortiori to have
recourse to indiscriminate denunciations.
2˚ Each person should know how to take responsibility for what he says
or proposes. Msgr. de Solages writes, “When it comes to an accusation, every-
thing that is anonymous is in bad faith.”4 I would gladly extend this formula by
removing its first part and would ask that it should be clearly understood that
we dispense with all clandestine literature widespread among the general public
and that we agree to stop its diffusion before it creates, especially in young
minds, in relation to the Roman Magisterium, a mentality of suspicion that
resembles all too closely that which another clandestinity, one that was all too
justified in that case, developed not long ago in our midst in relation to the
occupier whose authority, founded as it was upon violence, had no legitimacy.5
3˚ Respect for persons should be safeguarded in the theological discus-
sion, as well as an absolute bias to judge that they are acting in good faith,
and that everything should be done to remain on the level of ideas.
Here again, if my critical study failed to observe any of these rules, I apol-
ogize for this fact. I reaffirm the proposal I already made (Labourdette, “The-
ology and Its Sources,” p. 138n6 above) to each of the persons whom I cri-
tiqued, inviting him to explain himself in our review, even concerning what I
believed could be criticized in his thought. I am not one of those people who

4 “Pour l’honneur de la Théologie,” extract from Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique

(April–June 1947): 8. Since Msgr. de Solages calls upon St. Thomas not only for an exam-
ple of his methodology but also for his explicit counsels, he will allow me to add to the
texts that he gathered together this complaint wherein St. Thomas energetically protested
against the clandestine propagation of doctrines outside the ordinary parameters of
debate: “If anyone wishes to contradict what I say here, let him not do so by prattling on
about it with boys but, rather, let him write and propose his writings in public so that the
learned may be able to judge what is true and, by the authority of the Truth, confute what
is false” (Contra pestiferam doctrinam. . . , in fine[; Contra retrahentes, in fine]).
5 Granted, this circulation cannot be originally imputable to the actual author of these
writings, but when it reaches a certain scale of diffusion, he should indeed be anxious
to stop it or to make the necessary adjustments.
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 249

believe, on principle, that discussions are useless; they are useful, on the con-
dition that one knows how to stick to the object at hand, without turning such
discussions aside to discuss their author, and that one considers such matters
in a positive light.—As regards the precise meaning of my critical review, I
have already said enough about it and therefore need not return to it once
more;6 I only repeat that the purpose of this review, itself limited in its diffu-
sion and reaching only quite specialized circles,7 was not to discredit any of
those whom I critiqued, men for whom I simultaneously expressed my
unfeigned esteem. I only wished to show the tendency underlying the ideas
placed in circulation in various writings—then all the sudden united in a sin-
gle bundle by Fr. Daniélou in a resounding article—hoping thereby to indicate
how their convergence leads to certain weaknesses in theological thought and
a kind of disdain for the intellectual weapons prepared by St. Thomas.

3. FUNDAMENTALISM [INTÉGRISME]
AND MODERNISM
Why not say it? Here in France, we still bear the painful weight of the Mod-
ernist crisis and the terrible passions it aroused, along with its various social
and political repercussions.
Consequently, the word “modernism,” in its strict sense, designates at
once a doctrine and a method of religious thought, both of which have been
solemnly condemned by the Church. The texts exist, indisputably standing in
support of this claim. And I do not presume to suspect, a priori, that any con-
temporary Catholic theologians either do not accept this condemnation or
knowingly take up this or that error drawn from among those that fall under
it.—The term “modernist” also has a broader sense, one that it is undoubtedly
dangerous to use without further explanation, and for this reason, I have for-
bidden myself to make use of it. In this latter sense, the word designates much
more so a kind of attitude of mind, a mentality, than a specific method or doc-
trine. Without a doubt, this term is completely pejorative in the Church and
remains an insult. However, it would not, precisely by itself, constitute an accu-
sation of heresy or of a clear case of heterodoxy.

6 See our Dialogue théologique.—I myself did not reread without some sadness my own
“Réplique” to the anonymous “Réponse” in Recherches de Sciences Religieuses. Today,
I would prefer to have avoided following my opponents onto the level of polemics and to
have held back from personal remarks, which I readily agree do not aid in making pro-
gress in debates.
7 That is, the readers of the Revue thomiste (who, allow me to state the truth of the matter,
do not quite yet reach the diffusion of being the “general public”) and approximately
thirty theologians and friends who received my offprint; even the latter doubtlessly would
have read the same text in the Revue.
250 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

The historical sense of the word “fundamentalism” [intégrisme] is less

precise. Above all, it designates a kind of attitude of mind, a manner of intel-
lectually approaching things (with all that this includes in the way of moral
and affective attitudes). Even more quickly than is the case for modernism,
whose precise errors are defined, we find that fundamentalism is even more
so a kind of general tendency. How can it be described without needing to
cite any particular example in a particular author? At bottom, it includes, not
perhaps in a formalized way but, rather, in one’s attitude, the rejection of that
which is new, an a priori distrust for what places matters into question and
for what arouses problems. It implies, more obviously, the desire not to set
aside certain formulas or certain frameworks, because one fears that which
is not yet proven, or because a secret tendency to a kind of intellectual impe-
rialism drives one to place in the forefront of one’s concerns the requirement
that there be an external form of discipline, which itself does not go without
the risk of some type of conformism. The fundamentalist attitude bespeaks
a lack of confidence in the truth and an inexplicable inability to see the world
with youthful eyes, with a fundamental assurance that neither the Church
nor the truth have such need for our precautions and our prudence, not to
mention our deceits.
So-understood, we consider fundamentalism to be a sickness of thought
as well as a grave error. I deliberately speak here of “thought” in its personal
exercise and not of the mind, because it doubtlessly arises much more from
a thinker’s moral and affective attitudes than from intellectual defects. The
denunciation of it would fall to a well-formulated ethics of thought, which
must manifest its harmfulness. Though less striking or less immediately
obvious, it is no less harmful than is the “modernist” attitude.
*****
In this Revue, we are firmly committed to the doctrine, principles, and
methods of St. Thomas Aquinas. This is not so that we might thereby cling
to a grand past. Nor do we wish to confuse security with truth. And we do
not hold this position as a matter of discipline and obedience. Rather, we do
so because we believe that St. Thomas’s doctrine is true and that it alone can
illuminate and guide the renewals needed today without, however, risking
the danger of falling into error.
We are well aware that new problems arise, and we feel their weight,
along with the anxiety they arouse. We know that if certain minds are easily
satisfied with the most classical of solutions, others by contrast—and this is
doubtlessly to their honor—are profoundly concerned with the distance that
they perceive to exist between many of these solutions and what is expected
by scientists, historians, and philosophers trained in the most modern of dis-
ciplines. We believe that theology’s contemporary task is rendered particu-
larly delicate and arduous by the fact that the great classics of speculative the-
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 251

ology and, in the first place, St. Thomas, belong to a different age of culture
than our own, as well as by the fact that they are separated from us, in the
domain of thought, by the great scientific upheavals of modern times. When
we claim, not precisely their authority but, rather, their permanent value, we
surely do not believe that the best kind of work would consist in repeating
them. No more do we believe that it will suffice to dress them up, somehow
or other, in modern vesture. However, we think that one must have a suffi-
ciently lively—and, consequently, sufficiently complete (for this teaching is
an organic whole)—possession of their essential principles and teaching. We
see no other way to avoid losing some aspect of the permanent acquisition
they have bequeathed us nor, likewise, today faced with difficulties that they
themselves did not know, to benefit from the full luminosity that they were
able to transmit to us because of what they themselves received from a con-
tinuous tradition engaged in a common labor, in addition to their own rare
genius. This inheritance is not only sacred. It is living—quite so—awaiting
our efforts, to be sure, but giving these very efforts a point of departure and
irreplaceable instruments.
No, we do not believe that theology has completed its task. It will not do
so prior to the Last Day. And this is so not only because its “earthly” state is
a state of imperfection but, moreover, because human development itself can-
not cease to call the mind [esprit] toward new aspects of revealed truth, which
will forever outstrip our most perfect syntheses.
I believe that the history of thought contains necessary revolutions.
However, they do not call for a complete overturning that would reach, in
equal fashion, all the various levels of knowledge, thus meaning that every-
thing must be taken up afresh and anew. Rather, the necessity of such rev-
olutions plays out in virtue of great discoveries or, even more, in virtue of
great intuitions that have been rendered possible by a given degree of cultural
development along with the unique concurrence of circumstances. Modern
thought does not require us to bring mere additions to St. Thomas’s thought.
None of us would agree to endorse so childish an assertion. For example, we
believe that the philosophy of Hegel—I take this example precisely on
account of his exceptional grandeur as well as his exceptional powers of illu-
sion—presented thought with testimony to a sweeping intuition, even though
it was categorized in fundamentally erroneous schemata. I admit that we
must say—though, a great number of nuances should be added hereto—that
we owe to him the prise de conscience of historical movement as an internal
dimension of the world, a prise de conscience of unique profundity, which
speaks to its very novelty. However, I believe that St. Thomas’s philosophy
alone enables us to grasp the true meaning of this historical dimension of
the world. This will not be brought about by abandoning a certain number
of Thomist “theses” in order to substitute for them a certain number of
252 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

Hegelian doctrines. Indeed, what sort of intellectual monstrosity would that

produce? Even less will this be brought about by purely and simply abandon-
ing Thomism in order to adopt the central principles of Hegel. I believe that
pure Hegelianism constitutes an absolutely asphyxiating world for Christian
faith and a fatal mirage for reason. Moreover, such a choice would involve
the loss of the benefits that we draw from values that are loftier still, ones
permanently witnessed to by Thomism and finding no place in Hegelianism.
The rapprochement we are speaking of here will only be brought about
through an effort that is, in truth, more demanding, more difficult, and like-
wise of greater duration. (Time itself is necessary for thought to be able to
mature. The admirers of Hegel should not be the last people to understand
this point, something we have been taught by St. Thomas.) Well aware of the
different levels of philosophic and scientific consideration, such an effort will
tend to grasp, with the very principles of St. Thomas, an aspect of reality that,
historically speaking, became manifest only by following other principles and
in accord with other categories. This effort will be neither a form of overly-
eager harmonization nor of eclecticism but, rather, an integration that pre-
supposes a vigilant critique and constructive effort, and it is unjust to ask
Thomism to bring it about more quickly than is actually possible, I mean, in
virtue of an effort requiring much collaboration and a lengthy period of
maturation. Hasty adaptations are disastrous.
I personally believe that St. Thomas’s “worldview” and that of the medi-
eval theologians is distant from the worldview imposed upon us by perspec-
tives that are much more profound than the mere framework of a physics
that today is obsolete. It is not sufficient merely to abandon this physics.
Between them and us—and I in no way claim that I here provide a complete
enumeration!—there have been immense discoveries: the discovery of the
full dimensions of the earth, with its diversity of cultures and environments;
the discovery of this earth’s true place in the universe, the representation of
which henceforth lacks a common measure with the medieval theologians’
own framework for the world’s situation in the universe; the discovery of cer-
tain stages of human evolution, as well as the recognition of the temporal
dimension within humanity itself, within ideas and systems themselves; the
discovery of certain unconscious depths in man; the discovery of prehistory
and a kind of rhythm in the course of history. There have been prodigious
perspectival changes in philosophical thought, gradually reconnecting to the
same eternal problems, ultimately those that are metaphysical in nature,
though by completely different paths. (Whether or not these paths are valid
is a completely different question, though they nonetheless remain pro-
foundly instructive.)
What is needed is certainly not the mutilation of St. Thomas’s thought,
nor even a kind of refashioning thereof. Rather, our concern is to grasp each
CLOSING REMARKS CONCERNING OUR POSITION 253

of his principles in its purity and on its true level, by seeking to distinguish
from its true and permanent requirements that which, in its formulation, was
adapted to a representation of the world that we no longer can hold in light
of the development of our physical and historical sciences. However, this
work must be undertaken with infinite seriousness, with neither fevered
excitement nor casualness, with respect for the truth, which forbids us to give
into intoxication with destruction or with toppling things over for fear of
overlooking an acquired truth that has received too little attention. Here, as
I already said elsewhere,8 what we want is a critical spirit, persuaded that
neither the Church nor Thomism have anything to fear from its effects—
though a critical spirit that is not one-way, one that does not take up as it sole
mission the overthrowing of the idols of the past but, rather, knows how to
avoid the no-less-deceptive (and, for our contemporaries, more seductive)
wonders offered by the idols of contemporary relevance. However, even more
than the critical spirit, what Christian thought needs today is an immense
constructive effort undertaken in order to integrate so many new data into
its essential perspectives without losing anything. And we are convinced that
no more solid a foundation, nor any better instrument, can be found for this
constructive effort than St. Thomas’s philosophy.
We know quite well that “this is a hard saying,” and that it asks of the
modern mind an effort that cannot be undertaken without renouncing invet-
erate habits and illusions. The philosophy we propose—one that is called
“scholastic,” taking on the name of its most cruel trial, as Jacques Maritain
once remarked—appears to our contemporaries as being something too off-
putting to be able to ask them, without thereby requiring the harsh paths of
asceticism, to look at things from its perspective and appreciate the depths
of its vitality, which we feel is forever-young, like an ever-fresh spring. The
historian cannot fail to be amazed when he considers Leo XIII’s extraordinary
act, at the end of the 19th century, calling Christian thought back to scholas-
ticism. We simply believe that he was right in doing so. By that, we do not in
any way intend to claim for our own various remarks the authority of his
decision. We do not proclaim any anathema against anyone. It is not by
means of recommendations, however august they might be, that we claim to
assure and defend St. Thomas’s doctrine. It will be fully assured and defended
only when it comes to show that it can accomplish this task by itself.
*****
If my critical review seemed to some eyes to be something more than a
warning call or a taking of positions, being, rather, a rallying cry for a group
that would like to be a “party,” whether fundamentalist or otherwise, I assure
them that they are mistaken. I would not do injury to our regular collaborators

8 See Labourdette, “Theology and Its Sources,” p. 157 above.

254 M I C H E L- M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P

by making them believe that we had them in mind for such a task. For my
own part, I believe there could not fail to be some sort of deception or, in any
case, incalculable damage, involved in the idea that fidelity to the profound
meaning of St. Thomas’s thought would come to be crystalized in a group
that, no matter how small it might be, would, in the end, be a party or a sect.
We have no form of sympathy for this kind of gathering. This is not how we
conceive of his School, where love for the truth is the only law guiding the
forms of mutual strengthening afforded by such a gathering. We did not wish
to trigger off any kind of fratricidal war within French Christian thought,
and we do not accept the formation of any “common front.” We merely
wished to express our sentiment in utter simplicity and frankness, and we
will continue to do so on our own proper level [as theologians], persuaded
that much more light can be drawn from confrontations and from serene
and objective discussions than from artificial unanimity. Moreover, by no
means do I believe that those same people who were alarmed by my remarks
have any other sentiment than my own concerning this matter. On the con-
trary, I believe that I have translated rather-common sentiments and remain
persuaded that much more unites us than what separates us.

Saint-Maximin, Easter 1947

 8
Discussion Surrounding Our
‘Dialogue Théologique’
Michel-Marie Labourdette, OP,
and Marie-Joseph Nicolas, OP

T
he most interesting reactions that have been directly aroused by our
Dialogue Théologique are not coming from within scholastic circles but,
rather, from philosophers outside of that outlook and even from Pro-
testant theologians. Pierre Chazel in Réforme,1 Brice Parain in Le Cheval de
Troie,2 Emmanuel Mounier in Esprit,3 and Henri Germond in Revue de Thé-
ologie et de Philosophie 4 all dedicate noteworthy pages to considerations con-
cerning it. Although, to their eyes, our position seems as hard and difficult
as it appears to be deserving of respect, we are grateful to them above all for
having shed greater light on the reality of the problem, the extent of the
debate, and, in their own words, its fascinating relevance:

Theologians pose the daunting problem anew: how should one speak
to the world? When speaking to men who are sensitive to existentialist
anxiety or who are accustomed to cast their thought into Marxist dia-
lectic, can one retain a language that remains imprisoned within Aris-
totelian categories? . . . This fascinating Theological Dialogue . . . sets
in contrast not two doctrines as much as it does two temperaments or
mindsets, and I will even say two tactics. On the one side, there are
those who refuse to accommodate to the world, whatever the cost; on
the other, we have strategists on the move, those who, in order to defend
what is essential in the Catholic positions, are desirous to maintain their
freedom of movement and to engage the enemy on his own terrain.5

1 Pierre Chazel, “Le Thomisme est-il menacé?,” Réforme (Sept. 6, 1947): 2.

2 Brice Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” Le Cheval de Troie (Aug.-Sept. 1947): 329–39.
3 Emmanuel Mounier, “Aux avant-postes de la pensée chrétienne,” Esprit (Sept. 1947):
436–44.
4 Henri Germond, “Dialogue théologique,” Revue de Théologie et de Philosophie (Jul.-
Sept. 1947): 128–33.
5 Chazel, “Le Thomisme est-il menacé?,” 2.

255
256 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

Such is, from the Protestant perspective, Pierre Chazel’s estimation con-
cerning this affair. The very title of his article shows the light in which he
considers the discussion: “Is Thomism under threat?” His response is very
affirmative. For his own part, Mounier concludes his supple and penetrating
exposition by expressing the desire that “these debates might move beyond
retrospective squabbles and polemics within scholasticism. They participate
in the vast effort to simultaneously retrieve a faith that has been lost and a
reason that has been dethroned, to retrieve a wisdom wherein intense life
does not obfuscate the lights of the mind.”6 While reflecting upon this Dia-
logue, he has recognized “the debate of the nominalists and the realists, along
with all the intermediary schools, in the era of great theological discussions,”
though “renewed by the newfound historical sense that has developed since
the time of the 19th century. It expresses the permanent and irreducible ten-
sion between Christianity’s transcendence and its immanence.”7 For his part,
Brice Parain, like the others avoiding the factual question (what exactly does
each side say and think?), himself considers “the question that constitutes
the foundation of the debate, namely, how can the idea of a timeless truth be
maintained within our own mode of human reasoning, which is forever and
necessarily temporal. One will here recognize the old metaphysical problem
of the finite and the infinite.”8—“The choice to be made here is one of excep-
tional gravity. . . . Today, Christianity finds itself at such a critical moment in
its battle against human passions and everything that they invent in order to
dominate creation without actually being able to do so that if it does not suc-
ceed in providing its truth with communicative power equal to the violence
which combats it, Christianity will face very difficult days.”9 Brice Parain’s
sense for the gravity of what is at stake encourages him to hope for the pos-
sibility of a synthesis or, at least, of equilibrium between the two tendencies,
which in opposing each other have no choice but to be mutually restrained
by each other. As Emmanuel Mounier says, the parties have no “interest in
mutually pushing the argument [se rejeter] to the point that each party falls
into the asymptotic heresy toward which, as is quite clear, each side would
lead if pushed to absurdity: on the one hand, a kind of eternalism and of
metaphysical quietism, faced, on the other, with a nominalism that would
destroy all of faith’s continuity and rationality.”10 Here again, our reviewer has
understood perfectly that the heresy that is denounced in this kind of debate
is a kind of asymptotic heresy, one that is not explicitly willed and, indeed,

6 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 444.

7 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 444.
8 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 335.
9 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 339.
10 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 444.
DISCUSSION SURROUNDING OUR ‘DIALOGUE THÉOLOGIQUE’ 257

to the contrary is repudiated, while, nonetheless, each side claims, rightly or

wrongly, that, in spite of itself, the opposed tendency provides the foundation
for such a heresy. Moreover, we are grateful that Mounier did not succumb
to the convenient solution of calling these asymptotic heresies modernism
and fundamentalism [intégrisme] but indeed even expressly distinguished
and treated one after the other in an article dedicated to the “outposts of
Christian thought,” our own debate “concerning the place of history and the
relations of eternity with history,” and the debate opened by Esprit concerning
“The Christian World and the Modern World,” which was endorsed [sanc-
tionné] by Cardinal Suhard’s Lenten Pastoral Letter concerning the “Devel-
opment or Decline of the Church,” wherein modernism and fundamentalism
[intégrisme] are both denounced.
Here, we believe it is fitting to clarify certain points so as to provide a
response to what is awaited from us, not to clarify a controversy that has
come and gone but, instead, to specify certain things regarding our own true
position in the face of the problem so defined. Brice Parain, kindly taking up
one of our own expressions, entreats us not to leave unquenched the thirst “of
lay philosophers who are not theologians but who are interested, indeed pas-
sionately, in the fate of the Catholic Church.”11 For now, let us content our-
selves with taking advantage of this request in order to refine our thought.

I. RÉFORM
We are asked: “When speaking to men who are sensitive to existentialist anx-
iety or who are accustomed to cast their thought into Marxist dialectic, can
one retain a language that remains imprisoned within Aristotelian categories?”
We must be understood aright. When it is a question of “speaking to
men,” of bringing the “word of God” to them, this pertains to something dif-
ferent from pure science. How can we speak to a man if not by making use of
concepts and words with which they are familiar, at least to the degree that
such words lend themselves to communication? At this moment, what counts
is to bring him whatever portion of the truth he can receive and to save him.
Certainly, this presupposes that he abandon those explicit errors that prevent
true faith from gaining access to him. However, this does not require him to
push onward to the point of becoming a Thomist! The essential and vital wit-
ness does not need to be concerned with any truths other than those nec-
essary for salvation, and the number of such truths varies depending on the
receptive capacity of those who are being addressed. Theology is not the
science or art of “speaking to the world,” above all to the world in its present
character, to this or that man, or even to this or that class of men. However,

11 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 330.

258 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

this wholly-apostolic science of speaking to the world presupposes theology,

which it must know in-depth, knowing even what it contains that is inde-
pendent of this or that immediate apologetic necessity, in order to be able to
adapt it and cast it into categories that lend themselves to such a task only
partially and not in a fully adequate or “formal” manner. The term kerygmatic
has rightly been proposed as a name for this kind of theology, which is wholly
ordered to preaching and to the salvation of souls. It presupposes scientific
theology. What I cannot do is construct a scientific theology by casting it into
the terms of Marxist or existentialist dialectic. . . .
This observation is quite necessary in order to understand a sentence we
wrote, which Réforme cites as bearing witness to a courageous non-conform-
ism: “Thomist metaphysics cannot be true without being convinced at the
same time that there is a foundational evil underlying modern thought,
which, however much it may be assimilable on a number of points, is non-
etheless fundamentally opposed to it.” We certainly do not repudiate this
observation. This would represent a quite superficial understanding of the
essential characteristics of modern thought and Thomist thought, not
acknowledging the profound conflict that sets them in opposition to each
other. To say that Thomism is fundamentally true—yes, however painful this
might be for those who feel themselves to be naturally occupied with all the
tendencies of modernity and would not like to live the life of the mind in
separation from the modern world [ne pas vivre à part la vie de l’esprit]—is
likewise to say that, at its heart, modern thought is affected by a foundational
evil, a fundamental error. The choice is necessary, and one must not think,
all too readily, that it is really just a question of different forms of the same
truth. Nonetheless, we are not here speaking about what is essential to Tho-
mism; and it is not difficult to recognize its insufficiencies when it comes to
the perspectives opened up by historical awareness, the falsity of the scientific
data that underlie a number of its insights, and its silence concerning prob-
lems that are vital for us and were not of interest for it. For us, Thomism goes
beyond the explicit and conscious thought that St. Thomas himself had: in
addition to being a set of fundamental truths, it is a way of thinking. St.
Thomas is its master par excellence. This is quite certain. But he is only its
master, that is, according to his own teaching, him who shows the truth,
which is forever vaster than what he himself has seen concerning it, he who
teaches us how to find it. Conversely, modern thought seems to us to be brim-
ming with riches. And the drama of Christian thought today is that so many
truths have developed outside of its own bounds, on the foundation (and
sometimes under the sway) of denials that are unacceptable for it. Therefore,
our position does not represent a complete and overarching rejection. It too
is “catholic.” It too represents a claim to be able to gather together all the var-
ious parts of the Truth, though without hiding the intention of transforming
DISCUSSION SURROUNDING OUR ‘DIALOGUE THÉOLOGIQUE’ 259

and drawing [them] to itself, without hesitating to recognize the differences

involved in each of these matters.
Finally, how could we fail to be sensitive to such a sympathetic under-
standing of our “rejection,” so expressed by a Protestant brother who, through
his own understanding in this matter, makes us in turn enter more fully into
the state of the soul belonging to the Reformation? However, we find our-
selves immediately faced with the statement of the great scandal that we are
for them: “What these champions defend is St. Thomas’s Summa, not the
Gospel. When they proclaim, ‘Their conviction that the abandonment of the
main positions of Thomist metaphysics would gradually lead to ruination for
the faith,’ we are indeed forced to denounce, as a form of scandal, this con-
fusion between, on the one hand, faith, the work of God, the Gospel, and the
Word of God, and on the other, a Christian philosophy that is never anything
more than one man’s own, wondrous construction.”12
We are not the ones who commit this confusion. Faith is a purely super-
natural light, the work of the Holy Spirit, absolutely transcendent to all the
reasoning that can accompany it. Nonetheless, there are natural conditions
for faith, without which it would be utterly miraculous. One cannot believe
with just any indiscriminate philosophy whatsoever in one’s mind. Or, if some
people can do so, human minds in general cannot, and certainly metaphysical
errors rub off on the purity of faith. This is why the Church defends not only
faith but also the “praeambula fidei,” even to the point of proclaiming that the
latter are, in fact, confirmed and annexed by the former. We believe that if
Thomism were to be considered obsolete, these “praeambula fidei” would be
endangered. And we think this because we believe it is purely and simply the
true expression of metaphysics in its eternal character. However, of course, we
do not think, by contrast, that any rational dialectic suffices for giving birth
to faith, for the latter remains absolutely beyond the measure of such reason-
ing. “Faith does not depend upon any dogmatic [theology],” nor upon any
philosophy or apologetics. And, moreover, we are convinced that if the Holy
Spirit were to allow Thomism to fall into a state of decline, He would remain
powerful enough to maintain faith pure and stable within His Church, with
defective rational instruments. Therefore, our fidelity to St. Thomas is not a
“futile show of strength” or a “heroism without a cause,” for his theology is
not “one man’s wondrous construction” but, instead, is the presentation, in
human concepts, of the truth that is founded on God. Quite simply, it is a
question of fidelity to what we believe is the truth. Every truth, even natural
truth, deserves fidelity, for the whole fits together, and one cannot knowingly
deny what reason shows us without thereby running the risk of jeopardizing
that very thing which surpasses it and is revealed to us by faith.

12 Pierre Chazel, “Le Thomisme est-il menacé?,” Réforme (Sept. 6, 1947): 2.

260 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

However, we do indeed feel that here the possibility of an “imperious

synthesis,” wherein every truth, both natural and supernatural, would find
its place is a properly “catholic” pretention, one austerely repudiated by a Pro-
testant theology. We will return to this point in the final portion of our
remarks below.

II. LE CHEVAL DE TROIE

Brice Paraine seems to wholly agree with Fr. Bouillard and his famous sen-
tence, “A theology that would not be contemporary would be a false theol-
ogy.” Going further still, he thinks that, through a kind of contradiction, we
ourselves approve of it when we write, “Moreover, we know quite well that
our most useful work will be to prove the possibility of movement by walking
and to resolve the questions that every contemporary Christian thinker asks
himself with anguish, doing so with the assistance of St. Thomas’s thought.”13
This sentence, writes our gracious [bienveillant] reviewer, “is incompatible
with the idea of an atemporal truth grasped once and for all in defined con-
cepts. By striving to prove movement by walking, Fr. M.-J. Nicolas does noth-
ing other than promise to give us a contemporary expression of the truths
he has discovered within Thomism.”
To this, we must first respond that it is not only a question of expressing
the same things differently but, more so, on a number of points, we intend
to think and say wholly new things, which these past things bear within
themselves or at least remain ready to welcome. Provided that the great, foun-
dational metaphysical truths be safeguarded, as well as the very conception
of theological science, Thomism forever reconstructs itself from within, from
that which provides it with its most specific character, for its essence will be
safeguarded and, along with it, the great, characteristic theses that necessarily
proceed from it. However, in particular, we must respond to Brice Parain that
the “contemporary expression” of the truth must not be confused with its
“contemporary conceptualization.” To say that, “the entire ensemble of abso-
lute affirmations is distinct from the notions and systems of notions in which
these affirmations are incarnated,” is not the same thing as saying: “Each era
must formulate in its own terms its conception of the Christian truth in con-
formity with its own experience.”14 In the first formula, Parain summarizes
Fr. Bouillard’s thought;15 the second formula is that of Parain himself, who
orients the debate from the perspective of formulation and language, going
so far as to say that the Thomists, “postulating the transcendence and

13 Marie-Joseph Nicolas, “Theological Progress and Fidelity to St. Thomas,” p. 192 above.
14 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 336.
15 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 336.
DISCUSSION SURROUNDING OUR ‘DIALOGUE THÉOLOGIQUE’ 261

permanence of the truth, inasmuch as its truth, behind the various formula-
tions that men give for it,”16 practice a kind of asceticism by choosing “a sys-
tem of particularly coherent formulations,” sticking to it out of distrust for
“those aspects of human language that ever remain equivocal,” without too
much support upon what language supplies in the way of clarity, by placing,
on the contrary, their ultimate trust in that which is beyond language, in “the
silence that forever envelops coherent systems, and that is always all the
denser and closer, by consequence, to what the truth is, in proportion to the
tyranny exercised by a system.”17 Parain’s thought seems penetrating and very
original to our eyes. We must reflect on this interpretation of the “fixism of
theological formulation,” considering it as being the result of a kind of ascet-
icism, the asceticism of “the gift of a word,” rich with a thousand variations,
as it were, a kind of hieratic quality that is more befitting to the mystery that
one is concerned with expressing. However, one must not forget, when speak-
ing of Thomism, that “speech” [parole] is not confused with the “thought”
that the former expresses. A concept is something different from a word
[mot]. It is even something different from a pictorial image [l’image-tableau]
of a more or less similar external reality. It is the intelligible reality itself in
the mind. Weighty arguments can be made in defense of the claim that even
St. Thomas’s very language should be preserved. However, when we speak of
the permanent value of his concepts, we are considering a rather different
matter. Ah! We know what intimate and vital bonds join the concept to the
word. That is the place where we can speak of an incarnation, rather than
when it is a question of the union of the truth to a concept. But also, it is not
easy to translate one and the same concept from a philosophical language
into a language that is not philosophical, appealing more to imagination and
experience, a language that would have the movement, style, and rhythm to
which our thought, accustomed to other disciplines, would be habituated.
What should we say concerning the case of translating this concept into the
language of another philosophy, in other words, looking to find anew, in a
completely different system—indeed one that is even completely opposed to
the first in its principles—certain concepts, designated by other words, which
aim at the same intelligible reality without always adequately covering it? If
every translation is difficult, given that a word drawn from one language
never has exactly the same meaning as a word drawn from another language,
what shall we say about this kind of translation? Nonetheless, it is necessary.
It is not concerned with making the truth contemporary [d’actualiser la vér-
ité] but, rather, with rendering it comprehensible to particular minds today.

16 It should be understood that we are taking the liberty to emphasize, in the texts we
cite, the sentences or expressions which would like to highlight.
17 Parain, “Dialogue théologique,” 338–39.
262 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

But, moreover, let this effort not prevent the theologian from safeguarding
its formal expression, its proper and adequate expression, which alone will
be its scientific expression and, if I can so speak, the starting point for all
translations. . . .18

III. ESPRIT
The preceding reflections are of use for responding to this warning expressed
by Emmanuel Mounier: “Confusing permanence [pérennité] with timeless-
ness [l’intemporalité], one arbitrarily presupposes that the problem of expres-
sion and communication has been resolved, whereas a truth like Christian
truth, which is affirmed as being eternal throughout [various] languages,
mentalities, and generations, poses this problem with the greatest possible
acuity. One accepts the risk of fixing in formulas of a school that are bound to
a given time and place that which precisely is above time and place. One risks
eternalizing the provisional by refusing to make the eternal contemporary
[d’actualiser l’éternel].”19
Formulas are bound to time and place, quite clearly, as well as to the con-
cepts that seek to be expressed in them and to inform the verbal matter
offered to them. However, these concepts are bound to time and place only
in what is subjective in them: at a given moment and in a given place, a given
man conceived a given thing in a given manner, something that is always
explained by a great number of causes external to the very object that he has
conceived, a state of affairs that, perhaps, remains undetected for millennia.
However, this object itself, this intelligible reality impressed within me, living
spiritually in me when I conceive it, is wholly independent of time and place.
Nonetheless, we must add that the fact of being conceived in a given, deter-
minate mind [esprit]—thereby being introduced into an entire system of
partly inexact ideas, ones that are forever partial—will color this intelligible
reality with that which the mental whole adds to the simple element. All of a
man’s conceptions are affected by the worldview into which they are intro-
duced, by what we could call the thinker’s “mentality.” Indeed, here we see
one factor involved in the variation befalling human conceptions, a factor
that is related neither to the pure and simple formulation of the concept
(although the latter will retrain traces from it), nor to the intrinsic content
of the concept (although the latter can be obscured and distorted by it), but
rather to its integration into a given system of thoughts and sentiments, filled
with obsolete and incomplete elements.

18 We explain ourselves more fully on all these points in the article which can be read in
this same [volume in English], “The Analogy of Truth and the Unity of Theological
Science.”
19 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 440.
DISCUSSION SURROUNDING OUR ‘DIALOGUE THÉOLOGIQUE’ 263

In fact, Mounier himself understood this difference between “formula-

tion” and “conceptualization” quite well, as can be seen in his excellent sum-
mary of the debate: “Differences arise precisely when it is a question of delim-
iting the frontiers of history and the immutable in the expression of eternal
truth. For Thomist thought . . . the historical aspect [indice] only affects given
secondary regions of the formulation and does not enter, as a component,
into the very act by which the truth is communicated.”20 We would say the
secondary regions of the formulation and the reverberations of the “mindset”
upon the concept; and in place of “the very act,” we would say: in the intelli-
gible reality that is conceptually grasped through an act of the mind that is
historically conditioned.
“By contrast, the other, opposed theologians tend to think that the sys-
tems of notions and of representations through which we grasp eternal affir-
mations are necessarily bound to circumstances of time and place, so that
through the ages, one and the same immutable truth is expressed through
systems of notions which each time translate elementary affirmations, each
doing so in its own way, each time in different ways, without ever exhausting
those affirmations.”21
Here we can see the debate placed at its true depth: a modern installment
of the conflict between realism and nominalism, with the intermediary
schools it generates. But, what does this excellent reviewer think? Here too,
he sees quite well, without fear of exacerbating the scope of such a discussion,
that the problem arising in relation to the permanence of theology likewise
arises in identical fashion for the permanence of dogma. He thus pushes back,
as all Catholic theologians obviously do, against the “asymptotic heresy” to
which excessive historicism would lead:

Must one, for all that, hold that every dogmatic formula and every con-
ceptual definition is a mere sign placed upon an unknowable reality, a
symbol that defies all illuminating content? The modernist critique
tended toward this kind of nominalism, which overturns the entire con-
tinuity of the faith. Today, we have a more complex sense of the life of
the intellect.22

What is this sense?

Therefore, the formula, which in itself is valid, dies if one does not inces-
santly seek, under its structure, to retrieve the living movement of
thought and faith which deposited it, [and] on the basis of it, the con-

20 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 443–44.

21 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 444.
22 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 440–41.
264 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

tinuous revelation which historical and religious experience gives con-

cerning it, and behind it, the inexhaustible expressive power which its
transcendent source provides for it.23

In this antinomy between structure and movement, we can recognize

Bergsonian currents, at least in its language. For us, the movement of thought
and faith that is the vital and subjective intellectual act in which the concept is
born is less important than the immutable content of this concept. That said,
there can be no doubt that the formula itself dies if one does not make the con-
cept expressed in the formula—indeed, itself the creative source of the formula
itself—live anew in oneself. The “continuous revelation” in question can be
nothing other than our ever-more-actual-and-perfect understanding that the
mind draws from the content of the concepts “deposited” in fixed formulas.
Precisely because we are here concerned above all with revealed truth, the
“transcendent source” of concepts and of their formulation can be nothing
other than the Divine Spirit who has spoken within them. Indeed, the First
Truth to whom we adhere through faith surely infinitely overflows the concepts
that express Him, concepts that can have only a finite—and therefore infinitely
deficient—grasp upon their object. However, this “infinite expressive power,”
which cannot be exhausted in the concepts that issue from it, is no longer
exerted, since God no longer reveals and was only able to reveal through a
grace-given, transcendent act, which was by no means homogeneous with the
life of our mind. The truth is not expressed in concepts that differ from those
in which it was first revealed. They are the basis for whatever reflection might
follow thereafter. They are what must be understood and developed. And they
set the limits within which the human mind must resign itself to remain.
Perhaps we have distorted Mounier’s thought through our commentary.
However, our purpose was, rather, to make clear in what precise sense we
could subscribe to his words and, consequently, in what sense, perhaps, his
thought would differ from ours concerning these matters. In any case, he
must be thanked for having expressed with greater understanding how the
very foundation of the entire debate concerning the relations between truth
and time necessarily involves philosophical positions concerning the nature
of conceptual knowledge and of language.

IV. REVUE DE THÉOLOGIE ET DE PHILOSOPHIE

We must admit that, for Protestant theologians, the interest in our Dialogue
théologique is found in the fact that it provides, in full breadth, a “lively image
of the oppositions that mark out Catholic thought.”24

23 Mounier, “Aux avant-postes,” 441.

24 Germond, “Dialogue théologique,” 128.
DISCUSSION SURROUNDING OUR ‘DIALOGUE THÉOLOGIQUE’ 265

We can see that, whatever the chosen party, at the very heart of Catholic
thought, at the basis of everything that provides it with its apparent
solidity, minds [esprits] are divided. These divergences can be main-
tained behind the scenes, but they nonetheless are essential. The façade
of the house remains, although its foundations are less secure.25

It is true that, in order to appear with such determinate opposition, our

respective positions have been pushed to their limits by our reviewer, though
this means they have been pushed precisely to that which [we] intended to
avoid: on the one hand, disregard for every element of subjectivity and rel-
ativity in the constructions wrought by human thought; on the other hand,
disregard for the objective and universal value of finite formulas concerning
the Infinite Truth. By pushing matters to these extremes, he finds it possible
to feel that the Protestants are much closer to the Jesuits, apart from, however,
what difficulties could be brought to the purity of their own properly religious
witness by intending an even greater conformity with the modern world.
However,

they find it difficult to understand how it is that with such conceptions,

the Jesuit Fathers do not press on further and do not bring their criti-
cism to bear upon the absolute value of dogmatic formulas, upon the
infallibility of the magisterium which proclaims them, and upon the
irrevocable condemnation of every heresy.26

What one finds difficult to understand is often what ultimately conceals

the solution to problems at hand. What prevents every Catholic theologian
from pushing further onward in regard to dogmatic formulas is the fact that
whatever he happens to think concerning the relative nature of theological
systems, he will forever seek to nuance his position so that he can avoid the
implications that others strive to make manifest to him, while he wholly and
completely rejects them. When one Catholic theologian attacks another, he
shows him—yes, through analysis of the concepts involved—the con-
sequences that faith pushes back against, making clear to his interlocutor
how far he must push onward. However, he immediately receives a reply. And
if there were some immediate evidence in such implications, if it became psy-
chologically impossible to maintain in his mind, alongside divergent theo-
logical conclusions, the very principles of faith understood “in eodem sensu,”
if there were a danger that one would imperceptibly pass from the former to
the denial or corruption of the latter, this is when the magisterium would
come to intervene, something that it takes care to avoid doing unnecessarily,

25 Germond, “Dialogue théologique,” 128.

26 Germond, “Dialogue théologique,” 132–33.
266 M I C H E L - M A R I E L A B O U R D E T T E , O P, M A R I E - J O S E P H N I C O L A S , O P

holding that freedom is one of the necessary conditions for the vitality of the
intellect’s own work exerted in reflecting upon the object of faith.
One must not, for all this, minimize the importance of certain debates,
where the very essential character of Christianity can quite well be put into
question.
However, two Catholic positions will forever be prevented from being
purely and simply opposed to each other, precisely because of their primor-
dial adherence to the truths that are defined by the Church, an adherence
that is not only one of good will but, also, an adherence of the intellect, no
more entailing the identity of theological constructions than does the com-
mon character of the first intuitions of the mind (or even of certain funda-
mental truths) entail that various philosophies would need to be identical
with each other.
For fear of endlessly repeating ourselves, let us merely note that different
positions can be complementary while not being opposed to each other or
even that verbal oppositions are often more pronounced than are those on
the level of ideas. If one does not sufficiently consider the weight of this dis-
tinction between dogma and theology (a distinction commonly held by Cath-
olic theologians), it is understandable that the very idea of a Theological Dia-
logue at the heart of the same Faith could reveal to Protestant eyes a sign of
splintering within the unity of Catholicism, whereas much to the contrary, it
manifests just how this unity is placed above every form of contestation for
each of us, as soon as matters turn to the truth defined by the Church as being
revealed by God, no longer remaining merely something that our reason
happens to elaborate concerning this truth.

Saint-Maximin, Nov. 25, 1947

 PART 2
The Roman Response:
Garrigou-Lagrange on Truth and Dogma

267
 9
Theology and the Life of Faith
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

B
y “the life of faith,” we here mean the vitality of Christian faith, whether
in the Church in different ages or in each believer considered in his or
her intimate relations with God.
It could seem unnecessary to treat of the importance of theology for the
life of faith understood in this way, for in principle, it is quite clear that—
above all for a priest—the positive and speculative study of Christian dogmas
is sovereignly useful to the interior life and to the apostolate. Christian faith
is indispensable for salvation, and theology (or, the science of faith) is of great
use in becoming well aware of the interrelations existing among the various
truths of faith in the doctrinal body that is Christian doctrine or the teaching
of the Savior and of the Apostles.1 This is so obvious that it is almost tautol-
ogous to state the fact.

THE PROBLEM, SUCH AS IT IS POSED TODAY

However, it in fact does happen that one loses sight of this truth and, con-
sequently, of the difficulties that are encountered in the study of theology.
Sometimes, these difficulties render this work quite arduous and can fatigue
certain minds who are content with a more superficial knowledge of things.
From the perspective of positive studies, theology is the patient study of
Scriptural texts, the documents of tradition, of various interpretations that
have been proposed concerning them, and of errors old and new. From the
speculative perspective, it is the thorough study of the notions without which
revealed truths would remain unknowable: analogical notions concerning
the various divine perfections (Wisdom, Goodness, Mercy, Justice, Prov-
idence, Predestination, etc.); the notions of nature and person in the treatises

1 In its decree Lamentabili (Denzinger, no. 3059), the Holy Office condemned this fifty-
ninth proposition of the modernists: “Christ did not teach a determined body of doctrine
applicable to all times and all men but, rather, inaugurated a religious movement adapted
or to be adapted to different times and places.” Also, see the proposition that follows.
[Tr. note: The sixtieth condemned proposition reads: “Christian doctrine was originally
Judaic. Through successive evolutions it became first Pauline, then Joannine, finally Hel-
lenic and universal.”]

269
270 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

on the Trinity and the Incarnation; the notions of substance and accident in
that on the Eucharist; the notions of freedom, merit, grace, sin, eternal pun-
ishment, beatitude, etc. Some might think that the abstract considerations
needed for thoroughly studying these notions are quite distant from our
habitual preoccupations. The interior life, we are told, is simpler, above all in
its superior parts, and it does not seem necessary that it should get tangled
up with the metaphysical study of all these problems. Great saints, like the
sublime beggar Benedict-Joseph Labre, lived profoundly upon the Eucharist
without ever having read a treatise on the sacraments.
It suffices, some say, that we adhere to the fixity of faith and, for action,
to the directions of ecclesiastical authority. As regards theological opinions—
whose ensemble, they think, constitutes theology!—they are merely disputed
questions to be investigated by the dedicated teams of laborers belonging to
various religious orders. These groups and their doctrines all hold an equally
probable certitude, allowing the mind complete freedom in choosing among
them and even the possibility of choosing none of them. The vital questions
would lie elsewhere.
Some believe that nothing of great importance is involved for the Cath-
olic when it comes to the question of choosing between the definition of truth
to which St. Thomas always returns (conformity of the intellect with reality)
and the definition of truth proposed some years ago by Maurice Blondel
when he wrote, “In place of the abstract and chimerical adaequatio rei et intel-
lectus [the adequation of the thing, or reality, and the intellect] there is sub-
stituted . . . adaequatio realis mentis et vitae [the real adequation of the mind
and life].”2
As the life in question here is human life, which is subject to change, it
was then asked how, from this perspective, one can avoid falling under the
condemned modernist proposition: “Truth is no more immutable than man
himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through him.”3
Since 1906, Blondel has moved closer to traditional metaphysics. We
know that he has formally condemned the manifestly inadmissible excesses
that can be found in the posthumous articles of Fr. Laberthonnière.4 Equally,

2 Maurice Blondel, “Le point de depart de la recherche philosophique,” Annales de phi-

losophie chretienne 152 (1906): 235.
3 Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 59 (Denzinger, no. 3459).
4 In his posthumously published articles, one reads in Lucien Laberthonnière, “La société
spirituelle,” Archivio di filosofia 3, no. 3 (July-September 1933): 11: “Without a doubt, St.
Thomas kept the letter of Christianity. . .but, by his doctrine, by his fundamental concep-
tions, by all the orientation of his thought, he is totally and radically outside of Christi-
anity.” Also, Laberthonnière, “Dieu d’Aristote, Dieu de l’école, Dieu des chrétiens,” Archi-
vio di filosofia 3, no. 2 (April-June 1933): 14: “The God (whom he describes for us) is a
being of pride, nothing but pride” (who has created all things for Himself).
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 271

he even retracted the final chapter of L’Action, which was most vigorously
contested.5
However, in his latest work, La pensée, we still can find propositions that,
understood according to the obvious sense of their terms, seem quite
removed from traditional doctrine. In Blondel’s thought, which here is pre-
occupied, on the one hand, with taking into account certain results from the
critique of the physical and natural sciences and, on the other, with speaking
in opposition to the rationalism of this or that contemporary philosophy,
these propositions do not have, we believe, the scope that they appear to have
at first sight. Nevertheless, they do not seem to maintain sufficiently enough
the stability and ontological value of the notions necessary for the first prin-
ciples of reason (including among them that of causality), nor that of those
notions needed for the formulas of faith.6

Fr. Laberthonnière forgot what is said in Prov 16:4: “The Lord hath made all things for
himself,” and he has not understood that if God ceased willing everything for the sake
of the Sovereign Good, which is Himself, and for the sake of the manifestation of His
goodness, God would be, as it were, guilty of mortal sin, a most extremely absurd claim.
5 Blondel said in L’Action, pp. 437ff: “Knowledge, which, before one’s option [or, act of
choice], was simply subjective, propulsive, becomes, afterwards, privative [sic] and con-
stitutive of being” (depending on whether the free choice is morally bad or good). See
L’Action, 426ff, 439, 463.
6 One reads in La pensée, vol. 1, p. 130: “The objects to which thought is taken and given
find their common denominator, their specific stability, their logical utilization, ONLY BY
THE ARTIFICE OF LANGUAGE. . . . We substantize the things that we know not to be substances.”
If this proposition, thus formulated, is true, how is one to maintain the stability and real
value of the notions of nature, substance, and person, necessary for the statement of the
dogmas of faith? [Tr. note: Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange does not cite the edition, but it appears
to match the pagination of Maurice Blondel, La pensée, vol. 1 (Paris: Presses Universi-
taires de France, 1934).]
Blondel also says: “The notion of an object and the use that is ordinarily made of it is one of
these divisions, one of these illegitimate ‘overestimations’ [majorations] that we do not
cease to denounce as being the chronic deception and ruinous improbity from which many
a philosophy is dying today” (La pensée, vol. 1, 131). If one takes this proposition in its
obvious sense, how can one determine the proper object of our intellect and affirm with the
Church (cf. [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 [Denzinger no. 3015]) that the supernatural
mysteries of faith certainly exceed this [formal] object, which is naturally knowable for us?
Again, we read on the next page: “There are, not in an absolute fashion (this would be
an illusion), but in a relative fashion, distinctly subsistent realities . . . ‘substantial forms’
that, without being stably achieved and independent, nevertheless have . . . a value that
is, at one and the same time, objective and subjective” (La pensée, vol. 1, 132). Also, see
La pensée, vol. 1, 136–37 and vol. 2, 30, 57, 74, 196, and 302.
How then is the nature of the human soul really and essentially distinct from grace that
is not owed to it? How is the latter certainly above the exigencies of our nature, contrary
to what Baius said?
272 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

When Blondel speaks of the dependence of certitude upon a free option

[or, free choice], we greatly desire to see him maintain the profound distinc-
tion formulated by St. Thomas7 concerning the influence of the will upon the
intellect, depending on whether or not there is necessitating evidence for the
object known. In the first case, the influence of the will leads the intellect
(quoad exercitium [with regard to its exercise]) to consider this truth atten-
tively, in a manner that is sustained long enough, likewise considering every-
thing that should be considered without neglecting anything. Here, there cer-
tainly is room for moral rectitude and intellectual probity. We likewise
concede that even when there is necessitating evidence, the influence of the
will can confirm our intellectual certitude because day-by-day we live ever
more in accord with the truth we have already acknowledged. From this per-
spective, a great difference separates the notion that one can form for oneself,
for example, concerning humility after having read an excellent study on this
subject from that much more profound notion of humility that a saint has of
it at the end of his life. Something similar occurs with regard to the proofs
for God’s existence.
All this is incontestable and should be clearly distinguished from the
influence of the will on the intellect quoad specificationem [with regard to
specification] when necessitating evidence from the object does not exist, as
holds in the case of faith in the revealed mysteries. Many passages in Blon-
del related to the free option and to certitude would be admissible if he
noted this distinction that is common in St. Thomas and his disciples. By
means of it, the role of the will in these very different forms of certitude is
easily explained, as are the certitude of science and the certitude of faith or
belief.8 It also sheds light on the character of the kinds of certitude proper

We read later in La pensée, vol. 1, p. 179: “Far from deducing the affirmation of the living
God from a prior assertion of abstract principles, these intellectual premises proceed in
a more profound sense from the realistic conception of a divine subsistence.”
Is this to say that we have a firm certitude of the real and universal value of the principle
of causality, necessary for the a posteriori proofs of God’s existence only after we believe
in God, which seems indeed to presuppose itself a free choice, as Blondel affirms in his
book L’Action (pp. 437ff, 439, 426ff, and 463), and as voluntarist philosophy of action
would require? It is this free choice we see reappearing in the belief of which he speaks
in this new work, La pensée, vol. 1, pp. 390ff and vol. 2, 65, 67, 81, 90, and 96: “In our
fashion of knowing and affirming, there is always for the assertion and effective consent
a portion of belief inherent to vital and intellectual certitudes all together. Not that there
would be a hazard [aléa] for those who can see and will; but, in the most perspicuous
intellect, it is necessary that to the evidence of logical reasons there be joined the deci-
sion that renders truth the primacy and totality that is owed to it.”
7 ST I-II, q. 17, a. 6.
8 See ST II-II, q. 2, a. 1; q. 4, a. 8.
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 273

to prudence,9 hope,10 and to the gift of wisdom. In these latter, the role of
the will is manifestly much greater than in the certitude born of necessi-
tating evidence.
In order to remain faithful to traditional metaphysics, we absolutely must
maintain that, prior to any free option, the human intellect can be certain of
the truth of the principles of contradiction and of causality, understanding
these principles in their realist sense.
For the nominalists and consistent [conséquents] idealists, the principle
of contradiction is only a conditional proposition: If something is, something
is (si aliquid est, aliquid est). However, according to them, perhaps nothing
is. Perhaps our idea of being does not have a real value. Perhaps all things
become, and perhaps becoming itself is self-explanatory, ratio sui. Perhaps
God is nothing more than creative evolution.
For the realist, the ontological formulation of the principle of contradiction
is categorical: “It is absolutely impossible that, at one and the same time, a thing
be and not be.” For the realist, a square circle is not only subjectively inconceiv-
able. It is really impossible, unrealizable outside the mind, whatever Descartes
may say about the matter. Similarly, for realism, the denial of the principle of
causality leads to absurdity. To claim that that which begins (i.e., the contingent)
is uncaused is not only an unintelligible claim but, moreover, is absurd and really
impossible outside the mind. Does Blondel firmly admit, prior to every free
option, the certitude of the real value of these principles and that of the prin-
ciple of finality (every agent acts for an end)? In certain passages, he seems to
admit that these certitudes are necessary; however, in others, he attenuates his
affirmation and makes it seem like it has some sort of relativity.
Likewise, does he acknowledge, prior to every free option, certitude con-
cerning the personal existence of the thinking subject and the truth that he can-
not have the experience of it without the existence of the experienced reality, no
sensation of resistance (distinct from hallucination) without something that
resists? “Touch and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Lk 24:39).11
All these primordial questions are manifestly of a great importance for
every man who seeks the truth. They are certainly no less important for the
intellectual formation of priests according to the mind of the Church.12

9 See ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3 (on prudential certitude, per conformitatem ad appetitum rec-
tum, through conformity to right appetite, even in the case of invincible ignorance or error).
10 See ST II-II q. 18, a. 4.
11 See ST III, q. 55, a. 6; q. 57, a. 6, ad 3; ST I, q. 51, a. 2.
12 Canon [1917 code] 1366, §2: “Professors shall treat studies in rational theology and
philosophy and the instruction of students in these disciplines according to the system,
teaching, and principles of the Angelic Doctor and hold to them religiously.” Taken from
The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, ed. and trans. Edward N. Peters (San Fran-
cisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2001), can. 1366, §2 (p. 460).
274 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

What then must we think about the relationship existing between the
speculative and thorough study of theology and the life of faith as well as the
interior life itself? In the Church, it has always been taught that the interior
life owes much to theology and that the study of this science is, in turn,
greatly fertilized by a profound interior life. Here, we find mutual relations
whose elementary truths should be recalled, truths which turn out to be very
profound when one indeed chooses to penetrate them and make them the
rule of one’s life with greater intensity each day.

THEOLOGY PRESERVES THE INTERIOR LIFE FROM

GRAVE DEVIATIONS
First of all, the study of theology helps the spiritual life avoid two grave, truly
ruinous defects: subjectivism and particularism.
Those who approach God in prayer by allowing themselves to be led too
much by the inclination of their own individual nature, temperament, imag-
ination, sensibility, or character often fall into sentimentalist subjectivism.
In our own days, Henri Bergson holds that the mystics are above all
dominated by an emotion to which they deliver themselves, one they then
express in religious ideas or conceptions, like that of the divine mercy toward
us or that of the need to offer reparation to divine justice. However, [accord-
ing to him] we can make pronunciations concerning the truth of these reli-
gious conceptions only from the empirical and practical perspective, doing
so by the welcome effect they produce, above all if this effect is durable and
has an echo in us. Therefore, one could ask oneself whether these conceptions
only contain a beautiful dream arising from one’s religious sentiment, a con-
soling reverie, though without its object exceeding the limits of probable
opinion, all the while becoming increasingly plausible by the increasing
number of welcome results that depend on these conceptions.
It will be responded: However, to be assured of being in the truth, the
fixity of faith suffices without needing recourse to theology.
Still, in order to retain the fixity of faith, one must accept the traditional
definition of truth and not only the pragmatist definition thereof. Otherwise,
dogmas would become mere preceptive norms: comport yourself in relation
to Jesus Christ as though He were God, though without affirming that He
really is God; comport yourself in relation to the Resurrection as though it
really had taken place; comport yourself in relation to the Eucharist as though
there really were a transubstantiation and real presence.
Moreover, to preserve oneself from subjectivism in the interior life, to
truly live the great mysteries of faith, is it superfluous to meditate seriously
on what the masters of theology have written concerning them? Likewise, is
it superfluous to know the nature of the spiritual organism of sanctifying
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 275

grace, the infused virtues and the gifts, the various forms of actual grace, and
the signs of a divine inspiration along with its counterfeits?
Have not the great mystics been ever more attentive to the task of placing
truth in their life so that they might live upon nothing other than the truth?13
Of particular note, we have the case of St. Teresa of Ávila, who spoke of
the esteem that she had for theology and for learned men:

In difficult matters, even if I believe I understand what I am saying and

am speaking the truth, I use this phrase, “I think,” because if I am mis-
taken, I am very ready to give credence to those who have great learn-
ing.14 For even if they have not themselves experienced these things,
men of great learning have a certain instinct to prompt them. As God
uses them to give light to His Church, He reveals to them anything that
is true so that it shall be accepted; and if they do not squander their tal-
ents but are true servants of God, they will never be surprised at His
greatness, for they know quite well that He is capable of working more
and still more. In any case, where matters are in question for which
there is no explanation, there must be others about which they can read,
and they can deduce from their reading that it is possible for these first-
named to have happened. Of this I have the fullest experience; and I
have also experience of timid, half-learned men whose shortcomings
have cost me very dear.15

*****
Beyond individual subjectivism, theology also preserves the interior life
from particularism, which arises from the excessive influence of our envi-
ronment or from that of the ideas in vogue in our era, ideas that will be out-
dated in thirty years’ time. One can note these deviations in the ages of qui-
etism, Americanism, and modernism. In these deviations, we have passing
enthusiasms that last little longer then a fire fed upon straw, and if they are
not remedied, they are followed by discouragement.
By preserving our interior life from these deviations, the attentive study
of theology gives it a precious objectivity, a sane realism, and also, above every
narrow, particular, and passing view, universality, which is the mark of the
great classics of spirituality, whose writings are of value for all places and
times. In a way, like something conceived above the flow of time in its con-
tinual onward course, these works do not age but, instead, retain a superior
relevance.

13 On this point, see the beautiful study by Fr. Thomas Deman, “La théologie dans la vie
de sainte Catherine de Sienne,” Vie spirituelle, Vol. 42, Suppl. (1935): [1]–[24].
14 [Tr. note: Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange has in French les grand théologiens.]
15 Teresa of Ávila, Interior Castle, trans. E. Allison Peers (New York: Doubleday: 1961),
100–101 (fifth mansion, ch. 1). Likewise, see the eighth chapter of the sixth mansion.
276 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

THEOLOGY CONTRIBUTES TO PROVIDING THE

INTERIOR LIFE WITH THE PROFOUND SENSE
OF THE TRUTHS OF FAITH
The study of the great masters of theology not only preserves our interior life
from the deviations of which we have spoken. It moreover helps it to know
the mind of the Church [le sens de l’Eglise], which is the same semper et ubique.
Little by little, it shows us the profundity of the most elementary truths of
Christianity. It even habituates us to seeing that the elementary truths of
Christian doctrine are the loftiest, most profound, and most vital truths we
may ever know, provided that they are penetrated well, meditated upon at
length, and lived upon. Thus, they ultimately become the object of contem-
plation. Such is the case for the first line of the Catechism: “Why were you
created and put into the world? To know God, to love Him, to serve Him,
and by these means to obtain eternal life,” or, again, this expression of St.
John: “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son” (Jn 3:16).
The [First] Vatican Council admirably expresses the importance of the-
ology for the Christian life when it says:

Nevertheless, if reason illumined by faith inquires in an earnest, pious,

and sober manner, it attains by God’s grace a certain understanding of
the mysteries, which is most fruitful, both from the analogy with the
objects of its natural knowledge and from the connection of these mys-
teries with one another and with man’s ultimate end. But it never
becomes capable of understanding them in the way it does truths that
constitute its proper object.16

Theology enables us to arrive at a certain, very fruitful understanding

of the revealed mysteries. And this is even its most precious fruit. This is why,
in St. Thomas, the first questions of the great dogmatic treatises on the Trinity,
the Redemptive Incarnation, the Sacraments in general, and the Eucharist,
all first contain conceptual analysis of these revealed truths before he is con-
cerned with deducing from them other truths of less importance, truths that
are theological conclusions, properly so-called, the fruit of objectively illative
reasoning. All these first questions of the great treatises usually contain only
explicative reasoning, which explain or deepen the subject and the predicate
of the revealed truth, concerning the great mystery in question. In this way,
as a result of these explications, the consubstantiality of the Word is not, as is
sometimes said, a theological conclusion deduced from a revealed truth, but
instead, is the revealed truth in its exact and profound sense: “And the Word
(consubstantial to the Father) was made flesh (namely, man).” It is the

16 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4. Denzinger, no. 3016.

T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 277

revealed mystery itself in the light of this other expression from the Prologue
of St. John: “And the Word was God.” The consubstantiality of the Word [to
the Father] is incomparably superior to theological conclusions.
Even were theology not to deduce any theological conclusions, properly
so called, but were only to explain, through a profound metaphysical
analysis,17 the subject and predicate of revealed truths, and even were it only
to show their subordination in order to make us be better aware of the depth,
riches, and elevation of the very teaching of the Savior, even in such a case,
it would have considerable importance. And this is how theology prepares
for the elaboration of increasingly explicit dogmatic formulations of one and
the same dogma, that is, of one and the same assertion or revealed truth,
before it is a question of deducing from it other truths through objectively
illative reasoning.18 This deepening of the meaning of a fundamental truth
sometimes takes centuries, as with the deepening of this expression: “And
the Word was made flesh.”
It is utterly evident that theology has contributed much to the elabora-
tion of increasingly explicit formulations of one and the same dogma, an
explication often rendered necessary for eliminating heresies.
St. Thomas, who in his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aris-
totle (bk. 2, lect. 3–17) studied so profoundly how one undertakes the venatio,
the search, for the real and distinct definition by setting out from the nominal
definition that expresses the vague concept of the thing to be defined, was
certainly not unaware of this development [progrès] of dogmas. The most
important work of philosophy and theology is found in this methodical pas-
sage from the vague concept of common sense to the distinct concept. The
latter is not deduced from the preceding like a conclusion. Rather, one and
the same concept is given increasing precision through the division of the

17 [Tr. note: By which he merely means an analysis searching for the most essential defi-
nition (or at least what is closest thereto quoad nos) of a given reality.]
18 We use the expression “Objectively illative reasoning” for that form of reasoning which
leads to another [objectively new] truth. For example, from the Divine Intelligence, we
can deduce the Divine Freedom through this major premise: every intelligent being is
free. By contrast, reasoning is only explicative (or at most subjectively illative) when it
establishes the equivalence of two propositions in stating the same truth. For example,
there is the equivalence of these two propositions: “You are Peter and upon this rock I
will build my Church; and the gates of hell will not prevail over it” = “The successor of
Peter, when he speaks ex cathedra to the universal Church, in a matter of faith and
morals, cannot be deceived.”
See, at the end of this article, an appendix concerning the question of knowing whether
theological conclusions obtained by objectively illative reasoning with the aid of a natural
premise (even when the latter is the major, that is to say the more universal premise) can
be defined as a dogma of faith to be acknowledged under pain of heresy properly so-
called (and not only of error).
278 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

genus (or of the most general notion19) and through the inductive comparison
of the thing to be defined with what more or less resembles it. In this way,
philosophy comes to obtain precise definitions of substance, man, the soul,
the intellect, the will, the different acquired virtues, etc.
In theology, the same kind of conceptual analysis has contributed greatly
to the precision of notions that are indispensable for dogmatic formulations:
the notions of created being and uncreated being, those of unity, truth, and
(ontological and moral) goodness; the notions of analogy relative to God, of
the Divine Wisdom, the Divine Will, love, providence, and predestination;
for the understanding of revealed truths concerning the Trinity, the notions
of nature, person, and relation; the notions of grace (habitual and actual, effi-
cacious or sufficient); the notions of free will,20 merit, sin, infused virtue,
faith, hope, charity, and justification; the notions of sacrament,21 character,
sacramental grace, transubstantiation, and contrition; the notions of beati-
tude and punishment, purgatory and hell, etc.
Even before taking up the task of deducing theological conclusions (that
is, the task of arriving at new truths distinct from revealed truths) an immense
labor must be undertaken in the conceptual analysis of these revealed truths
so as to pass from the vague notion (expressed by the current nominal defi-
nition or by the terms of Scripture and of Tradition) to the same distinct and
precise notion in view of eliminating heresy, which deforms revelation itself.
To arrive at this penetration, it is not useless to have studied many times
the Treatises on God and on the Incarnation in the work of a master like St.
Thomas.
Even those who teach them come to have a command of the subject
only after many years; then, little by little, they grasp the profound sense
of the principles, as well as their elevation and radiance. Thus, one arrives

19 [Tr. note: That is, in the case of analogical notions.]

20 The passage from the nominal definition to the real definition is sometimes quite
lengthy. Thus, Thomists and Molinists still do not agree concerning the real (exact or dis-
tinct) definition of free will inasmuch as it adds a precision to the nominal definition. Nev-
ertheless, it is a question of the same concept, which is at first vague and then is distinct.
21 For defined doctrine concerning the sacraments, dogmatic progress is considerable,
for the revealed truths relative to the sacraments had been revealed less in an abstract
manner than in a concrete and practical manner, by the very administration of the sacra-
ments. And thus what is necessary for a sacrament, like baptism, can be considered
either from the perspective of being a sign (sensible thing and words), or from the per-
spective of the subject who receives it, or from the perspective of the effects produced,
or from the perspective of the ordinary or exceptional minister. Thus, one and the same
thing practiced in Church, in accord with the will of Christ, since her beginnings, can be
expressed in multiple propositions in order to eliminate this or that heresy. And these
propositions are not theological conclusions; they are the abstract expression of the con-
cretely revealed truth.
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 279

at the “fruitful understanding of the mysteries” spoken of by the [First] Vat-

ican Council.
Theology aids in deepening faith so that we may live by it, and below the
level of faith, it is gradually constituted as an explanatory science of the
revealed truths and as a deduction of certain theological conclusions that are
nearly universally admitted, with that which contradicts them often having
been condemned not as “heresies” but as “errors.”
Indeed, it is of great importance not to confuse theological science with
theological opinions. Classics like Bossuet draw from this science with open
hands, generally setting aside consideration of the particular opinions of theo-
logians. They are not unaware of these various opinions. However, what they
seek in faith and in the science of faith is that which rises above such opinions.
To realize the importance of the acquisition of theological science, let us
suppose for a moment that St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae had not yet been
written and that the only treatises on God, the Incarnation, grace, and faith
that we had were the questions of the Master of the Sentences. How much more
difficult would we find it to render account of the mutual relationships that exist
among revealed truths in the body of Christian doctrine, and how much more
impoverished would we be for forming a sound judgment concerning danger-
ous doctrinal novelties, which are sometimes born of a very slight error in a
first principle: “Parvus error in principio magnus est in fine.” If one distorts in
an almost imperceptible manner certain Thomist principles in the question of
predestination and reprobation, one can fall into Calvinism (for example, if
one does not distinguish clearly enough the divine permission, which precedes
sin, and the subtraction of divine grace, which follows at the same instant).
It is of great importance that we know the value of commonly received
theological science. By having misunderstood it, the nominalists of the four-
teenth and fifteenth century fell into grave errors that paved the way for the
errors of Luther, who was formed by them. Thus, they conceived of sanctify-
ing grace as being a quality belonging to the natural order, which would nev-
ertheless give a moral right to eternal life as a result of a divine institution,
like a bank note, which gives us the right to receive a hundred dollars [francs],
even though it all the while remains nothing more than a piece of paper.
Luther came to say that grace and justification are only an extrinsic denomi-
nation by the imputation of the merits of the Savior unto us.
Finally, as Fr. Gardeil has noted,22 among the various theological systems,
we must carefully heed the importance of universal syntheses that set as their

22 Ambroise Gardeil, Le donné révelé et la théologie (Paris: Librarie Victor Lecoffre, J.

Gabalda et cie., 1910), 252–85.
[Tr. note: Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange lists only the title and pp. 252–85. It appears that he
means the third chapter of the second part as cited here, pp. 252–84.]
280 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

master idea the very idea of God, the Author of nature and of grace (or, of
salvation) and not some particular idea, which is obviously subordinate to
the preceding (for example, the idea of man’s free will). A given system thus
dominated by a particular idea cannot be a universal synthesis, which must
be dominated by the idea of God, the proper object of theology.
In its superior simplicity, faith is like an absolutely simple circle. The
teachings of the greatest theologians, seeking to explain the dogmas of faith,
are like a polygon inscribed within this circle, seeking to elaborate its content
and riches. The nominalists draw their polygon in their own particular
manner; it is quite different from what had been sketched by St. Augustine
and drawn out by St. Thomas.
All this shows what the life of faith receives and can receive from the
study of theology when the latter is indeed undertaken with intelligence, pen-
etration, and docility to the great doctors whom the Church proposes to us
as Masters.
*****

THE INFLUENCE OF THE INTERIOR LIFE ON THEOLOGY

But if the interior life receives much from the study of theology, it can, in its
own turn, greatly perfect such study as well. This fact is not noted frequently
enough. Nevertheless, the great doctors of the Church have often mentioned
this fact, indeed, in a much truer manner than the current partisans of the
philosophy of action.
Too often, the study of theology remains lifeless, either in its positive
part or in its abstract and speculative part. It does not truly make felt the
superior inspiration existing in it, the breath of the theological virtues and
of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of understanding and wisdom. Thus,
we do not sufficiently find in it this sapida scientia spoken of by St. Thomas
in the first question of the Summa theologiae.
Like a child who studies the piano and cannot yet fathom what gives the
works of the masters their value, one comes to a halt too readily at the for-
mulas of faith without seeking to pass through them to the Divine Reality
they signify, in order to thereby penetrate and taste the revealed mysteries.
Here we should recall that saints like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Catherine of
Siena, St. Benedict-Joseph Labre, and so many others, who never undertook
the conceptual analysis of the dogmas of the Redemptive Incarnation and of
the Eucharist and who never studied the theological conclusions that one
deduces from them, all profoundly lived upon these mysteries precisely by
passing through the formula so as to press onward to the Divine and Living
Reality that they signify.
And without calling to mind these great saints who received special
graces of contemplation, how many simple but profound Christian souls live
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 281

upon these mysteries more, perhaps, than many theologians! With a sound
and saintly realism, they enter into these heights of God because they are
humble, having pure hearts and lively faith, both of which inspire all their
conduct from morning to night. As St. Thomas says: “The act of the believer
does not find its ultimate terminus in the statement but, rather, in reality, in
the revealed mystery itself.”23
Now, if this is true of these souls, for how much greater a reason should
it be true of a priest who has truly understood the grandeur of his vocation,
he who should celebrate the Holy Sacrifice with an ever-livelier faith each
day, a purer and stronger love of God, and each day make a communion sub-
stantially more fervent than the day before, given that we must not only pre-
serve the charity that is in us but indeed must make it grow, thus disposing
ourselves (so long as we do not fall into some form of negligence) to receive
our Lord the next day with a fervor of will that is not only equal to the pre-
vious day’s but, rather, one that is greater still.24
When the interior life of a priest thus grows every day, it greatly vivifies
his study of theology. These two forms of his activity have the most welcome
influence upon one another: Causae ad invicem sunt causae, in diverso genere
[Causes are mutually causes for each other, though in different genera of
causality].

THE FRUITS OF THIS MUTUAL INFLUENCE

When a priest has a great and solid piety, if he also applies himself to study,
theology becomes ever-livelier for him. Like the pianist coming to master
the necessary techniques of piano playing and to understand the works of
the masters, one here comes to perceive the harmonies at play in the works
of someone like St. Augustine or St. Thomas.
Then, after descending from faith to theology to know its details in its
various treatises, the theologian will experience the need to ascend from the-
ology to faith, to ascend to the divine source of this science. He resembles a
man who would have passed his childhood upon a mountain, like Monte
Cassino, then descending into the valley to traverse it in all directions. This
man would feel the need to return to the mountain so as to embrace the entire

23 ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2.
24 In his Commentary on Hebrews 10:25, St. Thomas wrote: “The more a natural motion
approaches its terminus, the more is it inclined thereunto. The contrary is the case for
violent motion (e.g., of a stone thrown upward and ascending upward). Now, grace
inclines in the manner of nature. Therefore (as the natural motion of the stone falling is
ever faster), the more those who are in grace approach the end, the more they ought to
grow [in grace].” The more they approach God, the more they are attracted by Him, and
more rapidly do they press onward toward Him, as we see in the final years of the lives of
the saints.
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valley in a single glance. The theologian likewise needs to embrace his science
in a single glance by finding it virtually contained in the Credo or at the end
of the Mass in the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel.
When the priestly soul has become, as it must, a soul of prayer, the inte-
rior life then emphasizes what is most vital and most fertile in dogmatic and
moral theology. The gifts of understanding and wisdom render infused faith
penetrating and enable it to savor the truths that it knows. . . . And let us
remember, infused faith is the root of theology.
One thus discovers increasingly captivating chiaroscuros in the doctrines
of Christianity, chiaroscuros that are the object of the infused contemplation
of the saints and of truly interior souls.
Little by little, all the great questions on grace are summarized in the fol-
lowing two principles. On the one hand, “God never commands the impos-
sible, but in commanding, He admonishes us to do what we can and to ask
[for the grace] to do what we cannot,” as St. Augustine says25 and as is cited
by the Council of Trent against the Protestants.26 On the other hand, against
the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians [there are those words of Scripture], “For
who sees anything different in you? What have you that you did not receive?”
(1 Cor 4:7, RSV); or, according of the terms used by St. Thomas: “Given that
the uncreated love of God is the cause of all that is good, nothing would be
better than something else if it were not more loved by God.”27
Just as each of these two principles is clear and certain when considered
in isolation, so too is their intimate reconciliation obscure on account of the
superior obscurity that comes from too-great a light for our weak eyes. To
see this intimate reconciliation, we would need to see how infinite justice,
infinite mercy, and sovereign freedom are reconciled in the Deity (or, the
intimate life of God).
Let us take another example. With the progress of the interior life, one
sees more and more fully the loftiness of the treatise on the Redemptive Incar-
nation and the motive of the Incarnation of the Son of God, “qui propter nos
homines et propter nostrum salutem descendit de caelis et homo factus est [who
for us men and for our salvation descended from heaven and was made man].”
Similarly, again, under the influence of the life of prayer, one gradually
discovers what life is hidden in the Eucharist, and, in a domain elevated
above all the theories on the sacrifice of the Mass, the sense and scope of
these words of the Council of Trent becomes increasingly clear: “For the
victim is one and the same: THE SAME NOW OFFERS Himself through the mini-
stry of priests who then offered Himself on the Cross; only the manner of

25 See Augustine, De natura et gratia, ch. 43, no. 50.

26 See Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, ch. 11 (Denzinger, no. 1536).
27 See ST I, q. 20, aa. 3 and 4.
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 283

the offering is different.”28 With ever greater clarity, the Savior appears as
the Principal Priest “always living to intercede for us” (Heb 7:25), and His
interior oblation, ever current, not renewed, but continued and measured,
like His beatific vision, by participated eternity, appears as being the soul of
the sacrifice of the Mass and of all the Masses that do not cease to be cele-
brated on the earth’s surface.
Thus, little by little, one discovers, in Scripture and the Councils, the
most precious stones of the doctrinal edifice. Likewise, in the Summa theo-
logiae, one comes to have increasing discernment concerning the summa
capita, the greatest articles, which are like the most elevated and most char-
acteristic peaks in a lengthy mountain range.
If one truly applies oneself to the study of theology in a spirit of faith
and prayer, it becomes living, and then are these words of St. Thomas realized:
“Doctrine and preaching (of the divine word) ought to be derived from the
fullness of contemplation,”29 as we see, following upon Pentecost, in the
preaching of the Apostles.

*****
Understood in this manner, theology is of a great importance in pre-
paring oneself for the ministry of souls. It profoundly forms the mind to judge
in accord with the Gospel and to exhort souls to true Christian perfection.
It shows all the elevation of the ultimate precept: “Love your God with all
your heart.” It makes one see that this precept does not have limits and that
all Christians must tend to the perfection of charity,30 each according to his
condition, one in marriage, another in the religious state, another in the
priestly life.
Now, we cannot arrive at the full perfection of the Christian life if we
do not profoundly live the mysteries of the Redemptive Incarnation and of
the Eucharist, if we do not penetrate and taste them by a living faith, illu-
minated by the gifts of understanding and of wisdom. In a subordinate but
truly useful way, the study of theology contributes to this, provided that it
is inspired not by natural curiosity but by the love of God and desire for the
salvation of souls.
In this way, we have an ever-more powerful verification for the beautiful
words from the [First] Vatican Council’s constitution Dei filius cited at the
beginning of this article, words which are, at once, a definition and an enco-
mium for theology:

28 Council of Trent, sess. 22, Doctrine and Canons on the Sacrifice of the Mass (Den-
zinger, no. 1743).
29 ST II-II, q. 188, a. 6.
30 See ST II-II, q. 184, a. 3.
284 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Nevertheless, if reason illumined by faith inquires in an earnest, pious,

and sober manner, it attains by God’s grace a certain understanding of
the mysteries, which is most fruitful, both from the analogy with the
objects of its natural knowledge and from the connection of these mys-
teries with one another and with man’s ultimate end.31

The study of theology, which sometimes is difficult and arduous, is thus

truly fruitful. It disposes, in a certain way, the faithful and generous priestly
soul to receive the light of life, the grace of contemplation and of union, which
is, as St. Thomas says, “a kind of beginning of eternal life.”32

NOTE
With regard to the definability of theological conclusions, in the body of this
chapter, we distinguished objectively illative reasoning, which leads to
ANOTHER TRUTH [from that which is expressed in such reasoning’s premises],
from explicative reasoning, namely, that which is, at most, subjectively illative,
which establishes the equivalence of two propositions that state, the one
vaguely, the other distinctly, THE SAME TRUTH (for example, the infallibility of
Peter and of his successors).
This leads to the following question: can theological conclusions
obtained by objectively illative reasoning using a natural premise (even when
the latter is the major, i.e., the more universal premise) be defined as a
dogma of faith that one must admit not only under pain of error but,
indeed, under that of heresy properly so-called? For example, supposing
that the Divine Freedom were not formally revealed, even in a vague
manner, could it be defined as a dogma? It would be the conclusion of a
process of reasoning whose natural major would be: “Every intelligent
being is free.” Following with the minor premise, “Now, it is revealed that
God is an intelligent being,” we would then conclude, “Therefore, God is
free, and this is virtually revealed.”
We do not think that a theological conclusion, properly so called, as
deduced from that which is revealed by means of objectively illative rea-
soning could be defined under pain of heresy, properly so called, as being
a dogma of the faith (although the contradictory proposition could be
infallibly condemned as erroneous). This is so because—and the great
commentators on St. Thomas generally admit the point—it is not simplic-
iter a revealed truth but, instead, is a truth deduced from a revealed propo-
sition using a natural premise (which even here is the major premise and
not the minor).

31 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (Denzinger, no. 3016).

32 ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2; II-II, q. 24, a. 3, ad 2; De veritate, q. 14, a. 2.
T H EO LO GY A N D T H E L I F E O F F A I T H 285

Even if this conclusion states a judgment concerning God, no matter

how rigorous it may be, it cannot be defined as a dogma (unless it is con-
tained elsewhere in some place within the deposit of revelation).
To defend the idea that such statements could be defined, Fr. Marín-Sola
said in 1924 in his Homogenous Evolution of Catholic Dogma33: The truth
deduced states a judgment concerning one and the same Divine Reality. For
example, if one deduced the Divine Freedom (presupposing that it not be for-
mally and vaguely revealed) from the Divine Intelligence, what is known is
one and the same Divine Reality.
It is easy to respond to this. The deduced truth states a judgment con-
cerning the same Divine Reality, ut res est, concedo; ut obiectum est, nego [as
He is a reality as such, I concede the point; as He is an object of knowledge,
I deny it], according to the classic distinction explained well by Cajetan in
his Commentary on ST I, q. 1, a. 3, no. 5.
One and the same Divine Reality is an object of many specifically distinct
habitus: the light of glory, faith, theology, and metaphysics. For all the more rea-
son, one and the same Divine Reality corresponds to many truths. Some of these
truths are revealed, while others are deduced from the preceding. (Verum est for-
maliter in mente, ut conformitas iudicii cum re. [Truth is formally in the mind,
as the conformity of its judgment with reality.]) And for a human intellect, inas-
much as it does not see God, there are many truths relative to one and the same
Divine Reality. Only God forms one, single truth concerning Himself.
Still, one adds: “Two propositions concerning the same subject and really
identical predicates have a really identical meaning.” For example: the soul is
spiritual, and the soul is immortal. Or again: God is intelligent, and God is
free, for there is not a real distinction between the divine attributes.34
This would mean that, precisely because they are not really distinct, the divine
attributes have THE SAME MEANING, OR, IN OTHER WORDS, ARE SYNONYMS. Now, this
is a nominalist thesis that was refuted by St. Thomas in ST I, q. 13, a. 4. It would
follow, as the nominalists say, that one could say, “God punishes through mercy
and pardons through justice.” One would thus arrive at agnosticism.
It sometimes happens, as in the present case, that while believing oneself to
combat the nominalist position, and by insisting on the divine reality in which
the divine attributes are identified, one ends up in this form of nominalism, hold-
ing that all the divine names are synonyms, being only verbally distinct. From this
perspective, divine justice and mercy would be no more distinct than Tullius and
Cicero, and just as everywhere that the term Tullius is written, one could just as
well write Cicero, so too everywhere that the term justice is written, one could

33 Francisco Marín-Sola, L’évolution homogène du dogme catholique (Fribourg: Imprim-

erie et librairie de l’Oeuvre de Saint-Paul, 1924), vol. 2, 332ff.
34 This is what Fr. Marín-Sola says in Evolution homogène, vol. 2, p. 333.
286 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

just as well write mercy. In-depth investigation into these question of speculative
theology is manifestly of great importance concerning all these problems.
However, it is further insisted35: In order for an assertion to be defined
as a dogma, it suffices that it be revealed actu implicite. Now, each divine
attribute is contained actu implicite in the divine nature conceived as Subsis-
tent Being, as well as in each of the other attributes. Therefore [every divine
attribute is revealed and thus can be defined as a dogma.]
In accord with what we have said, we must respond by making a distinc-
tion in the claim that in order for an assertion to be defined as a dogma, it
suffices that it be revealed actu implicite. I concede that this is true, on the
condition that the truth in question is the same truth as the one which is
revealed. However, I deny that this holds if it is a new truth that has been
deduced.36 Now, I deny that each divine attribute is contained actu implicite
in the divine nature and in every other attribute, as the same truth. However,
I concede that they are there as another, deduced truth.
Indeed, I concede that a given divine attribute is contained in the divine
nature actu implicite by reason of the divine reality ut res est. However, I make
a sub-distinction regarding the claim that there would be the same truth as an
object of knowledge [ratione obiecti]. I concede the point for the case of the
divine intellect and that of the intellects of the blessed. However, I deny that
it would be the same truth for our intellect [in our current wayfaring state].37
Otherwise, all the divine names would be synonyms, and we would need
to say: The two statements, “God is just,” and “God is merciful,” both state the
same truth. They state two truths concerning the same divine reality.38 Indeed,
truth is formally in the mind. It is the conformity of its judgment with reality.
Now, we are here not concerned with the divine mind, nor that of the blessed,
but rather with our intellect, in relation to which one speaks of revealed truths
and other truths deduced from the preceding. This is contrary to theologism,
which would give, in a way that is similar to philosophism, too much impor-
tance to an acquired science;39 however, this shows, along with the superiority
of infused faith, the immense value of revealed truth.

35 Marín-Sola, Evolution homogène, 342ff.

36 Fr. Marín-Sola himself recognizes this in Evolution homogène, 333.
37 [Tr. note: Although I have kept some of the scholastic form above, including nego and
concedo, this text required translation, for Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange slipped into Latin after
the beginning of the first French sentence.]
38 When one says, “In God, justice is mercy,” it is true as a material, not a formal, attri-
bution or predication.
39 Between infused faith and acquired theology, there is a homogeneity that is not spe-
cific but quasi-generic; these are two habitus that are specifically distinct by their double
formal object (quod and quo). However, the theological habitus has its root in infused
faith, even though it is itself acquired, “acquiritur studio humano.”
 10
Where is the New Theology
Headed?
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

I
n1 a recent book, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin,2 Father
Henri Bouillard writes, “When the mind evolves, an unchanging truth
can only maintain itself by virtue of a simultaneous and correlative evo-
lution of all notions, each proportionate to the others. A theology that would
not be contemporary would be a false theology.”3
Moreover, in the pages preceding and following [the above quotation],
the author demonstrates that the theology of St. Thomas, in several of its
most important sections, is not contemporary. For example, St. Thomas
conceived sanctifying grace as a form (a radical principle of supernatural
operations, which have the infused virtues and the seven gifts as their
accompanying principles). “The notions employed by St. Thomas are noth-
ing more than Aristotelian notions applied to theology.”4
What follows? “By renouncing the Aristotelian system of physics, mod-
ern thought abandoned the notions, the schemata, and the dialectical oppo-
sitions which only made sense as functions of that system.”5 Thus, modern
thought abandoned the notion of form.
How then can the reader evade the conclusion, namely, that since it is
no longer “contemporary,” the theology of St. Thomas is a false theology?
But then, how is it that the Popes so often instructed us to follow the
teaching of St. Thomas? Why does the Church say in her Code of Canon
Law, Can. 1366, §2, “Professors shall treat studies in rational theology and

1 [Tr. note (Minerd-Kirwan): In general, much of this translation retains the form in which
it was found in the Josephinum edition cited in the introduction to our volume. However,
on occasion, we have made small alterations to it for the sake of consistence with the
whole of our volume or in order to correct minor translational issues.]
2 Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944),
219.
3 Emphasis added by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange.
4 Bouillard, Conversion, 213ff.
5 Bouillard, Conversion, 224.

287
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philosophy and the instruction of students in these disciplines according

to the system, teaching, and principles of the Angelic Doctor and hold to
them religiously”?6
Moreover, how can “an unchanging truth” maintain itself if the two
notions that are united by the verb to be are essentially variable or changeable?
An unchangeable relationship can only be conceived of as such if there
is something unchangeable in the two terms it unites. Otherwise, for all
intents and purposes, it’s like saying that an iron clamp could still the waves
of the sea.
Of course, the two notions that are united in an unchangeable affirma-
tion are sometimes at first confused and then later distinguished one from
the other, such as the notions of nature, person, substance, accident, tran-
substantiation, the Real Presence, sin, original sin, grace, etc. But if these
are not fundamentally unchangeable, how then will the affirmation that
unites them by the verb “to be” be unchangeable? How can one hold that
the Real Presence of the substance of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist
requires transubstantiation if the notions are fundamentally variable? How
can one assert that original sin occurred in us through a willed fault of the
first man, if the notion of original sin is essentially unstable? How can one
hold that the particular judgment after death is eternally irrevocable, if
these notions are said to change? Finally, how can one maintain that all of
these propositions are invariably true if the notion of truth itself must
change, and if one must substitute for the traditional definition of truth
(the conformity of judgment to extra-mental reality and to its immutable
laws) what has been proposed in recent years by the philosophy of action:
the conformity of judgment to the exigencies of action or to human life,
which is always evolving?

1. DO THE DOGMATIC FORMULAE THEMSELVES

RETAIN THEIR IMMUTABILITY?
Father Henri Bouillard responds: “The affirmation which is expressed in
them remains.”7 But he adds:

Perhaps one might wonder if we could even assert that the notions
implied in conciliar definitions are also contingent? Would this not
compromise the irreformable character of these definitions? The
Council of Trent (sess. 6, ch. 7, can. 10), for example, in its teaching
on justification, employs the notion of formal cause. By so doing, did

6 Taken from The 1917 Pio-Benedictine Code of Canon Law, ed. and trans. Edward N.
Peters (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2001), can. 1366, §2 (p. 460).
7 Bouillard, Conversion, 221.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 289

it not enshrine this term and confer a definitive character upon the
notion of grace as a form? Not at all. It was certainly not the intention
of the Council to canonize an Aristotelian notion, nor even a theo-
logical notion conceived under the influence of Aristotle. It simply
wished to affirm, against the Protestants, that justification is an inte-
rior renewal. . . . To this end, it used some common notion in the the-
ology of its era. However, other notions can be substituted for these,
without modifying the meaning of its teaching.8

Undoubtedly, the Council did not canonize the Aristotelian notion of

form with all of its relations to other notions used in the Aristotelian sys-
tem. But it approved it as a stable human notion, in the sense that we speak
of everything that formally constitutes a thing (in this case, justification).9
In this sense, it speaks of sanctifying grace as distinct from actual grace by
saying that it is an infused supernatural gift that inheres in the soul and by
which man is formally justified.10 If the Councils define faith, hope, and
charity as permanently infused virtues, their radical principle (habitual or
sanctifying grace) must also be a permanently infused gift and, from that,
distinct from actual grace or a transitory divine motion.
But how can one maintain the sense of this teaching of the Council of
Trent, namely, that “sanctifying grace is the formal cause of justification,”
if “one substitutes another notion for that of formal cause”?—I did not say,
“if one substitutes an equivalent word,” but as Father Bouillard says, “if one
substitutes another notion.”
If it is another notion, then it is no longer that of formal cause: then it
is also no longer true to say with the Council: “Sanctifying grace is the for-
mal cause of justification.” It is necessary to be content to say that grace
was understood at the time of the Council of Trent as the formal cause of
justification, but today it is necessary to define it differently; this passé def-
inition is no longer “contemporary” and thus is no longer true, since a doc-
trine that is no longer contemporary, as was said, is a false doctrine.11

8 Bouillard, Conversion, 221. [Emphasis is Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange’s.]

9 I have explained this more fully in Thomistic Common Sense: The Philosophy of Being
and the Development of Doctrine, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus
Academic, 2021), 275–300.
10 See Council of Trent, Decree on Justification, ch. 7, Denzinger, nos. 1528–1529 [old no.
799]; Canons on Justification, can. 11, Denzinger, no. 1561 [old no. 821].
11 Further it is defined that the infused virtues (above all the theological virtues), which
derive from habitual grace, are qualities, permanent principles of supernatural and mer-
itorious operations; it is thus necessary that habitual or sanctifying grace (by which we
are in a state of grace), from which these virtues proceed as from their source, be itself a
permanently infused quality and not a motion like actual grace. Well, it was long before
St. Thomas that faith, hope and charity were conceived as infused virtues. What could be
290 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

One will answer: for the notion of formal cause, one can substitute
another equivalent notion. But this plays too fast and loose with terms (by
insisting first on another and then on an equivalent), especially inasmuch
as it is not verbal equivalence but, rather, another notion. What then
becomes of even the notion of truth?12
Thus, the very serious question continues to resurface: does the con-
ciliar proposition hold as true through conformity with being outside the
mind and with its immutable laws or, rather, through conformity with the
exigencies of human life, which are forever changing?
We can see the danger of the new definition of truth, no longer the adae-
quatio rei et intellectus (adequation of intellect and reality) but conformitas
mentis et vitae (the agreement of mind and life). When Maurice Blondel in
1906 proposed this substitution, he did not foresee all of the consequences
for the faith. He himself would be perhaps terrified or at least very troubled.13
Which “life” is meant in this definition of: “agreement of mind and life”? It
means human life. And so then, how can one avoid the Modernist proposi-

clearer? Why waste time under the pretext of advancing these questions and of putting
into doubt the most certain and fundamental truths? To do so is an indication of the intel-
lectual disarray of our times.
12 Blondel wrote in “Le point de depart de la recherché philosophique,” Les Annales de
Philosophie chrétienne 152 (June 15, 1906), 235: “By rights, in place of the abstract and
chimerical ‘Adaequatio speculativa rei et intellectus,’ we must substitute methodical
research, the adaequatio realis mentis et vitae.” It is not without great responsibility that
one calls “chimerical” the traditional definition of the truth accepted for centuries in the
Church, and that one speaks of substituting another one for it in all domains, including
that of theological faith.
Have the most recent works of Blondel corrected this deviation? We are unable to ascer-
tain that. He also says in L’Etre et les êtres (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1935), 415: “No intellectual
evidence, not even that of principles that are absolute of themselves, having an ontologi-
cal value, imposes itself upon us with a constraining form of certainty.” In order to admit
the ontological value of these principles, one must exercise a free option, and because
of this choice, their ontological value is thus only probable. But it is necessary to admit
them according to the demands of action secundum conformitatem mentis et vitae. It
cannot be otherwise if one substitutes the philosophy of action for the philosophy of
being or ontology. Thus truth is defined not as a function of being, but of action. Every-
thing has changed. An error regarding the first notion of truth gives rise to an error regard-
ing all the rest. See also in Blondel, La Pensée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1934 and 1935), vol. 1, 39, 130–36, 347, 355; and vol. 2, 65ff, 90, 96–196.
13 Another theologian, whom we shall cite further on, invites us to say that at the time of
the Council of Trent transubstantiation was conceived as the changing, the conversion
of the substance of the bread into that of the Body of Christ, but that today it has come
to be thought of as transubstantiation, without this changing of substance, meaning that
the substance of the bread, which remains, becomes the efficacious sign of the Body of
Christ. And this pretends to conserve the Council’s meaning!
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 291

tion: “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with
him, in him, and through him.”14 We can understand why Pius X said of the
Modernists, “They pervert the eternal concept of truth.”15
It is very dangerous to say: “The notions change while the affirmation
remains.” If even the notion of truth is changing, then the affirmations do
not remain true in the same way nor according to the same meaning.
Therefore, what the Counsels meant is no longer maintained, as one would
have wished.
Unfortunately, the new definition of truth has spread among those
who forget what Pius X had said: “We admonish professors to bear well in
mind that they cannot set aside St. Thomas especially in metaphysical ques-
tions, without grave disadvantage. ‘A small error in principle,’ we may thus
use the very words of Aquinas himself, ‘is a great error in conclusion.’”16
A fortiori is this true if one ignores all metaphysics, all ontology, and
tends to substitute for the philosophy of being, that of phenomenalism [du
phénomenon], or of becoming, or of action.
Moreover, is this not the new definition of truth that is found in the
new definition of theology: “Theology is no more than a spirituality or reli-
gious experience that has found its intellectual expression.” And so follow
assertions such as: “If theology can help us to understand spirituality, spir-
ituality in turn will, in most cases, burst open our theological frameworks,
and we shall be obliged to formulate different types of theology. . . . For to
each great spirituality has corresponded a great theology.” Does this mean
that two theologies can be true, even if their main theses are contradictory
and opposite? The answer will be “no” if one keeps to the traditional defi-
nition of truth. The answer will be “yes” if one adopts the new definition
of truth, conceived not in relation to being and its immutable laws but rel-
ative to different religious experiences. This idea brings us remarkably
close to Modernism.
We should recall that on December 1, 1924, the Holy Office con-
demned 12 propositions taken from the philosophy of action, among
which was number 5, on the new definition of truth:

Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect wherein which
there would be had conformity with the object, as the Scholastics
have said, but rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and con-
sists in a progressive adequation of the understanding with life,

14 Holy Office, Lamentabili, no. 58 (Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no. 2058]).
15 Pius X, Pascendi dominici gregis, no. 13 (Denzinger, old no. 2080)
16 [Tr. note: this last text refers to Aquinas’s reference to Aristotle, which is found both
in the opening line of the prologue to Aquinas’s De ente et essentia, and in the Summa
contra gentiles, bk. 2, ch. 2.]
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namely, a certain perpetual process by which the intellect strives to

develop and explain that which experience presents or action
requires. However, it is a law that in all progression there is at no time
anything which is determined or fixed.

The last of these condemned propositions is: “Even after having grasped
matters of faith, man must not take up his rest regarding religious dogmas,
adhering to them in a fixed and immobile manner.—Rather, he must forever
remain anxious to progress onward to some further truth, namely, by devel-
oping a new meaning for what he believes, nay, also by correcting it.”17
Many who did not heed these warnings have today reverted to these
errors.
But then how can it be held that sanctifying grace is essentially super-
natural, gratuitous, and not at all owed to human nature nor to angelic
nature?
This question is clear for St. Thomas who, by the light of Revelation,
clearly articulated this principle: faculties, “habitus,” and their acts are
specified by their formal object; yet, the formal object of the human intel-
lect, and even that of angelic intellects, is immensely inferior to the proper
object of the divine intellect: the Godhead or the intimate life of God.18
But if one puts aside all metaphysics and is satisfied with historical study
and psychological introspection, then the text of St. Thomas becomes
unintelligible.19 From this point of view, what can be kept from the tradi-
tional doctrine regarding the distinction, not contingent but necessary,
between the order of grace and that of nature?
On this subject, in the midst of remarks concerning the probable
impeccability of the angels in the natural order, Fr. Henri de Lubac states,

17 These condemned propositions are found in Monitore ecclesiastico (1925), 194; in Doc-
umentation catholique (1925), vol. 1. 771ff., and in Fr. Pedro Descoqs, Praelectiones Theo-
logiae naturalis (Paris: Beauchesne, 1932), vol. 1, 150; vol. 2, 287ff.
18 See ST I, q. 12, a. 4.
19 In Bouillard, Conversion, 169ff, arriving at the heart of the matter considered in his
volume says, for example, that, regarding the immediate disposition to justification, St.
Thomas (in ST I-II, q. 113, a. 8, ad 1) “no longer makes appeal to reciprocal causality,” as
he does in his previous works. To the contrary, it is clear for every Thomist that he does
speak of it and that it is what illuminates the whole matter. Moreover (and the point is
elementary to recall), reciprocal causality is always found where the four causes are
involved, that is to say: in all cases of becoming. Here it is said: “On the part of God jus-
tifying, by an order of nature, the infusion of grace is prior to the remission of sins.
However, if we consider matters from the perspective of the man who is justified, the lib-
eration from sin is prior to the obtaining of justifying grace.” Every theological student
who heard an article-by-article explanation of St. Thomas’s treatise on grace will agree
that this is a truth that cannot be ignored.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 293

in his recent book, Surnaturel (Études historiques):20 “Nothing is said by

St. Thomas regarding the distinction that would be forged later by a
number of Thomistic theologians between ‘God, Author of the natural
order’ and ‘God, Author of the supernatural order ’. . . as if the natural
beatitude . . . in the case of the angels would have had to result from an
infallible activity, incapable of sin.”21
On the contrary, St. Thomas often distinguishes the ultimate super-
natural end from the ultimate natural end,22 and as far as what concerns
the devil, he says,23 “The sin of the devil was not in anything that pertains
to the natural order but according to something supernatural.”24
It is by this path that one would become completely disinterested in
the pronuntiata maiora, or major pronouncements, of the philosophical
doctrine of St. Thomas, that is to say, in the 24 Thomistic theses approved
in 1916 by the Sacred Congregation of Studies.
Even more, Fr. Gaston Fessard, S.J., in the November 1945 issue of
Études, speaks of the “blessed drowsiness that protects this canonized (but

20 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 254.

21 de Lubac, Surnaturel, 275.
22 See ST I, q. 23, a. 1:
The end to which God has ordered created things is twofold. One exceeds the pro-
portion of human created nature and its powers, and this end is eternal life, which
consists in the vision of God [divina visione]. As we said earlier (in ST I, q. 12, a. 4),
this is above any possible nature whatsoever. However, the other end is propor-
tioned to created nature; that is, it can be attained by a created thing in accord with
the power of its nature.
Likewise, in ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1: “However, as we said earlier (in ST I-II, q. 3, a. 2, ad 4; q.
5, a. 5), there is a twofold beatitude, or felicity, for man. One is proportioned to human
nature, that is, as an end to which man can arrive through his nature’s own principles.
The other, however, is a beatitude which exceeds man’s nature.”
Likewise, in De veritate, q. 14, a. 2: “However, man has a twofold ultimate good. One of
them is proportioned to nature . . . and this is the felicity spoken of by the philosophers.
. . . The other the is a good which exceeds what is proportioned to human nature.” If one
no longer accepts the classical distinction between the order of nature and that of grace,
one will say that grace is the normal and obligatory achievement of nature, and the grant-
ing of such a favor nonetheless would remain, one says, free, like creation and all that
follows it, because creation was not at all necessary. To which Fr. Descoqs, S.J., in his
little book, Autour de la crise du Transformisme, 2nd ed. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1944), 84,
very rightly responds: “This explanation seems to us in distinct opposition to the most
explicit Catholic teachings. It also contains an evidently erroneous conception of grace.
Creation is never a grace in the theological sense of the word, grace only being able to
be found in relation to nature. In such a perspective, the supernatural order disappears.”
23 De malo, q.16, a.3.
24 “Peccatum diaboli non fuit in aliquo quod pertinet ad ordinem naturalem, sed secun-
dum aliquid supernaturale.” ST I, q. 63, a.1, ad 3.
294 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

also, in Péguy’s words, ‘interred’) Thomism, while thought dedicated to its

contradiction is full of life.”25
In the same review in April 1946, it was said that neo-Thomism and the
decisions of the Biblical Commission are “a guardrail but not an answer.” Yes,
what is proposed to replace Thomism, as if Leo XIII in the Encyclical Aeterni
Patris had been wrong and as if Pius X, in renewing this same recommenda-
tion, had gone down the wrong path? And where is this new theology headed,
with the new teachers it has inspired? Where but onto the road of skepticism,
fantasy and heresy? His Holiness, Pius XII, recently said in a published Dis-
course in L’Osservatore Romano, Dec. 19, 1946:

There is a good deal of talk (but without a sufficient testing of its

character), about a “new theology” which is in constant transforma-
tion, following the example of all other things in the world, which
are in a constant state of flux and movement, without ever reaching
their term. If we were to accept such an opinion, what would become
of the unchangeable dogmas of the Catholic Faith; and what would
become of the unity and stability of that Faith?

2. APPLICATION OF NEW PRINCIPLES TO THE

DOCTRINES OF ORIGINAL SIN AND THE EUCHARIST
Some will no doubt say that we exaggerate, but even a small error regarding
first notions and first principles has incalculable consequences which are
not foreseen by those who are thus mistaken. Therefore, the consequences
of the new views, some of which we have already reviewed, must go well
beyond what the authors we have cited foresaw. For example, it is difficult
not to see these consequences in certain typewritten papers, which have
been sent (some even since 1934) to clergy, seminarians, and Catholic
intellectuals; one finds in them the most singular assertions and denials
concerning original sin and the Real Presence.
At times, in these same circulated papers, before such novelties are pro-
posed, the reader is forestalled by being told: this will appear crazy at first,
however, if you look at it closely, it is not without probability and is accepted
by many. Those with superficial intelligence are taken in, and the dictum, “A
doctrine that is not contemporary is no longer true” forges ahead. Some are
tempted to conclude: “It seems that the doctrine of the eternal pains of hell
is no longer of contemporary relevance, and for that reason it is no longer
true.” Yet, it is said in the Gospel that one day the love of many persons will
grow cold and that they will be seduced by error.

25 Gaston Fessard, [Review of Joseph de Tonquédec, Un philosophie existentielle. L’Exis-

tence d’après Jaspers,”] Études 247 (Nov. 1945): 269–70.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 295

It is a strict obligation of conscience for traditional theologians to

respond. Otherwise, they gravely neglect their duty, and they will be made
to account for this before God.
In the documents mimeographed and distributed in France in recent
years (at least since 1934, according to those which this writer possesses),
the most fanciful and false doctrines regarding original sin are being
taught.

*****
In these same documents, the act of Christian faith is not defined as a
supernatural and infallible adherence to revealed truths on account of the
authority of God Who reveals them (propter auctoritatem Dei revelantis)
but as an adherence of the soul to a general perspective of the universe.
This general perspective entails a perception of what is possible and most
probable but not demonstrable. The Faith becomes an ensemble of prob-
able opinions. From this point of view, Adam no longer appears as an indi-
vidual man from whom the human species is descended but rather as a
group of men.
Thus, from that point of view, one can no longer see how it would be
possible to hold to the revealed doctrine of original sin as explicated by St.
Paul in Romans 5:18: “Therefore as through the offense of one, all men are
given unto condemnation; so also through the justice of one, all men are
given unto the justification of life. Just as through the disobedience of one,
the many are made sinners, so also through the obedience of one, many
are made just.” All of the Fathers of the Church, who are the authorized
interpreters of Scripture, in their constant sacred teaching, whether ordi-
nary or solemn, have always understood that Adam was an individual man
as Christ was after him and not a group of men.26 But what is now pro-
posed to us is a probability with a meaning opposed to that of the teaching
of the Councils of Orange and Trent.27

26 See Marie-Joseph Lagrange, L’Épitre aux Romains, 3rd ed. (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1931),
commentary on chapter 5.
27 See 2nd Council of Orange, can. 2 (Denzinger no. 372 [old no. 175]); Council of Trent,
Decree on Original Sin, can. 2 and 4 (Denzinger, nos. 1512 and 1514 [old nos. 789 and
791]); Decree on Justification, ch. 1 (Denzinger, no. 1521 [old no. 793]).
The difficulties for the positive sciences and for prehistory were set forth in the article
“Polygenism” in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1935): cols.
2520–36. The authors of this article, Amédée and Jean Bouyssonie, clearly distinguished,
in col. 2536, the purview of philosophy as being “Where the naturalist, as such, is incom-
petent.” It would have been well if, in that same article, the question had been treated
from three points of view: the positive sciences, philosophy, and theology, particularly
in relation to the dogma of original sin.
296 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Furthermore, following this new point of view, the Incarnation of the

Word would be merely a moment of universal evolution.
The hypothesis of the material evolution of the world is now extended
into the spiritual order. The supernatural world is in evolution toward the
full coming of Christ.
Sin, in so far as it affects the soul, is something spiritual and therefore
timeless. Consequently, they say, it is of little importance for God whether
it took place at the beginning of the history of humanity or during the
course of the ages.
Therefore, original sin in us is no longer a sin that depends on the
willful misconduct of the first man, but it comes from the mistakes of men
who have influenced humanity.
Following this line of reasoning, one desires in this way to change not
only the manner of explaining theology but even the very nature of theology
and, even more, that of dogma. Dogma itself is no longer considered from
the viewpoint of the faith given by divine Revelation and interpreted by
the Church in her Councils. It is no longer even a question of the Councils;
here one places himself in the point of view of biology, completed by the
most fanciful rantings that recall those of Hegelian evolutionism and which
retain nothing of Christian dogmas but the name.
In all of this, we but follow the way of the rationalists, and in so doing
we do what the enemies of the faith want most: we reduce the faith to ever-
changing opinions so that there is no value retained in them. What remains
of the word of God given to the world for the salvation of souls?
In these pages, bearing the title, “How I believe,” we read (cf. p. 15):

If we wish, we Christians, to conserve for Christ the qualities that are

the basis of His power and our adoration, we can do nothing better or
even nothing more than to accept completely the most modern notions
of evolution. Under the combined pressure of science and philosophy,
the World stands out more and more to our experience and our thought

According to several theologians, the hypothesis according to which there were men on
earth whose race was extinct before Adam is not contrary to the faith. But according to
Scripture, the human race that lives on earth derives from Adam. See Gen 3:5–20; Wis
10:1; Rom 5:12, 18, 19; Acts 17:26.
Moreover, regarding the philosophical point of view, a free intervention of God in creating
the human soul was necessary, and even for preparing the body to receive it. The beget-
ting of an inferior nature cannot, however, produce this superior state of his species;
more would come out of less, contrary to the principle of causality.
Finally, as is said in aforementioned article (col. 2535): “According to the mutationists
(mutationistes) of today, a unique seed gave rise to the new species. The species was
begun by an exceptional individual.”
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 297

as an intertwined system of activities gradually lifting itself toward

freewill and consciousness. The only satisfying interpretation of this
process is that of regarding it as irreversible and convergent. Thus, this
convergence has been defined, even before us [Christians], as a cosmic
Universal Center, where all leads, where all is felt, where everything is
ordered. And so, it is in this physical pole of the universal evolution
where it is necessary, in my opinion, to locate and recognize the pleni-
tude of Christ. . . . Evolution, in discovering the apex of the world,
renders Christ possible, just as Christ, in giving meaning to the world,
makes evolution possible.

I am perfectly aware of the staggering proportions of this notion, . . .

but by imagining a parallel wonder, I do nothing else but transcribe,
in terms of physical reality, the juridical expressions in which the
Church deposits her Faith. . . . I have unhesitatingly come to the real-
ization that I can only go in that direction that seems possible to me
for making progress and, consequently, for saving my faith.

At first blush, Catholicism had disappointed me with its narrow def-

initions of the World and by its failure to understand the role of
Matter. Now, I recognize that by means of the Incarnation of God,
which Catholicism reveals to me, that I am only able to be saved by
becoming one body with the universe. And, by the same token, these
most profound “pantheistic” hopes of mine are fulfilled, reassured
and directed. The World around me, becomes divine.

A general convergence of religions toward a universal-Christ, which,

fundamentally, fulfills all of them: this appears to me to be the only
conversion possible for the World and the only form imaginable for
the Religion of the future.28

28 Emphasis added [by Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange]. Ideas that are nearly as fanciful are found
in an article by Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, “Vie et planètes: Que se passe-t-il en ce moment
sur la terre,” Études 249 (May 1946): 145–69, especially 158–60 and 168. See also, by
the same author, “Un grand Evènement qui se dessine: le Planetisation humaine,” in
Cahiers du Monde nouveau 2 (August 1946): 1–13.
One has recently quoted a text by the same author, [“Comment se pose aujourd’hui la ques-
tion du transformisme”] in Études (1921), 543, where he spoke of “The impossibility of deter-
mining an absolute beginning of our spirit in the order of phenomena.” To this, Georges
Salet and Louis Lafont rightly responded in L’Évolution regressive (Paris: Éditions Francis-
caines, 1943), 47: “Isn’t creation an absolute beginning?” Well, faith tells us that God daily
creates the souls of babies and that in the beginning He created the spiritual soul of the first
man. Moreover, miracles also are absolute beginnings, something that is not at all incom-
patible with reason. On this point, see Descoqs, Autour de la crise du transformisme, 85.
Finally, as Father Descoqs remarked, in Autour de la crise, 2 and 7, theologians should
not be speaking so much about evolutionism and transformism anymore, since the best
minds, such as Lemoine, Professor at the Museum, write: “Evolution is a kind of dogma
298 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Thus, the material world might have evolved toward spirit, and the
world of the spirit would evolve naturally, so to say, toward the supernat-
ural order and toward the fullness of Christ. In this way, the Incarnation
of the Word, the mystical body, the universal Christ would be moments in
the process of Evolution, and based on this view of a constant progress
from the beginning, it would seem that there was not a fall at the beginning
of the history of humanity but a constant progress of good, which triumphs
over evil according to the same laws of evolution. Original sin in us would
be merely the sequela of the faults of human beings, which have exercised
a deadly influence on all humanity thereafter.
See now what remains of the Christian dogmas in this theory, which
distances itself from our “Credo” in proportion to its approach to Hegelian
evolutionism.
In the above-cited work, the writer said: “I have taken the only road
that seems possible to me for making progress and consequently, for saving
my Faith.” This therefore means that the Faith itself is only conserved if it
progresses, and it changes so much so that one can no longer recognize in
it the Faith of the Apostles, of the Fathers, and of the Councils. It is but
one way of applying the principle of the new theology: “A doctrine that is
no longer contemporary is no longer true,” and for some, it suffices that it
is no longer contemporary only in certain quarters. From this principle, it
emerges that the truth is always in fieri [in process], never immutable. The
Faith is the conformity of judgment, not with being and its necessary laws,
but with life, which is constantly and forever evolving. We now see exactly
how far the aforementioned propositions condemned by the Holy Office,
December 1, 1924 lead: “No abstract proposition can have in itself im-
mutable truth.”—“Even after having grasped matters of faith, man must not
take up his rest regarding religious dogmas, adhering to them in a fixed and
immobile manner. Rather, he must forever remain anxious to progress
onward to some further truth, namely, by developing a new meaning for what
he believes, nay, also by correcting it.”29

which its priests do not believe, but that they hold for their people. It is necessary to
have the courage to say so, so that the men of the next generation will conduct their
research by other methods” (see Conclusion of vol. 5 of L’Encyclopédie française [Paris:
Société de gestion de l’Encydopédie Française, 1937]). Dr. Henri Rouvière, professor in
the School of Medicine of Paris, member of the Academy of Medicine, also writes in Anat-
omie philosophique, La finalité dans l’Évolution (Paris: Masson, 1941), 37: “The doctrine
of transformism has suffered a veritable collapse. . . . The majority of biologists have dis-
tanced themselves from it because the defenders of transformism have never produced
the least proof to support their theory and everything known about evolution con-
tradicts their contentions.”
29 See Monitore ecclesiastico (1925), 194.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 299

*****
We have another example of a similar deviation in the typewritten
papers on the Real Presence, which have been circulating for some months
among the clergy. These say that, up to now, the true problem with the
Real Presence was not well posed: “The response to all of the difficulties
that were posed was: Christ is present after the manner of a substance. . . .
This explanation only side-stepped the real problem. Let us add, moreover,
that in its deceptive clarity, it actually suppressed the religious mystery.
Strictly speaking, there is no longer a mystery there; there is nothing more
than a marvel.”
Thus, it is St. Thomas who did not know how to pose the problem of
the Real Presence and his solution, that the presence of the Body of Christ
by mode of substance, would be illusory; its clarity is a deceptive clarity.
We are warned that the new explication being proposed “evidently implies
that we substitute the Cartesian and Spinozan method of reflection for the
Scholastic method.”
A bit further on, concerning transubstantiation, one reads: “This word
is not without drawbacks, like that of original sin. It corresponds to the
way the Scholastics conceived of and defined this transformation, and their
definition is inadmissible.”
Yet, here the writer distances himself not only from St. Thomas, but
also from the Council of Trent,30 for the latter defined transubstantiation
as a truth of faith, and even said: “a change which the Catholic Church
most fittingly calls transubstantiation.” Today these new theologians say:
“Not only is this word unsuitable, . . . it corresponds to an inadmissible
understanding and definition.”
In the Scholastic perspective, in which the reality of the thing is ‘the
substance,’ the thing may only really change if the substance changes
. . . by transubstantiation. According to the current view, where, by
virtue of the offering made according to a rite determined by Christ,
the bread and the wine became the efficacious symbol of the sacrifice
of Christ and consequently of His spiritual presence, because their reli-
gious being was changed, but not their substance.31

30 Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist, ch. 4 and can. 2 (Denzinger, nos.
1642 and 1652 [old nos. 877 and 884]).
31 In the same place, we are told: “In the scholastics’ perspective, the notion of thing-
sign was lost. In an Augustinian universe, where a material thing is not only itself, but
rather a sign of spiritual realities, one can conceive that a thing, being through the will
of God the sign of another thing than what it was by nature, might become something
else without changing its appearance.”
From the scholastic perspective, the notion of thing-sign was not at all lost. Saint Thomas
says, ST I, q. 1, a.10: “The Author of Sacred Scripture is God, in whose power it lies not
300 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

And also: “This is what we can designate by transubstantiation.”

But it is clear that this is no longer the transubstantiation defined by
the Council of Trent, “that wonderful and unique change of the whole sub-
stance of the bread into his body and of the whole substance of the wine
into his blood while only the appearance [species] of bread and wine
remain.”32 It is evident that the meaning of the Council is not maintained
by the introduction of these new notions. The bread and the wine have
become only “the efficacious symbol of the spiritual presence of Christ.”
This brings us singularly close to the Modernist position, which does
not affirm the Real Presence of the Body of Christ in the Eucharist, but
which only says, from a religious and practical point of view: behave
toward the Eucharist the same way you behave with regard to the humanity
of Christ.
In these same circulated papers, quite the same is done to the mystery
of the Incarnation: “Although Christ is truly God, one cannot say that
because of Him, God was present in the land of Judea. . . . God was no
more present in Palestine than anywhere else. The efficacious sign of this
divine presence was manifested in Palestine in the first century of our era,
and this is all that one can say.”33
Finally, the same writer adds: “The problem of the causality of the sac-
raments is a false problem, born of a false method for posing the question.”
*****

only to give words their meanings (something that man also can do) but even to do so
for things themselves.” Thus, Isaac who is prepared to be sacrificed is the figure of Christ,
and the manna is a figure of the Eucharist. St. Thomas notes this when speaking of this
sacrament. But by the Eucharistic consecration the bread does not only become the sign
of the Body of Christ and the wine the sign of His Blood, as the sacramentaries of the
Protestants thought. See L. Christiani, “Sacramentaire (controverse),” Dictionnaire de
Théologie Catholique, ed. Alfred Vacant et al., vol. 14.1 (Paris: Letouze et Ané, 1939), 441–
65. However, as was formally defined at the Council of Trent, the substance of bread is
converted into that of the Body of Christ, which becomes present per modum substantiae
under the species of bread. And this is not only germane to the theologians of the era of
the Council regarding the consecration. It is the immutable truth defined by the Church.
32 Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist, can. 2 (Denzinger, no. 1652 [old
no. 884]).
33 St. Thomas clearly distinguished the three presences of God: first, the general pres-
ence of God in all the creatures that He keeps in existence (ST I, q.8, a.1); second, the
special presence of God in the just by grace. He is in them as in a temple, as a quasi-
experientially recognized object (ST I, q. 43, a. 3); third, the presence of the Word in the
humanity of Jesus through the hypostatic union. Thus, it is certain that after the Incarna-
tion, God was more present in the land of Judea than elsewhere. But when one thinks
that St. Thomas did not even know how to pose these problems, then one goes off into
all types of flights of fancy and returns to Modernism with the off-handedness that can
be found on every one of these pages.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 301

We do not think that the writers whom we have discussed abandoned

the doctrine of St. Thomas. Rather, they never adhered to it, because they
never understood it very well. This is saddening and disquieting.
Wouldn’t it be that only skeptics can be formed through this type of
teaching, since nothing solid is proposed in place of St. Thomas? Moreover,
they pretend to submit to the directions of the Church, but what is the sub-
stance of this submission?
A professor of theology wrote to me:

In effect, the very notion of the truth has been put into debate, and
without fully realizing it, we return toward modernism in thought as
in action. The writings that you have spoken to me about are much
read in France. It is true that they exercise a huge influence on the
average type of soul. However, they have little effect on serious
people. Therefore, it is necessary to write for those who have the sin-
cere desire to be enlightened.

According to some, the Church has only recognized the authority of

St. Thomas in the domain of theology but not directly in philosophy. Con-
trary to their assertions, the Encyclical of Leo XIII, Aeterni Patris, speaks
above all of the philosophy of St. Thomas. Likewise, the twenty-four Tho-
mistic theses proposed in 1916 by the Sacred Congregation of Studies are
of the philosophical order, and if these pronunciata maiora of St. Thomas
do not have certitude, then how can his theology have value, since they are
constantly reiterated in philosophy? Finally, we have already cited Pius X,
who wrote in his Encyclical Pascendi: “We admonish professors to bear
well in mind that they cannot set aside St. Thomas, especially in metaphys-
ical questions, without grave disadvantage. A small error in principle, says
Aquinas, is a great error in conclusion.”
What is the source of these trends? A good analyst wrote to me:

We are harvesting the fruits of the unguarded attendance of univer-

sity courses. Those who have attempted to attend the classes of the
masters of Modernist thought in order to convert them have allowed
themselves to be converted by them. Little by little, they come to
accept their notions, their methods, their disdain of Scholasticism,
their historicism, their idealism and all of their errors. If this is the
result for those already formed, it is surely perilous for the others.

CONCLUSION
Where is the New Theology headed? It returns to Modernism because it
accepted the proposition that was intrinsic to modernism: that of replac-
ing, as if it were chimerical, the traditional definition of truth, adaequatio
302 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

rei et intellectus [the adequation of intellect and reality], with the subjective
definition, adaequatio realis mentis et vitae [the adequation of intellect and
life]. That was more explicitly stated in the already cited proposition, which
emerged from the philosophy of action, and was condemned by the Holy
Office, December 1, 1924:

Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect wherein which
conformity with the object would be had, as the Scholastics have said,
but rather truth is always in a state of becoming and consists in a pro-
gressive adequation of understanding with life, namely, a certain per-
petual process by which the intellect strives to develop and explain
that which experience presents or action requires. However, it is a
law that in all progression there is at no time anything which is deter-
mined or fixed.34

The truth is no longer the conformity of judgment to extra-mental

reality and its immutable laws but the conformity of judgment to the
exigencies of action and to human life, which is always evolving. The phi-
losophy of being, or ontology, is substituted by the philosophy of action,
which defines truth as no longer a function of being but of action.
One thus returns to the Modernist position: “Truth is no more immu-
table than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him, and through
him.”35 As Pius X said rightly of the Modernists, “they pervert the eternal
concept of truth.”
This is what our master, Fr. Marie-Benoît Schwalm, in his articles in
Revue thomiste (1896 through 1898) foresaw concerning the philosophy
of action, the moral dogmatism of Fr. Laberthonnière, the crisis of con-
temporary apologetics, the illusions of idealism, and the dangers that all
of these posed to the Faith.36
But while many thought that Fr. Schwalm had exaggerated, little by little
they conceded the right of full citizenship to the new definition of truth, and
they more or less ceased defending the traditional definition of truth: the
conformity of judgment to extra-mental reality and to its immutable laws of
non-contradiction, of causality, etc. For them, the truth is no longer that
which is but that which is becoming, and it is constantly and always changing.

34 See Monitore ecclesiastico (1925), vol. 1, 194.

35 Decree of the Holy Office, Lamentabili, no. 58 (Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no. 2058]).
36 Marie-Benoît Schwalm, “L’acte de foi, est-il raisonnable?” Revue thomiste 1 (old series)
(1896): 36–63; “Les illusions de l’idéalisme et leurs dangers pour la foi,” Revue thomiste
1 (1896): 413–41; “L’apologétique contemporaine,” Revue thomiste 2 (1897): 62–92; “La
crise et l’apologétique,” Revue thomiste 2 (1897): 239–71; “La croyance naturelle et la
science,” Revue thomiste 2 (1897): 627–45; “Le dogmatisme du coeur et celui de l’esprit,”
Revue thomiste 3 (1898): 578–619.
W H E R E I S T H E N E W T H EO LO GY H E A D E D ? 303

And yet to cease to defend the traditional definition of truth, allowing

it to be said that it is merely chimerical and that one must substitute for it
a vitalist and evolutionary definition, leads to complete relativism, and that
is a very serious error.
Moreover, although we do not always reflect on it, this leads to saying
what the enemies of the Church wish to hear us say. When one reads their
recent works, one sees that they are completely content and that they them-
selves propose interpretations of our dogmas, whether it be regarding orig-
inal sin, cosmic evil, the Incarnation, Redemption, the Eucharist, the final
universal restoration, the cosmic Christ, or the convergence of all religions
toward a universal cosmic center.37
One understands, therefore, why the Holy Father in his recent speech
published in the September 19, 1946, issue of L’Osservatore Romano, said,
when speaking of the “new theology”: “If we were to accept such an opin-
ion, what would become of the unchangeable dogmas of the Catholic Faith;
and what would become of the unity and stability of that Faith?”
Moreover, since Providence only permits evil for a greater good, and
since we see all about us an excellent reaction against the errors we have
emphasized herein, we can hope that these deviations shall be the occasion
of a true doctrinal renewal, achieved through a more profound study of
the works of St. Thomas, whose value is more and more apparent when
compared to today’s intellectual disarray.38

37 Authors such as Téder [i.e., Charles Détré] and Papus [i.e., Gérard Encausse] in their
explanation of the Martinist doctrine [Rituel de l’ordre martiniste (Paris: Dorbon-Aîné,
1913)], teach a mystical pantheism and a neo-gnosticism by which all beings come from
God by emanation (thus, there is a fall, a cosmic evil, a sui generic original sin), and all
aspire to be reintegrated into the divinity, and all shall arrive there. This is in many recent
occultists’ works on the modern Christ and his fullness in terms of astral light, ideas not
at all those of the Church and which are blasphemous inversions, because they are
always the pantheistic negation of the true supernatural and often even the negation of
the distinction of moral good and of moral evil in order to allow only that which is a useful
or desired good and of cosmic or physical evil, which with the reintegration of all, without
exception, will disappear.
38 Certainly, we admit that true mystical experience, which proceeds in the just from the
gifts of the Holy Spirit, particularly the gift of wisdom, confirms the faith, because it shows
us that the revealed mysteries correspond to our highest aspirations and arouse even
higher ones. We recognize that there is a truth of life, a conformity of the spirit, with the
life of the man of good will, and a peace which is a sign of truth. But this mystical experi-
ence presupposes infused faith, and the act of faith itself presupposes the evident cred-
ibility of the revealed mysteries.
Likewise, as the [First] Vatican Council expresses it, we are able to have, by the natural
light of reason, the certainty that God exists as the author of nature. Solely because of
that, it is necessary that the principles of these proofs, in particular that of causality, be
true per conformitatem ad ens extramentale, and that they are demonstrable through
304 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

objectively sufficient certainty (prior a priori to the free choice [option] of men of good
will), and not only through a subjectively sufficient certainty, like that of the Kantian proof
of the existence of God.
Finally, the practical truth of prudence (per conformitatem ad intentionem rectam) sup-
poses that our intention is truly rectified in relation to the ultimate end of man and the
judgment of the end of men must be true secundum mentis conformitatem ad realitatem
extramentalem. See ST I-II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2.
 11
Truth and the Immutability
of Dogma
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

I
n the April–June 1947 issue of the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, pub-
lished by the Catholic Institute of Toulouse, Msgr. Bruno Solages examined
the article we recently published in Angelicum.1 In this article, we would
like to briefly respond, in an objective manner, to the objections that have
been registered against us.2
*****
Above all, we critiqued the new definition of truth proposed by Maurice
Blondel when he wrote in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne in 1906: “By

1 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle?,” Angelicum 23

(1946): 126–45.
2 As in our first article, our sole perspective remains on the level of ideas, attempting to
speak about persons as little as possible. Such was the method used by St. Thomas, who
generally did not name the theologians of his era whose opinions he could not accept.
He was content with saying, “Quidam dicunt. . . .”
We regret the fact that we must once again cite Maurice Blondel, with whom we have had
friendly relations in private letters. However, we feel compelled to do so, for a number of
people build upon his most ruinous theses and upon a dangerous use of vocabulary,
which lends itself to equivocation. What forces us to cite him is the obvious influence his
philosophy of action is having, above all in apologetics, upon the thought of a number
of contemporary theologians. Nonetheless, the reader should understand well that we
are solely concerned with the objective meaning and logical implications of Blondel’s
assertions, without in any way attributing to him the way they are applied in domains
that are no longer his own. Thus, a fortiori, we do not question his personal faith nor even
the good that has been brought about by his philosophy for certain minds [esprits]. We
recognize that his last works indicate a manifest intention to remedy issues that existed
in his earlier writings and that they express thoughts having an undeniable loftiness.
In order to understand what will follow in our discussions here, it is necessary to see
clearly, against nominalism, the measureless distance separating the intellectual idea
of intelligible being from a sensible image accompanied by a common name, as well as
that separating judgments, whose soul is the verb to be, from empirical associations of
two images, and finally, the measureless distance separating reasoning, which manifests
a raison d’être, from empirical sequences of facts [consécutions], which do not render
intelligible the empirical conclusions to which they lead.

305
306 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

rights, in place of the abstract and chimerical ‘Adaequatio speculativa rei et

intellectus,’ we must substitute methodical research, the adaequatio realis men-
tis et vitae.”3
When we referred to this text in the past, we forgot to include the word
“speculativa.” However, this does not change its meaning in any way, for it is
clear that this traditional definition is concerned with speculative truth. Our
criticism thus stands as before. Can we call this traditional definition “chime-
rical,” and must we “substitute” another definition for it, namely: the con-
formity of the mind with the requirements of life and action? Does not this
new definition of truth slide toward pragmatism, as Émile Boutroux noted
in his criticisms of the philosophy of action in 1908?4
Thus, a number of questions arise for both the metaphysician and for
the theologian.5
The traditional definition of truth, holding that it is conformity to reality
and its immutable laws, is commonly admitted for the truth of first
principles,6 the conclusions of the proofs of God’s existence,7 the affirmation
of the fact of revelation along with the probative force of miracles,8 and the
truth of all revealed dogmas.9 If this traditional definition of truth is pro-
claimed to be “chimerical,” and if another definition must be “substituted”
for it, what will be the value of the Conciliar definitions that presuppose it?
For all these truths, must we content ourselves with the conformity of the

3 Blondel, “Le point de depart de la recherché philosophique,”Annales de philosophie

chrétienne 152 (June 15, 1906): 235.
4 See Émile Boutroux, Science et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine (Paris: Flam-
marion, 1908), 296.
5 No doubt, we do not know everything that exists in reality, even in infinitely small
affairs [dans les infiniments petits], a fact that marks out the great difference separat-
ing our knowledge and that had by the angels and, above all, by God. However, truth
formally exists in judgment, and here we are concerned with knowing the nature of
the truth belonging to judgments that are universally recognized in the Church as
being true.
6 Through the necessitating evidence of their real value.
7 They do not have a merely subjectively sufficient certitude, like Kant’s proof of God’s
existence but, rather, have an objectively sufficient certitude based on the very strength
of the demonstration in question, independent of the requirements of action.
8 The fact of revelation is affirmed by the probative force of the various signs that confirm
it and not only because it corresponds to our aspirations, which find a satisfaction in the
Christian religion. See [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 3 (Denzinger, no. 3009 [old
no. 1790]) and canon 3.4 (Denzinger, no. 3034 [old no. 3034]); Pius X, Sacrorum antisti-
tum / Anti-Modernist Oath (Denzinger, no. 3542 [old no. 2145]).
9 That Jesus is God is affirmed on account of God who reveals and not only because we
should behave toward Him as though we were faced with God.
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 307

mind (or of judgment) with the requirements of life and of human action,
which forever evolves?10
*****
In his last works, did Blondel retract the words “chimerical” and “sub-
stitute”? We answered: we cannot hold that he has done so, and we can indeed
cite a text from his work L’Être et les êtres. Here it is in a more complete form:

No intellectual evidence, not even that of principles that are absolute of

themselves, having a necessary ontological value, imposes itself on us
with a spontaneously and infallibly constraining certitude, any more than
does our real idea of the absolute Good act on our will, as though we
already had the intuitive vision of perfect goodness, which alone is able
to captivate our utterly free love.11

Thus, as we said, given that our love for God here-below is free, it follows
that the option [or, choice,] by which we adhere to the ontological value of
the principle of contradiction is likewise free, contrary to what is announced
by the title of this same page, which speaks of an intellectual option that is
“prior to the application of free choice.” Moreover, we are told several pages
later: “We now see what initial elaboration and what kind of an intellectual
option are at work in minds depending on whether they allow themselves to
be taken in by worldly seductions or, instead, free themselves by giving pref-
erence to the truth in a wholly-disinterested fashion.”12
Is not this preference free? The fact that the exercise of such an option is
free was affirmed many times by Blondel in his earlier works, as we will point
out.13 Here, in Être et les êtres, we find him laudably striving to reconnect with

10 This is why 12 propositions extracted from the philosophy of action were condemned
by the Holy Office on Dec. 1, 1924 (cf. Monitore ecclesiastico (1925), 194ff). As we have
shown elsewhere, among them is numbered the new definition of truth, which leads to
two modernist propositions. One of them denies the immutability of truth: “Truth is no
more immutable than man” (Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 58; Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no.,
2058]). The other pertains to the nature of dogmas: “The dogmas of the faith are to be
held only according to their practical sense; that is to say, as preceptive norms of con-
duct and not as norms of believing” (Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 26; Denzinger, no. 3426
[old no., 2026]).
If the Christian religion were only the most incontestably lofty form of the natural evolu-
tion of religious sentiment, its dogmas and precepts could forever evolve in an intrinsic
fashion. However, it is incomparably superior to this. It has an essentially supernatural
origin, and the doctrine that it teaches is the immutable word of God.
11 See Maurice Blondel, L’Être et les êtres (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1935), 415.
12 Blondel, L’Être et les êtres, 419.
13 Moreover, what would a non-free option even be? “Option” means choice, and properly
speaking, a choice is free. Blondel, pressed by objections coming from theologians, no
308 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

traditional realism and to respond to the constant objection registered against

him: “However, the first principles have a necessitating evidence.”14 He ends
by acknowledging that this is so for those who stand at a superior perspective
and “look upon things from on high,” namely, for the wise.15 However, we
say that the only way that the wise could arrive at this reflective metaphysical
certitude is if every man’s natural understanding already spontaneously
adheres to this truth: no being can exist [sic] and not exist at the same time.16
To deny this truth or to place it in doubt is to dash the intellect against rocky
shoals, thereby leading to its death.17
Thus, in order to sympathetically interpret this chapter from Blondel,
we must at least admit that the proposition from page 415 cited above, “No
intellectual evidence . . . imposes itself on us. . . ,” is not true in itself. Only the
following is true: “Certain minds are so poorly disposed that they seek to pull
back from the natural evidence of the principle of contradiction as a law of
being.” Led by their prejudices and their own sophistical dialectic to deny the
real value of this principle or to place it in doubt, even Protagoras, Kant, or
Hegel themselves admitted that, at one and the same time, Protagoras cannot
simultaneously be and not be Protagoras.18

longer speaks of a free option here. Nonetheless, he forever continues to hold onto the
word “option” and, contrary to what would be desired by classical theologians, he does
not speak of a natural and necessary adherence to the real value of the first principles
on account of their necessitating evidence.
14 Blondel, L’Être et les êtres, 415–22.
15 Blondel, L’Être et les êtres, 418.
16 See ST I-II, q. 17, a. 6.
17 We have been accused of wishing to impose Thomism upon all. Here, we are only ask-
ing whether one admits the real value of the principle of contradiction. Nothing less could
be asked for.
18 Often enough, Blondel confuses, even in his last works, accidental deformations with
the nature of a faculty that is essentially related to its proper object. Thus, he writes in
La Pensée, vol. 2 (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1934), 431:
So-called sense intuition is deceptive . . . and the so-called intuition of conscious-
ness is deceptive . . . if it is subject to subjective illusions. . . . Deceptive as well is
the too-clear intuition of mathematical and rational truths which can mark out the
relays of knowledge . . . in order to make room for renovations under the double
pressure of further experience and of greater plasticity in understanding.
Likewise, in La Pensée, vol. 1, 131: “The notion of an object and the use that is ordinarily
made of it is one of these divisions, one of these illegitimate ‘overestimations’ [majora-
tions] which we do not cease to denounce as being the chronic deception and ruinous
improbity from which many a philosophy is dying today.”
However, then, how are we to preserve the teaching of the [First] Vatican Council, which
says that the order of supernatural knowledge is distinct from that of natural knowledge,
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 309

Every so often, Blondel returns again to his first orientation, which was
expressed in the 1893 edition of L’Action: “The knowledge of being implies
the necessity of the option: being in knowledge is not prior to the freedom of
choice but, rather, comes after it.”19 There you have it, the free option, and even
according to the very context of this remark, it is the option which freely
prefers God to every created thing, which prefers “the Being who illuminates
every reason and before whom every will must make its self-declaration.”20
This assertion constantly returns to his pen in the 1893 edition of L’Action.21
We have cited these texts elsewhere at length in our work God: His Existence
and His Nature.22

not only through its principle but also through its object, which is inaccessible to the nat-
ural knowledge that is had by man and the angels: “The perpetual common belief of the
Catholic Church has held and holds also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, dis-
tinct not only in its principle but also in its object” (Dei filius, ch. 4, Denzinger, no. 3015
[old no. 1795]). Also, see Dei filius, canon. 4.1 (Denzinger, no. 3041 [old no. 1816]).
In a number of places in the two volumes of La Pensée (1934), one can find assertions
that are no less deserving of criticism. See vol. 1, 130–36, 170–72, 175, 179, 180, 349,
355; vol. 2, 39, 66, 67, 90, 96, and 196.
In Pensée, vol. 2, 66–69, see what is said concerning free option and its role in knowl-
edge, even in that of the real value of the first principles.
19 Blondel, L’Action (1893), 435.
20 Blondel, L’Action (1893), 435.
21 See Blondel, L’Action (1893), 297, 341, 350, 426, 435, 437, and 463.
22 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son existence et sa nature, 6th ed. (Paris: Beau-
chesne, 1936), 44–52. [Tr. note: See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and
His Nature, A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic Antinomies, trans. Bede Rose (St.
Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1949), 43–54.]
In the 1893 edition of L’Action, one could read, on 297: “Metaphysics has its substance
in the acting will. It only has truth in this experiential and dynamic form. It is less a science
of what is than one that brings about being and becoming.”
Blondel, L’Action (1893), 341: “A proof which is only a logical argument forever remains
abstract and partial. It does not lead to being. It does not necessarily corner thought
within real necessity. A proof which stems from the total movement of life, a proof which
is action itself, will have, on the contrary, ‘this constraining force.’”
Blondel, L’Action (1893), 350:
The notion of a first cause or of a moral ideal, the idea of a metaphysical perfection
or of a pure act, all these conceptions of human reason, which are empty, false, and
idolatrous if one considers them only as abstract representations, are true, living,
and efficacious as soon as they are seen to be in solidarity with one another. Then,
they are no longer a kind of mental game but, rather, a practical certitude.
In other words, they are true by way of conformity with the requirements of life and action
and not through the objective power of the proofs of God’s existence. See Blondel,
L’Action (1893), 437 and 438. We have not seen the author retract these propositions.
310 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Blondel cannot forget what he wrote in his first book: “Only action is
concerned with the whole. That is why it alone is the source for the unques-
tionable presence and constraining proof of Being. No matter how lengthy and
brilliant dialectical subtleties may be, they are nothing more than stones
tossed by children at the sun.”23
Consequently, for someone who has so conceived of the philosophy of
action and has had this pattern of thought his whole life long, it is very diffi-
cult now to retract what he wrote in 1906 regarding speculative knowledge:
“By rights, in place of the abstract and chimerical ‘Adaequatio speculativa rei
et intellectus,’ we must substitute methodical research, the adaequatio realis
mentis et vitae.”
This is what separates the philosophy of action from the philosophy of
being. The former, which represents a superior form of pragmatism, defines
truth in terms of action, as one would expect, whereas the latter defines it in
terms of being. Otherwise, the philosophy of action ceases to be what it is in
order to be the same as the philosophy of being.
The latter is characterized by this assertion made by St. Thomas in De
veritate, q. 1, a. 1, stating something utterly different from all the citations
presented above: “What the intellect first conceives, as it were, as that which is
most known and that into which all of our conceptions are resolved, is being.”
What is first known by the intellect is being, as the colored is what is first
known by sight and sound by the sense of hearing.This conception of being
is immediately followed by two judgments. 1˚ Being is contradictorily opposed
to non-being; that which is cannot at the same time be and not be. 2˚ Aliquid
existit, something exists: the thinking subject and extra-mental reality, for
example, my body, the earth that carries me, or the food on which I nourish
myself. These affirmations are prior to every free choice [option]. We cannot
freely admit or reject them. As soon as we consider them, we necessarily
adhere to them.

23 Blondel, l’Action (1893), 350. He wrote again in the 1893 edition of L’Action, 463:
“For science, what difference can one discover between that which seems to exist
forever and that which is? And how can it distinguish reality itself from an invincible
and permanent illusion or, so to speak, from an eternal appearance? The situation is
different for practice: by acting as though it were so it alone possesses what is if it is
truly so.”
Blondel, L’Action (1893), 437ff:
The knowledge that before the option was simply subjective and propulsive
becomes, after it, privative or constitutive of being (depending on whether the
option was evil or good). . . . The second of these forms of knowledge, that which
follows on the freely taken determination . . . instead of placing us in the presence
of what is to be done, gathers from that which has been done that which is. There-
fore, it is truly an objective form of knowledge. . . . The will resolves the problem
proposed by the understanding.
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 311

St. Thomas likewise says in ST I, q. 5, a. 2: “Being first falls into the intel-
lect’s conception. . . . Thus, it is the proper object of the intellect, just as sound
is the proper object of hearing. Therefore, according to its formal character
[rationem], being is prior to the good.”
Now, this fundamental assertion by the philosophy of being, or ontology,
is not found in the philosophy of action. The latter represents, as it were, a
transformation, not of ontology, but of ethics, which is the philosophy of
human action [agir]. Now, ethics requires an ontological foundation. Indeed,
the notion of the good presupposes those of being and of truth. Otherwise,
we can only speak of an apparent good and not of the true good in action’s
own movement, which could perhaps only be a form of sentimentalism and
not a true and authentic love.
In order for the will to tend toward the true good and not toward one
that is illusory, it must be profoundly rectified by the intellect, which alone
can know being, reality, the truth, and also the true good (and not only an
apparent one). Only the intellect can judge concerning it by means of a true
judgment, that is, one that is conformed to reality, in accord with the tradi-
tional definition of truth.
We would fall into a vicious circle if we here wished to content ourselves
with a prudential judgment conformed to a right will (that is, to a good inten-
tion [rectified by the virtues]) since here we are quite precisely concerned with
explaining the rectitude of the will through its tendency to the true good.24
And therefore, we cannot allow the traditional definition of the truth,
“adaequatio rei et intellectus,” the conformity of the judgment with reality
and its immutable laws, a definition presupposed by all the Councils, to be
called chimerical. Likewise, we cannot admit the claim that we would need
to “substitute” for it another definition that slides toward pragmatism, as Bou-
troux rightly noted with as much clarity as a good number of theologians.
In the very essence of the intellect, there is an immediate relation to intel-
ligible being, its object, and not only a relation to that which is to be done.
Consequently, if we remove from the intellect this immediate relation to
being, we mortally wound it in its very nature.

24 This is what St. Thomas said in ST I-II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2: “In the means to be chosen,
rectitude of reason (here, of prudence) consists in conformity to right intention of the end
[appetitum finis debiti]. However, this right intention of the end [appetitus finis debiti]
presupposes right apprehension of the end, which is had through reason.” This latter
knowledge is true through conformity to reality, not to right intention. Émile Boutroux
registers a similar objection against the philosophy of action in Science et religion, 296.
“But the will requires an end,” indeed, an end that would be judged by the intellect
according to its conformity to reality. Otherwise, how could one be sure of avoiding the
sentimentalism of false mystics? The Encyclical, Pascendi (no. 14; Denzinger, no. 3484
[old no., 2081]), noted this fact: How is one thus to discern true religious experience from
false religion?
312 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMATIC FORMULAS

According to Msgr. Bruno de Solages, when Fr. Bouillard wrote in his Con-
version et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin, “A theology that would not be con-
temporary would be a false theology,”25 he

in no way affirms the monstrous notion that a theology that would have
been true at a given moment becomes objectively false ‘when the mind
evolves’ but, rather, that it will be subjectively false, meaning that it
would be interpreted in a false sense by a mind that, as a result of its
own development, would no longer give the same meaning to the var-
ious notions used by this theology.26

I will respond: if Fr. Bouillard meant only this, then he has expressed
himself poorly in a question of great importance, one requiring the greatest
attention to the proper use of terms. Moreover, this would come down to this
truism: a theology that is no longer contemporary is poorly understood by
those who no longer grasp the notions in which it is expressed. In reality, Fr.
Bouillard said: “In order for theology to continue to be meaningful to the
mind [esprit] and to be able to impregnate it and progress with it, it must also
abandon these notions.”27 He means: like how we abandoned the Ptolemaic
system of astronomy.28
He speaks to us about the relativity of the notion of formal cause, which
“modern thought abandoned when it renounced Aristotelian physics.”29

25 Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 219.
26 Bruno de Solages, “Pour l’honneur de la Théologie. Les contre-sens du R.P. Garrigou-
Lagrange,” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 48 (1947): 75.
27 Bouillard, Conversion, 224.
28 He also says on Bouillard, Conversion, 211:
If authors are aware of the fact that theology did not always exist in its contemporary
state, as it is known by theologians today, they at least unconsciously imagine that
it was already given as such in the domain of eternal truths and that discursive intel-
lection only had to discover it and gradually reconstruct it. By contrast, a historical
study reveals . . . the relativity of notions.
When Leo XIII spoke in his encyclical Aeterni patris about the stability of St. Thomas’s
doctrine, considered in what is primordial and essential in it, he quite surely meant that
what the Holy Doctor taught is true in the domain of eternal truths. This is not a prejudice
that contemporary theologians should abandon. Rather, they should reread this entire
encyclical on this subject.
Likewise, His Holiness, Pope Pius XII, in a discourse published by the L’Osservatore
Romano on 23–24 Sept. 1946, in opposition to certain new opinions, spoke of the immu-
table principles on which St. Thomas’s doctrine rests.
29 Bouillard, Conversion, 224.
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 313

Now, if we would need to abandon this notion, which is found all through-
out St. Thomas’s theology, this theology would be objectively false, and indeed
not only in many of its important parts but as a whole, for according to St.
Thomas no nature would be conceivable any longer, neither that of sensible
beings nor that of angels nor that of God. One could no longer speak about
what formally constitutes them, and along with the formal cause, the notion
of the other causes would likewise disappear: the material, efficient, and final
causes. Behold what a metaphysician sees all at once. Indeed, moreover, we
clearly cannot confuse scientific laws (which progressively replace one
another) with immutable truths.
In order to avoid relativism, Fr. Bouillard says: “While notions, methods,
and systems change with the times, the affirmations that they contain remain,
even though they are expressed in different categories.”30
Finally, in speaking about the Council of Trent, which employed the
notion of formal cause in its teaching concerning the notion of justification
(cf. sess. 6, ch. 7, can. 10), he says: “By so doing, did it not enshrine this term
and confer a definitive character upon the notion of grace as a form? Not at
all. . . . To this end, it used notions commonly used in the theology of its era.
However, other notions can be substituted for them without modifying the
meaning of what the Council declared.”
With great care, I have read over what comes before this quotation and
what follows it, but this context does not render it more acceptable. I repeat
the point again: how can we maintain the meaning of this Conciliar teaching,
“Sanctifying grace is the formal cause of justification,” if we must abandon
the notion of formal causality, substituting another notion for it, even one
that is analogous to it. (The uncreated gift that is the Holy Spirit is analogous
to a created gift. Nonetheless, one cannot say that habitual grace is the
uncreated gift of God.)
If another notion is substituted for the Council’s own notion, what it
affirms no longer will have the same meaning. We would need to be content
with saying: “At the time of the Council of Trent, grace was conceived of as
being the formal cause of justification, but, today we must conceive of it in
a different way. This past conception is no longer contemporary. Therefore,
it is no longer true, for a doctrine that is no longer contemporary, as has
been said, is a false doctrine, ‘which is no longer meaningful to the mind,’
one that would be able to ‘impregnate it and progress with it.’ Therefore, it
can no longer be admitted, just as an adolescent no longer can wear the
clothing of a child, nor can the ancient claims of astronomy be admitted
any longer.”
Here again, we have not misinterpreted anything.

30 Bouillard, Conversion, 220.

314 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Nonetheless, we find ourselves faced with the objection: Fr. Bouillard

does not speak of two notions united by the verb to be.
I respond that he says, “While notions, methodologies, and systems
change with the passing of time, the affirmations that they contain remain,”31
adding that even the Council’s notions can change.
But then, I ask, what is an affirmation if not the union of a subject and a
predicate by means of the verb to be? For example: grace is the formal cause
of justification; transubstantiation is required by the real presence. An affir-
mation presupposes two notions united by the verb to be.
Therefore, if notions change and if we must abandon the notion of formal
causality and substitute another for it, even one that is analogous, how can
the meaning of this affirmation by the Council of Trent remain: “Grace is the
formal cause of justification”? One and the same relationship cannot remain
between two notions if they are essentially unstable and changing. As we said
before, one might as well say that an iron clamp can still the waves of the sea.
Therefore, we stand by our criticism.32
*****
As regards Fr. de Lubac’s assertion in Surnaturel, “There is nothing in St.
Thomas that declares [annonce] to me the distinction that a certain number
of Thomist theologians will come to draw between God the Author of nature
and God the Author of the supernatural order, etc.,”33 the four texts from St.
Thomas that are cited in a note, when read in their obvious and commonly-
received meaning, show that St. Thomas not only declared this distinction but
also admitted it himself. We have cited many other texts related to this matter
in the first volume of our treatise De revelatione,34 and in that text,35 we
examined and refuted the theory of the supernatural proposed in the 18th
century by Noris and Berti, to which Fr. de Lubac on the whole returns today.36

31 Bouillard, Conversion, 220.

32 The best of contexts does not suffice for saving a proposition if it is false by itself.
Indeed, even the gravest errors are often proposed in a context that gives them some
appearance of the truth. Thus, we would deceive ourselves if we spoke of them as though
they had a true intuition or an animating truth, whereas, in fact, they only have a parcel
of the truth in themselves, turned away from its meaning, thus rendering the error more
seductive and more dangerous, as happens in the most specious sophisms.
33 Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel: Études historiques (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 254.
34 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, trans. Matthew K.
Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 475–562.
35 See Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, 543–45.
36 It is asked where St. Thomas spoke about natural beatitude—not in this life, which
was spoken of by the greatest pagan philosophers, but rather, after death. He made allu-
sion to it in speaking of the state of the souls of children born without baptism. According
to him, they do not have perfect natural beatitude but, rather, a kind of imperfect, natural
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 315

*****
Some other remarks.
When, in Les études, Fr. Gaston Fessard spoke “of the blessed drowsiness
that protects this canonized (but also, in Péguy’s words, ‘interred’) Tho-
mism,”37 we are told that he was only referring to the Thomism of Fr. Tonqué-
dec and not Thomism itself.
However, Fr. Tonquédec’s Thomism has not been canonized by anyone,
and Péguy was not speaking of him, at least as far as I can tell.
If we asked, “Can two theologies be true at the same time if they are con-
tradictorily opposed to each other in their capital theses?,” we did so because
in recent days there has been talk of the simultaneous truth of Thomism,
Scotism, and Molinism, as though the truth, in its integral and full form,
were a kind of polyhedron. Thus, we recalled that Thomism and Scotism are
opposed contradictorily on many of their principal theses, as are Thomism
and Molinism as well, given that, for example, one affirms that grace is effi-
cacious by itself, whereas the other denies this assertion. Here again, we have
not misinterpreted anything.
Finally, we are told that there is a lack of probity involved in citing mim-
eographed sheets clandestinely distributed to the clergy since 1934. Nonethe-
less, this state of affairs is something known by all. Likewise, we are well aware
of the harm they cause for those youths who get caught up in all of this. If a
lack of probity does exist here, who is guilty of it: the person who denounces
a source of scandal or the person who provokes it?38
It seems that if we had been alive in the 13th century, we would have
called for St. Thomas’s condemnation! However, such a claim presupposes
that this or that contemporary theologian, whose conclusions we cannot
admit, is the St. Thomas of our own era. We will see in a century or two how

beatitude. See De malo, q. 5, a. 2, and 3. I have explained this in Reginald Garrigou-

Lagrange, Grace, trans. Dominican Nuns of Corpus Christi Monastery (St. Louis, MO: B.
Herder, 1952), 410–12. Like Noris and Berti, Fr. de Lubac does not seem to preserve the
true notion of human nature. It seems he holds that this nature does not have a deter-
minate limit (receiving such determination from our intellect’s proper object). Rather, it
seems he holds that it is open as a nature in such a way that it is no longer clear where
the natural ends and the supernatural begins, where nature ends and where grace begins.
This is the source of the criticisms addressed to St. Thomas who himself has a determinate
notion of nature and of human nature, such that the supernatural truly exceeds nature’s
powers and demands, in contrast to what Baius said. We have spoken at length about
these questions elsewhere. See the text of On Divine Revelation cited above.
37 See Gaston Fessard, [Review of Joseph de Tonquédec, Un philosophie existentielle.
L’Existence d’après Jaspers,”] Études 247 (Nov. 1945): 269–70.
38 We have not at all spoken about the unknown person who has taken the responsibility
for distributing these texts. However, along with many others, we have been able to observe
the effect they have produced (and still produce) in many of those who read them.
316 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

history will judge this matter. In any case, these two St. Thomases would
hardly agree with one another.
A theologian is not forbidden to say that, to his eyes, a given new posi-
tion leads to heresy and even that it seems to him to be heretical. He only
says this from the perspective of theological science and its deductions, with-
out authoritatively speaking like a judge in an ecclesiastical tribunal.39
As regards the problem of evolution, it is important to clearly distinguish
between the domain of scientific hypotheses proposed for examination (i.e.,
that of sensible appearances) and the domain of being, which is that of meta-
physics, where we must hold that God specially intervened in the production
of vegetative life, sense life, and intellectual life and, a fortiori in an utterly
special way, in order to produce the life of grace in man.
Finally, we absolutely cannot admit that the Incarnation of the Word and
the Redemption would be moments in evolution. And if this evolution were
explained along the lines of Hegelian metaphysics, which was condemned
by the [First] Vatican Council,40 this would properly speaking be a case of
heresy. Indeed, it would be even more than a heresy. It would represent com-
plete apostasy, for Hegel’s absolute and pantheistic evolutionism does not
allow any Christian dogmas to survive. In denying the True God, who is
really and essentially distinct from the world, he denies all the revealed mys-
teries and can only preserve their verbal forms.41
*****
Therefore, we find ourselves forced to maintain what we have said, in
particular, what pertains to the traditional definition of truth as “adaequatio

39 In what we have written, we have critiqued ideas, leaving persons to the side as much
as is possible. This is an entirely different perspective from that which would be taken
up by someone writing a plea on behalf of persons.
A number of representatives of the new theology whom we have cited were already
pointed out to us by some of their friends, in particular in Études (Sept. 1946): 253ff. [sic]
We are quite well aware that in his Constitution, Sollicita ac provida (July 9, 1753), Bene-
dict XIV, in fixing the discipline for the prohibition of books, requires one to attentively
read a book in its entirety and not judge it by one or two of its propositions taken out of
context, for it is possible, he says, that “that which is obscure in one place would be more
clearly stated in another,” thus giving it an acceptable sense. This is indeed certain.
However, without rendering a judgment on an entire book, one can cite one or several
propositions that are (or at least seem) manifestly false or dangerous on account of the
consequences that can be drawn from them, above all when they are not explained and
made acceptable in another place that is clearer and more explicit.
40 See [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, can. 1.4 (Denzinger, no. 3024 [old. no., 1804]).
Also, Jean-Michel-Alfred Vacant, Études sur le Concile du Vatican, vol. 1 (Paris: Delhomme,
1895), 213, 344, 362: “The pantheistic evolutionism of Hegel.”
41 This is what we have shown elsewhere in On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, 389–444.
T R U T H A N D T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D O G M A 317

rei et intellectus, the conformity of judgment with reality and its immutable
laws.” This definition is not chimerical, and it must not be replaced by another
definition that slides toward pragmatism. Were it so replaced, the intellect
would be mortally wounded, and one would forget that this traditional defi-
nition is presupposed by all of the Councils and is required in order for dog-
mas to be immutable. Therefore, one cannot be too attentive to the words of
His Holiness Pope Pius XII in the discourse published by L’Osservatore
Romano September 19, 1946:
There is a good deal of talk (but without a sufficient testing of its char-
acter), about a “new theology,” which is in constant transformation, fol-
lowing the example of all other things in the world, which are in a con-
stant state of flux and movement, without ever reaching their term. If
we were to accept such an opinion, what would become of the unchange-
able dogmas of the Catholic Faith; and what would become of the unity
and stability of that Faith.

At the present hour, in the midst of profound disarray of minds [esprits],

more than ever, we stand in need of a firm, living, penetrating, and radiant
faith. It would cease to be living and strong if it lost its firmness, as well as its
immutable adherence “to the words that will not pass away,” which are
expressed in human notions that are stable enough to remain immutably true
throughout all the ages.
(*) Even in La philosophie et l’esprit chrétien, published by Blondel in 1946,
we still find, in the midst of beautiful reflections, assertions like the following:
One realizes all the more that the idea of supporting the obsequium
rationabile fidei on abstract arguments, on a fixity of notions, without a
plastic relationship with the normal development of the methods of
thought and of mindsets that are ever in movement, risks leading to a
static and closed, formalistic conception of things, which was suited to
one moment of history, or to a wholly extrinsic idea of a religion imposed
once and for all by witnesses marked by the time and mental habits of
their own eras, making abstraction from problems that are at once per-
manent and changing, as well as from the vital roots of the truths to be
believed and of obligations to be observed, thrust down into the depths
of human souls and of the constructive elements of the moral and meta-
physical conscience. . . .42
Therefore, nothing is more contrary to the living idea of Christianity
than the twofold thesis that certain people have wished to make into a
sine qua non condition for a fundamentalist [intégriste] orthodoxy: a
summary literally fixed in dependence on a terminology and a doctrine

42 But who, therefore, we ask, has made such an abstraction? Certainly not traditional
theologians.
318 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

constructed with notions as its materials, as well as a pure and simple

super-imposition of the supernatural order upon a self-sufficient phi-
losophy, enclosed within itself without even a small window opening,
if but darkly, toward a loftier clarity and a more abundant life.43

Nonetheless, we must acknowledge the fixity of the notions of revelation,

of the supernatural, of faith, of evident credibility, of the divine signs of rev-
elation, and of miracles. Certainly, these notions are at first vague [confuses]
and then distinct, but nonetheless, they must be stable if we are to maintain
the irreformable character of the judgments that unite them by means of the
verb to be. This is required by the very teaching of the Church concerning
the nature of revelation and its object, a teaching that is summed up in these
immutable propositions drawn especially from the [First] Vatican Council,
which are correctly presented by Denzinger as follows:
— Revelation strictly speaking, that is, God’s speech to man, is:
• possible and useful (3027ff [1807ff])
• supernatural (2778 [1637], 3006 [1787], 3420ff [2020ff]),
• necessary, regarding morally necessary natural religious truths,
as well as regarding absolutely supernatural truths (3006 [1786],
3028 [1808]);
• and it can be made credible through external signs (2751ff
[1622ff], 2757 [1627], 2779 [1638ff], 2813 [1651], 3009 [1790],
3012 [1793], 3033 [1812]);
• it is neither imperfect nor, as such, to be perfected through pro-
gress (2778ff [1637ff], 2829 [1656], 2905 [1705], 3020 [1800]),
• nor is it to be changed in any way into some other meaning (3043
[1818]).
— Beyond truths that can be known by reason,
• Christian revelation contains mysteries both in the broad sense
such as God’s eternal decrees (3004 [1785]) and strictly speaking,
namely, ones that altogether cannot be known by reason alone
(2732ff [1616ff], [1642ff], 2828 [1655], 3015 [1795], 3043 [1818]);
• however, they nonetheless do not contradict reason but, rather,
exceed it (2854 [1671], 3015 [1795]),
• and they forever remain obscure for as long as we are pilgrims
in this life separated from God, for we walk by faith and not by
sight (2 Cor. 5:6) (3016 [1796]);
— Moreover, faith requires certain knowledge concerning the fact of
revelation (2752 [1623], 3009 [1790], 3033 [1812], [2106]).

All of these propositions are immutably true and can only be so if the notions
they unite by means of the verb “to be” are themselves perfectly stable as well.

43 Maurice Blondel, La philosophie et l’esprit chrétien, vol. 2 (Paris: Presses Universi-

taires, 1946), 261.
 12
Concerning Notions
Consecrated by the Councils
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

I
n an article recently published in Angelicum,1 we said that one cannot hold
that the notions implied in Conciliar definitions are contingent or unstable
(for example, the notion of formal cause used by the Council of Trent [sess.
6, ch. 7, can. 10] in teaching that habitual or sanctifying grace is the formal
cause of our justification). Were we to hold that this notion is unstable, we
would ultimately compromise the unchangeable character of this Conciliar
teaching, and as we said in our earlier article, another meaning cannot be
substituted for it without thereby modifying the meaning of the Council’s
teaching.

THE GRAVITY OF THE PROBLEM

Now, one could object: the notions that certain people say are contingent in
the Conciliar definitions are only technical notions, Aristotelian notions closely
connected to a system of thought that has been obsolete for some time now.2
However, what shall we say concerning the way that we must distin-
guish between the technical notions used by the Councils and those that are
not technical? Must we say that, in order to preserve its immutable value,

1 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, “Verité et immutabilité du dogme,” Angelicum 24

(1947): 124–39. [Tr. note: See the previous chapter in this volume.]
2 We have always responded: they can seem obsolete to a chemist who judges all things
solely “according to sensible appearances; however, they are not so if one judges them
from the perspective of being and the ontological value of the first notions of being, unity,
identity, substance, and that which formally constitutes a given substance (e.g., hydrogen
or oxygen), making it to be one and the same being with given properties and not others.
Substance (and therefore the substantial form) is wholly in the whole and wholly in each
part (e.g., of a molecule of water). Similarly, the substance or nature of oxygen is wholly
in the whole of an atom of oxygen and wholly in each of its parts, which, however, are
mathematically divisible ad infinitum. Considered from the perspective, not of chemistry,
but of the philosophy of nature, the notion of formal cause is no more obsolete than are
those of matter, end, or efficient cause. Moreover, formal causality is found not only in
the order of bodies but also in the spiritual order and that of grace.

319
320 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

the notion of transubstantiation is a common-sense notion and not a tech-

nical one?
Furthermore, it will be objected that the various notions to which the
different theological schools have had recourse in order to express one and
the same truth are equivalent notions. It will be said that, despite their diver-
sity, which is only surface-level, they aim at one and the same reality and
truth, meaning that they can be substituted for one another.
However, how can this reality and immutable truth be known with cer-
titude and firmly believed in if it can only be attained through changing
notions? In response, we are told that these successive notions are equivalent
and analogous.
Now, these two last words raise a host of difficulties. Indeed, they involve
a most serious problem, which we can’t just pass over in silence without seek-
ing to resolve it.
We are told:
This immutable thing is expressed in a different manner, depending on
the system one chooses. This is the law of analogy, which can be ignored
by no Thomist. When one and the same revealed truth is expressed in
different (e.g., Augustinian, Thomist, Suarezian, etc.) systems, the var-
ious notions that are used for translating this truth are neither “equiv-
ocal” (if they were, one would no longer be speaking about the same
thing) nor “univocal” (for otherwise, all systems [of thought] would be
identical) but, rather, “analogous.” In other words, they express the same
reality in different ways.

To our eyes, this represents an abuse of the notion of analogy. We have

written about this topic for many years, and we can say that, according to St.
Thomas, truly analogous notions do not aim at the same reality but, rather,
at different realities, which are proportionally similar to one another (e.g.,
God’s existence and that of creatures, the existence of created substance and
that of accidents). Likewise, St. Thomas cites the different manifestations of
man’s health through his complexion, pulse, etc.
By contrast, different notions of the same reality can differ from each
other only as a vague [confus] notion and a distinct one concerning one and
the same thing. In such a case, they are univocal. Or, on the other hand, these
different notions can be so opposed to each other that one is the negation of
the other (e.g., the notion of conversive transubstantiation and that of non-
conversive, adductive transubstantiation). In that case, they are not even ana-
logical, for the second is the negation of the first, whereas the creature’s exis-
tence is not the negation of the Creator’s existence, which the creature itself
presupposes.
Hence, the gravity of the problem becomes clearer for us, helping us to
see that we cannot just pass it by.
CO N CE R N I N G N OT I O N S CO N SECR AT E D BY T H E CO U N CI L S 321

We would like to examine three questions concerning this subject.

1˚ In the Councils’ teachings, are there notions, indeed even technical
ones, which would truly be consecrated by them?—It does indeed seem that
this is so, for example, for the notions of the Hypostatic Union, transubstantia-
tion, and the spiritual soul, which of itself and essentially is the form of the body,
as well as for the notion of sanctifying grace, the formal cause of justification.
2˚ Can we, without modifying the meaning of the Councils’ teaching,
abandon these technical notions consecrated by them or leave them fall
into obsolescence by substituting others that are said to be equivalent and
analogous?
3˚ What would be the real foundation for the aforementioned analogy
existing between the new notions substituted for those that were previously
consecrated? Would it not follow that the meaning expressed by the Councils
would thus become unknowable or, at least, uncertain and merely probable,
even for the Church herself? Would not relativism be unavoidable?
This problem must be considered in itself with the greatest of attention.
If we do not consider it today, it will still exist tomorrow, and its gravity is
manifestly clear. The words of the [First] Vatican Council concerning this
subject bear being reread: “Hence, also, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is
perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother Church has once declared,
and there must never be deviation from that meaning on the specious ground
and title of a more profound understanding.”3
*****
1˚ In the Councils’ teachings, there are notions, indeed even technical ones,
that are truly consecrated by them.
It does not seem that there can be any doubt in this matter. For example,
we have: the notions of supernatural revelation, mysteries properly so called
(i.e., supernatural truth, which is naturally unknowable and indemonstrable,
even after revelation has been made), that of dogma, the notion of naturally
knowable, supernatural signs of Divine Revelation; above all, there is the
notion of miracles, the notions of infused faith, evident credibility, the biblical
inspiration of those books having God as their Author, the notion of divine
tradition, as well as the condemnation of heterodox notions contrary to all
of those we just cited.4

3 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (Denzinger, no. 3020 [old. no., 1800]). Likewise,
see Dei filius, can. 4.3 (Denzinger, no. 3043); similarly, Jean-Michel-Alfred Vacant, Études
théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du Vatican, vol. 2 (Paris: Delhomme et Bri-
guet, 1895), 281–321.
4 We have examined at length the meaning and scope of these fundamental notions (in
contrast with the heterodox notions opposed to them) in our treatise On Divine Rev-
elation, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 205–319,
611–49, 733–63 and vol. 2, 3–63 and 143–57.
322 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Similarly, there is the notion of the Church as a society that is super-

natural, perfect, independent, and visible (i.e., knowable through her notes).
Likewise, there are the notions of [her] unity, holiness, Catholicity, aposto-
licity, and that of the hierarchy, as well as the notion of salvation and of that
which of itself is necessary for salvation. Moreover, there is the notion of
infallibility, the power to teach, the power of jurisdiction, and the power of
order.
As regards God, there is the notion of the True God, who is really and
essentially distinct from the world, the notions of His principal attributes,
simplicity, unity, truth, goodness, infinity, immutability, eternity, God’s nat-
ural and supernatural knowability, the divine life, His omniscient wisdom,
the divine will and freedom, uncreated love, justice, mercy, providence, pre-
destination, omnipotence, and infinite beatitude. All these notions are ana-
logical but must be taken in their proper meaning and not only by way of
metaphor, for were we to understand them as being mere metaphors, we ulti-
mately would be led to agnosticism.
These various notions, understood according to their proper and not
merely metaphorical sense, are already technical in their own manner. Even
more so are the following.
As regards the Holy Trinity, there are the fundamental notions of the
divine processions (the eternal generation of the Word and the spiration which
terminates at the Holy Spirit), the divine relations (paternity, filiation, etc.),
divine persons, the notions concerning their equality, as well as what is proper
to each. Without a certain degree of technicality in our theological vocabu-
lary, we cannot avoid contradiction in these matters and will not be able to
correctly understand how there are three persons in God, that is, three intel-
ligent and free subjects, who nonetheless have the same nature, the same
essential intelligence, the same freedom, and the same power, thus meaning
that they constitute a single principle of activity [opération] ad extra.
Again, let us mention the notions of free creation ex nihilo and non ab
aeterno, the notion of creatures (whether bodily, spiritual, or human) that
come forth through free production, ex nihilo, initio temporis, and not from
the substance of God by way of emanation. Likewise, there is the notion of
the human soul, which by itself and essentially is the form of the body, even
though it is spiritual and immortal.
Then, there is the notion of the divine government, as well as that of the
distinction between good and evil in relation to this government.
Next, we have the notions of the supernatural order in relation to human
and angelic natures, as well as the notion of the supernatural ultimate end
and that of the beatific vision.
Likewise, there are the notions of original justice, original sin, and its
consequences.
CO N CE R N I N G N OT I O N S CO N SECR AT E D BY T H E CO U N CI L S 323

For the mystery of the Incarnation, there is the technical notion of the
Hypostatic Union and its consequences, the notion of the communication of
idioms and that of Christ’s impeccable freedom.5 Likewise, there are the
notions of redemption, sacrifice, universal mediation, and those of the infi-
nite value of the Redeemer’s merits and satisfaction. For Mary, there is the
notion of the divine maternity and its consequences.
For the life of grace in us, there are the notions of justification, sanctifi-
cation, and our interior renewal through grace. Indeed, it is quite important
that we know that this interior renewal is not formally constituted by some
other interior principle than grace but, rather, is so constituted by habitual
grace, which inheres in the soul as a participation in the divine nature and is
the seed of eternal life in us.
The Council of Trent (Denzinger, no. 1528ff [old no. 799]) even teaches
us what the various causes of justification are: its final cause (the Glory of God
and of Christ, as well as eternal life), its primary efficient cause (the Merciful
God), its meritorious cause (Jesus Christ, who merited justification for us on
the wood of the Cross and made satisfaction for us to God the Father), its
instrumental cause (the sacrament of baptism), its sole formal cause (the justice
of God, not that by which He Himself is just but, rather, that by which He
makes us just [can. 10 and 11], by which . . . we are spiritually renewed [spiritu
mentis nostrae] . . . each of us receiving into ourselves His justice according to
the measure that the Holy Spirit bestows upon each as He wills [1 Cor. 12:11]
and according to each person’s own disposition and cooperation.)
In this way, we have an explanation for the exact meaning of the Council,
as we can see in canon 10: “If anyone says that men are justified without the
Justice of Christ, by which He gained merit for us, or that they are formally
just by His justice itself, let him be anathema” (Denzinger, no. 1560 [old no.
820]). Indeed, it is even more explicitly found in canon 11, which speaks of
the grace that inheres in us.6
The Councils have likewise consecrated the notions of prevenient actual
grace, operative grace, and cooperative grace, as well as those of merit de con-
digno, satisfaction, and the notions of the infused virtues, in particular those
concerning the theological virtues. Likewise, they have consecrated the
notions pertaining to each sacrament: as regards the Eucharist, those of

5 Thus, Christ is a single intelligent and free subject, even though He has two natures,
two intellects, and two freedoms. Here again, without a certain degree of technicality in
our theological vocabulary, we cannot grasp the true meaning of the dogma in question
and the true meaning of the Councils.
6 Here, we must repeat that the notion of formal causality is no more obsolete (in philos-
ophy and theology) than are those of matter, end, and efficient cause.
As we have just seen, the Councils even make use of the notions of meritorious causality
and instrumental causality.
324 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

transubstantiation and of real presence (vere, realiter, substantialiter: Den-

zinger, nos. 1636, 1651 and 1652 [old nos. 874, 883, and 884]), and as regards
penance, the notions of attrition and contrition. Finally, as regards the last
things: the notions of the immutable particular judgment, of supernatural
heavenly beatitude, purgatory, eternal damnation, the resurrection of the
dead, and the universal judgment.
Each of these notions, thus consecrated by the Councils, themselves
imply many others, many of which are far more precise than what can be
attained by common sense (i.e., natural reason, in the natural order), as well
as Christian sense, in the order of grace. Through the course of the centuries,
philosophical and theological reason have contributed to this precision
through the slow passage from vague [confus] concepts to the distinct ones,
which exclude false conceptions. From this perspective, many notions the
Councils have consecrated deserve to be called technical, in particular, the
notions of the Hypostatic Union, Transubstantiation, and that of the human
soul, which is spiritual and immortal while nonetheless being “by itself and
essentially the substantial form of the human body.”7
And yet, when the Council of Trent taught that sanctifying grace is the
formal cause of justification (Denzinger, nos. 1528, 1560, and 1561 [old nos.,
799, 820, and 821]), it was not content merely to define habitual grace, as dis-
tinct from actual grace, in relation to the soul in which it inheres as an infused
quality, and in relation to the final end, that is, to the glory of which it is the
seed. Nor did it limit itself to defining it in itself as a participation in the divine
nature (Denzinger, nos. 1525, 1528, and 1546ff [old nos., 795, 799, 809ff]).
In addition to these definitions, it also taught what it is in relation to justifi-
cation, by saying that it is “the formal cause” thereof (Denzinger, nos. 1528
and 1560 [old nos., 799 and 820]).
And therefore, certain notions consecrated by the Councils are tech-
nical.8 Nonetheless, when a Council utilizes and consecrates them, it does not

7 See Council of Vienne (Denzinger, no. 902 [old no. 481]); see also Lateran V, sess. 8
(Denzinger, no. 1440 [old no. 738]).
8 On this subject, we must cite an important text drawn from the reportatio read by
Johann Baptist Franzelin at the [First] Vatican Council concerning the first schema of the
Dogmatic Constitution De fide. See Giovanni Domenico Mansi et al., Amplissima collec-
tion conciliorum, vol. 50, ed. Louis Petit and Jean-Baptiste Martin [Arnhem and Leipzig:
Société nouvelle d’édition de la Collection Mansi, 1924], 321. Quite correctly, Franzelin
distinguishes, among errors and heresies to be condemned, those that have a technical
form and those expressed in contemporary language, saying,
Of course, we must distinguish in the very manner of exposition and declaration of
a doctrine what must be opposed in the errors of a [given theological] school from
the other kind of exposition by which heresies are condemned in sectarian creeds,
a distinction that should jump to one’s eyes if one were to look at the two chapters
CO N CE R N I N G N OT I O N S CO N SECR AT E D BY T H E CO U N CI L S 325

canonize all the various relations that they have to the other notions in the
philosophical system that contributed to their precision.
For example, in our earlier article, we said, “The Council of Trent did
not canonize the Aristotelian notion of form with all its relations to other
ideas of the Aristotelian system. But it approved it as a stable human idea, in
the sense that we speak of everything that formally constitutes a thing (in
this case, justification).”9
We have explained this matter at greater length in our book, Le sens com-
mun: la philosophie de l’être et les formules dogmatiques.10 There, we said that,
on account of their precision, many of these dogmatic formulas surpass the
terms of common sense and even that which is accessible to the Christian
sense of simple believers who do not have theological training. However,
dogmatic formulas expressed in philosophical language remain in continuity
with common sense and Christian sense. Through lofty preaching
[élévations] on the mysteries, masters like Bossuet can help fully-docile souls
come to understand them, indeed, in a way that is very fruitful.

Firmiter and Damnamus from the Lateran Council. In the first, against the Albigen-
sian sect, there is quite simply an exposition of the creed expressly concerned with
the doctrine of the Trinity; in the latter, where an error that was introduced in the
shape and reasons of a school of thought had to be eliminated, the same Trinitarian
doctrine is declared, though in a completely different manner and by means of com-
pletely different reasons, which quite obviously corresponded to the error itself, in
accord with its own particular character. Here, we first have a lengthy exposition of
errors to be condemned, bringing to bear the arguments and texts relied on by its
author, the Abbot Joachim of Fiore. Then, a declaration of the mystery follows. Even
though this latter text is scarcely suitable for instructing the simple faithful, non-
etheless it most certainly is completely suited to its own particular goal and is a
declaration that for theologians up to our own days has been, is, and ever will be
the foundation for the entire speculative doctrine concerned with the Trinity.
It is in this chapter of Damnamus (Denzinger, nos. 803–5 [old nos. 431–33]) that this
point of doctrine is defined:
because each of the Three Persons is that reality, that is, the divine substance,
essence, or nature which alone is the beginning of all things, apart from which noth-
ing else can be found. This reality is neither generating nor generated nor proceed-
ing, but it is the Father who generates, the Son who is generated, and the Holy Spirit
who proceeds, so that there be distinctions between the Persons but unity in nature
(Denzinger, no. 804 [old no. 432]).
The expression here is learned and technical, like the error to be condemned.
9 Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie où va-t-elle,” Angelicum 23 (1946): 128. [Tr.
note: See “Where is the New Theology Headed?” earlier in this volume.]
10 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Thomistic Common Sense: The Philosophy of Being
and the Development of Doctrine, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus
Academic, 2021), 275–99.
326 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Thus, far from being submitted to a philosophical system, the Church’s

faith in Divine Revelation, with the Holy Spirit’s assistance, judges from on
high the notions that were brought to their precision through collaboration
with a given system like that of Aristotle.11 A given notion, like that of formal
causality is thus “taken up” by the supernatural faith of a Council (through
its infused faith, illuminated by the Holy Spirit’s gifts and special assistance),
consequently receiving, in the supernatural light of Divine Revelation and of
infused faith illuminated by the Holy Spirit, a stability that is superior to what
it heretofore had. Thus, in this superior light, such a notion is judged to be
suitable for expressing a divine, revealed truth, which shall not pass away.
*****
2˚ Without thereby modifying the meaning of the Councils’ teaching, can one
abandon the technical notions consecrated by them or leave them fall into obso-
lescence by substituting for them other so-called “equivalent” or “analogous”
ones?
We must respond negatively to this question. First of all, let us say that,
faced with a number of conciliar notions (e.g., for sanctifying grace), we
obviously can choose the one that is most suited to our current ends. Indeed,
as we said above, the Council of Trent conceived of sanctifying grace in differ-
ent ways, depending on whether it is considered in relation to the just soul
in which it inheres as an infused quality, in relation to the glory of which it
is the seed, in relation to the divine nature of which it is a participation, or
finally, in relation to justification, of which it is the formal cause.
All of these conceptions are simultaneously true and immutable. The
last one (in relation to justification) cannot be abandoned, nor can it be
allowed to fall into obsolescence by substituting another conception for it
(one that is said to be equivalent and analogous), akin to how Ptolemy’s astro-
nomical hypothesis was abandoned.
Why? Because the technical meaning of this notion, which was con-
secrated by the Council of Trent, is not a provisional hypothesis like those of
ancient astronomy. If we are truly aware of what such a hypothesis of this

11 This is already true of theology, which judges from on high (i.e., from the perspective
of wisdom in the supernatural order) a philosophical truth before making use of it to
deduce a theological conclusion. See ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2: “This science (namely, theol-
ogy) does not have the task of proving the principles of the other sciences but, rather, is
only tasked with judging concerning them. For whatever we discover in other sciences
to be contrary to a truth held in this science is completely condemned as being false.”
This is even truer still for a Council, which judges with the Holy Spirit’s special assistance.
Moreover, let us note that normally, in the various orders of nature, the superior order,
according to its own proper laws, “uses” the inferior one without, properly speaking,
depending on the laws of the latter. Thus, man assimilates foods like bread and wine
because from on high he finds them to be suited to this assimilation, without being forced
to undertake a chemical analysis of these foods, which he has always used.
CO N CE R N I N G N OT I O N S CO N SECR AT E D BY T H E CO U N CI L S 327

kind is, we know that it is not proposed as something true through a con-
formity to extra-mental reality and to its immutable laws but, rather, is true
inasmuch as it is a useful means for provisionally representing and classifying
phenomena. Regarding these hypotheses, St. Thomas said in ST I, q. 32, a. 1,
ad 2: “They do not sufficiently prove what they propose, for perhaps the sen-
sible appearances could likewise be explained by a different hypothesis.”
This is not how the Council of Trent affirmed that “sanctifying grace is
the formal cause of justification.” It affirmed this proposition as being true
through conformity to extra-mental reality and its immutable laws. This
proposition remains true today and will remain true forever.
The notion of formal causality cannot be abandoned while still preserv-
ing “the meaning of this Conciliar proposition,” for the meaning of this Con-
ciliar affirmation is inseparable from the notion of formal cause, which is the
predicate of the aforementioned proposition. If this notion is unstable, the
Conciliar affirmation is unstable as well, for it is nothing other than the union
of this notion with the subject in question, brought about through the verb
to be. Therefore, one cannot here say, with Henri Bouillard: “The notions
change, while the affirmations remain.” In these Conciliar affirmations, the
verb to be cannot immutably unite an essentially unstable notion to the sub-
ject [in question], just as an iron clamp cannot still the waves of the sea.
Moreover, we must note that one cannot retain the Council’s meaning
by replacing the notion of formal causality with some other notion that is said
to be equivalent or analogous. This would already involve a different meaning,
for the predicate of the Conciliar proposition would no longer be the same.
We would only be able to claim that, at the time of the Council of Trent, it
was true to say, “grace is the formal cause of justification,” but today, we would
need to abandon this notion and conceive of it in a different manner.
However, one may object: we must conceive of it in an analogous and
equivalent manner, according to the law of analogy.
At the beginning of this article, we already noted that this represents an
abuse of the notion of analogy. Two analogous notions do not express the
same reality in different ways but, rather, express different realities that have
a proportional similarity (e.g., the being of God and that of creatures, the
being of created substance and that of accidents, or again, complexion as a
sign of health and heart rate as such a sign).
By contrast, when two theological notions express one and the same real-
ity in a different manner, they can be univocal if they are different only inas-
much as one is vague [confus] and the other distinct. Thus, St. Augustine said
that the body of Christ is in the Eucharist not as a body in a place but, rather,
spiritually, whereas St. Thomas later on said much more distinctly that it is
there per modum substantiae, for he noted that substance, even bodily sub-
stance, is wholly in the whole and wholly in each of its parts. Where St.
328 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Augustine only had a vague concept, St. Thomas had a distinct one. Likewise,
St. Augustine conceived of habitual grace from the psychological and moral
perspective, whereas St. Thomas moreover conceived of it from the meta-
physical perspective, that is, the perspective of being, as an accident, an
infused quality inhering in the soul. However, this metaphysical concept was
already vaguely present in St. Augustine. Here, there is only a passage from
the vague to the distinct for one and the same notion. Rather than here hav-
ing two different, analogous notions, we have one and the same notion
becoming more explicit and distinct.
This is not the case for the different conceptions of transubstantiation
we find in modern theologians. The Thomists note that in her Councils, the
Church first spoke of the conversion of the substance of bread into that of the
body of Christ and later on more precisely spoke of transubstantiation. Thus,
they conclude: hence, transubstantiation is conversive. By contrast, other
theologians speak of a non-conversive, adductive transubstantiation, which
would be the adduction of the body of Christ in the Eucharist, after the anni-
hilation of the substance of the bread. This would not be the conversion of
one substance into another but, rather, the substitution of the second for the
first. In this case, the new notion of adductive transubstantiation is not equiv-
alent and analogous to that of conversive transubstantiation but, rather, is
the negation of it, not preserving the obvious meaning of the Councils, which
first spoke of conversion and then, more precisely, of transubstantiation.
In order to preserve the meaning of a Conciliar proposition that brings
together two notions through the use of the verb to be, these two notions
must be maintained. If one of them is replaced by another, even if it is anal-
ogous, we no longer have the same judgment, and therefore, the “meaning”
of the Council does not remain.
*****
3˚ What would be the real foundation for the aforementioned analogy of the
new notions substituted for those that were previously consecrated? Would not
the meaning of the Conciliar propositions become unknowable or uncertain
even for the Church? Would not relativism be unavoidable?
First of all, one and the same reality, like that of transubstantiation, can-
not provide a foundation for two notions that are contradictorily opposed to
one another, like that of conversive transubstantiation and that of non-con-
versive transubstantiation. One of these two notions is certainly false. We do
not here have two analogous and equivalent notions, for the second is the
negation of the first. By contrast, the existence of the creature that is analo-
gous to that of the Creator is not the negation of the latter but, rather, pre-
supposes it, just as an accident’s existence presupposes that of substance. One
must not alter the doctrine of analogy, for then confusion would thus be
introduced into the very domain one wishes to clarify.
CO N CE R N I N G N OT I O N S CO N SECR AT E D BY T H E CO U N CI L S 329

Moreover, would not the meaning of the Conciliar propositions become

unknowable, or at least uncertain, even for the Church, if one were to say,
“One and the same affirmation can subsist through notions that evolve. Or to
put another way, a foundational element, the essential element, remains
through the course of surface-level changes. In other words, the reality that we
aim at forever remains the same.”
We respond: however, this essential element remains unknown and even
unknowable or at least uncertain, indeed, for the Church herself, for how are
we to distinguish it from the aforementioned “surface-level changes”? We can
only know revealed truth through notions united in a judgment, and if these
notions are ever-changing (at least in certain cases), then the truth remains
uncertain.
If we take this teaching and proposition from the Council of Trent,
“Sanctifying grace is the formal cause of justification,” and substitute for the
notion of formal causality some other notion (even one that is said to be anal-
ogous and equivalent), who will ever be able to say what is the absolute truth
that the Council wished to express?
We are told in response: “Two notions can be different inasmuch as they
are connected to different systems and identical inasmuch as they both aim
at the same reality and express an absolute truth.”
However, if this absolute and immutable truth can only be expressed by
different and successive notions, it remains unknowable and uncertain for
the teaching Church herself. Thus, one abandons traditional realism in order
to fall into nominalism and relativism.12 And by abandoning traditional real-
ism, one abandons, whether or not one wishes to do so, the traditional defi-
nition of truth, “adaequatio rei et intellectus,” the conformity of judgment
with extra-mental reality and its immutable laws, contenting oneself with the
new definition, which slides toward pragmatism: conformitas mentis et vitae,
the conformity of the judgment with the requirements of life and human
action, which forever evolves.
Thus, absolute truth would become unknowable. In order to reach it, we
will no longer have anything but provisional and successive technical notions,
which are neither true nor false but, rather, only useful [commode] for rep-
resenting to ourselves, in view of our own activity, a reality that will forever
evade our attempts to grasp it, a reality that will never be able to be expressed
in a certain and immutable manner.

12 And thus, historical works undertaken in this spirit do not in the least help one
understand St. Thomas’s doctrine. What can be their value for Thomists who have
passed their life explaining the Summa theologiae article by article? They have no
desire to dispute the value of the conclusions expressed in these works. This would
give way to endless discussions, for it would be undertaken outside of the light of
principles.
330 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

When one reads many contemporary works, one has, as it were, an

intuition that this represents their fundamental deviation. Their authors at
least implicitly accept some alternative for the very definition of truth. The
latter is no longer conceived of as it is by the Church, namely, as the con-
formity of our judgment with extra-mental reality and its immutable laws
but, rather, is thought to be the conformity of our judgment with the require-
ments of life and action, which forever evolves.
This is what we said in our earlier articles in Angelicum,13 and we find
ourselves compelled to maintain what we have stated.
Doubtlessly, in these difficult problems, the authors whom we critique
could well have used this or that unfortunate formula, which does not prop-
erly translate their thought. However, as these formulas become more wide-
spread, it is important that they be corrected, for otherwise, inexactness in
language can lead to a true and very serious error.
From this perspective, we hope that this controversy will not have been
useless. It will serve to help us to grasp all the better the Church’s teaching
concerning the truth and immutability of dogmatic formulas.14

13 See Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie,” 126–45; “Verité et immutabilité,”

124–39. [Tr. note: See the previous two chapters in this volume.]
14 In a recent article, obviously written in response to what we recently said on this sub-
ject, its author seeks to show that “the absolute character of our truths come to them
not so much from the representations to which they are applied as from the affirmation
itself,” and the author adds, “Through the application of the verb to be, whether it is
‘copulative’ or ‘existential,’ every judgment implies a positing of the absolute, of unlim-
ited act.” In support of this, the author cites ST I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 1, where St. Thomas states,
“To know that God exists is naturally found in us in a kind of general and vague way,
namely, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. . . . However, this is not the same thing as
knowing without qualification that God exists.”
Doubtlessly, to know and desire beatitude in general is to know God vaguely, for such
beatitude can only be found in God. However, this does not mean that “every judgment
implies a positing of the absolute.” For example, the judgment, “this stone or this house
exists outside of my mind,” does not imply the positing of the absolute, except in the
sense that this stone can be of use for me in proving God’s existence. See ST I, q. 16, a. 6.
Moreover, we have in no way misunderstood the analogous character of the notion of
being nor the essential supernaturality of infused faith. For many years we have cease-
lessly insisted on these two fundamental points.
[Tr. note: Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange is here citing Jean Marie Le Blond, “L’Analogie de la vérité:
Réflexion d’un philosophe sur une controverse théologique,” Recherches de science reli-
gieuse 34 (1947): 129–41 (here, p. 131).]
 13
On the Need to Return to the
Traditional Conception
of Truth
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

T
oday we find ourselves faced with ongoing discussions concerning the
point of departure to be taken in philosophical research, the ontological
value of the first rational principles, their necessitating evidence as laws
of being, the value of the traditional proofs for God’s existence, the foundation
of moral obligation, the immutability of the notions consecrated by the Coun-
cils, the immutable truth of dogmatic definitions, the notion of the supernat-
ural, the notion of original sin, the topic of monogenism vs. polygenism, and
the very nature of theology as a science. A fundamental problem of great
importance underlies all of these various discussions, a problem that peren-
nially calls for reflection and cannot be set aside or overlooked. It lies at the
very foundation of recent discussions that took place at Gallarate from the 16th
to the 18th of September, 1947, concerning the point of departure for philo-
sophical research as well as the philosophical thought of Maurice Blondel.1
The problem we are speaking of is that of the value of the traditional
definition of truth. According to this definition, “Adaequatio rei et intellectus,”
truth is the conformity of our judgment not with the subjective laws of our
mind but, rather, with extra-mental reality and its immutable laws of non-
contradiction or identity (what is, is; what is not, is not), of efficient causality
(nothing happens without a cause), and of finality (every agent acts for an
end, whether or not it knows it).
Such is the fundamental thesis of traditional realism, which holds that
our intellect can, by its own natural powers, arrive at metaphysical certitude
concerning extra-mental being and even concerning the existence of God,
the Sovereignly Perfect Being.
This doctrine was rejected by Kant, who denied that we could have spec-
ulative knowledge of the absolute. According to him, we scientifically know

1 Attualità filosofiche, Aloisianum, Gallarate, Atti del III Convegno di stuid filosofici cris-
tiani tra professori universitarì (Padova: Editoria Livinia, 1948).

331
332 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

only phenomena, without however knowing anything about things in them-

selves, noumena. For example, the principle of causality has its meaning and
scope only in the world of phenomena or of experience (every phenomenon
requires an antecedent phenomenon), and it does not enable us to elevate
ourselves to certain knowledge of the First Cause.
The positivists go even further down this path, and the pantheistic ide-
alism that came after Kant concluded: given that we cannot affirm with suffi-
cient objective certitude the existence of a first transcendent cause, we must
be content with affirming a first immanent cause, which we can call God who
becomes or who fashions Himself in humanity through its evolution. Thus,
truth no longer is the conformity of our judgment with extra-mental reality
and its supposedly immutable laws, which we in fact cannot know. Instead,
truth is the conformity of our judgment with human life, which forever evolves,
or with the requirements of human action, which manifest themselves
through the course of time. In place of the relative and provisional truth of
one thesis, the provisional truth of an antithesis will follow, then a superior
synthesis, and so on. No longer is there any immutable and absolute truth
but, instead, all that remains is a relative and ever-changing truth. (This is
what was said in the first proposition of the Syllabus of Errors,2 and it was
also said by the modernists.3)
The point of departure for this outlook can be found above all in Kant.
According to him, if truth consists in the agreement of our knowledge with
the extra-mental object, my knowledge can only be regarded as being true
on the condition that it is in agreement with the latter. Now, given that I can-
not know the extra-mental object except through knowledge, the act of com-
paring knowledge with the extra-mental object is itself an act of comparing
knowledge with knowledge. Since the object is outside of me and knowledge
within me, I am forever limited to rendering one kind of judgment, namely,
one stating whether my knowledge of the object agrees with my knowledge
of the object. Therefore, man is enclosed within himself and cannot escape
therefrom. The Greek skeptics already had noted this vicious circle, and Sextus
Empiricus summarized their arguments, which went back to Protagoras and
the other sophists.
*****
Aristotle himself already responded to the sophists, saying that precisely
through knowledge the knower becomes, in some manner, something other
than itself, quodammodo fit aliud a se, thanks to the representation, which is
essentially relative to the object represented, all of this taking place without

2 See Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors, no. 1 (Denzinger, no. 2901 [old no. 1701]).
3 See Sacred Office under Pius X, Lamentabili, no. 58 (Denzinger, no. 3458 [old no.,
2058]).
RETURN TO THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION OF TRUTH 333

involving any vicious circle. Indeed, the very property of a knower is the fact
that it can, in this way, become something other than itself, aliud a se. Indeed,
this already can be found in the case of animals: whereas the plant remains
enclosed within itself, through knowledge, the animal is open to the external
world. When the sun rises, the animal is not only illuminated and heated, as
is the plant. Beyond this, it sees the sun: quodammodo fit aliud a se; anima
quodammodo fit omnia.4
Moreover, against Protagoras and the other sophists, in Metaphysics 4
(III), chs. 3–5, Aristotle wrote his defense of the real value of the principle of
contradiction (or, non-contradiction), founded on our very first intellectual
knowledge, that of intelligible being in opposition to non-being: “That which
is, is; that which is not, is not.” Protagoras cannot, at one and the same time,
both be and not be himself.
In the same place, Aristotle examines all of the objections raised by the
sophists against the real value of the principle of contradiction. He responds
to them “redarguitive” by showing that these objections do not hold, for they
err against the laws of reasoning and are unable to destroy the first natural
evidence [of the principle of contradiction]. He adds that were we to doubt
the real value of the principle of contradiction, we would be led to suppress
all language, every essence (or substance), and indeed, every distinction
between things (between a wall, a man, and a trireme). We would likewise be
led to suppress movement, for its two termini would no longer be opposed to
each other. We would arrive at our destination before ever setting forth toward
it. Likewise, such a denial would lead us to destroy every form of truth, indeed
even every form of opinion, all the degrees of probability, and all of those of
error. No longer would there be any difference between a great error and small
one. Consequently, we would also in this way be led to suppress every form
of desire and action. Thus, we would not only be faced with the death of the
intellect but, moreover, with the death of action in all of its domains.
Thus, the fact remains that truth is not only the conformity of our judg-
ment with the logical laws of our mind but, rather, is the conformity of our
judgment with extra-mental being and this immutable law of reality: that
which is, is; that which is not, is not; being is not non-being.
Moreover, we must acknowledge the primacy of being over becoming, for
there is more in that which is than in that which becomes and does not yet
exist, more in the [fully] begotten adult, than in the embryo still in the midst
of its development.
This is why becoming is not self-explanatory and, therefore, requires not
only a subject which passes from potency to act (like the seed which develops)
but also an efficient cause which actualizes it (begetting it), as well as an end,

4 See De Anima bk. 3, ch. 8; bk. 2, ch 12; St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 14, a. 1.
334 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

without which it would not have one given direction for its activity rather
than another. Consequently, all bodily and spiritual movements require a
Supreme Mover who is ever in act and an Ultimate end for the Universe, He
who is Pure Act and the Sovereign Good.
St. Thomas deepened this doctrine. He similarly says in De veritate, q.
1, a. 1, “Being is what the intellect first conceives of, as it were, as that which
is most known, into which it resolves all of its conceptions,” and in SCG bk.
2, ch. 83, §32: “Just as sight naturally knows color and hearing sound, so too
the intellect naturally knows being and those things that per se belong to being
as such, and our knowledge of the first principles is founded on this knowl-
edge.” Then, in De veritate, q. 1, a. 9, St. Thomas adds
The intellect reflects back upon its own act, not only inasmuch as it
knows its own act but also inasmuch as it knows its proportion to reality
[rem], and it indeed could not know this unless it knew the nature of its
act, which it cannot know unless the nature of its active principle were
known, namely, the intellect, WHOSE NATURE IS THAT IT BE CONFORMED
TO REALITY [rebus]. Thus, in this way, the intellect, which reflects upon
itself, knows truth.5

Our intellect KNOWS ITS OWN NATURE, which is to be ESSENTIALLY RELATIVE

TO INTELLIGIBLE BEING, as sight is to color. In this way, the intellect is not
enclosed within itself but, rather, is opened to the entire domain of intelligible
reality. This involves no vicious circle but, on the contrary, is an affirmation
which we must hold onto like something more precious than the apple of
our eyes, and when this is not maintained, the intellect suffers and dies, as
we see in positivism and Kantianism.
*****
This fundamental problem was posed anew to philosophers and theo-
logians when, in his “Le Point de depart de la recherche philosophique,” Mau-
rice Blondel wrote: “By rights, in place of the abstract and chimerical ‘Adae-
quatio speculativa rei et intellectus,’ we must substitute methodical research,
the adaequatio realis mentis et vitae.”6

5 [Tr. note: We have chosen to render “res” as “reality” because this definition of truth
applies not merely to purely speculative truth concerning “things” but also to specu-
latively-practical knowledge of moral truths. Admittedly, Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange most often
understands this classical scholastic language of “res” in the sense of “thing” / “things.”
However, what he says about our knowledge of moral truths indicates something in the
direction of this broader translation, which to our eyes is also more correct, theoretically
speaking. In any case, let the reader bear in mind the slight interpretive choice that we
have thus made, aware of its implications (and its relationship to certain remarks made
by Blondel in the letter included in this volume).]
6 Maurice Blondel, “Le Point de depart de la recherche philosophique,” Annales de Phi-
losophie chrétienne 152 (June 15, 1906), 235. Blondel had already said such in his article,
RETURN TO THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION OF TRUTH 335

Theologians, above all Thomists, do not fail to say: prudence’s practical truth
doubtlessly exists through conformity to right intention, to right appetite, as Aris-
totle says (see EN 6.2) and as St. Thomas teaches (see ST I-II, q. 57, a. 5, ad 3).
No doubt, this prudential truth remains true even in the face of speculative error
or absolutely involuntary or invincible ignorance, as when we are deceived with-
out being able to discover the deception in question. Undoubtedly, there also is
a practical truth of like kind in mystical experience, in which we find a conform-
ity of the mind to the life of the man of good will7 and a peace that is a sign of
the truth. However, this mystical experience presupposes infused faith, and the
act of faith itself presupposes the evident credibility of the revealed mysteries,
attained through the examination of the signs of Revelation.
Moreover, as the [First] Vatican Council said, through the natural light
of reason, we can have certitude concerning the existence of God, the Author
of nature. However, in order for this to be so, the principles of the proofs for
God’s existence—in particular, the principle of causality—must be true
through conformity to extra-mental being, with an objectively sufficient certi-
tude (prior to the free choice [option] exercised by man in his willing [de
l’homme de homme volonté]) and not only with a subjectively sufficient certi-
tude, like that of the Kantian proof for God’s existence.8

“L’Illusion idéaliste,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale (Nov. 1898), 12, 17–18 (off-
print): “In place of the question of the agreement of thought with reality, we must sub-
stitute the problem . . . of the immanent adequation of ourselves with ourselves.”
The declaration made in 1906 only confirmed what he said at great length in the 1893
edition of L’Action, above all in its last chapter, which is quite distant from traditional
metaphysics and its proofs for God’s existence.
Looking upon this work, many theologians saw (and we still see) thoughts that are much
closer to Kant than to traditional metaphysics. However, they acknowledged that the work
contained good ad hominem arguments addressed to rationalists holding the doctrine of
immanence and not wishing to depart from it. Blondel’s argument against such rationalists
stated that according to the subjective requirements of action, one must freely choose
either for or against God, and such a choice will either lead to progress and fecundity in
our action or, instead, to its impairment and sterility. As regards this free option, he said,
“It will depend on whether God does or does not really exist for us—that which alone is
absolutely important.” See the 1893 edition of L’Action, p. 426, as well as 347.
However, Kant could say the same thing to those who would refuse to accept his moral
proof for God’s existence. And through such an assertion, we will not find ourselves
returning to the traditional definition of truth, for in making such claims, one is content
with solely affirming that which is conformed to the subjective requirements of action.
7 [Tr. note: In line with what is found near the end of “Where is the New Theology
Headed,” we are reading “vie de l’homme de homme volonté” as “vie de l’homme de
bonne volonté.”]
8 According to Kant, we scientifically know only phenomena and do not know things in
themselves, noumena. The world of noumena is unknown to us. Nonetheless, it is open
336 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Finally, the practical truth of prudence, through conformity to right inten-

tion, presupposes that our intention is truly right in relation to man’s ultimate
end, and the judgment concerning man’s end must be true according to the
conformity of the mind to extra-mental reality (cf. ST I-II, q. 19, a. 3, ad 2).
The best theologians have added: if the traditional definition of specu-
lative truth as “adaequatio rei et intellectus” is chimerical, and if we must sub-
stitute another one for it (and not merely complete it through the experience
of the Christian life), WHAT IS THE VALUE OF DOGMATIC DEFINITIONS, which pre-
suppose it? For all these dogmatic truths, must we content ourselves with the
conformity of the mind (or our judgment) with the requirements of life and
human action which forever evolves? What will thus become of the immut-
ability of dogma?
Hence, we can understand why on December 1, 1924 the Holy Office
condemned 12 propositions drawn from the philosophy of action, including
(no. 5), the new definition of truth:

Truth is not found in any particular act of the intellect wherein there
would be had conformity with the object, as the Scholastics said, but
rather truth is always in a state of becoming, and consists in a progres-
sive adequation of understanding with life, namely, a certain perpetual
process by which the intellect strives to develop and explain that which
experience presents or action requires. However, it is a law that in all
progression there is at no time anything which is determined or fixed.9
*****
This gravely important question constantly comes up in one form or
another in a number of contemporary debates.
We find it at the foundation of two problems examined in the recent
gatherings in Gallarate.

to hypotheses of faith, which themselves are not arbitrary but, rather, are connected to
subjective necessities. Practical reason posits, a priori, the law of duty according to the
requirements of moral action, and this law implies postulates of its own: man’s freedom,
the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. These postulates are unverifiable
in the present world, but they must be admitted, for one does not have the right to
renounce one’s duty. Thus, according to Kant, the certitude of God’s existence is subjec-
tively sufficient, though objectively insufficient. Such certitude does not reach the
noumena, in particular, concerning the existence of God, except according to the require-
ments of moral action, and not through a metaphysical demonstration. God’s existence
is true according to the conformity of the judgment, “God exists,” with the requirements
of action.
9 Monitore ecclesiastico (1925), 194; Documentation catholique (1925), I, 771ff.—More-
over, as we have noted elsewhere, Émile Boutroux, in his own criticisms of the philosophy
of action, likewise noted how it slides toward pragmatism. See Émile Boutroux, Science
et religion dans la philosophie contemporaine (Paris: Ernest Flammarion, 1908), 296.
RETURN TO THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION OF TRUTH 337

Concerning the first of these two problems, “The point of departure for
philosophical research,” we read the papers offered by professors U. Padovani,
F. Sciacca, and C. Mazzantini with particular interest.
The first (pp. 72–76) recalls for us, in an original way, the guiding prin-
ciple and development of Aristotelian metaphysics perfected by St. Thomas,
a metaphysics founded on the intellectual apprehension of intelligible being
(of sensible things) in opposition to non-being and, hence, on the principle
of non-contradiction, conceived of as the law of being and not only of the
mind. This metaphysics is developed through the doctrine of act and potency,
which renders becoming intelligible in function of being, leading to Pure Act
in virtue of the principles of non-contradiction (or, identity), causality, and
finality. According to this paper, as for St. Thomas, the first object known by
our intellect is the intelligible being of sensible things, on the basis of which
philosophical research ultimately elevates itself to God, with a certitude that
preserves the traditional definition of truth.
For Professor Sciacca, who is inspired by St. Augustine (pp. 89ff), the
point of departure for philosophical research is our awareness of our indi-
vidual, existing being, known as an activity and interior dynamism, tending
not toward dissolution but, rather, toward self-development, which stretches
out, from its very beginnings of activity, toward the Transcendent Being, con-
fusedly known and present, its principle and its end.
In these pages, we can feel the influence of Rosmini’s philosophy as well
as his own particular conception of being, a conception that is well known
by theologians and which is notably different from that of St. Thomas, for
according to Rosmini, the idea of being does not arise from abstraction but,
rather, represents something of the divine.10
In his own unique way, professor Mazzantini (pp. 127–42) defends the
Thomist doctrine concerning the point of departure of philosophical
research: transcendental being, which emerges from sense experience under
the influence of the agent intellect. He defends the objectivity of this doctrine
by showing that the objections that have been raised against it remain worth-
less, and he holds that the first spiritual act necessarily is to think, an act prior
to our exercise of free choice [option], indeed, an act whose value opens up
the horizon for willing itself. Before every free choice [option], there are
evident necessities, above all that of the principle of non-contradiction as a
law of extra-mental being.
All of this seems absolutely certain to us: that which is absurd (e.g., a
square-circle or an uncaused-contingent) is not only unimaginable, nor only
inconceivable, but indeed evidently unrealizable. Here we have a form of

10 See Albert Michel, “Rosmini-Serbati, Antonio” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique,

vol. 13, pt. 2, ed. Émile Amann (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1937), cols. 2917–52.
338 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

necessitating evidence, and were we to deny it, we would be faced with the
death of the intellect, which would thus be deprived of its own proper object:
intelligible being in opposition to non-being. Without this first, certain prin-
ciple, the intellect no longer has an incentive for passing from what is known
to what is unknown and even cannot know anything certain, not even the
“cogito ergo sum,” for if the principle of non-contradiction is not absolutely
certain as a law of thought and of being, my thought could at once be mine
and not mine. Perhaps, we would need to be content with saying imper-
sonally, “There is thought,” just as one says, “It is raining.” And still, this would
not be certain, for is this impersonal thought really distinct from the sub-
conscious and from the unconscious? Thus, how could we conclude with cer-
titude, ergo sum?
Perhaps I do not exist. Rather, perhaps I become, and perhaps contradic-
tories are identified in a flow of becoming that has no efficient cause and no
true and superior finality, as is said by contemporary atheistic existentialists.
*****
On the second subject, “The philosophical thought of Maurice Blondel,”
Professor Sciacca (pp. 255ff and 337ff), a Rosminian by tendency (and
thereby a realist), strives to show that Maurice Blondel’s philosophy, as found
in his last works, attains, with certitude, extra-mental being and the Sov-
ereignly Perfect Being, despite the place that Blondel gives to free choice
[option], even in our knowledge of the ontological value of the first principles.
This would no longer be a philosophy of action, like what we find in Blondel’s
work in 1893, but rather, a philosophy of mind, thought, action, and being,
for the mind is, thinks, and acts.
Nonetheless, we remain faced with the question of knowing whether,
according to Blondel’s final works, our certitude concerning God’s existence
(which ever seems to be dependent upon our free option) is objectively suffi-
cient (like the proofs founded on a necessitating principles) or only subjec-
tively sufficient, like the Kantian proof for God’s existence.
Fr. Giacon also strives (p. 323) to provide a sensible interpretation of
Maurice Blondel’s assertions, as though the philosophy of action ultimately
rejoins the philosophy of being and as though Blondel no longer defined the
truth merely in function of human action but, rather, in function of extra-
mental being. However, would not Blondelism thereby be unfaithful to its
first guiding impulse? Or, if it still preserves this impulse, does this not rep-
resent a kind of Thomist recasting, which rectifies all of its positions?
Professor Mazzantini (pp. 328ff) maintains, on the contrary, that Blondel’s
philosophy, which remains a philosophy of action, cannot arrive at metaphys-
ical certitude concerning extra-mental being and its immutable laws, because
this philosophy holds that our objective representations are always provisional,
likewise holding that there are no necessitating forms of evidence.
RETURN TO THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION OF TRUTH 339

Professor Padovani (pp. 328 and 343) also registers a number of objec-
tions along these same lines. He asks how Blondel demonstrates the existence
of God and how he resolves the problems concerning the relationship
between the soul and the body, the value of sense knowledge, and the foun-
dation of morality. Fr. Deza (p. 334) says that if one abandons the path fol-
lowed by St. Thomas, one no longer will be able to demonstrate the existence
of God. Professor Bontandini (p. 346) asks whether Blondel’s last books
remain faithful to his early thought; if they do, he does not truly prove the
existence of God.
Fr. Augustin Valensin notes that one cannot respond to the objections
raised except by referring to the whole of Blondel’s thought, for Blondel never
wished to be a scholastic, nor to distinguish problems along the same lines
as does classical metaphysics.
Nonetheless, it remains the case that Blondel’s thought is a human form
of thought that proceeds from the known to the unknown and involves prin-
ciples, along with the consequences drawn therefrom. Now, the objections
raised against his thought are concerned with the certitude of his principles.
Is this certitude objectively sufficient or only subjectively so? In the latter case,
one would not end up with a true proof for God’s existence. Likewise, the
traditional definition of truth would not be preserved. Instead, all that would
remain is a definition holding that truth is the conformity of our judgment
with the requirements of action, as we find in the Kantian proof for God’s
existence.
*****
In order to respond to the objections raised against Blondelism, Profes-
sor Sciacca (pp. 337–51) notes, himself being inspired by Rosmini, that the
traditional positions Blondel intends to go beyond are not false in his opinion
but, rather, are only incomplete, taking on their full value only in the superior
synthesis presented by him.
We do not see how this can be harmonized with texts in Blondel’s
work La pensée, which we will need to recall below, for example, this one:
“It is deceptive to speak of an overly clear intuition of mathematical and
rational truths.”11
In order to explain this to us, we are told that every limited truth is only
one aspect of the complete truth to which we aspire and that the latter is not
merely abstract but, rather, is concrete and living. Certainly, this sort of claim
is not new. It is admitted by all philosophers worthy of the name, as well as
all theologians, above all if one is thinking of the immediate vision of the
Divine Essence, which is promised to us at the end of our spiritual and super-
natural ascent.

11 Maurice Blondel, La pensée (1934), vol. 2, 431.

340 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

However, in the discussion at hand, we are situated within the order of

philosophical knowledge, not in the order of the supernatural knowledge
had through infused faith, which becomes living, penetrating, and, as it were,
tasted in authentic mystical experience under the influence of the gifts of the
Holy Spirit.
Thus, in the order of philosophical knowledge, if one comes to tell us
that the proofs for God’s existence given by St. Thomas do not establish their
conclusion if we also lack the Rosminian primitive intuition or the living and
concrete thought of God who is vaguely known and present to us, spoken of
by Blondel, we cannot admit such a claim, and the entire problem is raised
anew.
As all theologians know, Rosmini’s position runs into grave difficulties.
To recognize this fact, one merely needs to carefully read the first 17 of the
40 condemned Rosminian propositions. But that is another matter, lying out-
side of our present concerns.
However, we still must ask whether for Maurice Blondel the ontological
and transcendent value of the principles of the traditional proofs for God’s
existence has a necessitating evidential character. If it does, why would he still
say today, as in his first books, that an option must be exercised so that one
may admit this evidence, an option properly so called, a free choice.12 Thus,
is the affirmation of the real value of these principles true according to its
conformity with extra-mental being, independent of the requirements of moral
action, or instead, only according to the requirements that are responded to
by such an option? In other words, do we here have an objectively sufficient
certitude or only one that is subjectively sufficient, like that found in the Kant-
ian proof for God’s existence?
In the 1893 edition of his text L’Action, Maurice Blondel said, “Knowledge
of being implies the necessity of the option: being does not exist in knowledge
before the freedom of choice but, rather, is there only after it.”13 The context
even makes it clear that he is speaking of the option that freely prefers God
over everything created. This assertion constantly comes up in the 1893
edition of L’Action,14 above all in its final chapter.
However, even in his last works, Blondel remains faithful to his earliest
thought. Instead of saying, like traditional philosophers, “Certain minds are
so badly disposed that they seek to pull back from the natural evidence of the
principle of contradiction as a law of being,” he writes in L’Être et les êtres:
“No intellectual evidence, not even that of principles that are absolute of them-
selves, having a necessary ontological value, imposes itself upon us with a

12 [Tr. note: Reading “ou un choix libre” for “ou un choix est libre.”]
13 See Blondel, L’Action, 435.
14 See Blondel, L’Action, 297, 341, 350, 426, 435, 437, and 463.
RETURN TO THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPTION OF TRUTH 341

spontaneously and infallibly constraining form of certainty.”15—According to

traditional realism, Protagoras himself sees that he cannot at one and the
same time be and not be Protagoras. Here, we have a form of necessitating
evidence that is not the object of a choice [option], as is the case for a prop-
osition that is only probable.
Therefore, Blondel remains quite distant from traditional metaphysics,
in particular when he writes in La pensée: “It is deceptive to speak of an
alleged sensible intuition. . . . Deceptive too to speak of the so-called intuition
of consciousness . . . if it is subject to subjective illusions. . . . It is deceptive to
speak of an overly clear intuition of mathematical and rational truths.”16
One would think that this quote was drawn from Sextus Empiricus’s
Adversus mathematicos.
Likewise, Blondel still writes in the first volume of La pensée: “The notion
of an object and the use that is ordinarily made of it is one of these divisions,
one of these illegitimate ‘overestimations’ [majorations], which we do not
cease to denounce as being the chronic deception and ruinous improbity from
which many a philosophy is dying today.”17 Thus, what could be the value of
the assertion made by the [First] Vatican Council concerning the distinction
of our supernatural knowledge from our natural knowledge, on account of
their objects: “The perpetual common belief of the Catholic Church has held
and holds also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only in
its principle but also in its object”?18
In the 1934 work La Pensée, we can find many other assertions that are
no less deserving of criticism.19
For all these reasons, we think Blondelism is still quite distant from St.
Thomas’s teaching. However, this does not prevent us from recognizing
that it contains very gripping ad hominem20 arguments against the rational-
ist partisans of the doctrine of immanence, in particular the argument set
forth in the 1893 edition of L’Action as follows: “It has been claimed that
the very notion of revelation does not allow for rational discussion, yet one
does not allow this negative conclusion to be debated: on the pretext of

15 Maurice Blondel, L’Être et les êtres (1935), 415.

16 Blondel, La pensée (1934), vol. 2, 431.
17 Blondel, La pensée, vol. 1, 131.
18 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (Denzinger, no. 3015 [old no. 1795]). Also, see
Dei filius, can. 4.1 (Denzinger, no. 3041 [old no. 1816]).
19 See Blondel, La pensée, vol. 1, 130–36, 170–72, 175, 179, 180, 349, and 355; vol. 2,
39, 66–69, 90, 96, and 196.
20 [Tr. note: That is, an argument that concedes the premises of one’s interlocutor, for
the sake of arguing with that particular person. See Tommaso Zigliara. Summa philo-
sophica in usum scholarum, 12th ed., vol. 1 (Paris: Briguet, 1900), 157.]
342 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

respect, free examination refuses to be examined.”21 Thus, one finds oneself

to be voluntarily enclosed “within a biased philosophy hostile to the very
notion of revelation and to the possibility and usefulness of every kind of
defined dogma.”22
From this perspective, Blondelism has freed certain minds from their
rationalistic prejudices, and we think that Blondel’s last works draw close to
traditional realism. However, we do not believe that he has been unfaithful
to his earliest thought, which is solidly anchored in him, thus keeping him
still quite distant from the realism of St. Augustine and that of St. Thomas.
What is certain is the fact that we must absolutely return to the tradi-
tional definition of [speculative] truth: adaequatio rei et intellectus, the con-
formity of judgment with extra-mental being and its immutable laws. Dog-
mas presuppose this definition. It absolutely cannot be called “chimerical,”
nor can one substitute for it a form of truth which would only belong to the
practical order.
In other words, we must admit that the real value of the first principles
has a necessitating evidence, independent of every free choice [option]. This
is what St. Thomas says in ST I-II, q. 17, a. 6: “If there are such things,
which the intellect grasps and naturally assents to, such as the first prin-
ciples, then such an assent or dissent does not lie in our power but, rather,
in the order of nature.” It is not through a free option but, rather, through
its very nature that our intellect adheres to the ontological value and abso-
lute necessity of the first principles as laws of reality. Only in this way can
we maintain the traditional definition of truth which the Church’s dogmas
themselves presuppose.

21 Blondel, L’Action, 392ff.

22 Blondel, L’Action, 393.
 14
On the Immutability
of Defined Truths,
With Remarks on the Notion
of the Supernatural
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

I
n the April–May 1948 issue of Recherches de science religieuse, Fr. Henri
Bouillard looks to explain the correct way that a number of assertions in
his book Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin should be understood
in relation to the notions used by the Councils. In particular he is concerned
with explaining this assertion: “While notions, methodologies, and systems
change with the passing of time, the affirmations they contain remain, even
though they come to be expressed in different categories.”1
One page later, he adds, in relation to the Council of Trent’s teaching
that sanctifying grace is the formal cause of justification (Sess. 6, ch. 7, can.
10): “In so doing, did it consecrate this use and thus bestow a definitive char-
acter upon the notion of grace, considered as a form? By no means. . . . To
this end, it employed notions that were commonly in use in the theology of
that era. However, others can be substituted for them without modifying the
meaning of the Council’s teaching.”2
Likewise, on p. 224: “In abandoning Aristotelian physics, modern
thought abandoned the notions, schemas, and dialectical oppositions which
were meaningful only in relation to that outlook. In order for theology to
continue to furnish the mind with something meaningful, to be able to fer-
tilize it, and progress with it, it must abandon these notions.”3 Similarly: “A
theology that would not be contemporary would be a false theology.”4

1 See Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: Aubier, 1941),
220.
2 Bouillard, Conversion, 221.
3 Bouillard, Conversion, 224. I [i.e., Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange] have added the emphases.
4 Bouillard, Conversion, 229. Also see what is said (Ibid., 211) about the “relativity of
notions” in theology.

343
344 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

To these claims, we responded: If we must “abandon” the notion of for-

mal cause, which is found all throughout St. Thomas’s theology, what will
remain of this theology?
Of all the aforementioned propositions, one in particular drew our atten-
tion, namely: “While the notions change, the affirmations remain.” If we must
“abandon” the notion of formal cause, how can we maintain the meaning of
the Council of Trent’s affirmation, “sanctifying grace is the formal cause of
justification”?
We apologize for insisting once more on this point, but the importance
of this doctrinal problem, one that touches so closely upon the immutability
of Christian faith, prevails over every other consideration. This is what was
on our mind when we wrote our earlier article, along with the citations it
contained. Indeed, this question must not be considered solely from the phi-
lologist’s perspective and that of the historian but also must be considered
from the perspective of the metaphysician and the theologian, and if need
be, we will be able to elaborate on the matter [s’il est necessaire, nous pourrons
la développer].
In order to see things clearly in the problem facing us, we must recall
what an affirmation is. It is a judgment that, by means of the verb to be (the
root of all other verbs), attributes a predicate to a subject.5 Moreover, an
affirmation is true if it is conformed to reality, and it is immediately true if a
real, immutable identity exists underneath the logical diversity of its subject
and predicate.6
Hence, we asked: how can an immutable truth like, “Sanctifying grace
is the formal cause of justification,” remain standing if the notion of formal
cause changes and must have another notion substituted for it (even if such
a notion would be analogous)? We must note that the Council of Trent did
not limit itself to the use of terms contained in Scripture but, instead, specified
that the formal cause of justification is not only the imputation of Christ’s
merits or God’s favor, nor is it an interior renewal that would be brought
about solely through infused faith or infused hope, which can still exist when
one is in the state of mortal sin, but rather, is an interior renewal brought
about through sanctifying grace and charity. How can the meaning of this
affirmation made by the Council be maintained if we must “abandon” the
notion of formal cause and substitute another, analogous one for it?

5 As Aristotle says, Socrates acts means Socrates is acting.

6 See ST I, q. 13, a. 12: “In any given true affirmative proposition, the predicate and the
subject must signify something that is, in some way, the same in reality and diverse
notionally in reason [diversum secundum rationem].”—For example, Peter is the same
subject who is a man, who is large, who is learned, who is acting, who is sick, who is the
father of three children, etc.—Human nature is the principle of given properties and of
given specific activities.
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 345

Thus, as we said, we would end up having a different affirmation. The

Council’s affirmation would not be maintained, for the immutable truth of a
judgment necessarily depends on the immutable value of the notions, which
it unites by means of the verb to be.
The immutability of the union of two terms presupposes the immutabil-
ity of these very terms. Two terms that change like waves on the sea cannot
be immutably united, and in order for their union to not be immutable, all
that is needed is for one of its two terms to change.
(The waves of the sea are only an example for sensibly verifying the prin-
ciple invoked, one that is self-evident to the intellect.)
Fr. Bouillard seeks to resolve the problem by saying:

When one and the same revealed truth is expressed in different (e.g.,
Augustinian, Thomist, Suarezian, etc.) systems, the various notions used
for translating this truth are neither “equivocal” (if they were, one would
no longer be speaking about the same thing) nor “univocal” (for other-
wise, all systems [of thought] would be identical) but, rather, “analo-
gous.” In other words, they express the same reality in different ways.7

However, as we already noted [in our earlier article], this does not rep-
resent the true notion of analogy. Rather, in place of it, we here have substi-
tuted a pseudo-Thomist analogism, which represents an abuse of the notion
of analogy, just as philosophism represents an abuse of philosophy.
By proceeding along these lines, one forgets that notions that are truly
analogous do not aim at the same reality but, instead, at different realities that
are similar according to a proportion (e.g., the being [être] of God and that
of creatures, or again, the being [être] of substance and that of accidents, or
again, pulse and complexion as signs of health).
In the solution that has been proposed to us, the author speaks of “anal-
ogous notions expressing the same reality in different ways.” As we said [in
our earlier article], according to this account, the notion of conversive tran-
substantiation could be affirmed as being analogous to that of adductive, non-
conversive transubstantiation.
Now, this is false, for given that the second of these notions represents
the negation (or contradiction) of the first, the notions are not analogous. By
contrast, the being [être] of [finite] beings does not represent the negation of
God’s being but, rather, presupposes it.8

7 Bouillard, “Notions conciliaires et analogie de la vérité,” Recherches de science reli-

gieuse 35 (1948): 254. (Emphasis is Fr. Garrigou’s.)
8 Merely because the spiritualist and materialist conceptions of man express the same
reality in different ways, it does not follow that they would be analogous. One is the nega-
tion of the other.
346 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Moreover, even if this new manner of conceiving of analogy were accept-

able, the meaning of this Conciliar affirmation, “sanctifying grace is the for-
mal cause of justification,” would not remain the same if one were to “aban-
don” the notion of formal cause.
If the notion of formal cause is obsolete, the affirmation founded on this
notion is obsolete as well. And if we must “abandon” this notion, we will like-
wise need to abandon this affirmation, whether or not we wish to do so, just
as the Ptolemaic astronomical hypothesis was abandoned as a hypothetical
conceptualization that was not true through conformity to reality but, rather,
was so only as an expedient representation enabling a provisional classification
of the phenomena observed up to that point of time.—However pure the
intentions of the author whom we have critiqued might be, they do not elim-
inate the consequences of the position he has advanced.9
We firmly hold that the notion of formal cause is no more obsolete in phi-
losophy and theology than are those of matter, end, and efficient cause.10 One

Merely because the divine justice and the divine mercy express the same, sovereignly
simple divine reality in different manners, they are not analogous to each other. Rather,
the divine justice is analogous to human justice and the divine mercy to human mercy.
In contrast to what nominalists claim, one clearly cannot write “the divine mercy” in those
places where it is necessary to speak of justice, for were one to do that, one would say
that God punishes through His mercy.
Let us not forget the definition of univocal, analogous, and equivocal [things]:
“UNIVOCAL [things] are those whose term [nomen] is held in common, while the formal
notion [ratio] signified by the term is simpliciter the same. Thus, men univocally are one
in species. EQUIVOCAL [things] are those whose term is held in common, while the formal
notion [ratio] signified through the term is totally different, like the dog, which is a domes-
tic animal and the constellation canis major.”
“ANALOGOUS [things] are those whose term is held in common, while the formal notion
[ratio] signified by that term is simpliciter diverse in them, though remaining propor-
tionally the same, as being is said of God and of creatures.”
9 Moreover, the notions of the four causes are correlative. A mutual relationship exists
between the agent and the end, as well as between matter and form, between that which
is determinable and the determination given and received for an end.
10 To abandon the notion of formal cause (or, the notion of the formal constitutive) would
be to abandon the notion of essence, as well as the first principles that presuppose this
notion. It would be to fall into relativism, and the Ecclesia docens herself would fall into
such relativism if she wished to follow down this path, which her discernment prevents
her from taking.
By a necessity at once logical and metaphysical, whether or not one wishes, one erro-
neous denial would entail many others. We could consider several extreme cases. In Spi-
noza’s Ethics, the first error (the assertion that only one substance can exist) entails all
the others. This is what makes this book into an extremely tightly-woven web of errors,
and once the first error is conceded, one is lost or becomes increasingly entangled. The
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 347

will forever speak of the formal constitutive of a given substance, be it bodily

or spiritual, as well as that of our faculties, our virtues, and of justification.
Here, we must note that we can consider the notion of formal cause in
all its relations with the subsequent or subordinate notions in the Aristotelian
system, and from this perspective it has not been consecrated by the Council.
However, we can also consider it in itself, along with its roots in the very
first, absolutely immutable notions and principles of natural reason (that is,
common sense), which were made manifest by Aristotle, notions that are
more or less profoundly known by metaphysicians according to how well
they penetrate such matters.11 Understood thus, this notion, along with its
roots, is taken up for loftier consideration by theology under the twofold light
of revelation and faith accompanied by the [Spirit’s] gifts of understanding
and wisdom. Theology thus approves this notion negatively as not being
opposed to any revealed truths and then positively approves it as being suit-
able for expressing a number of them in a true manner (see ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad
2 and 3). From this perspective, a Council can approve such a notion with
the assistance of the Holy Spirit and can approve it forever.
In this sense, as we said, the Council of Trent consecrated this notion by
saying that the formal cause of justification is sanctifying grace.
Does or does not Fr. Bouillard believe that the “notion” of formal cause
“remains” after the downfall of what was obsolete in the Aristotelian cosmol-
ogy? In other words, according to him, is this notion, along with its roots, a
stable philosophical notion indicating what we all mean when we speak of the
formal constitutive of a given thing—in the case at hand, that of justification?

same is true regarding the Hegelian system, which seems to be inspired by an evil genius
that was all the more insightful for having formulated the ultimate, necessary con-
sequences of a false principle. Thus, we have these renowned chains of errors which to
the eyes of God and of angelic intellects must be absolutely outrageous and ridiculous,
indeed, truly insane. Many historians of philosophy mix together great philosophers with
great sophists, even though on other occasions they present the generative principle of
the greatest truths alongside [et] that of the greatest errors. The latter are really contra-
dictions, which are covered over by specious argumentation, like a hidden underwater
mine.
11 We have explained this at greater length in our book, Thomistic Common Sense: The
Philosophy of Being and the Development of Doctrine, trans. Matthew K. Minerd (Steu-
benville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 291–394: “How dogmatic formulas are given pre-
cision in philosophical terms” (pp. 229–44); “Do dogmatic formulas, thus given preci-
sion, remain accessible to common sense?” (pp. 245–74); “Even thus given precision,
they do not make dogma subservient to any system” (pp. 275–99). Nonetheless, in a
sense, the Church does have a philosophy, which is related to the primitive creed in the
same way that “the natural metaphysics of the intellect” is related to common sense (pp.
297–99). Concerning the intellect’s first glance over intelligible being, the good, and the
supernatural, how this first glance comes to be obscured, and how we are to retrieve it,
see pp. 301–19.
348 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

Moreover, is this a stable philosophical notion approved as such forever in a

superior light by the Council? Or, rather, is it only a hypothesis, like those
formed in the positive sciences, provisionally accepted by the Council for as
long as this happens to be accepted by philosophy and theology, an accept-
ance that will no longer hold when this hypothesis is judged to be obsolete
and therefore no longer accepted by philosophers and theologians? In the
second case, the Church will need to then provisionally accept another so-
called analogical notion. Thus, the meaning of the Council that accepted the
first notion will no longer be maintained, since the Church will no longer
accept it. However, she will express a different judgment in order to accept
another, equally provisional truth. In this way, one and the same Ecclesia
docens will never know what the exact role of sanctifying grace in justification
is. On this explanation, the role played by sanctifying grace will not vary in
itself; however, its knowable meaning would indeed vary.12 In one era, it will
be said to play the role of being the “formal cause,” and in another, it will be
designated by “another notion” (and not only by other, equivalent words).
Indeed, we must carefully distinguish, on the one hand, the changing of
notions13 from, on the other, recourse made to different, equivalent words in
order to express the same notion.
In order to explain, even today, what is meant by the term “form,” it suf-
fices to say, as is generally done in the best standard or philosophical diction-
aries, that this word has a number of meanings. In its common use, it first of
all designates the various determinations of a body’s extension: a conical form,
a spherical form. Then, philosophically, it means what determines matter in
such a way as to constitute a bodily being of this or that species—for example,
an inorganic element (gold, silver), a plant (an oak), an animal (a lion, a bird,
etc.). Thus, an animal’s sensitive soul is called its substantial form, the principle
of its specific activities. St. Thomas often says: “The form in bodily beings
determines the matter in this or that species and is the principle of its activity.”
In purely spiritual beings, like the angels, “The form is the very nature of the
thing” (cf. ST III, q. 13, a. 1).—The dictionary compiled by Littré, speaking
first primarily of bodies, says for the word form (lat. forma): “That which
determines the matter to be such or such a thing.” It is less exact when it says
before this, “The ensemble of a being’s qualities.” It would be better to say: in
each being, the form is the principle of its specific properties and activities.

12 Fr. Bouillard wrote in p. 220 of his book [Conversion]: “A new concept is introduced,
one that will command the organization of a new system. Never is the divine truth acces-
sible beyond [en deça de] every kind of contingent truth. Such is the law of the Incarna-
tion.” This entire page must be read carefully. We respond: an immutable, true affirmation
presupposes the immutability of the notions it unites together.
13 [Tr. note: In the original French, “notions” has an opening quotation mark without a
closing one.]
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 349

Consequently, we say that the rational soul is the form of the human body,
the root principle of man’s properties and his specific activities.14 We likewise
speak about that which formally constitutes a given virtue (e.g., justice) and,
in a superior order, about that which formally constitutes justification or that
by which the just man is first and foremost truly just in the eyes of God. There,
we see the verbal equivalences that enable us to understand the meaning of
the term “formal cause.” However, this notion is maintained; it is not replaced
by another.15 All of this is intellectually accessible by all in every era.
It is understandable that, sometimes, apologists who are above all pre-
occupied with the communication of Christian and Catholic doctrine to our
contemporaries would be particularly attentive to the adaptation of concepts
to the cultivated men of our era. They sometimes feel a kind of discomfort
before a number of concepts used by classical theology, such as transubstan-
tiation and the hypostatic union. Nonetheless, this difficulty is not completely
insurmountable if, in the study of traditional philosophy and theology, one
strives to pass methodically from the vague concept known by common sense
and expressed by its nominal definition to the distinct concept, which is given
greater specification with the progress of philosophy or that of sacred science.
On the other hand, one must not forget that, beyond any given apologetic
preoccupation, theology’s first mission is to determine and preserve the exact
meaning of the truths revealed by God. To this end, it must make use of truly
universal concepts that are always and everywhere valid, like those necessary
for understanding the first principles. Therefore, it must take care never to
slide down the slopes of nominalism toward relativism, even unconscious
relativism. One merely needs to recall the excesses that took place because
of such nominalism during the 14th century.
This nominalistic outlook came to argue that truths exceeding experi-
ence, such as the existence of God, are indemonstrable, that we cannot know,
even imperfectly, the nature of things, and that the concept of man does not
signify human nature but, rather, only individual men. According to such
nominalism, there is no immutable idea of human nature, even in God.
Indeed, even for Him, all that remained was knowledge of all individual
things. Consequently, even after revelation, one could no longer define the
supernatural as, “That which exceeds nature,” for nature itself would remain
unknowable on such nominalistic foundations. In all domains, the only thing

14 In order to affirm the substantial unity of human nature, the Council of Vienne defined
that the rational soul is “Of itself and essentially the form of the human body” (Denzinger,
no. 902), but it did not define that it is the sole substantial form of the human body, as
St. Thomas teaches.
15 In a recent article, Jacques Maritain showed how one can explain this notion of form
to contemporary scientists and philosophers. See Jacques Maritain, “Coopération phi-
losophique et justice intellectuelle,” Revue thomiste 46 (1946): 439ff [434–56].
350 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

remaining would be unstable notions fixed by words and ever-provisional sche-

mata.16 This represented nothing other than relativism, which has become
even more pronounced with the advent of positivism and evolutionism.—
Many of the tendencies of contemporary philosophy could lead us back to
it, and certain looseness in language arising from these tendencies could
further aggravate them. 17
In the same book, Fr. Bouillard, speaking of the authors of theological
manuals and of more erudite works as well, writes:

If these authors know that theology has not existed in its contemporary
state, as it is found in the theologian’s knowledge today, they at least
unconsciously imagine that it was already given as such in the domain
of eternal truths18 and that discursive intelligence only had to discover
it and gradually reconstruct it. By contrast, a historical study reveals
the degree to which theology is bound to time, to the becoming of the
human mind.19

However, traditional theologians are not deceived in thinking that perfect theo-
logical science exists in the domain of eternal truths in the divine intellect, in
the domain of the theologians who have arrived at the beatific vision, and that
this theological science existed in an imperfect state (while, nonetheless, already
being immutable on a good number of points) in the intellect of someone like
St. Thomas Aquinas and that of many other theologians while still here-below.
Thus, we can understand why the Holy Father said in a discourse pub-
lished by the L’Osservatore Romano on Sept. 19, 1946:

16 Many speak in a similar manner today.

17 There are many other points in Fr. Bouillard’s text that call for response from us, but
we do not have the time to do so. Let us only say that in ST I-II, q. 113, a. 8, ad 2, St.
Thomas, as ever, makes recourse to the reciprocal causality of the disposition and the
form and then writes: “The disposition of the subject precedes the reception of the form
in the order of nature; however, it follows the action of the agent through which even the
subject itself is disposed. And therefore, the movement of free choice precedes, in the
order of nature, the reception [consecutionem] of grace, although it follows the infusion
[infusionem] of grace.” Consecutio is said on the side of the subject (namely man), and
infusio on that of God who infuses.
For merit of eternal life, I meant that what is taught by the Councils is what the theologians
call “de condigno” and not only a merit of suitability “de congruo.”
Finally, although I said, “I have no desire to dispute the value of certain historical works,”
I added, “This would give way to endless discussions, for it would be undertaken outside
the light of principles.” Hence, I still can judge these works in light of the principles which
they neglect.—All the same, I have the pleasure of seeing that the recollection of these
principles is not without some effect.
18 I have added the emphases.
19 Bouillard, Conversion, 213.
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 351

Much has been said, though not with careful enough consideration,
about the “new theology,” which, since it rolls along with all things
themselves rolling along in continuous motion, itself will forever be in
motion and never will arrive at some destination. If it seemed that such
an opinion should be embraced, what would become of Catholic dog-
mas which must never change, and what would become of the unity
and stability of the faith.

THE NOTION OF THE SUPERNATURAL

In the same issue of Recherches de science religieuse,20 Fr. Henri de Lubac
wishes to prove that the natural beatitude spoken of by St. Thomas is only the
imperfect beatitude that falls to the present life, in contrast to the supernatural
beatitude (or perfect beatitude) experienced in the next life. In support of
this claim, he cites a number of texts from St. Thomas that, in fact, make use
of examples of natural beatitude precisely in the sense spoken of by Aristotle
in relation to the present life.
However, St. Thomas also spoke about the natural beatitude of the angels
in their own state as wayfarers [in their first instant of existence, prior to their
first free choice],21 and of a kind of natural beatitude had by children who
die without baptism.22
Moreover, if the perfect beatitude had in the next life (which is nothing
other than the immediate vision of the divine essence, along with the love of
God that flows from this) is TRULY SUPERNATURAL, as St. Thomas shows (in ST
I, q. 12, a. 1 and 4; q. 60, a. 5, ad 4 and 5, etc.), then it is absolutely grace-given,
exceeding the exigencies of every created and creatable intellectual nature. Con-
sequently, it is in no way owed to our nature, as the Church herself said in
condemning Baius. Otherwise, the very notion of the supernatural is what
would find itself being overthrown.
And thus, in creating man, God did not owe him the means needed for
leading him to his supernatural beatitude. Therefore, we must conclude
that man could have been created in a purely natural state, without sancti-
fying grace, the seed of eternal life.23 This means that if man had observed

20 See Henri de Lubac, “Duplex Hominis Beatitudo (Saint Thomas, Ia 2ae, q. 62, a. 1),”
Recherches de science religieuse (April-June 1948): 290–300.
21 See ST I, q. 60, a. 5; q. 62, a. 1; q. 63, a. 3.
22 See De malo, q. 5, a. 2 and 3.
23 St. Thomas says in In II Sent. d. 31, q. 1, a. 2, ad 3:
God had been able, at the beginning, when He created man, even to form from the
mud of the earth another man whom He would have left in the condition of his
nature, namely so that he would be mortal and passible, likewise experiencing con-
cupiscence’s struggle against reason [ad rationem]. Were this the case, nothing
352 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

the natural law in the present life, God would have owed it to Himself to
give man, in the next life, natural beatitude, in other words, a beatitude pro-
portionate to our nature, one that is greatly inferior to the immediate vision
of the divine essence. It would have consisted in a natural knowledge of
God through the reflection of the divine perfections in the created world.
Such knowledge would have been certain and unmixed with errors, being
likewise accompanied by rational love for God, the author of nature, pre-
ferred to all things.
This distinction of the two orders of nature and grace quite certainly is not
something foreign to St. Thomas’s thought, and it was not “forged by a certain
number of Thomist theologians,” as Fr. de Lubac claims.24 Nor is it true to
say that I supposedly have reproduced an error committed by Fr. Cathrein.
For fifty years, I have studied this problem, and the conception I present is
nothing other than what I have found in St. Thomas himself, reading him
article by article in light of his own principles and not in light of some pre-
conceived idea. And this is also what I have found said on these matters by
all the great Thomists,25 something likewise laid forth so well by the [First]
Vatican Council:

The perpetual common belief of the Catholic Church has held and holds
also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only in its
principle but also in its object; in its principle, because in the one we
know by natural reason, in the other by divine faith; in its object,
because apart from what natural reason can attain, there are proposed
to our belief mysteries that are hidden in God that can never be known
unless they are revealed by God.26

It is clear that the proper object of the divine intellect, essentia Dei immediate
et clare visa sicuti est, immensely exceeds the natural powers and exigencies

would have been detracted from human nature because this would follow from the
principles of [his] nature. However, this defect would not have the character of being
a form of fault and blame for him because this defect would not have been caused
through the [sinful exercise of his] will.
Likewise, see De malo, q. 4, a. 1, ad 14.
And again, see ST III, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2: “Also, for the perfection of the universe it suffices
that the creature be ordered in a natural manner to God as to an end.” Similarly, see ST
I, q. 23, a. 1; I-II, q. 5, a. 5; De veritate, q. 14, a. 2.
24 See Henri de Lubac, Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1946), 254.
25 I set this forth at length in the work On Divine Revelation, trans. Matthew K. Minerd
(Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), vol. 1, 475–562, there citing a great number
of texts from St. Thomas.
26 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (Denzinger, no. 3015).
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 353

of every created and creatable intellect. Otherwise, the created intellect in its
very nature would be specified by the same formal object as is the divine intel-
lect. This would represent the pantheistic confusion of these two natures.
Moreover, if the definition of sanctifying grace could thus already hold true
for the nature of the created intellect, the latter could not be elevated to a
superior order of knowledge.27
Thus, we fully accept what Fr. Charles Boyer, S.J., wrote recently con-
cerning the new notion of the supernatural proposed by Fr. de Lubac:

However, it is now time to examine the internal coherence of this new

system. Whatever divergences of opinion might exist among theo-
logians, the supernatural must at least retain the character indicated by
its name and attributed to it by the documents of the Church, namely,
that of being a reality above our nature: perfectionem quae naturalem
superet ([First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, can. 2.3, de Revelatione, Den-
zinger, no. 3028). Now, an end without which a nature is not conceiv-
able cannot be called an end that is above this nature. Such an end is
natural to that nature. It is the end that is owed to it and that God owes
to Himself to give to it. It is a properly demanded end, whereas we must
all hold that in relation to it, human nature cannot have any demand,
properly speaking. Deprived of the means of tending to this single end,
nature would exist in a violent, abnormal, and disordered state. All of
its movement would be lacking in measure [déréglé]. In particular, we
can see what would follow for a state of fallen nature.

We are not here concerned with some point of Aristotelianism. Rather,

we are concerned with something that reason finds to be necessary: a
nature, and above all grace, cannot be ordered to a unique end, without
this end entering into its own notion. A nature is an essence, which
rests on the good that is proportioned to it or which pursues this very
good. It would be contradictory to posit it without placing within its
reach the sole good for which it is made. And there is no demand more
acute, either for a created nature or for its infinitely wise Creator, than

27 Regarding the text of ST I-II, q. 62, a. 1, “However, there is a twofold human beatitude.
. . . One that is proportioned to human nature . . . whereas the other is a beatitude exceed-
ing man’s nature,” Fr. de Lubac says on page 291 of his recent article [“Duplex Hominis
Beatitudo”]: “This text is suitable for expressing the doctrine of two ‘orders,’ in the sense
that it is spoken of today, only if one already presupposes this distinction.”
There are many other, similar texts in St. Thomas (ST I, q. 23, a. 1; q. 12, a. 4; I-II, q. 3, a.
4; q. 5, a. 5; De veritate, q. 14, a. 2). Moreover, the holy Doctor presupposes what the
[First] Vatican Council will come to express later on: “The perpetual common belief of the
Catholic Church has held and holds also this: there is a twofold order of knowledge, dis-
tinct not only in its principle but also in its object, etc.” And St. Thomas has shown that
the object of the beatific vision immensely exceeds all the powers and exigencies of every
created and creatable intellect. See ST I, q. 12, a. 4; I-II, q. 5, a. 5.
354 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

that of avoiding contradiction, above all when such contradiction

would need to be found at the heart of a rational being.28

Thus, the matter is clear, and what is said here quite obviously represents
an expression of the traditional teaching concerning these topics. Thus, in
the same article, Fr. Boyer can conclude:

The intentions and attestations of an author cannot change anything:

as soon as one assigns to a given nature only one possible end, not only
is this end natural, but moreover, it is owed to it. It is no longer a grace
if it is on equal terms with creation and the other natural gifts. The
supernatural has not been exalted; it has been suppressed.29

Fr. de Lubac will perhaps respond that, according to him, human nature,
or that of the angels, does not involve anything complete and closed up within
itself, that it is not an essence that is indeed defined, with necessary properties
and a proportionate end. In that case, there no longer is a nature, properly
speaking, nor consequently, something supernatural, for the latter can be
defined only in relation to nature, which it exceeds. One would thus set out
upon the paths of nominalism, and what it led to in the 14th century is
known well-enough.30 It came to doubt the demonstrative value of the clas-
sical proofs of God’s existence and that of the immutability of the first pre-
cepts of the natural law.31
*****

28 Charles Boyer, “Nature pure et surnaturel dans le ‘Surnaturel’ du P. de Lubac,” Gre-

gorianum 28 (1947): 379–95, here 390ff.
29 Boyer, “Nature pure et surnaturel,” 392.
30 Such is the conclusion that we have defended at length elsewhere in On Divine Rev-
elation, vol. 1, chs. 11 and 12. In the same place, we set forth what the majority of Tho-
mists hold concerning the character of our natural desire to see God: a conditional and
inefficacious desire, like that by which the farmer desires rain. This desire certainly does
not prove that the essentially supernatural vision of God is owed to us, nor even that it
is possible; however, it does furnish on behalf of this possibility an argument from befit-
tingness which can forever be deepened, one that the angels know much more pro-
foundly than we do, though it nonetheless remains non-apodictic, for we cannot natu-
rally demonstrate even the possibility of an essentially supernatural mystery—and the
mystery of eternal life is of the same essentially supernatural order as those of the Holy
Trinity and the Incarnation. Nonetheless, the probability of this argument forever grows
as one deepens it. It is like a polygon inscribed within the circumference of a circle. As
its sides are multiplied, it forever draws closer to that circumference without, however,
ever reaching it.
31 There is much that could be said concerning this today. We will return to the point only
if the necessities of the controversy demand it.
O N T H E I M M U TA B I L I T Y O F D E F I N E D T R U T H S 355

We have not here undertaken a detailed and complete examination of

St. Thomas’s texts concerning the twofold beatitude [of men and angels]. It
will be taken up elsewhere by a Thomist theologian who has profoundly stud-
ied the matter.32
It will be easy to show that St. Thomas fully admits that both we and the
angels can have deliberated-love of God proceeding from our natural knowl-
edge of Him and from our will, outside of every aid coming from grace.
It is false to say that St. Thomas holds that the natural love of God is
always reduced to an instinctive, non-free natural movement and that every
love of God arising from deliberation must be supernatural and grace-given.
St. Thomas always distinguishes two loves, one proceeding from natural
knowledge and the will, and the other proceeding from supernatural knowl-
edge and infused charity.33
This new examination of the question concerning the supernatural con-
firms for us, with increasing strength, the traditional positions of the Thomist
school, positions which are perfectly conformed to those of St. Thomas.

32 [Tr. note: This is likely referring to the work of his student Marie-Rosaire Gagnebet,
“L’amour naturel de Dieu chez saint Thomas et ses contemporains,” Revue thomiste 48
(1948): 394–446; Revue thomiste 49 (1949): 31–102. Also, after this, see Marie-Rosaire
Gagnebet, “L’enseignement du magistère et le problème du surnaturel,” Revue thomiste
53 (1953): 5–27.]
33 Moreover (and this point has already been noted), by denying man’s natural last end,
one suppresses the very principle of natural ethics, “Finis enim est prior in intentione.”
One thus arrives at a very grave error, and it is not clear what means are at hand for avoid-
ing it.—Finally, if, as is claimed, St. Thomas had admitted this position, his doctrine would
lead to this error committed by Baius: “The distinction of a twofold love of God, namely,
a natural love whose object is God as the author of nature and a gratuitous love whose
object is God as beatifying, is meaningless and imaginary; it has been devised as a mock-
ery of the Sacred Scriptures and of the numerous testimonies of ancient authors” (Den-
zinger, no. 1934 [old no. 1034]).
 15
Relativism and the Immutability
of Dogma According to the
[First] Vatican Council
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

I
n these days of ubiquitous relativism, it is of great importance that we recall
what the [First] Vatican Council defined in opposition to Anton Günter’s
relativism, which the Council believed to contain the gravest of errors.
Indeed, this kind of error is graver than any given particular heresy, for such
relativism is not concerned with one or several dogmas but, rather, extends
to all of them, in the end leading to rationalism itself, indeed, in one of its
most inconsistent forms.

The Guntherian Theory: Dogmas are infallibly true,

though their truth is only relative to the state of
science and philosophy at the time of
their definition.1
Günther’s theory differed from that held by pure rationalists, because he
admitted the divine origin of Christianity, as well as a kind of infallibility in
the Church’s teaching. However, he understood this infallibility in such a way
that his conception of dogmatic development barely differed from that held
by rationalists properly so called. In the end, his doctrine represents a form
of semi-rationalism, and its generative principle is the claim that reason,
through its own proper principles, can demonstrate all the truths that God
has revealed.2 In order to justify this new way of looking at things, he had to

1 See Jean-Michel-Alfred Vacant, Études théologiques sur les constitutions du Concile du

Vatican, vol. 2 (Paris: Delhomme et Briguet, 1895), 282.
2 Anton Günter was born in Bohemia in 1783. At a rather young age, he sought to build
on the writings of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. This undertaking shook his faith. However,
under the influence of Blessed [now, St.] [Clemens Maria] Hoffbauer, he studied Sacred
Scripture and theology. His faith was completely placed back on steady footing, and he
was ordained to the priesthood in 1820. However, he then gradually came to be per-
suaded that the philosophical doctrine of the Fathers and of the Doctors of the Middle

357
358 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

interpret dogmas in a new manner, one that was opposed to the statements
of the Apostles and to the Church’s definitions.
Obviously, weighty objections were raised against this claim, but he
believed that he could resolve them by having recourse to the following prin-
ciple: reason can demonstrate revealed dogmas only after expending exten-
sive efforts in assimilating them. The Apostles and the first Councils under-
stood these revealed data very imperfectly, and their infallibility only had
served to enable them to make the best possible choice among the interpre-
tations prevailing in their own particular era. The interpretations the Church
has infallibly proposed have always been those that are best in harmony with
the scientific, philosophic, and theological culture of the age in which those
interpretations were offered. All these conciliar interpretations were the best
ones available at the very time when they came to be defined; however, with
the progress of the sciences, philosophy, and critical theology, they have come
to be replaced by others, which would, hence, draw closer to truth in its abso-
lute form and would have greater conformity with reason’s own natural lights.
Thus, reason would gradually come to demonstrate every revealed truth and
connect them to the order of philosophical truths.
Thus, according to Günther, the Council of Ephesus, in accord with the
psychology of its era, had defined that there is only one person in Jesus Christ.
[For Günther,] this statement would have contained a portion of the truth,
for Christ’s humanity, from the first moment of its existence, was united to
the Word of God. However, now that we must (according to Günther) follow
the insights of modern philosophy, which makes personality consist in self-
consciousness, we must hold that there are two persons in Jesus Christ, one
human and the other divine, for there are two consciousnesses in Him. Thus,
Christ’s holy soul was united to the Word only through knowledge and love,
as is the case for the saints, though He would be so united to a loftier degree
and with a much more intimate subordination. From this same perspective,
Günther called the Council of Trent a kind of interim between the ancient

Ages no longer sufficed for the needs of our days and believed that he was called to estab-
lish a new philosophy, which would provide a correct interpretation for the dogmas of
Christianity. His book, An Introduction to the Speculative Theology of Positive Christianity
was published in 1828 and republished in 1846–48.
Günther’s greatest adversary was Fr. Josef Kleutgen, S.J., who from 1852 onward mightily
contributed to the restoration of traditional philosophy through his two works Philoso-
phie der Vorzeit and Théologie der Vorzeit.
Gunther’s works were placed on the Index in 1857, and he died in submission to the
Church in 1863. Pius IX condemned semi-rationalism in 1857 and 1862. See Pius IX,
Eximiam tuam to the Archbishop of Cologne, June 15, 1857 (Denzinger, no. 2828 [old no.
1655]) and Gravissimas inter to the Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Dec. 11, 1862 (Den-
zinger, old nos. 1666–76).
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 359

Councils and modern times, adding that we could not know whether, in the
end, it would be replaced.
As Alfred Vacant observed regarding this matter, “Within Christian rev-
elation itself, he distinguished, on the one hand, the historical elements that
we must believe on account of God’s authority (even when we do not under-
stand how they are so) from, on the other hand, our understanding of these
elements, which he held would consist in knowing the reason why they are
so.”3 As Vacant likewise notes: “Thus, he saw in revelation nothing but a kind
of outer bark formed out of historical elements.”4 Hence, the primary object of
Divine Revelation would no longer be God Himself, His infinite perfections,
and His intimate life, as well as its relations with us in view of eternal life.
The revelation given in the Old and New Testaments would only be con-
cerned with historical facts, and human reason would seek out the explana-
tion for why they are what they are. Thus, Vacant rightly concludes: “By this
very fact, Christian doctrine ceased to be fundamentally divine and supernat-
ural. The only thing left for the divine and supernatural order was the channel
of sacred history, the teachings of the Apostles, and ecclesiastical definitions . . .
which provided him with a relative and transitory truth and perfection, not
with a [lasting] truth and an absolute perfection.”5 Thus, we here find ourselves
faced with a form of relativism.
As Cardinal Franzelin noted,6 this theory replaced the authority of the
Councils with the activity of those who cultivate sciences belonging to the nat-
ural order. The progress (or supposed progress) of philosophy became the
principal cause of dogmatic declarations, with the Holy Spirit intervening
only to give this explanation a transitory form of infallibility in accord with
the current state of the sciences. Moreover, Günther was thus led to hold that
tradition grows objectively speaking. Dogma would no longer be intrinsically
immutable but, rather, would undergo intrinsic development, as does philoso-
phy. By contrast, the Church has always said that dogma is intrinsically
immutable and that the only kind of progress involved in dogmatic devel-
opment is quoad nos, through the increasingly-explicit knowledge that we
have of dogmas. However, the latter is not perfected in itself, like a human
science that undergoes intrinsic development.

3 Vacant, Études théologiques, 284.

4 Vacant, Études théologiques, 284.
5 Vacant, Études théologiques, 284.
6 See Johannes Baptist Franzelin, De traditione, 2nd ed. [Rome: Sacra Congregatio de
Propaganda Fide, 1875], 309.
360 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

The definitions of the [First] Vatican Council concern-

ing the absolute and immutable truth of dogmas.
The [First] Vatican Council condemned the two principal errors of Günther
when it defined 1˚ that revealed doctrine is not a philosophical theory to be
perfected and 2˚ that the meaning of the Church’s teachings cannot change.
Here, we must recall several elementary points that are somewhat forgotten
in our own days.
According to the Council, what is a dogma? The Council defines what it
is by saying: “All those things are to be believed with divine and Catholic faith
that are contained in the word of God, written or handed down, and which by
the Church, either in solemn judgment or through her ordinary and universal
teaching office, are proposed for belief as having been divinely revealed.”7
Moreover, the Council defined the immutability of dogmas as follows:

For the doctrine of faith that God has revealed has not been proposed
like a philosophical system to be perfected by human ingenuity; rather,
it has been committed to the spouse of Christ as a divine trust to be
faithfully kept and infallibly declared. Hence, also, that meaning of the
sacred dogmas is perpetually to be retained which our Holy Mother
Church has once declared, and there must never be a deviation from that
meaning on the specious ground and title of a more profound under-
standing. “Therefore, let there be growth and abundant progress in
understanding, knowledge, and wisdom, in each and all, in individuals
and in the whole Church, at all times and in the progress of ages, but
only within the proper limits [sed in suo dumtaxat genere], i.e., within
the same dogma, the same meaning, the same judgment” (Vincent of
Lérins, Commonitorium primum, 23, no. 3, PL 50 668A).8

Canon 4.3, which corresponds to this declaration, states: “If anyone says
that, as science progresses, at times a sense is to be given to dogmas proposed
by the Church different from the one that the Church has understood and
understands, let him be anathema.”9
*****
As Vacant says in the aforementioned work, “In order to fall under the
Council’s anathema and be guilty of heresy, it suffices that one claim that, on
account of the progress of science, there is sometimes room to attribute another

7 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 3 (Denzinger, no. 3011 [old no., 1792]). Also, see
Vacant, Études théologiques, 82ff.
8 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, ch. 4 (De fide et ratione, in fine) (Denzinger, no. 3020
[old. no., 1800]).
9 [First] Vatican Council, Dei filius, can. 4.3 (Denzinger, no. 3043 [old no. 1818]).
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 361

meaning to the dogmas proposed by the Church, one differing from the mean-
ing that she once gave for them and, indeed, continues to give for them.”10
Moreover, as the same theologian notes, this conciliar teaching is “the
consequence of the nature of truth and of infallibility.”
Indeed, the truth of an affirmation does not consist in its conformity with
the human knowledge attained in each era. Rather, it consists in its conformity
with the reality of things. If what we affirm is [what we affirm it is], our affir-
mation is true and will forever remain so. Even if this affirmation is con-
cerned with a contingent fact that has already taken place, like, “The Messiah
was born in Bethlehem,” it will forever remain true that this fact has taken
place and that the Messiah was born in Bethlehem.11 It will remain forever
true that He died on the Cross for our salvation. And in the case of truths
that dominate time and space, abstracting from the hic et nunc, like, “sancti-
fying grace is the formal cause of justification, that which makes us just in
the eyes of God, whether we be speaking of a baptized child or an adult,” such
a truth will remain forever and immutably true.
Moreover, God’s infallibility, and that which He communicated to the
Apostles and to the Church, consists in not being able to fall into error. There-
fore, the definitions that are infallibly proposed by the Church cannot be erro-
neous and never can become such, since the truth is intrinsically immutable.
The Savior’s words hold true for them as well, “Heaven and earth will pass
away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt 24:35, RSV). For example, the
Council of Ephesus’s definition regarding the unity of personhood in Christ
is no less true today (and, indeed, forever) than it was when it was first pro-
nounced. The doctrine of the Hypostatic Union cannot change. It could be
proposed in a more explicit manner in response to new errors, but it will not
change. What the Church has infallibly affirmed cannot change in meaning.12
*****
As Vacant notes, we must add that, “The expressions used by the Council
established that the Church never removes anything from Christian doctrine,
nor does she add any element to it.”13 Indeed, according to the Council, this
doctrine is a divine deposit entrusted to the Church so that she may faithfully

10 Vacant, Études théologiques, 286.

11 A truth is relative to time only when this relativity is mentioned in its statement. For
example: “The Messiah will be born in the future in Bethlehem,” or even, “The Messiah
is being born at this very moment in Bethlehem.” However, following this, it will forever
remain true that He was born in Bethlehem.
12 It will forever remain true that in Jesus Christ there is only one person ontologically
speaking, even though He has two consciousnesses of the same self and two freedoms,
one of which is perfectly subordinated to the other.
13 Vacant, Études théologiques, 288.
362 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

guard it, leaving it neither fall into ruin nor be forgotten, and so that she may
infallibly expound it: doctrina tanquam divinum depositum Christi Sponsae
tradita, fideliter custodienda et infallibiliter declaranda. This truth’s guardian
is not the private reason of Christian philosophers, however penetrating they
may be. Rather, it is the Holy Church, established by God and His Christ, with
the special assistance promised to Peter, his successors, and the bishops sub-
mitted to him (Mt 16:8 and 28:19–20). Therefore, the Church cannot leave
anything in the divine deposit fall into ruin, for she must faithfully guard it.
No more can she add any foreign doctrine to this divine deposit. Indeed,
such new elements could only come from new revelations (which are not part
of this divine deposit) or from the human mind’s own, ever-fallible discoveries.
This point of doctrine was confirmed by the condemnation of the fol-
lowing modernist propositions in the Holy Office’s decree Lamentabili:

(21) Revelation, constituting the object of the Catholic faith, was not
completed with the Apostles.

(54) Dogmas, sacraments, and hierarchy, both their notion and reality,
are only interpretations and evolutions of the Christian intelligence that
have increased and perfected by an external series of additions the little
germ latent in the Gospel.

(58) Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with
him, in him, and through him.14

In contrast to these condemned propositions, the Church holds that Rev-

elation, which constitutes the object of Catholic faith, came to a close with the
death of the last of the Apostles. According to her, dogmas are not mere inter-
pretations offered by Christian intelligence but, rather, are immutable truths.
The approval that the Church sometimes accords to certain private rev-
elations, like those related to the worship [culte] owed to the Sacred Heart,
only provides a guarantee that these revelations do not contain anything that
would be contrary to Christian doctrine and that they can be believed with-
out jeopardizing the rules of prudence and piety. However, this approval does
not make these private revelations enter into the Church’s doctrine.
For all the more reason, the Church holds that Christian doctrine is not
proposed to men so that it may receive perfections from them, as though it
were something akin to a philosophical theory. Men would alter the nature
of the divine deposit if they strove to bring it to completion. “This is why,” as
Vacant says, “this deposit was entrusted to the Church and not to philos-
ophers and learned men. . . . The assistance that God gives her is a sure pledge
. . . that she will never present us with a human doctrine as though it were the

14 Denzinger, nos. 3421, 3454, and 3458 [old nos., 2021, 2054, and 2058].
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 363

divine doctrine of Christ.”15 This would be contrary to the unity of faith, which
unites the faithful of all times and places. In order to have this unity of faith
proclaimed by St. Paul (Eph 4:4–6), it suffices that the principal revealed
truths be explicitly believed, whereas the others can be implicitly believed.

Progress in knowledge of dogmas.

Revealed doctrine has an inexhaustible fecundity, and it remains forever living.
We can forever deepen our understanding of it and discover in it aspects that
we have heretofore only implicitly known. Thus, our knowledge of dogmas pro-
gresses, even though those dogmas remain intrinsically immutable, and this
knowledge has indeed progressed in extent [étendue], clarity, and certitude—for
example, through the infallible proclamation of the dogmas of the Immaculate
Conception and that of the Pope’s infallibility when he speaks “ex cathedra.”
This progress in our knowledge of dogmas comes about in particular in
the midst of the Church’s struggles against errors and heresies, which God
permits in order for the truth to be set forth in greater light, just as He permits
evil for the sake of a greater good. Preparation for this progress is brought
about through private studies undertaken by theologians responding to the
needs of souls throughout the ages.
Quite correctly, Vacant notes16 that this forward march may be slowed
down or accelerated by events, but it is never reversed. In it, we see Prov-
idence leading the Church onward, and we can distinguish three successive
phases within this forward march by distinguishing each of their particular
concerns: the positive theology of the Fathers, the speculative theology of the
Doctors of the Middle Ages, and the critical theology of modern theologians.
The new methodologies are grafted onto the older ones. However, they must
not make them disappear, for this would compromise this progress’s unity,
which in the words of Vincent of Lérins, is comparable to that of a growing
human body. The teachings and methodologies of each era correspond to its
needs, to the need to combat this or that sort of error.
Thus, the knowledge of dogma progresses for each believer who wishes
to be instructed, to pray, and to place his faith into practice, as it also pro-
gresses for the Church herself.
St. Vincent of Lerins, who was cited by the Council, said that this repre-
sents progress “in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom,” in opposition to
those who every day seek out ever-new novelties, one after another, forever
claiming to alter our religion by way of addition, alteration, or removal.17

15 Vacant, Études théologiques, 292.

16 See Vacant, Études théologiques, 310ff.
17 See Vincent of Lérins, Commonitorium, no. 21.
364 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

In this progress, even for the Church herself, the first thing to be done
is to understand that there is a point of doctrine to be examined (e.g., on
account of a deviation that seems to be flaring up in certain places). Then,
the question is debated in order to prepare her solution and bring it to full
maturation, through [theological] science, considering this particular point
and looking into what is in conformity with the documents and spirit of
orthodox tradition, as was done for the question concerning the privilege of
the Immaculate Conception. Finally, the point thus examined at length will
be solemnly defined by an act, which will make it a dogma of Catholic faith.
In this slow progress by the Church in coming to a definitive declaration con-
cerning controversial questions, we see her wisdom, which measures out and
weighs all of her judgments so as to assure their harmony. This is indeed what
St. Vincent of Lérins said about such progress: progress “in understanding,
knowledge, and wisdom . . . within the same dogma, in eodem dogmate, the
same meaning, in eodem sensu, and the same judgment, in eadem sententia.”
This progress will be a passage from what is implicit to what is explicit, as we
see in the works that prepared for the definition of the Immaculate Concep-
tion and that of the Pope’s infallibility.18
Theological science can continue to progress in clarity after the defini-
tion of a dogma by examining ever more deeply its relations with other truths
of faith and with the certitudes of reason. Here again, we will have growth in
our understanding of each dogma, knowledge [science] of its relations with
others, and then wisdom, that is, the superior synthesis connecting all dog-
mas to God sub ratione Deitatis, to His intimate life.
*****
Likewise, in the same work, Vacant rightly states:

The centuries when wisdom will develop will be those of lofty specula-
tion and great faith, such as the 13th century. . . . Theologians even point
out that no truth belongs to faith and theology except inasmuch as it is
connected to God sub ratione Deitatis. Therefore, the wondrous syn-
thesis of Christian doctrine, the Summa theologiae of St. Thomas Aqui-
nas, is arranged into three parts, wherein all the dogmas of faith are
connected to God who is considered as the principle, to God consid-
ered as the end, and to God who became incarnate in order to open to
us the supernatural path leading to possession of this same God.19

18 We must note that the implicit faith (or, vague [confuse] faith) had by past saints was
livelier (and thus, more profound, despite its still-vague form of expression) than the
explicit faith of the theologians of later eras when these theologians do not have as
elevated a degree of charity, faith, the other infused virtues, and the seven gifts of the
Holy Spirit.
19 Vacant, Études théologiques, 319.
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 365

The Spirit’s gifts of understanding, knowledge, and wisdom contributed

to this great synthesis, which quite clearly proceeds from the contemplation
of divine things.

Consequences of the Council’s Doctrine

When theologians come to devote their labor above all to historical-critical
studies, they give the greatest attention to the rules of historical methodology,
and they indeed should. Nonetheless, the theologian must take heed that he
not become a mere historian, as though he no longer needed a philosophical
mindset and as though the habitus of theological science were no longer nec-
essary for him. This path would gradually lead him to a position similar to
that of Günther who, as we have seen, no longer saw in revelation anything
but a kind of outer bark of philosophical truths, a bark formed from the his-
torical elements of the Old and New Testaments, with human reason, psychol-
ogy, and philosophical analyses seeking out explanations for these elements.
Hence, the primary object of Divine Revelation would no longer be God Him-
self, His infinite perfections, His intimate life, and its relations with us with
regard to eternal life. The Revelation of the Old and New Testaments would
no longer be concerned with anything other than historical facts, the history
of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and the prophets, as well as the history of
Jesus Christ and the apostles. And to know the explanation for these facts,
theology properly so called would no longer be necessary. It would suffice to
have, along with historical methodology, that of religious psychology and
philosophical investigations, which no longer have the ambition of discovering
the absolute and immutable truth but, rather, only a truth that is relative to
the current state of science and, therefore, a truth that is forever provisional,
perhaps drawing closer to the absolute truth, though without ever attaining
it. From this perspective, theology properly so called would be suppressed and
reduced to philosophy and the history of religions.20 The supernatural mys-
teries themselves would be reduced to the order of philosophical mysteries, as
Günther said. And thus, we would find ourselves back at that form of semi-
rationalism that denies the very order of essentially supernatural truths and
of supernatural life properly so called. The words of Revelation would only
have a phenomenal value for arousing our religious experience, as the mod-
ernists said. It would no longer have an ontological and transcendent value.
Dogmas would only have a practical value. They would tell us to behave
toward Jesus as though we were faced with a divine person.21 Religious experi-

20 Instead of making use of history, positive theology would, rather, be reduced to his-
tory, and speculative theology would be reduced to philosophy (or, rather, to philosoph-
ical investigations that no longer hope to arrive at absolute truth).
21 See Lamentabili, no. 26 (Denzinger, no. 3426 [old no. 2026]).
366 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

ence, which is found in various degrees in all religions, would be substituted

for infused faith, which enables us to infallibly and supernaturally adhere
propter auctoritatem Dei revelantis, on account of the authority of God who
reveals, to the absolute truth of what He has revealed to us.
This supposed progress in knowledge of dogmas would, in fact, repre-
sent a form of utter regression as well as the path leading directly to pure
rationalism.
The life of the Infallible Church marches in the opposite direction. As was
defined by the [First] Vatican Council, she faithfully guards and infallibly
declares the sacred deposit of Divine Revelation concerning the mysteries of
God’s intimate life, those concerning the Incarnation, the Redemption, and
eternal life. And if she progresses in her knowledge concerning dogmas, she
does so forever in the same direction and sense. Thus, the absolute truth of God’s
word is preserved in accord with these words spoken by our Savior: “Heaven
and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mt 24:35, RSV).
However, we must understand aright the profound meaning of this
assertion by our Savior. It goes much further and far higher, and in order for
it to soar upward, it must have an unshakeable foundation.
In order for Christ’s words to not pass away, the notions and judgments
they express must have more than a phenomenal value (i.e., one limited to the
order of external and internal, transitory, sensible phenomena). They must have
an ontological and transcendent value in the order of being and its immutable
laws. Likewise, these notions must be able to express God’s intimate life with
an absolute truth, despite the imperfections befalling analogical knowledge.
This is what we have shown at great length elsewhere, in the first volume
of our De revelatione, in the chapters where we critique agnosticism by
defending the ontological value of the first notions and principles of reason,22
as well as in in our defense of the transcendent and analogical value of the
same notions and principles.23 We have studied this question over the course
of many years and are ready to defend what we have said about it.
This twofold ontological and transcendent value of the first notions does
not cease to be certain merely because some people who have never studied
these problems deeply enough do not understand it and thus are led to a
wholly superficial and false notion of analogy. We will return to it [sic]. There
is no small danger involved in setting aside the task of deeply studying St.
Thomas’s thought, opting instead to read modern philosophers who, like
Henri Bergson and many others, are much closer to nominalism than to tra-
ditional realism.

22 See Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, vol. 1, trans. Matthew Minerd

(Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021), 411–23.
23 Garrigou-Lagrange, On Divine Revelation, 423–48.
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 367

This would lead one to say that in the era of Modernism, grave problems
were posed that the modernists themselves did not know how to rightly
resolve, though the resolution to those problems still awaits discovery. Indeed,
one would thus even be led to place in doubt the demonstrative value of the
traditional proofs of God’s existence and to say that while human reason can
arrive at this demonstration (as the [First] Vatican Council stated and as is
made clear in the Anti-Modernist Oath), it has, in fact, never yet arrived at
such demonstrative knowledge.
The preceding pages are only a commentary on these words spoken by
our Savior: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass
away.” This divine affirmation, superior to every denial and existing in a light
that immeasurably exceeds that of natural reason, acknowledges that the
notions needed for the expression of Christian revelation have an absolutely
immutable real value. Not only does it recognize this fact, but it also confirms
it in the loftiest manner, which will be exceeded only by that which will come
to us from the immediate vision of the divine essence. No believer places this
in doubt.24

24 Concerning the first notions and first principles, we are surprised to read the following
lines regarding Christian Wolff in the recent text by Étienne Gilson, L’Être et l’essence
(Paris: Vrin, 1948), 176:
Wolff’s influence over modern scholasticism sometimes goes much further, and we
can see it acting even on the philosophical exegesis of Thomism itself. See, for
example, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu, son existence et sa nature, 3rd ed.
(Paris: Beauchesne, 1920), 170–79, where the “principle of raison d’être,” according
to which “every being has a sufficient reason,” is there connected to the principle
of identity through a reductio ad absurdum and, in this sense, made analytic. In
this text (p. 175), we are assured that those who hold a different position on these
matters in some other way separate themselves “from traditional philosophy.” Yes,
from what it has become from the time of Leibnitz and Wolff, though it represents
the very negation of that of St. Thomas Aquinas.
I have never read the works of Wolff, but I am well-enough aware of the use he made of
the principle of sufficient reason, particularly in relation to both divine and human free-
dom, to be able to say that a great distance separates my thought from his concerning
this matter, as can be seen by reading the same book, Dieu, 590–672. [Reginald Garri-
gou-Lagrange, God: His Existence and His Nature, A Thomistic Solution of Certain Agnostic
Antinomies, vol. 2, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1949), 269–354.] What I have
called the principle of raison d’être is formulated: “Every being must have its raison d’être
either in itself, if it exists through itself, or in another, if it does not exist through itself.”
This raison d’être must be understood analogically in various senses: 1˚ of the formal
cause, in relation to the properties that derive from it, 2˚ of the efficient cause in relation
to what it produces, and 3˚ of the final cause in relation to the means for which it is the
raison d’être, as well as to everything that is ordered to it.
Conceived in this way, the principle of raison d’être is a general principle commonly
received in traditional philosophy. The principles of efficient causality and that of finality
are derived from it, for the efficient cause and the final cause are the extrinsic raisons
368 R ÉG I N A L D G A R R I G O U - L A G R A N G E , O P

d’être of every contingent being and of its acts. For its own part, the formal cause of a
being is the reason for its properties, and matter is the reason for the corruptibility of
bodily beings. In this sense, as St. Thomas says, following Aristotle, the four causes each
correspond to a question propter quid. See St. Thomas, In II Phys., lect. 10. Also see Gar-
rigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomistic Thought, trans. Patrick Cummins (St.
Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1950), 31–36.
As regards the subordination of these principles to the principle of identity or of contra-
diction (“that which is is; that which is not, is not”), I did not find it in Wolff but for years
have read it in St. Thomas’s Commentaries on Aristotle and in the Summa theologiae,
which I even cited at considerable length in the pages cited by Gilson.
Indeed, we read in In VI Meta., ch. 4, lect 6, that the three conditions for every first prin-
ciple of reason belong to the principle of contradiction and that the other principles are
subordinate to it. The same assertion is made frequently in St. Thomas’s writings. For
example, see ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2:
That which first falls into [our intellect’s] apprehension is being, the understanding
of which is included in everything that someone grasps. And therefore, the first inde-
monstrable principle is that we cannot simultaneously affirm and deny [the same
thing of the same subject in the same respect], which is founded on the notion of
being and non-being, and all the other principles are founded on this principle, as
the Philosopher says in Metaphysics 4.4.
Likewise, in ST II-II, q. 1, a. 7:
The articles of faith are related to the doctrine of faith as first self-evident principles
are related to the doctrine that can be had through natural reason. A kind of order
can be found in these principles, so that certain ones are implicitly [lit. simpliciter;
Leonine: implicite] contained in the others. Thus, all the principles are reduced to
one principle as to the first principle: It is impossible to simultaneously affirm and
deny [the same thing of the same subject in the same respect], as is clear from what
the Philosopher says in Metaphysics 4.4.
John of St. Thomas, who wrote before Wolff, said in his Cursus philosophicus, Logica, q.
25, a. 2:
It is not contradictory to say that self-evident propositions could be proven through
an extrinsic middle term, or a deduction ad impossibile, for this is not opposed to
there being an immediate and intrinsic connection of subject and predicate. For this
reason, Metaphysics explains and defends all the other principles, indeed not doing
so ostensively (through a demonstrative middle term) but, rather, by deducing ad
impossibile, indeed, to that supreme principle: “Everything either is or is not.”
The Thomist Antoine Goudin speaks in the same manner in his Philosophia juxta incon-
cussa tutissimaque D. Thomae dogmata, vol. 4, pt. 4, disp. 1, q. 1, a. 1 (On the principles
of knowledge [lit. cognitianis; in Goudin: cognitionis]): “The first complex principle of
knowledge [i.e., in the second operation of the intellect] is this: ‘It is impossible that the
same thing simultaneously be and not be.’ We see this stated by Aristotle in Metaphysics
4.4 and by St. Thomas in ST I-II, q. 94, a. 2.” The first edition of this work by Goudin was
published in 1671 in Lyon. Suárez also taught this doctrine in Disputationes metaphysi-
cae, disp. 3, sect. 3, no. 9.
Therefore, in the form that we propose it, this principle is something quite earlier than
Leibniz and Wolff and certainly does not represent the negation of St. Thomas’s doctrine.
RELATIVISM AND THE IMMUTABILITY OF DOGMA 369

Matters would be completely different if we spoke of a principle of sufficient reason, taken

in a univocal manner and leading to the psychological determinism of moral necessity,
as much for the divine freedom as for human freedom, an outlook that we have forever
combatted.
Finally, we can be quite certain that St. Thomas held that it would be absurd to claim that
a contingent being can exist without an efficient cause and without an uncaused efficient
cause. If this is placed in doubt, the proofs for God’s existence per viam causalitatis effi-
cientis would no longer be apodictic.
Moreover, with St. Thomas and Cajetan, against the line of philosophers who admit the
ontological argument, we have always distinguished between existentia signata, con-
ceived after the manner of a quiddity (quid sit existentia) and existentia exercita or de
facto existence. On this, see God: His Existence and His Nature, A Thomistic Solution of
Certain Agnostic Antinomies, vol. 1, trans. Bede Rose (St. Louis, MO: Herder, 1949), 68–
69. This classic distinction is known by all. It also follows from what we have said that
God’s rights over human societies are immutable, exactly the same today as they were
in the past [sic].
 16
Correspondence
Maurice Blondel and
Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

We received the following letter from Maurice Blondel, along with his
request that we publish it. Following it, the reader will find the counter-obser-
vations that our colleague feels are necessary.

O
ut of respect for the truth, I feel duty-bound to respond to the formu-
las that were critiqued in Angelicum 23, no. 3–4, pp. 129–30, and
request that the editors of this periodical insert my note for the sake
of rectifying this matter.
First of all, my text has been cited in a mutilated fashion. Moreover, the
citations thereof overlook the full context of my complete position in these
matters, failing to study the various aspects of my outlook, which must be
considered as a whole in its unity if it is to be understood aright.
In no domain have I ever placed the immutable character of the truth
in doubt or even in danger, above all in matters concerning our essential
destiny.
Moreover, I never have substituted a philosophy of action for the phi-
losophy of thought and of being. However, having dedicated two volumes to
Thought and intending to deal with the study of beings in relation to Being,
I could not fail to be aware of the inviolable role that is played by action,
whether faithful or rebellious. Therefore, I felt it necessary to indicate how
and why human choice [option], in the reality of that very rebellion, can con-
tradict the value of the first principles without ever suppressing this value.
Here too, it is not the case that I overthrow either the definition of the truth
or its requirements.
Throughout all my works, I have safeguarded the indelible office [func-
tion] of the truth and have maintained the conciliar propositions in the face
of the avenging responsibilities of a false or culpable choice [option]. Did not
Christ say: “Ego sum via, veritas et via?” Now, does this not show us that
mere speculative truth does not suffice and that we must set ourselves in
motion, illuminated by this lamp for our feet, lucerna pedibus, spoken of in
Ps. 118—a forward march and a light that must lead us not only to knowledge
but also to eternal life and divine adoption? There is nothing more immutable

371
372 MAURICE BLONDEL; RÉGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, OP

than this truth, which ultimately leads us to God, and the condemned prop-
osition (Denzinger, no. 3458 [2058]) represents the utter antithesis of the
entire effort I have undertaken throughout my philosophical work. Gratui-
tous consequences are attributed to me, even though they are utterly opposed
to my most formally held conclusions.
When the reproach is registered against me, claiming that I overlook the
absolute sufficiency of the definition of truth, “Adaequatio rei et intellectus,”
I should be the one to protest against this reduction to the words res et intel-
lectus, which do not suffice to exhaust everything involved in these matters:
indeed, res does not suffice for designating the loftiest realities, and the intel-
lect does not exhaust the science of things and of beings, nor the reality of
the intimate activities [opérations] of our conscience or our duties, nor the
profound truth of our supernatural destiny. Therefore, if there is a deficiency,
it is to be found in the doctrine to which one would like to reduce my own
position. And even so, does not a Thomist adage itself declare, “Differentiae
rerum sunt innumerae et innominatae[; the differences of things are number-
less and unnamed]”? Indeed, is not this something that we must necessarily
admit, lest the secret life of the soul be underestimated, along with the merit
of being docile to the divine influence so as to faithfully fulfill our supernat-
ural vocation? Therefore, neither novelty nor fantasy is involved in the idea
of broadening out philosophical research so that it may include the study of
action, so that we might thereby provide a full account of the truth of the
mysterious salvation to which we have been called, at the price of our docile
contribution to this appeal, concerning which St. Thomas tells us that the
entire movement of nature conspires to multiply the elect, so much so that
one of his briefest and most profound formulas is that omnia intendunt
assimilari Deo; all things strive to be assimilated unto God.
And, without ever having wished to take advantage of the lofty appro-
bations that I have received from Leo XIII to His Holiness Pius XII, allow me
to cite here the witness received by the Archbishop Bonnefoy of Aix, who,
during his ad limina visit in 1912, obtained the following words from the
Sovereign Pontiff, Pius X: “I am certain of the orthodoxy of M. Blondel. I
instruct you to tell him this.” I possess this statement, signed by my Arch-
bishop, recounting at length his discussion with the Pope concerning the
encyclical Pascendi, and from that time, Archbishop Bonnefoy strongly urged
me to make it known.
Maurice Blondel
Aix-en-Provence, Mar. 12, 1947
*****
We will respond to Maurice Blondel as follows.
As we said in an article found in this same issue, we in no way question
Monsieur Blondel’s personal faith, nor the lofty elevation of his thought,
CO R R E S P O N D E N CE 373

which we have always recognized. Nonetheless, we have examined what can

be deduced from certain assertions that he has made, along with what has,
in fact, been deduced from them on a number of occasions.
1˚ Our critique is concerned above all with two words in the proposition
that he wrote in 1906: “By rights, in place of the abstract and chimerical ‘Adae-
quatio speculativa rei et intellectus,’ we must substitute methodical research,
the adaequatio realis mentis et vitae.”
In order to bring an end to these discussions, which now span over forty
years, we kindly asked him to retract the word “chimerical” and to replace
the words “must substitute” with “should be supplemented by.” Why? Because
affective knowledge through connaturality or sympathy does indeed supple-
ment notional truth. Nonetheless, it presupposes the value of the latter,
through conformity to reality, and does not serve as a substitute for it, at least
if one wishes to avoid the pragmatism toward which the philosophy of action
tends to slide.
We recognize that this twofold rectification is difficult for Monsieur
Blondel, for the aforementioned proposition represents, as it were, a sum-
mary of his entire book L’Action (1893), where similar formulas can be found
repeatedly, indeed, including ones that are even more deserving of critique
(see pp. 297, 341, 350, 426, 435, 437, and 463). We pointed out these passages
earlier in our own article. Most especially in these formulas, we can see every-
thing that separates the philosophy of action (which defines truth in function
of action) from the philosophy of being (which defines truth in function of
being). The ultimate outcome of such a position is an ethics (i.e., the philos-
ophy of human action) that lacks sufficient ontological foundation. Now, the
good presupposes being and truth [le vrai]; otherwise, we cannot be certain
whether a given good would be a true good.
2˚ Moreover, we critiqued a similar proposition found in the more recent
work, L’Être et les êtres (1935), p. 415: “No intellectual evidence, even that of
principles . . . imposes itself upon us with a spontaneously and infallibly con-
straining certitude.” Above, in our article, we presented this text in full, with
its complete context, and we maintain that this proposition, so formulated,
cannot be admitted.
Moreover, we recognize easily enough that when, from the perspective
of the philosophy of action, one affirms the existence of God according to the
exigencies of action, this affirmation is conformed to the divine reality, though
the certitude of this conformity is not objectively sufficient (that is, through
the demonstrative force of the proofs for God’s existence), but, instead, is
only subjectively sufficient, “according to the exigencies of action,” like the
Kantian proof for God’s existence.
As we have said, this does not suffice. Following this path, one ends up
not being able to prove the fact of Revelation through the probative force of
374 MAURICE BLONDEL; RÉGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, OP

miracles. Instead, all that will be had is a subjectively sufficient certitude con-
cerning this fact of Revelation, thus indeed having at hand a notion of reli-
gious experience, though one that is not distinguished clearly enough from
that had in some form of false religion, wherein sentimentalism and self-
reflective concerns [recherche de soi] take precedence over true faith and true
love of God. The Encyclical Pascendi noted this in speaking about that form
of religious experience which is not sufficiently founded on the truth, due to
what it lacks in regard to the evident credibility concerning the truths of faith
(Denzinger, no. 3484 [2081]).
Likewise, it is of utter importance that we maintain the immutability of the
notions that enter into Conciliar definitions. Now, Blondel writes in La Pensée
(1934), vol. 2, p. 431, “It is deceptive to speak of an overly clear intuition of math-
ematical and rational truths. . . ,” and in vol. 2, p. 496, “Everywhere that there
is a real distinction between essence and existence—in other words, everywhere
outside of the divine mystery—every kind of natural intuition is impossible, as
is every kind of direct and exact grasping of reality [toute capitation directe et
exacte].” He reduces our concepts to “ever-provisional schemata,” drawing their
stability from “linguistic artifices” (La Pensée, vol. 1, p. 130).
He notes quite surely that even according to St. Thomas, “Differentiae
essentiales rerum sunt saepe innominatae, the essential differences of things are
often unnamed.” Yes, but then, not knowing them explicitly and distinctly, we
do not affirm them, and truth is formally found only in judgment.—Are judg-
ments that are universally recognized as being true themselves true through
conformity to reality? And in the case of first principles, is their evidence neces-
sitating, by itself and on account of the very nature of our intellect? Is it evident
to every man that he cannot, at one and the same time, exist and not exist?
*****
3˚ Finally, we examined a number of recent deviations concerning the
nature of theology, grace, original sin, and transubstantiation and the real
presence. We noted that these deviations come from neglect of—or the more-
or-less pronounced abandonment of—the traditional definition of truth (the
conformity of judgment with reality and its immutable laws), along with the
acceptance of the definition of truth proposed by the philosophy of action (the
conformity of judgment with human life, in accord with the exigencies of
action), a definition that, as we have said, slides toward pragmatism.
This is, moreover, what motivated the Holy Office’s Dec. 1, 1924 con-
demnation of 12 propositions drawn from the philosophy of action. [In our
article,] we set forth the principal condemned propositions.
In order to explain these various points, we wrote, in this same issue,
our article concerning truth and the immutability of dogma.

Fr. Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, OP

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 Index
analogy of truth. See truth Aubert, Roger, 11, 375
Aquinas: and the Church Fathers, 7, 44, Augustine, 10, 44–45, 56, 58, 103, 152,
150, 159, 174–75, 235; De veritate, 155, 157, 220, 223, 230–31, 280–82,
284, 293, 310, 334, 352–53; as exam- 327, 328, 337, 342, 375, 383, 386
ple to imitate without mere repetition, Augustinianism, 40, 42, 220, 231, 299,
6, 28, 38, 52, 141–42, 182, 232–33, 320, 345
248, 250–51; enduring value of his
thought and metaphysics, 16–17, 23,
128–29, 137, 141, 170, 189–92, 238, Benda, Julien, 158, 375
250, 303; and the Eucharist, 38, 270, Bergson, Henri, 26, 28, 30–31, 233, 274,
288, 299–300, 323, 328; fidelity to, 9, 366, 375, 384
23–24, 130, 187–92, 259; intellectus in, Bernardi, Peter, 26, 375
65–67, 70–72, 201, 292, 310–11; the
Blondel, Maurice, vii, 26, 28, 33–40, 52–
mind/spirit/wisdom of Thomas, 27,
54, 57–59, 84, 170, 290, 317, 318,
29, 34, 231; and modernity, 23–24;
331, 334, 335, 371–77, 381, 382, 387,
opposed to nominalism and univoc-
388; infidelity in later books to his
ity of being, 20, 29, 198, 200, 203, 210,
original thought, 339–42; implica-
219, 277–80, 285, 320, 349; place in
tion for doctrine on the Eucharist,
history of theology, 31, 44, 131, 159,
299–301; theory of truth, implica-
197, 230; and proofs for the existence
tion for original sin, 294–98; on
of God, 202, 331, 339–40, 369; “a
truth, 270–73, 288–94, 305–11, 334–
small error in principle,” 279, 291,
36, 338–42
294, 301; Summa contra gentiles, 291;
Summa theologiae (ST) I, 75, 200, 219, Boersma, Hans, 22, 25–26, 47, 376
273, 280, 282, 285, 292–93, 299–300, Bonino, Serge-Thomas, 1, 82, 376, 380
311, 326–27, 330, 333, 344, 347, 351– Bonnefoy, Jean-François, 11, 81, 372, 376
53; I-II, 66, 125, 217, 272–73, 284,
Bonventure of Bagnoregio, 40, 60, 155,
292–93, 304, 308, 311, 335, 336, 342,
189
350, 353, 368; II-II, 55, 64, 99, 101,
103, 105, 272–73, 281, 283, 368; III, Bosschaert, Dries, 61, 376
184, 348, 352; theology of faith, 64, Bouillard, Henri, 5–9, 16, 19, 25–26,
101, 103, 289; traditional Thomism as 33–47, 53, 54, 58–61, 84, 135, 143,
in perfect conformity to Thomas, 314, 146, 149–53, 161, 168, 169, 173, 176,
352, 355; use of Aristotle, 7, 31, 60, 179–80, 182, 193, 195–96, 245, 260,
117, 119, 150, 233–34, 277, 287, 337. 287–89, 292, 312–14, 327, 343, 345,
See also theology; truth 347, 348, 350, 376, 384; on analogy,
Aristotle, 7, 95; on the intellect, 13, 31, 40–42; on dogma, 8, 149–52, 169,
65, 332–34, 337–38, 343–46. See also 260–62, 262–64, 312–14, 343–51; on
Aquinas judgment, 7–9, 19

391
392 T H E T H O M I S T I C R E S P O N S E

Boutroux, Émile, 54, 306, 311, 336, 376 378–79, 384–87; on Corpus Mysti-
Boyer, Charles, 7, 33, 77, 353, 354, 376 cum, 183–85; response to Dom-
inicans, 20–22; on Surnaturel, 314,
Bruckberger, Raymond-Léopold, iii, v,
351–54
vii, 5, 15–17, 24, 75, 78, 84, 127, 131,
377, 384 de Tonquédec, Joseph, 112, 294, 315,
379, 388
D’Ettore, Dominic, 65, 379
Cajetan, Thomas de Vio, 10, 64, 66, 72,
83, 95, 105, 165, 184, 285, 369, 379 Descoqs, Pedro, 292, 293, 297, 379
Cavallera, Ferdinand, 103, 120, 246, 377 development of doctrine, 63–69, 72–73
Cessario, Romanus, 48, 377, 389 dialogue, limits of, 78–79, 127–32
Charlier, Louis, 10, 36, 61–62, 77, 81, dogma, debate between Garrigou-
377, 379, 385 Lagrange and Bouillard, 33–46
Chazel, Pierre, 255, 256, 259, 377 Donneaud, Henri, 28, 48, 56, 57, 81, 83,
379, 383
Chenu, Marie-Dominique, 10, 11, 25–
28, 36, 39, 40, 47, 48, 49, 50, 55, 66, Donnelly, Philip J., 2, 379
76, 80–82, 195, 377, 379, 380, 382 Doronzo, Emmanuel, 56, 62, 379
common sense, 13, 43, 64, 67, 72–73, Duns Scotus, 195, 219, 221, 223
325–27
Congar, Yves, 4, 14, 62, 66, 81, 384 existentialism, 6, 9, 18, 19, 23, 61, 130,
contemporary thought, critique of, 141–42, 156, 157, 177, 181, 191, 255,
143–52 257–58, 338, 376–78
Conway, Michael A., 26, 377
Council of Trent: Decree on Justification, faith, 96–104; Church’s mediation of,
8–9, 59–60, 323–25; on the Eucharist, 99–104. See also theology
299–300; on formal causality, 37, 43 Fenton, Joseph Clifford, 83, 379
Fessard, Gaston, 16, 25, 38, 135, 152,
Daley, Brian, 22, 378 153, 161, 164, 168–69, 180, 182, 293,
Daniélou, Jean, 5–7, 15–21, 24, 39, 83, 294, 315, 379, 384
84, 133–38, 141, 142, 144, 145, 153– First Vatican Council, 57, 63, 89, 90, 97,
57, 161, 164, 167, 169, 172, 173, 175, 178, 335, 360–61
177, 178–82, 206, 234, 249, 378, 384 Flynn, Gabriel, 22, 376–77, 379, 382,
de Blic, Jacques, 170, 378 384, 387
de Carlensis, Antoninus, 55, 375 Fouilloux, Étienne, 1, 9, 10, 15, 19, 20–
Deely, John, 64, 69, 378 22, 24, 25, 34, 47, 56, 379
de Lubac, Henri, 10, 15–23, 25, 28, 33– fundamentalism (intégrisme), 21, 164,
34, 37–39, 46, 47, 48, 49, 83, 84, 249, 250, 253, 257
133–38, 147–48, 157, 161, 164, 169, Gagnebet, Marie-Rosaire, 11, 36, 51, 55,
170, 172, 174, 176, 177, 180–85, 292, 62, 70, 75, 81–82, 116, 118, 355, 379,
293, 314, 315, 351, 352–54, 376, 380
I N D E X 393

Gardeil, Ambrose, 12–14, 40, 50, 62, 65, Kirwan, Jon, iii, 1, 4, 6, 22, 26, 28, 34,
66, 76, 80, 108, 279, 380, 384 37, 48, 50, 80, 82, 287, 383
Garrigou-Lagrange, Réginald, iii, iv, vii,
5, 8–14, 20, 21, 26, 30, 33–40, 42–77, Laberthonnière, Lucien, 81, 270, 271, 302
80–85, 108, 184, 195, 267, 269, 271,
Labourdette, Michel, iii, vii, 1, 5, 10–32,
275, 279, 286–87, 289, 297, 305, 309,
36, 40, 42, 46, 51, 52, 54–62, 66, 70,
314, 319, 325, 330–31, 334, 343, 357,
73–80, 82–84, 89, 133, 134, 137,
366–68, 371, 374, 380, 382–89; on
141–42, 144, 150, 152, 153, 161, 187,
the development of doctrine, 363–
193, 194, 210, 237, 241, 248, 253,
65; history of the debate with Bouil-
255, 383, 384
lard, 33–46
Le Blond, Jean Marie, 25–29, 330
Germond, Henri, 255, 264–65, 382
Leo XIII, 113, 141, 253, 294, 301, 312,
Gilson, Étienne, 28, 51, 56, 57, 153–55,
372, 384
175, 367, 368, 379, 382, 383
Le Roy, Édouard, 13, 36, 384
Grummet, David, 22, 382
Günther, Anton, 34, 57, 357–60, 365, 382
Mansini, Guy, 13, 14, 62, 64, 66, 72, 76,
384
Haskell, Thomas, 3, 382
Maréchal, Joseph, 26, 48
Hegel, 6, 31, 34, 230, 233, 251–52, 308,
Marín-Sola, Francisco, 59, 62, 63, 80,
316
285, 286, 377, 384
historical method, limits of, 74, 143–52
Maritain, Jacques, 9, 11, 12, 21–26, 30,
historicism, 18–19, 53, 263, 301 34, 51, 52, 65, 69, 71, 75, 94, 96, 115,
131, 168, 182, 210, 220, 223, 253,
intellectus fidei, 52, 82, 104, 106, 109–10 349, 377, 384, 388
irrational philosophy, 157–60 Marxism, 9, 18, 19, 130, 131, 141, 142,
156, 157, 177; Marxist, 6, 156, 255,
257, 258, 378
John of St. Thomas, 54–56, 62, 69, 77,
95, 368, 382 McCool, Gerald, 1, 26, 385

Johnson, Mark P., 55, 383 McInerny, Ralph, 11, 26, 385

Journet, Charles, 9, 21–24, 34, 58, 65, metaphysics. See Aquinas

71, 82, 383 Mettepenningen, Jürgen, 3, 10, 22, 47,
judgment and affirmation, response to 62, 80, 81, 385
Le Blond, 195–96 Minerd, Matthew, iii, 1, 11, 12, 13, 30,
52–55, 64–68, 72, 75, 76, 78, 85, 108,
287, 289, 314, 321, 325, 347, 352,
Kant, Immanuel, 34, 304, 306, 308, 331,
366, 380, 381, 382, 385, 388
332, 334–40, 357, 373
Mondésert, Claude, 136, 145
Kelly, Patricia, 4, 5, 15, 19, 25, 161, 379,
383, 386 Mounier, Emmanuel, 198, 255–57, 262–
64, 385
Kerlin, Michael, 34, 383
394 T H E T H O M I S T I C R E S P O N S E

Mouroux, Jean, 135, 138–40, 385 revelation, 11, 188–89; closed and
Muñiz, Francisco P., 55, 385 unchanging, 63, 206, 318, 367;
heresy against, 278; as object of
faith, 96–97, 99–102, 119, 204, 264;
Nichols, Aidan, 2, 19, 21, 34, 49, 386 primarily concerned with God, not
Nicolas, Jean-Hervé, 64, 69, 70, 75, 386 facts of history, 359, 365; as source
Nicolas, Marie-Joseph, iii, vii, 1, 5, 15– of theology, 75–76, 89–91, 107–8,
16, 21, 23–24, 29, 30, 31–32, 42, 56, 110–12, 115, 117, 207; theories of de
57, 75, 79, 82, 84, 133, 147, 180 Lubac and Garrigou-Lagrange com-
pared, 49
nouvelle théologie, 4, 16, 23, 25, 26, 28,
38, 39, 47, 153, 179, 305, 325, 330, Rosmini, Antonio, 34, 337–40
376, 378, 381, 382, 384, 385, 386; Rousselot, Pierre, 11, 25, 26, 28, 48, 385
and the Church Fathers, 18, 79, 82, Ruddy, Christopher, 82, 387
111, 132–36, 141, 172, 174, 181, 183,
Russo, Antonio, 19, 37, 387
188, 234–35, 243; implying a deni-
gration of scholasticism as such,
141, 174, 183, 301; praised in its Sadler, Gregory, 11, 387
positive aims, 133–143; risks Salm, Celestine Luke, 13, 55, 387
implied modernist epistemology (in
Schultes, Reginald, 62, 67, 387
particular, in the theory of dogmatic
development proposed by Bouil- Schwalm, Marie-Benoît, 53, 66, 302, 387
lard), 58–59 Simon, Yves, 52, 54, 64, 69, 75, 94, 382,
387, 388
Parain, Brice, 255–57, 260, 261, 386 Sokolowski, Robert, 69, 388
Parente, Pietro, 22, 33, 386 Sources Chrétiennes, series, 133–38, 164,
167, 172, 180–81
Peddicord, Richard, 10, 80, 386
Suarezianism, 42, 60, 79, 195, 320, 345,
Pius X, 37, 58, 71, 148, 270, 291, 294,
368
301, 302, 306, 307, 332, 372, 386; on
Modernism, 37, 58, 102 systems, and conceptualization, 226–28
Pius XII, 183, 247, 294, 312, 317, 372, systems, philosophical, 30–32
386
Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 38, 142,
Régis, Louis-Marie, 65, 387 156, 297, 388
relativism: vii, 8, 19–21, 23, 34, 45, 54, Teresa of Ávila, 275, 388
57, 59, 60, 61, 146, 149, 153, 169, Théologie series, 135–36, 173–74, 180–81
175, 303, 313, 321, 328, 329, 346, theology: the act of faith, 105–9;
349, 350, 357, 359 authority in, 241–46; critique of
ressourcement, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 13, 15, aspects of ressourcement attitude,
18, 19, 22, 25, 26, 34, 47, 48, 72, 81, 133–43; as experience, 114–15; and
82, 161, 376, 377, 379, 382, 383, 384, historical method in, 18, 72–74, 141,
386, 387, 389 144–45, 170; and the interior life,
I N D E X 395

274–81; mystical, 90–91; positive, revealed, 204–6; and the unity of the
110–12, 244; problem posed by mind, 203–4
modernity, 269–74; as science, 10,
68–71, 79, 127–28, 206–7; as “speak- Vacant, Jean-Michel-Alfred, 53, 57, 62,
ing to the world,” 257–60; structure 300, 316, 321, 357, 359, 360, 361,
of, 104–9; systems, 120–22, 188–92 362, 363, 364, 380, 389
truth: adequation theory (adaequatio Vincent of Lérins, 61, 63, 360, 363, 364
rei et intellectus), 37, 52–53, 270,
Vollert, Cyril, 62, 389
290, 311, 329, 331–32, 336, 342;
analogy of, 25–29, 194–98, 203 (in von Balthasar, Hans Urs, 16, 83, 137,
Le Blond); degrees in conceptualiza- 145, 159, 161, 164, 169, 173, 179,
tion, 216–23; degrees in judgment, 180, 182, 384
214–16; and history and culture,
208–13, 230–31; logical, 199–203; Wolff, Christian, 367–68