Exploratory and standard theology

In a thoughtful review of Fergus Kerr’s recent book on Twentieth-century Catholic theology ( First Things , May), Rusty Reno discusses the distinction between exploratory and standard theology. The “Heroic Generation” prior to Vatican II (Congar, de Lubac, Rahner, Lonergan, and others) did theology in a creative, exploratory mode, severely criticizing the neoscholastic standard theology in which they were trained.

Reno perceptively notes that the true contributions of the innovators are almost unintelligible today, because no one knows the neoscholastic context against which they were reacting. As a result, their achievements are reduced to “simple-minded shibboleths.”

De Lubac serves as an example:

“In the 1930s [de Lubac] argued that standard theologies of the neoscholastic tradition used a metaphysically rigid, dualistic account of human destiny that ironically confirmed rather than overcame the modern suspicion that our everyday lives and concerns (nature) have no intrinsic contact with or need for the life of faith (grace).” De Lubac in essence charged that “the fundamental structure of neoclassicism was a covert form of modernism,” a charge that naturally put him in the hot house with the Vatican.

After the Second Vatican Council, however, de Lubac published a small book on Nature and Grace, correcting the misunderstandings of his work and defending “the corse theological judgments of the neoscholastic tradition he spent his life criticizing.” By the 1980s, de Lubac say that “the younger generation needed to be catechized into the standard, baseline commitments of Catholic theology.”

Reno’s article moves toward a plea for a new standard theology that incorporates the insights of the Heroic Generation but also recognizes the “essential continuity of the last two hundred years of Catholic theology.” That’s likely to happen anyway; creativity is frequently followed by consolidation.

But Reno seems more bothered by and whistful for the destruction of the old standard theology than he needs to be. Let me make my point typologically (which should appeal to Rusty): The neoscholastic structure was a tabernacle, and it is in tatters and ruins; the prophets of the Heroic Generation, heirs to Samuel, didn’t build a new structure, but renewed Israel in preparation for that new structure; some day, but likely not for a generation or two, a new structure will be built that will surpass the old in grandeur and beauty. Centuries from now, that structure too will become decrepit, cracked through the marble and frayed at the edges, and the whole process will begin again.

This is the way God works, not to be lamented but to be wondered at.