A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri De Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in Th

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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA

A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer

Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in the Interpretation of Scripture

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of the

School of Theology and Religious Studies

Of The Catholic University of America

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Eric Joseph Jenislawski

Washington, DC

2016

A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer

Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in the Interpretation of Scripture

Eric Joseph Jenislawski

Director: John T. Ford, CSC, S.T.D.

ABSTRACT

This dissertation investigates and compares the hermeneutics of the French Jesuit theologian, Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), and the German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer

(1900-2001). The writings of both Gadamer and de Lubac continue to generate scholarly investigation, including proposals to apply their insights to contemporary biblical interpretation.

Although de Lubac and Gadamer were contemporaries, they never directly engaged each other’s writings; this dissertation brings their thought into dialogue.

Chapter One provides a biographical overview of the lives of both scholars by situating the texts that will be examined within the broader context of each work. Since de Lubac approached the subject of biblical interpretation chiefly as an historian of exegesis, the first step in this comparative investigation is a formulation of de Lubac’s hermeneutical principles.

Chapter Two, which constitutes the major portion of this dissertation, analyzes de

Lubac’s works Catholicisme, Histoire et Esprit, Exégèse médiévale, and La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore in view of understanding his hermeneutics. An historical account of the formation of de Lubac’s theology of the four-fold sense of Scripture is provided, together with a description of its final synthesis. This chapter proposes that de Lubac’s later works must be read in light of his writings of the 1930s in order to grasp the scope of his desired integration of

traditional interpretation and modern science. It also provides a more detailed analysis of the exegetical import of La Postérité spirituelle than previous literature.

Although the writings of Gadamer concern general hermeneutics, he occasionally applied his theories to biblical interpretation. Chapter Three examines Gadamer’s Wahrheit und

Methode in order to compare his hermeneutics with those of de Lubac that were presented in

Chapter Two.

The conclusion appraises the similarities between de Lubac and Gadamer in their treatment of the role of tradition and community in interpretation. The conclusion also explores the tension between their views on the role of faith in interpretation and suggests that certain principles of Gadamer’s general hermeneutics may provide the philosophical support that de

Lubac desired for his theological hermeneutics of Scripture.

An appendix analyzes the textual relationship of Histoire et Esprit to its sources.

This dissertation by Eric Joseph Jenislawski fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in Theology approved by John T. Ford, CSC, S.T.D., as Director, and by Peter J.

Casarella, Ph.D., and Paul McPartlan, S.T.L., D.Phil., as Readers.

______

Rev. John T. Ford, CSC, M.A., S.T.D., Director

______

Peter J. Casarella, Ph.D., Reader

______

Rev. Msgr. Paul McPartlan, S.T.L., D.Phil., Reader

Beatae Mariae Semper Virgini

Castissimo Sponso eius Josepho:

Ponite, quaeso, hoc opus

In manibus Filii Vestri Sanctissimi

Per Spiritum Sanctum

Ad gloriam Dei Patris.

His ego

Servus inutilis

Laeto corde

Opus dico.

iii

οἱ δὲ εἶπαν αὐτῷ ἐνύπνιον εἴδομεν

καὶ ὁ συγκρίνων οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτό

εἶπεν δὲ αὐτοῖς Iωσηφ

οὐχὶ διὰ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡ διασάφησις

αὐτῶν ἐστιν διηγήσασθε οὖν μοι

— Genesis 40:8 (LXX)

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ...... 1

CHAPTER ONE: BIOGRAPHICAL OVERVIEW OF THE PRINCIPAL FIGURES...... 4 1. Henri de Lubac...... 4 1.1 Childhood, Education and Vocation (1896-1929)...... 6 1.2. Academic Career at Lyon and Fourvière (1930-1950)...... 17 1.3. De Lubac’s Works on the History of Exegesis (1950-1961)...... 29 1.4. The Second Vatican Council ...... 34 1.5. Postconciliar works...... 39

2. Hans-Georg Gadamer ...... 45 2.1. Early Years (1900-1918)...... 46 2.2. Marburg Period (1919-1938) ...... 55 2.3. The Leipzig Years (1939-1948)...... 65 2.4. Maturity at Heidelberg (1949-1968)...... 67 2.5. Gadamer’s “Second Youth” (1968-2001)...... 69

CHAPTER TWO: ANALYSIS OF THE WORKS OF HENRI DE LUBAC...... 75 1. “Apologétique et Théologie” (1930) ...... 80 1.1. Analysis...... 93

2. Catholicisme (1938)...... 102 2.1. Analysis ...... 110 2.1.1. Two “Areas of Difficulty” for the Exegete...... 113 2.1.2. Catholicisme’s Theological Anthropology, View of History, and Soteriology...... 116 2.1.3. Catholicisme’s "Fundamental Theology"...... 121 2.1.4. “Historika pneumatikōs, pneumatika historikōs”...... 126 2.1.5. Understanding “Historical Things Spiritually”...... 134 2.1.5.1. The Literal Sense as Narrative Sense and Its Relationship to Biblical Doctrine...... 135 2.1.5.2. Understanding "Spiritual Things Historically" and the Spiritual Senses of Scripture...... 143 2.1.6. Conclusion ...... 151

3. Review of Anders Nygren's Erôs et Agapè (1945)...... 163

4. Histoire et Esprit (1950) and Its Associated Essays...... 168 4.1. Analysis of Histoire et Esprit ...... 185 4.1.1. The Methodological Introduction ...... 186 4.1.2. The Literal Sense ...... 200 4.1.2.1. Origenian and Modern Exegesis of the Literal Sense...... 202 4.1.2.2. Areas of Critique...... 208

4.1.3. The Spiritual Senses...... 220 4.1.3.1. The Individual Senses...... 224 4.1.3.2. Sequence and Unity of the Spiritual Senses ...... 231 4.1.4. "Christ is the Living and Concrete Exegesis of Scripture"...... 248 4.1.5. The Spiritual Senses of the New Testament ...... 256 4.1.6. De Lubac's Preliminary "Philosophy of History" in Histoire...... 267 4.1.6.1. De Lubac's Retrieval...... 281 4.1.7. Inspiration and Interpretation...... 285 4.1.7.1. The Ecclesial Context of Interpretation ...... 293 4.2. Conclusion: De Lubac’s Hermeneutics ...... 299 4.2.1. De Lubac’s Theological Hermeneutics...... 303

5. Exégèse médiévale (1959-1963) ...... 312 5.1. Exégèse médiévale, Part One ...... 316 5.2. Exégèse médiévale, Part Two ...... 332 5.3. Thematic Analysis ...... 337 5.3.1. The Medieval Refinement of Christian Allegorical Method ...... 341 5.3.2. The Object of Tropology ...... 359 5.3.3. The Eclipse of Anagogy...... 376 5.3.4. The Exegete’s Essential Discipline...... 382 5.3.4.1. The Moral Discipline of the Exegete...... 396 5.4. Conclusion ...... 400

6. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (1978-1981)...... 403 6.1. Analysis...... 417 6.2. The Spiritual Senses vs. the Spiritual Posterity ...... 434 6.3. Conclusion ...... 448

CHAPTER THREE: ANALYSIS OF THE HERMENEUTICS OF HANS-GEORG GADAMER...... 456

1. Wahrheit und Methode (1960, Sixth Revised Edition, 1990)...... 456

2. Overview and Analysis...... 458 2.1. The Question of Truth in the Experience of Art...... 463 2.2. The Extension of the Question of Truth to Understanding in the Human Sciences...... 485 2.2.1. From Reformation Hermeneutics to Romanticism...... 487 2.2.2. The Historical School: Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey...... 497 2.2.3. Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology ...... 508 2.2.4. Gadamer’s Phenomenology of Understanding ...... 512 2.2.5. The Hermeneutical Inexorability of Tradition...... 516 2.2.6. Gadamer’s Correction of the Concept of Tradition ...... 525 2.3. The Ontological Shift of Hermeneutics as Guided by Language ...... 545 2.3.1. Rejecting the Instrumentalist View of Language...... 548 2.3.2. Gadamer’s Trinitarian Model of the Word ...... 553

3. The Charge of Relativism and Subjectivism ...... 566

4. Gadamer, Faith and The Divine Transcendent ...... 575

5. Challenges and Prospects for Theological Integration ...... 581

6. Conclusion ...... 587

CONCLUSION: A COMPARISON OF THE HERMENEUTICS OF HENRI DE LUBAC AND HANS-GEORG GADAMER...... 590

1. “Apologétique et Théologie” (1930) ...... 592

2. Catholicisme (1938)...... 596

3. Review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè (1945) ...... 610

4. Histoire et Esprit (1950) and Associated Essays...... 613 4.1. Histoire et Esprit...... 619

5. Exégèse médiévale (1959-1963) ...... 632

6. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (1978-1981)...... 641

7. Epilogue ...... 644

APPENDIX: The Textual Relationship Between Histoire et Esprit and Its Sources...... 645

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 652

vii

ABBREVIATIONS

Works of Henri de Lubac

AT “Apologetics and Theology” (1930) In Theological Fragments (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 91-104.

EM Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Écriture. 4 vols. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1959-1964.

HE Histoire et Esprit: l’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1950.

HomGen Introduction to Homélies sur la Genèse by Origen Paris: Cerf, 1943.

HomExod Introduction to Homélies sur l'Exode by Origen Paris: Cerf, 1947.

HS History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007.

ME Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture. 4 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998-

PS La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. 2 vols. Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1978-1981.

RevEA Review of Erôs et Agapè by Anders Nygren (1945). English translation “Eros and Agapē,” in Theological Fragments, 85-89.

SS “Sens Spirituel” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 542-576.

TA-Eng "Typology and Allegorization" In Theological Fragments, 129-164.

TA-Fr “Typologie et Allégorisme” Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947): 180-226.

Works of Hans-Georg Gadamer

GW Gesammelte Werke. 10 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990-1995.

viii

TM Truth and Method. 2nd revised edition. New York: Continuum, 1995.

Other Works

AAS Acta Apostolicae Sedis: Commentarium Officiale Rome: Typis Polyglottis Vaticanis, 1909-

DS Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer. Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. 36th rev. ed. Rome: Herder, 1965.

DTC Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, edited by Alfred Vacant and Eugène Mangenot. 30 vols. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1903-1951.

Makita Etsuro Makita. Gadamer-Bibliographie (1922-1994). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.

MakitaGaBi Etsuro Makita’s updated online continuation of the previous title http://www.ms.kuki.tus.ac.jp/KMSLab/makita/gdmhp/ghp_gabi_d.html

PG Patrologia Graeca. 161 vols. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1857-1866.

PL Patrologia Latina. 221 vols. Paris: J.-P. Migne, 1844-1864.

ST Summa Theologiae. Blackfriars edition. 61 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A dissertation that investigates the social fabric of human knowledge and the role of

community in the intellectual life should be especially cognizant of the many people whose love

and support have made this project possible.

First and foremost, the author’s wife, Sarah, dedicated an enormous amount of her time,

labor, and patient forbearance (Eph. 4:2), the full measure of which is known only to God. She

bore the brunt of parenting and family care, including the birth of two children, in the midst of

excelling at a demanding career. She suffered many months of “dissertation widowhood” when

this project occupied her husband’s academic breaks, summer vacations and workday evenings free of professorial duties, yet she did not give up hope of seeing it completed even as the work grew to an unexpected size, the years dragged on, and final revisions seemed distant. In the most trying of circumstances, she nursed the author back to health while caring for a newborn after a spinal injury left him unable to perform even the most basic tasks at home. This dissertation

simply would not have been completed without her constant support. No earthly recompense is

adequate for her hesed, yet she has the author’s most profound love, respect and gratitude.

Veronica, Theresa and Matthew, the author’s beloved children, likewise deserve much

praise and gratitude. They have never known a time when their father was not working on his

doctorate. How difficult it was, many evenings, to understand why Dad would opt to spend yet

more time with dusty books and papers, writing on an incomprehensible subject, rather than to

share the joys of leisure and games.

The author’s mother, Mary Ann, also cannot be thanked sufficiently in this lifetime. For

decades, she worked to instill in her son a love of learning, a dedication to high achievement, and

the virtue of persistence in academic pursuits, without which intelligence never becomes

scholarship. Decades ago, she posted by the author’s mirror a little verse: “Much is required from those to whom much is given” (Luke 12:48). The seed she planted has borne much fruit.

Without her, there likely would never have been a dissertation or even an academic career.

The author’s late father, Joseph, longed to see the completion of this dissertation. A few

weeks before he died, he was able to see the first complete draft and was very proud of it. May he rest in peace, and, in the vision of God, may he come to the knowledge that at last it is

finished. Neither of the author’s parents ever expected their son to leave a career path in physics

in order to teach theology in a small liberal arts Catholic college; yet they didn’t oppose this

calling, and they deserve many, many thanks for their constant love and support.

The author would like to thank in a special way two talented and caring medical experts:

Thomas Ball, M.D. and Ward Morrow, P.T. Both provided invaluable help when two ruptured

lumbar discs threatened to make any progress on this dissertation impossible. Dr. Ball is an

exemplary physician. Rare indeed is the doctor who unites as he does medical knowledge,

prudence from years of practice, Christian charity, and a personal approach to the patient’s needs

that involves him in dialogue about proposed treatments. Divine Providence introduced the

author to Ward Morrow, a truly gifted and dedicated physical therapist, at a time when risky

surgery seemed the only possible option. How fortunate it was to have met him before his

retirement, at the height of a lifetime’s mastery of an eclectic array of techniques, which were the

fruit of his boundless interest in the human body’s capacity to heal itself. His patient

encouragement and keen insight turned an improbable recovery into a complete success over

arduous seven months.

Many of the author’s present and former students at Christendom College played a role in

the completion of this dissertation by virtue of their constant encouragement, thoughtful inquiries

about the topic, prayerful support, and patience with their professor when he was stretched too thin. Above all, they provided the occasion of thirteen years of teaching Sacred Scripture to students eager to plumb its depths. Without the practical experience of interpreting the Sacred

Page with them, many of the insights of this dissertation would not have come so readily to

mind. Two young women who served as the author’s secretary deserve special thanks and

recognition. Nicole Koopman provided extraordinary help on par with her extraordinary intellectual formation. Few professors can boast an undergraduate assistant who is versed in

Latin, German and French, who has taken a class in hermeneutics, and who understands already quite intuitively all the demands of professorial life. It is rewarding to see her own doctoral

career unfolding so expeditiously. Evelynne Stewart also provided valuable help during the last

few years by keeping academic life sane during a time when the author was teaching five courses

in one semester, administering the needs of a growing, understaffed department, and finishing

the revisions of this dissertation.

Last but not least, the author thanks his dissertation board. Peter Casarella’s mentorship,

teaching and scholarship provided an important impetus for this project. He contributed valuable

insights into both Gadamer and de Lubac. Msgr. McPartlan provided many valuable

improvements to the chapter on de Lubac. His consummate written style has much polished the

text. Fr. Ford streamlined the work by nearly 100 pages without significant loss of content. He

also first posed the question to the author of whether there was a distinctively Catholic way of

interpreting Scripture. With humble gratitude, all three have the author’s appreciation for

awarding this project the merit of distinction, the memory of which he will cherish for a lifetime.

xii Introduction

This dissertation investigates the hermeneutics of the French Jesuit theologian, Henri de

Lubac, and the German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer. The hermeneutical writings of both de Lubac and Gadamer continue to generate scholarly investigation, including proposals to apply their insights to contemporary Catholic biblical interpretation. This dissertation seeks to bring their thought into dialogue.

Initially de Lubac and Gadamer may appear to be disparate figures. Although contemporaries, they never directly engaged each other’s writings. De Lubac’s writings concern religion, the majority of which are studies in Catholic historical theology. Gadamer was a professed agnostic his entire life and was reluctant to engage topics of Christian theology. De

Lubac authored lengthy studies on pre-modern hermeneutics; Gadamer was a postmodernist.

Gadamer discussed a broad range of hermeneutical activity, ranging across art, literature, jurisprudence, and philosophy; de Lubac’s hermeneutics predominantly concerned the interpretation of Scripture. Nonetheless, a survey of their works reveals provocative concurrences that may form the basis for fruitful comparison. Both men investigated hermeneutics historically, critiquing the development of hermeneutics from the time of the

Reformation to the contemporary period. Both had an interest in recovering a positive role for tradition in the act of interpretation, based on their understandings of historical consciousness.

Both also attended to the role that communal values play in shaping the prejudices, practices and norms of the interpreter. Both critiqued, from different standpoints, the Enlightenment’s rejection of the validity of religious faith in informing rational judgments, including hermeneutical judgments. Both characterized the retrieval of the thought of past ages as a kind

1 2 of dialogue between the present and the past. The writings of both men have remained of

interest to contemporary Catholic exegetes, so they share a common potential application. A few

scholars have noted the potential value of a detailed comparison of their ideas. This dissertation

undertakes such a comparison as a contribution to contemporary scholarly discourse about the

utility of both thinkers for Catholic biblical interpretation today.

The investigation of the topic proceeds as follows. Chapter One provides a biographical

overview of the lives of both men, situating the texts to be examined within the broader context

of each man’s scholarly career. This overview reveals that de Lubac approached the subject of

biblical interpretation chiefly as an historian of exegesis; Gadamer, by contrast, was a theorist of

general hermeneutics. In order to compare their thought, the next step requires formalizing de

Lubac’s hermeneutical principles.

Chapter Two, which constitutes the majority of this dissertation, undertakes this task. It

analyzes some of de Lubac’s early essays, as well as the books, Catholicisme, Histoire et Esprit,

Exégèse Médiévale, and La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. Chapter Two thereby

contributes to the ongoing scholarly effort to distill de Lubac’s hermeneutical insights from his

lengthy historical studies. His doctrine of the four senses of Scripture is presented as a major

component of his general theological hermeneutics. This chapter also argues that de Lubac’s

later works must be read in light of his writings of the 1930s to grasp the scope of his desired integration of traditional interpretation with modern science and the humanities. This realization

helps to dispel some criticisms of de Lubac’s later works, which misinterpret his interest in

certain aspects of pre-modern hermeneutics as a veiled argument for the abandonment of the

exegetical advances of the modern age. Such criticisms miss the range and intention of de 3 Lubac’s ressourcement entirely. Chapter Two also provides a deeper analysis of the exegetical import of La Postérité spirituelle than existing literature has provided.

Chapter Three surveys Gadamer’s hermeneutical theory, as expressed in his chief work,

Wahrheit und Methode. The writings of Gadamer concern general hermeneutics and thus are already formalized. The work of this chapter requires less conceptual abstraction. Yet Gadamer infrequently applied his theories to the subject of biblical interpretation, and so the remaining task is to consider how Gadamer’s hermeneutics might apply to biblical interpretation in ways similar to de Lubac’s hermeneutical theory presented in Chapter Two.

The conclusion of the dissertation appraises the similarities between de Lubac and

Gadamer in their concepts of tradition and the communal context of interpretation. It notes the tensions and prospects created by their differing views of the role of faith in interpretation. The conclusion enumerates several areas in which the hermeneutics of de Lubac and Gadamer complement each other and may be synthesized. As the first book-length comparison of the thought of both men, this dissertation seeks to provide a new point of departure for scholars who desire to integrate the insights of de Lubac and Gadamer into contemporary Catholic biblical interpretation.

An appendix to the dissertation exhaustively analyzes the textual relationship of Histoire et Esprit to its sources. This comparison, occasioned by the work of Chapter Two, contributes to the growing scholarly literature which charts the origins of de Lubac’s larger historical studies from his earlier essays. Chapter One

Biographical Overview of the Principal Figures

Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2001), the two principal

figures of this dissertation, were gifted with extraordinary longevity and extended academic

careers. Contemporaries, yet never collaborators, both Gadamer and de Lubac greatly influenced

the course of twentieth-century biblical hermeneutics through their voluminous scholarship.

This chapter provides a brief biographical sketch of both scholars as a prelude to an examination

of their hermeneutical works in the following chapters.

1. Henri de Lubac

A Jesuit priest and theologian, Henri de Lubac was the author of several important works

of twentieth-century Catholic theology, served as a peritus at the Second Vatican Council and

was created cardinal by Pope John Paul II in 1983. This biographical study will indicate the

major events and writings in de Lubac’s life with particular attention to the development of his

writings on exegesis, such as Histoire et Esprit: l’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène and

its four-volume successor, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Écriture.1 Not all of de

Lubac’s multifaceted intellectual interests can be discussed in a short overview. Works that are

distantly related to his writings on exegesis will receive only passing mention, such as his

1 Henri de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit: l’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène, Théologie 16 (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1950); hereafter HE. Idem, Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Écriture, 4 volumes, Théologie 41 & 59 (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1959-1964). Exégèse médiévale was originally published in two parts, each of which is subdivided into two books; thus the first volume is demarcated “Première Partie: Tome I,” followed by “Première Partie, Tome II,” which is followed by the “Seconde Partie.” likewise divided into two books. Exégèse médiévale will be abbreviated as EM with reference to both part and book; thus EM 2/1 refers to Seconde Partie, Tome I.

4 5 lengthy studies on Buddhism or his analysis of the writings of his fellow Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard

de Chardin.2

De Lubac’s major works often underwent extended periods of development and revision

before appearing in their final form. To assist other scholars, de Lubac marked his eightieth

birthday by publishing the lengthy Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits from journals and

correspondence that he had kept throughout his life. This valuable memoir provides an

autobiographical account of de Lubac’s scholarly career and his own explanation of the

influences upon each work.3 This book complements an earlier Bibliographie Henri de Lubac,

S.J. 1925-1970, which was originally prepared for the celebration of de Lubac’s seventy-fifth

2 This overview does not raise more speculative questions concerning the influential figures in de Lubac’s Jesuit formation or his involvement in the movement later known as la nouvelle théologie. For one such biographical investigation, see Marcellino G. D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic” (Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1991), 1-44. For a treatment which focuses on la nouvelle théologie and the modernist crisis debate about the nature of revelation, see Susan K. Wood, “The Church as the Social Embodiment of Grace in the Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac” (Ph.D. dissertation, Marquette University, 1986), 8-54. For the influence of Newman and Möhler on de Lubac, see Austin J. Lindsay, “De Lubac’s Images of the Church: A Study of Christianity in Dialogue” (Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1974), 28-37.

3 Henri de Lubac, Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits (Namur, Belgium: Culture et Verité, 1989), translated as At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned His Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993). A posthumously published “Mémoire sur mes vingt premières années” appeared in Bulletin de l’Association Internationale Cardinal Henri de Lubac 1 (1998): 7-31. The editors of de Lubac’s oeuvres complètes added copious notes and included this mémoire in Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits, ed. Georges Chantraine S. J. avec Fabienne Clinquart, Oeuvres complètes 33, Neuvième section: Divers (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006), 409-462. De Lubac also published memoirs from the Second World War as Résistance chrétienne à l’antisémitisme. Souvenirs 1940-1944 (Paris: Fayard, 1988), translated as Christian Resistance to anti-Semitism: Memories from 1940-1944, trans. Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990). 6 birthday and subsequently updated.4 These works are the principal sources of this brief

biographical overview, although other biographical sources were consulted, particularly those of

de Lubac’s colleagues, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Georges Chantraine.5

1.1 Childhood, Education and Vocation (1896-1929)

Henri de Lubac was born on 20 February 1896 in Cambrai, in northern France. He was

the third of six children born to Maurice Sonier de Lubac (1860-1936) and Gabrielle de

Beaurepaire (1867-1963).6 His parents were devout Catholics during a tumultuous period of

French history. De Lubac described his parents in these words:

My parents were hardly well-to-do. We were six children. They raised us according to the principles of a strict economy, but we were bathed in their tenderness. My mother was a simple woman. Her entire education was received

4 Originally published as Karl H. Neufeld and Michel Sales, Bibliographie Henri de Lubac, S. J. 1925-1970 (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1971); updated as Karl H. Neufeld and Michel Sales, Bibliographie Henri de Lubac, S. J., 1925-1974, 2. erganzte und verbesserte Auflage (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1975); and supplemented by Karl H. Neufeld and Michel Sales, “Bibliographie H. De Lubac, corrections et suppléments, 1942-1989,” in an appendix to volume two of the anthology, Henri de Lubac, Théologie dans l’histoire (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1990), 2:408-420. References to Neufeld and Sales’ Bibliographie will be to the second edition.

5 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac: An Overview, translated by Joseph M. Fessio and Michael M. Waldstein (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991). This volume is a translation of von Balthasar’s Henri de Lubac: Sein organisches Lebenswerk (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1976) and an essay by Georges Chantraine which appeared as an addition to the French edition of the work, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Georges Chantraine, Le Cardinal de Lubac: L’Homme et son oeuvre (Paris: Lethielleux, 1983). At the time of this writing, Chantraine is preparing a biography of de Lubac, provisionally entitled Henri de Lubac, with more than 1500 pages dedicated to the first thirty years of de Lubac’s life (Paris: Cerf, forthcoming). There is a surprising lack of biographical material in English for such a prominent figure of twentieth-century Catholic theology.

6 Rudolf Voderholzer, Henri de Lubac begegnen (Augsburg: Sankt Ulrich Verlag, 1999), 10. 7 in the country and in the cloister of a Visitation monastery, according to the custom of the times. Her entire upbringing rested on the foundation of Christian tradition and piety. I never saw anything in her but self-forgetfulness and goodness. After the death of my father, who wore himself out in daily labor, she said to me one day, “We never had the least disagreement.” She remained a widow a quarter century, and the intimacy between us grew.… When she learned that I had been elected to the Institute [of France], and, a little later, that I had been called to Rome for the Council, disturbed by what seemed to her to be honors, the two letters she addressed to me said, each in nearly the same terms: “I pray Our Lord to keep you in humility.”7

She died at 95 years of age.

De Lubac’s father, a banker, was a native of Lyon.8 The family relocated to Cambrai shortly before Henri’s birth because of a bold action that Maurice had taken in defense of the

Capuchins of Lyon. Rudolf Voderholzer provides information about this incident:

Aufgrund des Gesetzes vom 29. März 1880 wurden Ordensgemeinschaften aus ihren Niederlassungen vertrieben. In Lyon kam es am 3. November 1880 anläβlich der Vertreibung der Kapuziner zu Ausschreitungen, in deren Verlauf ein Demonstrant getötet wurde. De Lubacs Vater begleitete mit Freunden die vertriebenen Patres und wurde in eine Schlägerei verwickelt. Dabei verletzte er mit einem Schwertknauf einen Gegendemonstranten leicht im Gesicht. Er wurde deshalb zu einer Gefängnisstrafe und einer Geldbuβe von 16 Francs verurteilt. Das Berufungsgericht in Lyon erkannte auf Notwehr, ahndete jedoch das unerlaubte Tragen einer Waffe und hielt an der Geldstrafe fest. Im Hause Sonier wurde diese Verurteilung als Ehre betrachtet. Maurice de Lubac zog es allerdings vor, Lyon erst einmal den Rücken zu kehren, bevor die Familie 1898 nach Bourg- en-Bresse, und schlieβlich 1902 nach Lyon zurückkehrte.9

7 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 152. Several biographers have noted de Lubac’s great modesty about his achievements, an impression that is corroborated by reading his personal letters that are published as an appendix to At the Service of the Church.

8 Voderholzer, 14.

9 Voderholzer, 14. For a longer version of this story, see Georges Chantraine’s “Mémoire sur mes vingt premières années,” Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits, 425 n. 16. 8 Henri spent his infancy in Cambrai until 1898, when the family moved to Bourg-en-Bresse,

located 36 miles northeast of Lyon, near the border with Switzerland, approximately 40 miles

west of Geneva. In 1902, the family finally returned to Lyon.

The story illustrates the level of anti-clericalism in France at the turn of the century and

Maurice de Lubac’s steadfast opposition to it. From adolescence, Henri was keenly aware of the

problems arising from the separation of church and state in France and he likewise opposed it. In the midst of increasing secularization, he pursued a religious education. During an embattled time for religious orders in general, and for the Society of Jesus in particular, he aspired to a

Jesuit vocationan even bolder counter-cultural action than that of his father. The political

situation of the Jesuits in France during the nineteenth century provides deeper insight into the

background of the future Jesuit, the nature of his education, his reflections on the Church in the modern world, and other central themes of his later writing, such as the evolution of “separated

theology” and the origins of modern atheism and secularization.

All religious orders in France faced difficulties during the nineteenth century, but few

were as threatened as the Society of Jesus. In a nation-wide suppression in 1764, most Jesuits

were expelled from France.10 In that year, the Society counted 22,589 members worldwide, including 11,393 priests. It possessed 670 colleges, 176 seminaries and 273 missions.11 Fifty years later, it faced extinction throughout Europe. In 1773, Clement XIV suppressed the Society with the Brief, Dominus ac redemptor. Throughout France, schools, institutes and houses of the

Society were confiscated. Some Jesuits were expelled, yet others remained, becoming part of the

10 See Martin Harney, The Jesuits in History: The Society of Jesus Through Four Centuries (New York: The America Press, 1941), 306-311.

11 Harney, 293. 9 diocesan clergy.12 The French Revolution brought further upheavals for all Catholic religious orders: widespread destruction or confiscation of Church property, secularization of schools, and the termination of the legal relationship between church and state that had existed under the

Bourbon monarchy. In the midst of this disintegration, some stability was achieved by the

Concordat of 1801 between Pope Pius VII and Napoléon Bonaparte.13

During the early nineteenth century, the tide seemed to turn in favor of the Jesuits. Pope

Pius VII lifted the suppression of the order in 1814 and the Jesuits rapidly regained their numbers

in France.14 During the Bourbon Restauration (1814-1830) and July Monarchy (1830-1848), the

Jesuits rapidly established a network of boarding schools throughout France which also served as

minor seminaries.15 Jesuit major seminaries and colleges were not yet permitted in France, but

several “colleges in exile” were established in neighboring countries, such as the Jesuit

scholasticate in Fribourg.16

During the Second Republic (1848-1852), an educational reform known as the Falloux

Law, which was passed on 15 March 1850,17 permitted priests and religious to teach without any

12 Harney, 333-353.

13 Voderholzer, 16.

14 Voderholzer, 16-17.

15 A detailed history of the establishment of these French Jesuit schools, their development and their curriculum can be found in John W. Padberg, Colleges in Controversy: The Jesuit Schools in France from Revival to Suppression, 1815-1880, Harvard Historical Studies 83 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969). De Lubac attended several institutions mentioned in Padberg’s study; for the foundation of the minor seminaries and “colleges in exile,” see ibid., 45-80.

16 Padberg, 64-80.

17 La Loi Falloux, named after the Minister of Public Education, Alfred de Falloux. 10 further state authorization or university degree, thereby facilitating the establishment of many

Catholic institutions of both secondary and higher education throughout France.18 The Jesuits

were inundated with requests to establish colleges. Within nine months, eleven Jesuit colleges

were operational in France.19 Many of these boarding schools and colleges were permeated with

royalist political sentiment; all maintained anti-Enlightenment apologetics.20 Initially, the

students came from noble or upper bourgeois families, in part because only the wealthy could

afford the tuition of these financially struggling schools. By de Lubac’s time, however, the

Jesuits had made their secondary education programs more readily available to students from the working class.21

The early years of the Third Republic (1870-1940) saw renewed, violent anticlericalism

in French politics. A series of laws known as the Jules Ferry Laws laicized all higher education

in France.22 On 3 March 1880, the right to confer university degrees was withdrawn from

18 Voderholzer, 17.

19 Padberg, 102.

20 Padberg, 7.

21 Padberg, 50 and 128-132. Padberg observed that, in spite of their best efforts, the Jesuits’ success in making their education affordable for working class students was always limited.

22 The Prime Minister, Ferry, and the Minister of Education, Paul Bert, led a violently anticlerical campaign. Ferry wrote: “[T]he republic … has only one formidable enemy, the clergy. But the nonsense of Lourdes shows clearly the latter’s irremediable decadence. The shifting, decomposing body will never triumph over a living society whose entire progress is absolutely laic.” Bert maintained: “We shall make war on the good Lord, and we shall succeed. We must laicize France. Among ourselves, Voltaire’s great peals of laughter have long ago swept away superstition. Our religion will be … a patriotism that is ardent, intransigent, capable of every daring deed, ready for every sacrifice. This is worth a lot more than Capuchin mummeries and Jesuit deceit. Science lights our path and guides us; love of fatherland inspires us; we shall be victors” (Padberg, 263-264). 11 private institutions. On 29 March 1880, only authorized religious congregations were permitted

to remain in France and unauthorized congregations were dispersedthe event which led to

Maurice de Lubac’s armed conflict in defense of the Capuchins. On 29 June 1880, the Jesuit

order was again suppressed throughout France and its properties evacuated.23 Three decades’

labor was forfeited in a single day:

twenty seven colleges, then educating more than ten thousand students, became illegal precisely because they were Jesuit establishments. A revived system of Jesuit education in France, its dreams and hopes … existed no longer.24

Yet Voderholzer explained that all was not lost in some areas of the country:

Die zum Teil gewaltsam Vertriebenen wandten sich nach England, Belgien, Spanien oder gingen in die Missionen. Ein Teil der Priester konnte sich in Frankreich halten. Die Bevölkerung in den traditioneller geprägten Gebieten Frankreichs war den Jesuiten allerdings weit mehr gewogen als die Legislative und betrachtete das Gesetz für ungültig. So konnten unter dem Schutz der öffentlichen Meinung in beschränktem Maβe Kollegien weitergeführt werden.25

In 1902, Émile Combes became Prime Minister and continued to implement anticlerical measures vigorously. By 1904, twenty thousand more religious had been deported from France.

Lyon again erupted in fatal riots. Pope Pius X terminated diplomatic relations with the French government in 1904.26 The Concordat of 1801 was broken and the official separation of Church

23 Four hundred magistrates resigned rather than enforce the order (Padberg, 267-268).

24 Padberg, 272.

25 Voderholzer, 17.

26 Voderholzer, 18. 12 and State was complete with the publication of a 1905 law which ended all government funding

of religious groups and declared all religious buildings property of the state.27

Henri de Lubac began his religious education in the midst of this wave of secularization

and anticlericalism. In 1901, he entered a Christian Brothers school in Bourg-en-Bresse. When

the family relocated to Lyon in 1902, he attended another Christian Brothers school there.28 In

1905, he transferred to the Jesuit-sponsored St. Joseph School in Lyon.29 From 1909 to 1911, he

studied at the elite Jesuit Collège de Notre-Dame de Mongré30 in Villefranche-sur-Saône, located

just north of Lyon.31 A few years earlier, in 1897, de Lubac’s future companion in the Society of

Jesus, Teilhard de Chardin, graduated there with high honors.32 In addition to the standard

curriculum, advanced students (including de Lubac) studied contemporary Catholic authors, such

27 Voderholzer, 18. The Loi du 9 décembre 1905 concernant la séparation des Églises et de l’État permitted religious groups to use these buildings at the discretion of the government, but solely for purposes of worship.

28 Voderholzer, 15.

29 Voderholzer, 15. For the founding of this school in 1871, see Padberg, 256.

30 Voderholzer, 15. In French, collège signifies a school which educates adolescents in preparation for university and so is analogous to an American high school.

31 One of the first schools founded after the Falloux Law, Notre-Dame de Mongré began when the wealthy Countess de Barmondière, who was interested in helping noble families impoverished by the Revolution, gave her château and 67-acre estate at Villefranche to the Society of Jesus. By 1855, more buildings had been constructed and the entire Jesuit ratio studiorum was in place, including instruction in philosophy. Its early establishment and generous benefactress ensured that the school was a flagship institution by de Lubac’s time: “[F]rom the first, Mongré had an aristocratic allure, and more than its share of students from unreconciled legitimist families” (Padberg, 104-105).

32 Voderholzer, 15. 13 as Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel, and the Russian novelist Dostoevsky. De Lubac later analyzed the theological character of these authors.33

De Lubac’s brief years at Notre-Dame de Mongré had lifelong consequences. The

inspiring example of his indefatigable Jesuit teachers awakened his religious vocation:

Die Zeit in Villefranche war für den weiteren Lebensweg Henri de Lubacs von groβer Bedeutung. Unter der geistlichen Begleitung von Pater Eugène Hains, S.J., dem er zeitlebens groβe Wertschätzung entgegenbrachte, erwacht in ihm die Berufung zu einem Leben in der besonderen Nachfolge Jesu.34

De Lubac’s intellectual style was influenced by the curriculum of this school, which blended

classical education in the Jesuit tradition with open-minded engagement of modern authors in

order to address contemporary problems facing the Church in France. One may see here the

origins of de Lubac’s distinctive approach to research, which combined painstaking investigation

33 Voderholzer, 15. See, for example, the series of Dostoevsky articles in Cité Nouvelle: “Dostoievski prophète,” Cité Nouvelle 2/58 (1943): 109-135; “Faillité de l’athéisme  Les athées de Dostoievski,” Cité Nouvelle 2/59 (1943): 193-221; “L’expérience de l’éternité: la ‘nouvelle naissance’ selon Dostoievski,” Cité Nouvelle 2/60 (1943): 297-330. On Claudel, see “Le credo de Paul Claudel,” Choisir 14 (1960): 9-12, which was de Lubac’s foreword to the Claudel anthology, Je crois en Dieu (Paris: Gallimard, 1961); “Claudel théologien,” Recherches et Débats 65 (1969): 25-29; and de Lubac’s review of Claudel et l’interlocuteur invisible: Le drame de l’appel, by Aimé Becker, Bulletin de la Societé Paul Claudel, no. 58-59 (1975), which are all available in Theological Fragments, trans. Rebecca Howell Balinski (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 423-441. In the latter review, de Lubac wrote: “Both Claudel and Péguy are, in their respective ways that are no less authentic, theologians” (441). For de Lubac, the evocative depictions of Catholicism in both men’s literary works indicated an under-utilized way for the Church to engage modern culture. In addition, there is the late work co-authored with Jean Bastaire, Claudel et Péguy (Paris: Aubier, 1974). These works provide insight into de Lubac’s views on the Church in the modern world. See also D’Ambrosio, 28-30.

34 Voderholzer, 15. De Lubac said that Hains “was my spiritual guide during my youth, from 1909 to 1913 (he was spiritual father and rector of the College of Mongré at that time), to whom I owe the birth of my religious vocation.” They remained in contact throughout Hains’ life (At the Service of the Church, 402). 14 of Catholic sources with an erudite appreciation of modern culture in order to solve problems

relating to the role of the Church in the modern world.

On 9 October 1913, Henri de Lubac entered the novitiate of the Society of Jesus in the

Province of Lyon, one of four French Jesuit Provinces. Because of the 1905 law, the French

Jesuits were forced to conduct their major seminary education in other countries. The Lyon

Province sent its novices to St. Leonards-on-Sea, a suburb of Hastings, England, across the

English Channel from de Lubac’s birthplace of Cambrai. Voderholzer saw the genesis of a

lifelong theme of de Lubac’s writings in his early experiences of secularized France and the

expatriated Jesuit novitiate:

Dies ist bezeichnend für die Situation der Kirche in Frankreich in diesen Jahren. Sie muβ als Verständnishintergrund für das Werk de Lubacs immer auch mitbedacht werden. Sie ist vom Stichwort séparation, “Trennung” gekennzeichnet.… Séparation charakterisiert nicht nur, unter politischer Rücksicht, das Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat, sondern auch, geistig, das Verhältnis von Philosophie und Theologie, natürlicher Ordnung und übernatürlich-gnadenhafter Ordnung.35

De Lubac’s novitiate was interrupted by the outbreak of the First World War. He was

drafted into the Third Infantry Regiment of the French Army in 1914 and served on the front

near Verdun. On 1 November 1917, de Lubac was severely wounded in the head, which left him with lifelong injuries. Shrapnel embedded in his skull caused him migraine headaches, vertigo and susceptibility to meningitis.36 For his service, he was awarded the Croix de Guerre.37 Even

35 Voderholzer, 16. This theme is most apparent in de Lubac’s works on ecclesiology and grace, but it is also an important component of his works on the history of exegesis, since he was concerned that scientific methods of exegesis would separate themselves completely from the perspective of faith.

36 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 19. D’Ambrosio, 4. An operation in 1954 afforded de Lubac some relief. 15 on the front, de Lubac found inspiration for theological activity, collecting short texts about

Christianity for an atheist fellow infantryman.38 These notes would be published many years

later as The Discovery of God.39

Discharged in 1919, de Lubac continued his formation in England at St. Mary’s College

in Canterbury and Maison Saint-Louis on the island of Jersey.40 Although his principal task at

St. Mary’s was mastery of Latin and Greek, he read St. Augustine’s Confessions and the

Adversus haereses of St. Irenaeus of Lyon because he was “spiritually starving” after the war years.41 At Maison Saint-Louis, de Lubac began his three year philosophy studium, which

included studying the writings of Pierre Rousselot and Maurice Blondel. The work of these two

figures would occupy de Lubac’s attention throughout his life.42 De Lubac recounted that

Blondel’s writings prompted him to begin thinking about questions concerning nature, grace and

37 Wood, 3.

38 Voderholzer, 23-24.

39 De la connaissance de Dieu (Paris: Témoignage chrétien, 1945), translated as The Discovery of God, trans. Alexander Dru (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1960). The work was approved for publication in 1941, but the Second World War delayed its appearance (Neufeld and Sales, 16).

40 Neufeld and Sales, 8.

41 Voderholzer, 24.

42 See, for example: “La motif de la création dans l’ ‘Etre et les êtres’ de Maurice Blondel,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 65 (1938): 220-225; “Lettres échangées entre M. Blondel et J. Wehrlé sur la question biblique (janv/févr 1924),” Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique 64 (1963): 117-136; de Lubac’s editing of Maurice Blondel et Auguste Valensin: Correspondance 1899-1912, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1957) and his commentary in Maurice Blondel et Auguste Valensin: Correspondance (1912-1947), texte annoté par H. de Lubac (Paris: Aubier- Montaigne, 1965); also M. Blondel et P. Teilhard de Chardin: Correspondance commentée (Paris: Beauchesne, 1965); and “P. Rousselot: Petite théorie du développement du dogme,” Recherches de science religieuse 53/3 (1965): 355-390. 16 the teleology of man which formed the theoretical core of Surnaturel.43 Rousselot was killed at

Verdun in 1915 and de Lubac inherited his papers, which he closely studied. He sought to publish them, but permission was refused by the Holy Office—the first of several conflicts.44

The novice then returned to his alma mater, Notre-Dame de Mongré, for his practicum as assistant to the prefect of students for a year.45

De Lubac pursued theological studies at Seminarium Orense, Ore Place, Hastings from

1924-1926. Church-state relations had ameliorated sufficiently by 1926 that he was able to

complete his studies at the Jesuit faculty in Lyon-Fourvière (hereafter, “Fourvière”) from 1926-

1928.46 De Lubac was ordained to the priesthood on 22 August 1927.47 He served part of the

third practicum year in the Jesuit school at Paray le Monial, but an unexpected vacancy in the

Chair of Fundamental Theology at the nearby Catholic University of Lyon led to his immediate

43 Voderholzer, 25. See de Lubac’s letter of 3 April 1932 to Blondel published as Appendix 1:7 in At the Service of the Church, 183-184.

44 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 19-21.

45 Neufeld and Sales, 8. On the importance of the prefect and “surveillant” of students in their moral formation, and the great demands of this assignment, see Padberg, 210-222.

46 Voderholzer, 28. At both places, de Lubac was plagued by his war injuries: “I had not even been able to follow with regularity the courses during my four years of theology,” which made him anxious about his subsequent teaching assignments (At the Service of the Church, 15).

47 Voderholzer, 28. 17 appointment to its faculty as instructor of a course on Apologetics.48 Thus began de Lubac’s

academic career.49

1.2. Academic Career at Lyon and Fourvière (1930-1950)

In de Lubac’s inaugural lecture, “Apologétique et Théologie,” one can see several

emblematic themes of his later works.50 De Lubac stressed the need for an intelligent Catholic

dialogue with atheistic countercurrents in modern society, a need which had not been served by

the apologetics of the previous century.51 He highlighted the benefits of a return to the sources

of Catholic apologetical theology,52 which could help to overcome the deficiencies and

distortions of the previous century’s somewhat rationalist approach to apologetics. He expressed concern that this rationalist approach had led contemporary fundamental theology to treat the

48 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 15.

49 Because of the turbulent situation in France and the constant demand for teachers, de Lubac never completed the doctorate: “I did not in fact receive any specialized formation at the outset, I am very ignorant of languages, I did not go through the salutary testing of a doctoral thesis. One fine day, Father General Wladimir Ledochowski granted me … a doctoral diploma from the Gregorian University, in which I had never set foot and where no one knew me, because they needed me to fill a gap at the Theology Faculty of Lyons; I have never since obtained the time requested to make up for this” (De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 143).

50 “Apologétique et Théologie,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 57 (1930): 361-378, translated into English as “Apologetics and Theology,” in Theological Fragments, 91-104; the English translation is hereafter abbreviated as “AT.”

51 AT, 92-94. This would be a central theme of several short works over the next several years, culminating in Le Drame de l’humanisme athée (Paris: Spes, 1945), translated as The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. Edith M. Riley (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963).

52 He identified such authors as “St. Paul, Justin’s Apologia, St. Augustine’s De vera religione, St. Thomas’ Contra gentes, Savonarola’s Triumphis Crucis, Pascal’s Pensées” (AT, 95). 18 relationship between philosophy and theology as if they were wholly extrinsic to each other, leading to a “separated theology” and “separated philosophy.”

Against those who would condemn de Lubac for “innovating” in his approach to the subject, he established in advance that the contemporary style of apologetics that he rejectedonly a century oldwas the true innovation in this sternly worded riposte:

Small-minded theology that is not even traditional, separated theology, tagging behind a separated philosophyit is no more the theology of the Fathers than it is that of St. Thomas, and the worthless apologetics that it shaped in its image is no closer to the apologetics whose model has been given to us across the centuries.53

At the root of this problem is a misconception of the relationship between nature and grace:

Such a theology has acted as though the same God were not the author of both nature and grace, and of nature in view of grace! By establishing intimate links between these two parts of the divine plan, one does not necessarily, as it is too readily feared, relate grace to nature; the inverse can just as well be the case.54

One can see in this brief outline the principal elements of his important essay, “Sur la

philosophie chrétienne” (1936), his major work, Surnaturel (1946), and its successors published

53 AT, 95.

54 Ibid. 19 in 1965, Augustinisme et théologie moderne and Le mystère du surnaturel.55 The lecture also

contains his earliest written opinions about the role of faith in the interpretation of Scripture.56

On 2 February 1931, de Lubac made his solemn profession in the Society of Jesus.57 He took up residence in the Jesuit scholasticate at Fourvière, and he served the Catholic University of Lyon as Professor of Dogmatics from 1934-1937, Professor of Fundamental Theology in

1938, and, owing to another shortage of staff, Professor of Religious History in 1939.58 From

1935 to 1940, de Lubac also taught courses in the history of religions at Fourvière.59 In 1938, he

published his landmark work, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme, a programmatic

55 “Sur la philosophie chrétienne,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 63 (1936): 225-253; Surnaturel. Études historiques, Théologie 8 (Paris: Aubier, 1946); Augustinisme et théologie moderne, Théologie 63 (Paris: Aubier, 1965) and Le mystère du surnaturel, Théologie 64 (Paris: Aubier, 1965). The latter two volumes were translated as Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Lancelot Sheppard (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000) and The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. by Rosemary Sheed (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000).

56 “For example, the use that one makes of Scripture will be entirely different depending on whether it is seen, before faith, as a simple historical document (whose historicity must first be established), or after faith, as an inspired source” (AT, 96 n.16). De Lubac disagreed with those who make modern critical methods of exegesis the scapegoat for certain types of apostasy; instead he placed the blame on more fundamental beliefs about nature, reason and revelation, which determine how these methods are used and how their findings are received: “The powerful cerebral dream to which L’avenir de la science bears witness sheds more light on Renan’s religious crisis than does what he tells us about the authenticity of Daniel, the historicity of Judith, or the reality of Noah’s ark. If another ideal had not secretly won him over before, he would not have abandoned his Christian faith because of these ‘advanced’ exegetical opinions” (AT, 98 n. 19).

57 Neufeld and Sales, 8.

58 Ibid. See also de Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 31-32.

59 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 68. 20 work which displayed the scope of his theological concerns.60 Each of its eleven chapters

developed a theme which he would later elaborate in at least one full-length theological work:

ecclesiology; soteriology; the relationship between nature, grace and human beatitude; a

theology of Christian history, upon which is based a theology of the interpretation of Scripture;

the question of salvation outside the Church; and the challenges faced by Catholicism in the modern age.61

Many of de Lubac’s major works evolved slowly. They were often collated from earlier

essays and successively revised until reaching book form, and were sometimes further developed

in subsequent editions. The editorial history of Catholicism provides a typical example. De

Lubac gathered some published and unpublished lectures that he had delivered during the previous six years, joined them to a conference report, wrote a few new chapters in light of the broader scope of the new book and provided a framework for the whole achievement.62 After its

60 Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme, Unam Sanctam 3 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1938). Existing English translations have glossed the subtitle: see Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard (London: Longmans, Green, 1950); and Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, trans. Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988). References are to the latter edition.

61 For a more detailed discussion of how each chapter relates to de Lubac’s later works, see von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 35-43.

62 “My first book was Catholicisme.… It is made up of bits and pieces that were first written independently, then stitched together, so to speak, in three parts.… The first part, sums up the main outlines of something I taught at the Faculty. These were two lectures given at the offices of the Chronique sociale … for the Catholic group interested in social issues … these lectures appeared first in a pamphlet from Editions de la Chronique under the title, ‘La Caractère social du Dogme Chrétien’.… The second part of the work gathers together various texts given in lectures, some of which had already been published here and there; one of them is a report requested of me by Msgr. Olichon for a congress of the Union missionaire du clergé at Strasbourg (1933).… The third part of the book, more spiritual and ‘personalist’ in nature, had seemed to me necessary for the overall balance of the book” (At the Service of the Church, 27). 21 initial publication in 1938, three revised and expanded editions appeared in 1941, 1952 and

1965. The genesis of Surnaturel is even more complicated.63 These examples demonstrate the

importance of investigating the editorial history of de Lubac’s larger works and the utility of his

mémoires for gaining a better perspective on the development of his thought. Sometimes an

earlier presentation provided a clearer treatment of certain points.64

In 1940, de Lubac and his fellow Jesuit, Jean Daniélou, founded Sources Chrétiennes, which was dedicated to the task of ressourcement by publishing critical editions of Patristic

texts. The series was the idea of Victor Fontoynont, a Jesuit under whom de Lubac had studied during his residency at Mongré.65 Fontoynont gathered the necessary support for this ambitious

project, but judged it best to confer the editorship upon his younger colleagues.66

The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 and the occupation of France in 1940

prompted heroic action on the part of de Lubac and his fellow Jesuits. They denounced anti-

Semitism, sheltered persecuted Jews, and engaged in “spiritual resistance” to Nazismby public

prayer, speeches and publications. De Lubac recalled his own role during the German

occupation:

As early as the winter of 1940-1941, the spiritual resistance to nazism was organized. In the years before the war, Father Chaillet had created a service to

63 Neufeld and Sales, 59-65, provided diagrams, cross-references and excerpts from Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits to chart the development of de Lubac’s major works.

64 The sixth chapter of Catholicism, which contained de Lubac’s first presentation of ideas that he later developed in Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale, will be considered later in this dissertation,

65 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 46.

66 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 94-96. De Lubac lived to see over 300 critical editions published in this series. 22 help the refugees of our region. On his return from Hungary to France … he had taken it up again under the most difficult conditions. Then, from Cardinal Gerlier, who always placed great confidence in him, he obtained protection for the Jewish children who were being demanded from the French administration by the nazis. He sent me to Toulouse … to Cardinal Saliège to obtain his ringing intervention in favor of the persecuted Jews.67

Chaillet established the magazine, Cahier du Témoignage catholique—later renamed Cahier du

Témoignage Chrétien to facilitate the involvement of Protestants—which combated Nazi propaganda and gave spiritual exhortations to those living in occupied France. The first volume, of which de Lubac was an editor, was entitled: France, prends garde de perdre ton âme.68 The publication quickly attracted the attention of the Nazis. De Lubac recounted the ensuing peril:

Actively pursued, Father Chaillet was going from one hiding place to another. The Cahiers came one after the other, at a good pace, just as the complete occupation of the territory continued to accelerate. I had secret rendez-vous with him, each time in a different place, each time with the fear of falling into some “trap”, in order to take or deliver to him a new text.69

The stakes were high. Some collaborators of Témoignage were arrested, others deported,

and others executed by the Nazis. De Lubac himself fled after he became aware of the presence

of informants during a lecture he gave on Nazism; yet he refused to leave France and circulated

through a network of religious houses while continuing his work.70 De Lubac also published the

anti-Nazi tract “Un nouveau front religieux”71 with the aid of Swiss Jesuits in Fribourg, who

printed it in Israël et la foi chrétienne, a volume which reminded Christians of their spiritual ties

67 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 50.

68 On the inspiration behind this first volume, see de Lubac, Christian Resistance, 44-49.

69 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 51.

70 Ibid.

71 Ibid., 57. 23 to the persecuted children of Abraham.72 During the war years, de Lubac also published Le

Drame de l’humanisme athée, a collection of essays.73

In 1944, de Lubac published his historical study, Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et

l’Église au Moyen Âge. Étude Historique.74 This study traced how the term corpus mysticum—

initially used by Patristic authors to describe the Eucharist—later came to denote the Church.

The work is not merely a careful historical study in sacramental terminology; here too, de Lubac

had cultural and political concerns. He believed that the abrogation of corpus mysticum as a

description of the Eucharist had led, in part, to a deformation of popular piety. The act of

receiving the sacrament had lost its communal emphasis and become privatized, being viewed by

many merely as the communion of the individual soul with Christ. Such sacramental

individualism not only betrayed the earlier, more authentic understanding that “the Church

makes the Eucharist, and the Eucharist makes the Church,”75 but also left Christians more susceptible to the subtle influence of modern philosophies which overemphasize the role of the individual. Moreover, this diminished sense of the intrinsically communal dimension of the

Church’s central sacramental reality weakened the ability of the Church to represent itself as an

72 Henri de Lubac, “Un nouveau front religieux,” in Israël et la foi chrétienne, ed. J. Chaine, L. Richard and J. Bonsirven (Fribourg: Libr. de l’Université, 1942), 9-40.

73 Henri de Lubac, Le Drame de l’humanisme athée (Paris: Spes, 1944); translated as The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. Edith M. Riley (Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963).

74 Henri de Lubac, Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge. Étude Historique, Théologie 3 (Paris: Aubier, 1944).

75 A paraphrase of de Lubac’s thesis appeared in John Paul II’s Encyclical Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003) in AAS 95 (2003): 433-475, no. 26: “Ecclesiam aedificat Eucharistia et Ecclesia Eucharistiam efficit.” The phrase is found in de Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, transl. Michael Mason (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), 92: “Each has been entrusted to the other … by Christ; the Church produces the Eucharist, but the Eucharist also produces the Church.” 24 institution in society. In the context of the precarious position of the Church in France during the

previous century and its current struggle against Nazism, Corpus Mysticum had significant political import.

De Lubac’s desire to evangelize modern culture motivated all of his projects of ressourcement. He always pursued a two-fold goal. First he retrieved the authentic tradition of the Church, and then he brought the richness of this tradition to bear on modern problems. De

Lubac habitually solved cultural problems by tracing their origins over centuries, rather than

decades. He refused to present a reductionist historical narrative in order to make his analysis

more evocative or to find a convenient scapegoat for an error. Thus he often wrote vast

historical studies involving hundreds of pages of Patristic and Medieval citations, filled with

minute observations, in order to trace subtle developments and distortions of an idea, to identify

moments of progress or fatal missteps in intellectual history, and to retrieve once-vital notions

from oblivion. The bulk of such a work can conceal its immediate evangelical import. Hans Urs

von Balthasarno stranger to lengthy historical studieswrote of de Lubac’s work:

Whoever stands before the forty or so volumes of Henri de Lubac’s writings, with their more than 10,000 pages and hundreds of thousands of quotations … feels as though he is at the entrance to a primeval forest. The themes could hardly be more diverse, and the gaze of the researcher glides seemingly without effort over the whole history of theologyand of thought itself. And yet in all this, not even the smallest details escape himwhether it be an obscure tractate of an early medieval author or a review in an equally obscure periodical. But to one who begins to penetrate and become familiar with these major works, this seeming jungle reveals the order of an organic whole, far from a textbook of theology, that unfolds an eminently successful attempt to present the spirit of Catholic Christianity to contemporary man in such a way that he appears credible in himself and his historical development as well as in dialogue with the major forms of other interpretations of the worldand even feels confident in proposing the unique, complete (“catholic”) solution to the riddle of existence. 25 The height from which all is surveyed provides a measure for the rising, soaring power that one senses in the entire workfrom the bold synthesis in Catholicisme to the book on Pico by the almost eighty-year-old theologian.76

At times, de Lubac’s historical investigations required divesting the mantle of tradition from

theological positions that were actually an impoverishment of Patristic or Medieval thought.

Sometimes adherents of the divested theology resented de Lubac. The most dramatic example of such a reaction followed the publication of Surnaturel in 1946.77

Surnaturel placed de Lubac in the center of theological controversy. The work represents

the culmination of nearly twenty years of his thought and incorporates a number of earlier studies.78 Surnaturel concerned the relationship between nature and grace. De Lubac addressed the question of whether a human person may properly be said to have a natural end and natural beatitude in addition to a supernatural end and beatitude, which consists in the beatific vision.

To answer this question, de Lubac surveyed the opinions of theologians from Augustine to

Cajetan and traced the development of the hypothetical concept of “pure nature” (unfallen nature without grace) from Aquinas through Cajetan to the modern period. De Lubac asserted that

Cajetan had made a significant error in his interpretation of Aquinas; this error had facilitated the

76 Von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 23-25.

77 De Lubac recalled: “I did not foresee so strong and so generalized an obstinacy in identifying these anemic and belated systems, often based on obvious misinterpretations, with the very Tradition of the Church, so that to touch them was to appear to be sacrilegious” (At the Service of the Church, 36-37).

78 The formation of this work is complex; see the chart in Neufeld and Sales, 63-65. Important preparatory essays include: “Deux Augustiniens fourvoyés: Baius et Jansénius,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 21 (1931): 422-443 and 513-540; “Remarques sur l’histoire du mot ‘surnaturel’,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 61 (1934): 225-249 and 350-370; “Esprit et Liberté dans la tradition théologique,” Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique 40 (1939): 121-150 and 189-207; and “Le rencontre de ‘superadditum’ et ‘supernaturale’ dans la théologie médiévale,” Revue du Moyen Age Latin 1 (1945): 27-34. 26 later heresies of Baianism and Jansenism; and the same error continued to distort contemporary

theology.

De Lubac maintained that Neo-Thomism, following Cajetan, had inappropriately isolated

the orders of nature and grace from one another, wrongly denied the existence of an innate

human desire for the beatific vision, and viewed grace as wholly separate and “superadded” to human nature. This perspective not only misconstrued the teaching of Aquinas, it also created

the theoretical antecedents for the dichotomies that typify the modern period: dichotomies

between reason and faith, nature and grace, religion and sciencea network of effects that stretched from Luther to modern atheism. The Medieval unity of philosophy and theology had disintegrated into a “separated theology” and “separated philosophy.” Moreover, this separation robs Christianity of its apologetical and evangelical ability, which is rooted in human nature’s innate desire to know God through a revelation only made possible by grace.79

Some Neo-Thomists were not pleased by de Lubac’s research. Not only did Surnaturel

impeach their authority as legitimate interpreters of St. Thomas’ theology of grace, it implicitly

attributed to their theological tradition partial culpability for the past two centuries of

rationalism, secularization and atheism! In 1946, no one needed to be reminded of how violently

these movements had treated the Catholic Church.80 Surnaturel attracted the attention of the

Holy Office and, in particular, the opposition of two theologians: first, Fr. Réginald Garrigou-

Lagrange, a Dominican Neo-Thomist who held the Chair of Ascetical and Mystical Theology at

79 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 35-36.

80 For correspondence and reviews pertaining to Surnaturel, see At the Service of the Church, 200-223. For further analysis of the cultural implications of Surnaturel and The Drama of Atheist Humanism, see Joseph A. Komonchak, “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac,” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 579-602. 27 the Angelicum and was also a Consultator to the Holy Office.81 The second was Fr. Pietro

Parente, an Assessor of the Holy Office who had coined the term “la nouvelle théologie” four years earlier in an article critiquing the French Dominicans, Marie-Dominique Chenu and Louis

Charlier. Garrigou-Lagrange applied the term to the Jesuits of Fourvière,82 and at the Jesuit

General Congregation, Pius XII admonished the Society that there “has been too much talk for

some time about new theology.”83 De Lubac’s superior who had granted the nihil obstat to

Surnaturel was interviewed by the Holy Office.

In 1947, the newly-elected Jesuit Superior General, Jean-Baptiste Janssens, expressed

support for de Lubac by defending him in Rome as well as by giving him responsibility for the

journal Recherches de science religieuse. Positive and negative reviews of Surnaturel mounted

over the next two years, together with rumors of de Lubac’s impending condemnation. De

Lubac published a clarification of contested points of Surnaturel in a 1949 article “Le mystère du

81 Richard Peddicord, The Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Legacy of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2005), 16- 21.

82 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 60-61 and 60 n.3. He later wrote: “I do not much like it when people talk of ‘new theology,’ referring to me; I have never used the expression, and I detest the thing. I have always sought, on the contrary, to make the Tradition of the Church known, in what it offers that is most universal and least subject to the variations of time. ‘New Theology’ is a polemical term … which most of the time signifies nothing, serving only to throw suspicion on the author.… As for my theology being based solely on the Fathers and Scripture, that does not please me at all either. I don’t even think I have ever used the banal expression (which might be understood in a good sense, if it were not exclusive) ‘return to the sources.’ It would be enough, moreover, merely to open one of my books, for example, Surnaturel, to see that I in no way scorn the effort of Scholasticism” (De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 361; emphasis in original).

83 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 60. 28 surnaturel,” but it was too late.84 Early in 1950, de Lubac was notified by his superior that he was to cease teaching and to discontinue his work with Recherches. The faculty of Fourvière, including de Lubac, was directed to sign a letter of support of the Pope. De Lubac was subsequently moved from Fourvière to Paris.

On 12 August 1950, Pius XII published his encyclical Humani Generis, which condemned theologians who “destroy the gratuity of the supernatural order, since God, they say, cannot create intellectual beings without ordering and calling them to the beatific vision.”85

Many interpreted this statement as a condemnation of de Lubac’s thesis in Surnaturel, although de Lubac himself vigorously protested this association as a misunderstanding of his work.86 De

Lubac’s works Surnaturel, Corpus mysticum, and De la connaissance de Dieu were removed from libraries and withdrawn from print, together with the volume of Recherches containing “Le mystère du surnaturel.” De Lubac was ordered to leave Paris, apparently because Roman authorities were concerned about his possible influence there. He moved briefly to Carthage, and then was permitted to return to France to live in the Alpine town of Gap in Provence. De

Lubac summarized the bleak situation: “I led the existence of a recluse for a long time.”87 Von

Balthasar described de Lubac’s comportment during this trying period:

84 Henri de Lubac, “Le mystère du surnaturel,” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 80-121.

85 Pius XII, Encyclical, Humani Generis (12 August 1950), in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 42 (1950): 561-578, § 26.

86 “[N]ow it is rather curious to note that this phrase, intending to recall the true doctrine on this subject, reproduces exactly what I said about it two years earlier in a [sic] article in Recherches de science religieuse” (At the Service of the Church, 71).

87 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 71-74. 29 It was a silent ostracism that drove the sensitive man into complete isolation … [yet he] did not allow himself to become bitter. He always found excuses and attenuating circumstances for what was done to him. He expressly stressed that his true opponents were not the Roman authorities but a group of integralist professors both in and outside the Society of Jesus. His unequivocal stance in favor of ecclesiastical authority, especially the papacy, shows that there was not a trace of anti-Roman sentiment in him.88

Several years passed before de Lubac was rehabilitated in the eyes of the ecclesiastical authorities. During the decade that followed Surnaturel, de Lubac occupied himself with other, less controversial intellectual projectsall of which needed to be submitted directly to a Roman censor.89 He revised and enlarged earlier approved works, he continued his publications on

Buddhism, and he wrote several large volumes on the history of exegesis.90

1.3. De Lubac’s Works on the History of Exegesis (1950-1961)

De Lubac’s interest in the history of exegesis began in the early 1930s when he taught fundamental theology at Lyon: “My course in fundamental theology always led me back, by a thousand avenues, to this central subject.”91 As usual, his major publications in this area were

88 Von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 18-19. De Lubac frequently identified his principal opponents as “integrists” (e.g., At the Service of the Church, 18, 47, 64 et passim). The term admits a certain breadth of application, but usually denotes someone who does not distinguish between the unchanging dogmas of the Church and the mutable disciplines and customs of an age. Presuming even the smallest detail of Catholic life to be integral to the whole, “integrism” (or “integralism”) is an intransigent reaction which denounces legitimate ecclesial developments as a direct threat to the constitution of the Church. Von Balthasar described the acerbic attitude of the integrists whom he and de Lubac encountered during those years in his The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church, trans. Andrée Emery (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1986), 301-307.

89 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 72.

90 See Neufeld and Sales, 20-28.

91 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 83. 30 preceded by several smaller studies. In the 1940s, de Lubac edited several volumes of Origen’s

writings for Sources Chrétiennes and provided two lengthy introductory essays for volumes of

Origen’s exegetical works.92 De Lubac’s review of contemporary commentaries on Origen’s exegetical works led him to believe that many modern authors did not properly understand what

Patristic interpreters meant by “allegory” (allēgoria) nor did they correctly perceive the basis for

Origen’s typological associations. To clarify matters, de Lubac published an essay on this topic in 1947.93 The following year brought a short study on the Medieval doctrine of the four senses

of Scripture: “Sur un vieux distique. La doctrine du ‘quadruple sens.’”94 Then, in 1949, he

published “Sens spiritual,”95 an anticipation of the conclusion of his forthcoming major work,

Histoire et Esprit: l'intelligence de l'Écriture d'après Origène, which appeared in 1950. He

published an exegetical contribution to a Festschrift on Origen in the same year.96 De Lubac

believed, on the basis of his study of Origen, that the Patristic method of interpreting Scripture

was profoundly misunderstood in the twentieth century. This misunderstanding diminished the

utility of many Scriptural commentaries of Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Because Origen

92 Henri de Lubac, “Introduction” to Origène: Homélies sur la Genèse, Sources Chrétiennes 7 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1943), 5-62, and “Introduction” to Origène: Homélies sur l’Exode, Sources Chrétiennes 16 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1947), 7-75.

93 Henri de Lubac, “‘Typologie’ et ‘Allégorisme,’” Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947): 180-226, translated into English as “Typology and Allegorization,” in Theological Fragments (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 129-164.

94 Mélanges offerts au R. P. Fernand Cavallera (Toulouse: Institut catholique, 1948), 347-366. Translated as, “On an Old Distich: The Doctrine of the ‘Fourfold Sense’ in Scripture,” in Theological Fragments (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989), 109-127.

95 Henri de Lubac, “Sens spirituel,” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 542-576.

96 Henri de Lubac, “‘Tu m’as trompé, Seigneur’: Le commentaire d’Origène sur Jérémie, XX, 7,” in Mémorial J. Chaine (Lyon: Faculté de Théologie, 1950), 255-280. 31 influenced so many later exegetes in both the East and the West, de Lubac believed that a deeper understanding of Origen’s legacy could revitalize the utility of many works of Patristic exegesis for the Church in the modern age.

De Lubac had scarcely finished Histoire et Esprit, when he undertook what would

become the largest work of his career, Exégèse médiévale—which he considered a continuation

of Histoire et Esprit:

In order to write the conclusion of that book [Histoire et Esprit], I had amassed a number of texts from every era, many of which I had not used. The idea came to me, during these years when all properly doctrinal work seemed to me for the time, and perhaps forever, a dead end, to enlarge this conclusion, to correct hasty insights, to bring out the dogmatic backbone of it. There was material in it for a new book that would retrace per summa capita the history of spiritual exegesis in the course of the Christian centuries.… At first seen in modest dimensions, the book swelled beyond measure.97

As the indefatigable de Lubac combed hundreds of Medieval texts, the doctrinal significance of

his work became more apparent:

Along the way, I became more and more strongly aware of the essential nature of the extraordinary connection, always threatened but always maintained or reestablished within the great Church, between the two Testaments; I saw it more and more clearly dominating the whole history and the whole doctrine of the Church, from the first century to our own time.… I admired the marvelous synthesis of the whole Christian faith, thought and spirituality contained in the so- called doctrine of the “four senses”.… I was happy working to do justice in that way to one of the central elements of the Catholic tradition, so grossly underappreciated in modern times and nevertheless still the bearer of promises for renewal.98

De Lubac intended to publish a fifth and final volume, but the task proved beyond him:

A fifth [volume] was to follow, which would have attempted to show the more or less caricatural surviving relics, the incomprehensions of the past, the

97 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 83.

98 Ibid. 32 transformations of perspectives engendered either by confessional controversies or by progress in criticism, more or less successful attempts at reappearance, and so forth. An already considerable file was prepared, but various unforeseen tasks, more urgent and more absorbing, diverted me from completing it and bringing it out.99

Had time allowed for a completion revision of Exégèse médiévale, he would have enlarged the

work:

Besides many other deficits, it seems to me that these four volumes of Exégèse médiévale lack two important chapters: one, on the relations between Jewish exegesis and Christian exegesis at that time, the other, on Exegesis and Liturgy.100

As with his other works, de Lubac believed that the enormous effort invested in ressourcement

would pay a contemporary dividend. First, he hoped that the book would “provide a basis, or at

least an occasion, for setting up a very desirable exchange between exegetes, (dogmatic)

theologians and spiritual directors,” yet he added: “My timid hope was disappointed.”101

Second, de Lubac was fascinated by the development of Patristic and Medieval methods of interpretation and sought to discover the hermeneutical presuppositions of these methods. In light of the contemporary ascendancy of scientific exegesis, de Lubac hoped that his historical study would provide the essential data for careful reflection upon the differences between ancient and modern ways of interpreting Scripture and why these differences developed over time. As he emphasized at the outset of Histoire et Esprit, his study was never intended to be a refutation of the value or validity of modern methods of interpretation:

99 Ibid., 84.

100 Ibid., 84 n.10.

101 Ibid., 85. 33 [One ought not conclude] that I am presenting Origenian exegesis as a model to be followed in every respect. I am far from doing that. My endeavor would be misconstrued if ascribed to even a limited or amended “anti-scientific reaction.”102

Nearly a decade after the Surnaturel controversy, de Lubac was slowly permitted to

resume teaching after petitions from both the members of the French episcopacy and his

superiors in the Society of Jesus. First, de Lubac was permitted to give a few public lectures on

Buddhism at the Catholic University of Lyon; then in 1958, he was allowed to teach courses on

Buddhism at Lyon but not as a member of the theology department. In March 1958, Augustin

Bea (later cardinal) intervened for de Lubac and presented four of his works to Pius XII, who

judged them favorably and sent de Lubac an encouraging letter.103 A few more objections from

within the Society were overcome, and finally, in November 1959, at the age of 64, Henri de

Lubac was allowed to resume his former position in the theology faculty of Lyon. His

restoration was largely symbolic. Never hale and psychologically exhausted from the Surnaturel

affair, he taught for one semester and then retired at the age of 65.104 The faculty then awarded

him the title of “Honorary Professor.”105 That same year de Lubac was awarded the national

honor of election to the Institut de France.106

102 De Lubac, History and Spirit, 14; emphasis added. As will be seen, de Lubac continued the project of Medieval Exegesis in later books.

103 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 83. The works were Sur les chemins de Dieu (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1956), which was a revision of De la connaissance de Dieu, two books on Buddhism, and Méditation sur l’Eglise, 2nd ed., Théologie 27 (Paris: Aubier- Montaigne, 1953).

104 Years later, de Lubac endorsed a friend’s sardonic remark: “Everything would have been much simpler if they had had the courage to send (me) to Nouméa” (At the Service of the Church, 92).

105 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 90-91.

106 Ibid., 92. 34 1.4. The Second Vatican Council

De Lubac’s definitive vindication came a year later. Pius XII died on 9 October 1958 and was succeeded by John XXIII. According to de Lubac, John XXIII had noted with regret the adversarial interactions between the Holy Office under Pius XII and the French Jesuits and

Dominicans. De Lubac recalled the olive branch he personally received from John XXIII:

Very shortly after his election, he had a large donation made to the Sources chrétiennes series. It was not solely his interest in ecclesiastical history that had prompted him to make this gesture. Father Mondésert thanked him for his donation in a letter that I signed below his signature: then, fifteen days or so later, I received, addressed to me alone, a personal letter of thanks from him for this letter.107

De Lubac was surprised because he had no previous contact with the pontiff in any capacity. An even greater surprise came a year later:

In August 1960 … I read in that day’s issue of La Croix the list of theologians chosen by the Pope as consulters to the Preparatory Theological Commission for the Council. My name appeared there as well as that of Father Yves Congar. These were two symbolic names. John XXIII had undoubtedly wanted to make everyone understand that the difficulties that had occurred under the previous pontificate between Rome and the Jesuit and Dominican Orders in France were to be forgotten.… They were not, however, forgotten overnight by everyone, and in that commission, which was in operation until the summer of 1962 and which was practically an annex of the Holy Office, I in particular gave the impression of being a hostage, sometimes even of being a defendant.108

De Lubac served as a peritus during all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council. His customary humility about his contributions should not misguide people into thinking that he had no real influence on the council. In fact, his theology shaped the formation of several conciliar

107 Ibid., 116.

108 Ibid., 116-117. 35 documents, either directly through his participation in their drafting or indirectly through the

influence of his theological works on the Council Fathers and periti.

As a peritus, de Lubac was directly involved in the drafting of Gaudium et spes, “The

Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World”. His working group was charged

with drafting what became the “Introductory Statement: The Situation of Men in the Modern

World” (sections 4-10).109 This section’s discussion of atheism and secularization was the

product of two periti, Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, and two Council fathers, Franjo

Cardinal Šeper and Franz Cardinal König.110 The influence of de Lubac’s works, such as Le

Drame de l’humanisme athée and “Causes de l’atténuation du sens du sacré”111 are evident in the

text. Joseph Ratzinger appraised this chapter shortly after the Council: “On the whole a balanced

and well-founded statement had resulted from the thorough debate, and it may be counted among

the most important pronouncements of Vatican II.”112

As regards de Lubac’s indirect influence, his fellow periti provided ample testimony.

According to Yves Congar, the balanced tone of Gaudium et spes rests on its vision of the

Church in the midst of the world, affirming what is best in the world and sanctifying the world, and also on its stark refusal to speak of the Church and the modern world as intrinsically opposed forces. Underlying this vision of Gaudium et spes is the fundamental conviction that the life of

109 Charles Moeller, “History of the Constitution,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 5:63.

110 Joseph Ratzinger, “Part I, Chapter I,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 5:145.

111 Henri de Lubac, “Causes de l’atténuation du sens du sacré,” Bulletin des Aumôniers catholiques de chantiers de la jeunesse 31 (1942): 27-39.

112 Ratzinger, “Part I, Chapter I,” in Commentary, 5:145. 36 grace and the goods of nature are not juxtaposed to each other; grace is not extrinsic and

superadded to nature; rather, the goods and ends of natural things are intrinsically oriented toward a divine End which Christians know explicitly from the revelation of the Kingdom of

God. Thus faith does not take Christians out of the world; rather, faith unlocks the world’s hidden inner potential. The life of faith, properly pursued, develops what is best in the natural order without violating its natural integrity.113 According to Congar, this perspective permitted

Vatican II to speak positively about the world in a way in which few previous conciliar statements had done. Congar credited this new perspective, in part, to de Lubac’s theology of nature and grace which had been censured in the 1940s.114

Paul McPartlan has noted the striking similarity between the statement of Gaudium et spes that “Christ, the new Adam, in the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and of his love, fully reveals man to himself and brings to light his most high calling”115 and de Lubac’s

113 This is a paraphrase of Yves Congar, “Part I, Chapter IV,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. W. J. O’Hara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 5:211-212.

114 Congar identified the main influences as follows: “The works of H. de Lubac are very important on this: Surnaturel. Études historiques (1947); Augustinisme et Théologie moderne and Le Mystère du surnaturel (1965). Cf. also K. Rahner, “Nature and Grace”, Theological Investigations IV (1966) … L. Scheffczyk, “Die Idee der Einheit von Schöpfung und Erlösung,” TQ 140 (1960) … [and] on the biblical viewpoint, A. Feuillet, Le Christ Sagesse de Dieu d’après les Épîtres pauliniennes (1966), and the Council speech of Cardinal Meyer, 20 October 1964” (Congar, Commentary, 5:212).

115 “Adam enim, primus homo, erat figura futuri, scilicet Christi Domini. Christus, novissimus Adam, in ipsa revelatione mysterii Patris Eiusque amoris, hominem ipsi homini plene manifestat eique altissimam eius vocationem patefacit” (Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 58 [1965]: 1025-1115, § 22; English translation in Austin Flannery, ed., Vatican Council II, vol. 1, The Conciliar and Postconciliar Documents, new rev. ed. [Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co., 1998], 922). 37 statement: “By revealing the Father and by being revealed by him, Christ completes the

revelation of man to himself.”116

Another indirect influence of de Lubac has been identified by John M. Oesterreicher, the

principal architect of the schema Decretum de Judaeis, which became the fourth chapter of

Nostra aetate. In the early drafts of the schema, a major challenge was to speak accurately yet

irenically about the roles of Jews and Gentiles in the early Church. According to Oesterreicher,

de Lubac’s Méditation sur l’Eglise proved useful because of “the important statement … that the

Church, as regards the majority of its members, is descended above all from the Gentiles,

ecclesia ex gentibus; but that the idea of the Church is descended pre-eminently from the

Jews.”117 As regards the groundbreaking statements of Nostra aetate concerning the positive

theological value of religions other than Judaism and Christianity, Oesterreicher credited above

all the work of Karl Rahner and “most clearly Henri de Lubac.”118 There were also several

points of contact between the Council’s deliberations on how to frame its statement on Buddhism

and de Lubac’s numerous writings in this area.119

116 Paul McPartlan, “Henri de LubacEvangeliser,” Priests & People (August- September 1992): 344; de Lubac’s statement was published in Catholicism, 339.

117 John M. Oesterreicher, “Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non- Christian Religions,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. W. Glen-Doepel, H. Graef, J. M. Jakubiak, and S. & E. Young (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 3:32 n. 40. Cf. de Lubac, Splendour, 29-54. The same point is found in ME 1/2:111: “It is also far from being unprofitable, and is even quite necessary that the Ecclesia ex Judaeis and the Ecclesia ex Gentibus, arriving from two opposite points on the horizon, should come to meet each other and finally form just one single Church, in a common interpretation of the two Testaments and their unity.”

118 Oesterreicher, 3:93.

119 Oesterreicher, 3:148, 150. 38 The liturgist Josef Andreas Jungmann cited the role of de Lubac’s Corpus Mysticum in

shaping the way that Sacrosanctum concilium (§§ 47 and 48) described the reciprocal

relationship between sacramental communion and the building up of bonds of charity between

members of the Churcha description which introduced the Council’s call for active

participation in the revised liturgy.120 Heinrich Suso Brechter121 maintained that the Decree on

Missionary Activity (Ad gentes §7), where the Council enumerated the theological motives for

missionary activity, was indebted to de Lubac’s Le fondement théologique des missions.122

Writing about Dei Verbum, chapter six, “Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church,” Joseph

Ratzinger stated quite simply: “for the whole theme of this chapter, see H. de Lubac, L’Écriture dans la Tradition.”123

120 Josef Andreas Jungmann, “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. L. Adolphus, K. Smyth and R. Strachan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967) 1:33.

121 Heinrich Suso Brechter, “Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. H. Graef, W. J. O’Hara and R. Walls (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 4:122.

122 Henri de Lubac, Le fondement théologique des missions, Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Union Missionnaire du Clergé de France, 1941.

123 Joseph Ratzinger, “Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Chapter VI,” in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. by Herbert Vorgrimler, trans. W. Glen-Doepel, H. Graef, J. M. Jakubiak, and S. & E. Young (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969) 3:262 n. 1. L’Écriture dans la Tradition (Paris: Aubier, 1966) is a three-hundred-page compilation of excerpts from Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale, translated as Scripture in the Tradition, trans. Luke O’Neill, with an introduction by Peter Casarella (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 2000). 39 1.5. Postconciliar works

After the Council, de Lubac was appointed a member of the newly formed Vatican

Secretariat for Unbelievers and the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions, where he served

until 1974.124 In 1965, de Lubac decided to publish a substantial update to Surnaturel, now that

he was no longer under disciplinary sanctions; thus appeared the two volumes Augustinianisme

et théologie moderne and Le mystère du surnaturel. The first volume amplified the historical

research in Surnaturel; the second attempted a clearer formulation of its doctrinal core.125

The five years following the Council also saw the publication of several volumes containing the correspondence of Maurice Blondel and numerous publications on Teilhard de

Chardin. Interest in Teilhard’s work was high, and de Lubac believed that numerous expositors of Teilhard’s thought basically misunderstood him; de Lubac felt obliged to expound the genuine thought of his friend and former colleague in the Society of Jesus.

De Lubac also influenced post-conciliar reception of the documents of the Second

Vatican Council. In 1968, he published a commentary on the preamble and first chapter of Dei

Verbum126 and another on Gaudium et Spes.127 In 1972, he published Les Églises particulières

124 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 119.

125 Ibid., 123-130.

126 Henri de Lubac, “Commentaire du Préambule et du Chapitre I de la Constitution dogmatique ‘Dei verbum,’” in La Révélation divine by J.-P. Torrell and B.-D. Dupuy, Unam Sanctam 70 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968), 159-302.

127 Henri de Lubac, Athéisme et sens de l’homme: Une double requête de “Gaudium et Spes.” Foi Vivante 67 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968). 40 dans l’Église universelle128 on the ecclesiology of Lumen gentium. In the same year, he helped

to found the journal Communio.129 As the years passed, de Lubac became increasingly critical of

post-conciliar theological developments that claimed Vatican II as their warrant but, in his view,

were actually propounding substantively different ideas.130

As de Lubac neared his eightieth year, he did not foresee much time remaining for further

writing, yet he produced two more lengthy studies. First was Pic de la Mirandole: Études et

discussions,131 which examined the thought of the fifteenth-century Christian humanist philosopher and related it to several figures of the time: Erasmus, Luther, Nicholas of Cusa and

Bérulle. In 1973, de Lubac recounted:

I had been reading him [Pico della Mirandola] in my spare time for some forty years. By chance, my frequent stays in Rome over some dozen years permitted me … to deepen my acquaintance with him a bit. The book I devoted to him slowly took shape. It was not a complete account of his life nor an integral analysis of his work: too many elements were lacking for that; it was a mere series of “studies and discussions,” as the subtitle indicates. I tried to show through a number of topical examples … that even the most serious historians of humanism and the Renaissance, for the reasons I have stated, were not able really to understand the great Christian humanists.132

128 Henri de Lubac, Les Églises particulières dans l’Église universelle (Paris: Aubier, 1972); translated as “Particular Churches in the Universal Church,” in Motherhood of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982). For de Lubac’s comments on this volume, see At the Service of the Church, 132-133.

129 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 154. For a recent testament of de Lubac’s enduring legacy in the life of this journal, see Nicholas J. Healy, “Communio: A Theological Journey,” Communio 33 (Spring 2006): 117-130: “De Lubac’s vision remains the background against which the other signposts along the journey to the founding of Communio make sense” (121).

130 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 132-134, 145-150, 158-159, and 171-173.

131 Henri de Lubac, Pic de la Mirandole: Études et discussions (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1974).

132 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 138-139. 41

When de Lubac composed the first part of his Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits in 1973, he had regrets that Pic de la Mirandole would be his last work:

I am still haunted by the questions I have asked myself … concerning the choice of subjects approached in the course of my life, to the degree that these choices depended on me. Thinking of the pressing necessities of the present time, I feel some shame in having been able to offer to so many disoriented minds, as the final fruit of my work, only a study of Pico della Mirandola, whose usefulness no one would assert to be imperative. But we cannot start our lives over again, and regrets are pointless.133

Despite his frail health, de Lubac lived another eighteen years. These years afforded him an

opportunity to conclude some lifelong projects. In 1980, he wrote Petite catéchèse sur Nature et

Grâce, which forms a coda to a half-century of thought on this subject.134

De Lubac’s last major work was La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore.135 The

two-volume work of over nine hundred pages continued a train of thought which he first

133 Ibid., 151. On de Lubac’s regrets about not engaging contemporary debates in postconciliar theology more directly, see the “manifestation of conscience” submitted to his Provincial, which concludes with the words, “Am I not a Pilatus redivivus?” (ibid., 368-369).

134 Henri de Lubac, Petite catéchèse sur Nature et Grâce (Paris: Fayard, 1980); translated as A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1984). De Lubac commented on this work: “My goal was two-fold: on the one hand, to summarize the doctrine of the supernatural, such as it emerged from my previous historical studies on the subject, in a simple and up-to-date way, in order to draw the conclusions from it; on the other hand, to complete it with an exposition on grace, the liberator from sin. Both parts, closely connected, seemed to me in fact to be of a similarly obvious timeliness” (At the Service of the Church, 154).

135 Henri de Lubac, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, vol. 1, de Joachim à Schelling (Paris: Éditions Lethielleux, 1978); and La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, vol. 2, de Saint-Simon à nos jours (Paris: Éditions Lethielleux, 1981). No English translation has been prepared to date. 42 developed in the third volume of Exégèse médiévale.136 Given de Lubac’s lament over the

“uselessness” of Pic de la Mirandole and the obscurity of its subject, one might wonder why he

devoted his last years to a large project which traced the intellectual legacy of the Apocalypse commentary of a little-known twelfth-century abbot. De Lubac provided a clue in his description of the “twofold posterity of Joachim”:

[There is] on the one hand, a properly exegetical line, that is, the immense forest of commentaries interpreting the Apocalypse “literally” as a prophecy of the history of the Church, and, on the other, a spiritual line with numerous ramifications, that of the thinkers or men of action who … tend, like him, to conceive of a third age, an age of the Spirit, succeeding that of Christ of which the Church was the guardian.137

Once again, de Lubac’s painstaking historical investigation was motivated by

contemporary problems. He had witnessed the millenarianism of the 1970s, which related to the

first “posterity” of Joachim and the exegetical question of the literal interpretation of the

Apocalypse as an event in Christian history. More important to de Lubac, however, was the

second “posterity” of Joachim, which stretched from the Spiritual Franciscans to the Reformers,

the Enlightenment, and the present day, namely, those Christians who proclaim the immanent

inauguration of a new age of the Spirit which involves overcoming the present hierarchical

structure of the Church and the letter of its laws and which promises the establishment of a new,

utopian social order of all mankind. De Lubac warned:

136 “In volume 3 of Exégèse médiévale (1961), I had devoted a long chapter of 122 pages to Joachim of Flora.… Little by little, however, I would discover the extent of his influence and I was all the more surprised that our historians of theology accorded him such paltry attention.… Even before the fourth volume [of Exégèse médiévale] was completed, notes were accumulating in view of a fifth, which would cover the various phases of the old exegesis as it continued and caricatured itself through the modern period. One of its chapters was to describe the twofold posterity of Joachim” (At the Service of the Church, 155-156).

137 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 156. 43 I consider Joachimism to be a still-present and even pressing danger. I recognize it in the process of secularization, which, betraying the Gospel, transforms the search for the kingdom of God into social utopias. I see it at work in what was so justly called the “self-destruction of the Church.” I believe that it can only increase the suffering and bring about the degradation of our humanity.… [T]hat servile adaptation to the world and its changing idols, sometimes presented as the necessary route of progress.138

Von Balthasar considered La Postérité spirituelle a conclusion not only to de Lubac’s writings about the history of exegesis but also to his writings on ecclesiology:

The last work of Father de Lubac can be understood as the true conclusion to … [his writings] on the Church. In the eyes of universal history, must the Church be understood as the next-to-last reality, the work of the Second Person of the Trinity, just as creation and the Old Testament were the works of the First Persona work that will be overtaken by an age of the Spirit, long-awaited, hoped for, and still to come? Or is she, as the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, invested with the Spirit of the Father and the Son, the final and definitive reality, filled with internal potentialities that will unfurl across the ages, embracing them until the end? From within the Church, Joachim called for her succession of herself into a new agean age of the Spirit. Thus the entire spiritual history of Europe can be read in light of this thought: in a hundred different ways, we have tried either to give the Spirit free reign within the Church of Christ or to draw the Church forcefully into a third age of the human spiritfinally set it free.139

Two more projects on the history of exegesis remained unrealized at the end of de

Lubac’s life: one was to have been “on the subject of several texts of Origen’s homilies on

Jeremiah, a kind of analysis of the Christian demythization of the last ends and more generally of biblical revelation, which could be contrasted to those worked out by Spinoza or Bultmann”; the other, “on Erasmus, of which I had given an advance summary in the fourth volume of Exégèse médiévale.”140

138 Ibid., 156-157.

139 Von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 124-125.

140 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 140-141. 44 Finally, de Lubac always considered his most important work unwritten: a work on

mysticism which he had attempted unsuccessfully to write on various occasions since 1956. He

wrote about this long-desired but repeatedly-deferred project in 1973:

I truly believe that for a rather long time the idea for my book on Mysticism has been my inspiration in everything; I form my judgments on the basis of it, it provides me with the means to classify my ideas in proportion to it. But I will not write this book. It is in all ways beyond my physical, intellectual, spiritual strength. I have a clear vision of how it is all linked together, I can distinguish and more or less situate the problems that should be treated in it, in their nature and in their order, I see the precise direction in which the solution of each of them should be soughtbut I am incapable of formulating that solution. This all is enough to allow me to rule out one by one the views that are not conformed to it … but all this does not take its final form, the only one that would allow it to exist. The center always eludes me.141

De Lubac’s candid admission of the insurmountable challenge of articulating this central insight provides a guideline for the interpretation of his writings in two ways. First, readers are alerted to the presence of a hidden center around which all of de Lubac’s major works revolve.142

Second, the impediment which remained insurmountable for de Lubac’s central work on mysticism was also present at the outset of all his major early works. Catholicisme, Surnaturel, and Histoire et Esprit all contain the potent, elementary form of great ideas which de Lubac

141 Ibid., 113.

142 Von Balthasar sketched what this center might look like without claiming to speak definitively for de Lubac in Von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 11-12. Following de Lubac’s remark in Mémoire, 113, d’Ambrosio indicated de Lubac’s preface to A. Ravier’s La Mystique et les mystiques as a possible outline of his unwritten treatise. Of this preface, de Lubac said: “I worked out some ideas that, according to my original plan, should have been developed into several volumes”; the preface is available as “Mysticism and Mystery” in Theological Fragments, 35-69. Paul McPartlan has suggested Eucharistic and Scriptural aspects of de Lubac’s mysticism in “Mysticism and the Eucharistic Motif,” in The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 50-74; abridged as “‘You will be changed into me’: Unity and Limits in de Lubac’s Thought,” One in Christ 30, no. 1 (1994): 50-60. 45 struggled at first to articulate clearly, but which would in time develop into vast studies

commensurate to such vast ideas. By highlighting the elusive, fragmentary nature of his

thoughts on mysticism, de Lubac’s parting reflection indicates by contrast the powerful continuity amidst the incredible detail of his mature works. Expansive and profound, these

mature works typically did not follow a tightly outlined, systematic exposition; they have, rather,

what von Balthasar called “an organic unity” amidst a “seeming jungle” of research.143

On 2 February 1983, Pope John Paul II honored de Lubac by elevating him to the College

of Cardinals at the age of 87. Henri de Lubac died eight years later, on 4 September 1991, at the

age of 96.

2. Hans-Georg Gadamer

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s life spanned the twentieth century. Born in 1900, Gadamer

published his first academic work in 1922 and his last in 2001, the year preceding his death. His

extraordinary longevity gave rise to numerous publications. His international activity and

eventual prestige brought him into dialogue with many important thinkers of the twentieth

century. The following overview surveys Gadamer’s life and work, outlines the stages of his

academic career, summarizes his chief intellectual interests, and identifies contemporaries who

most influenced his thought.

A biographical overview of any intellectual figure is useful, but in Gadamer’s case it is

vital for three reasons. First, Gadamer developed his key ideas slowly, over a period of decades;

a panoramic view of his life aids the identification of these central themes. Second, Gadamer

143 Von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac, 24. 46 was a voluminous essayist; his best-known major works, such as Wahrheit und Methode, are the

culmination of many earlier smaller works and should be seen in this light.144 Third, Gadamer

was influenced by the thought of many contemporaries, whose influences reveal Gadamer’s

intellectual motivations. In the present consideration of Gadamer’s life, attention will be paid to

his relationship to Christian faith and to Scriptural exegesis. Three works will be frequently

consulted in this overview: Gadamer’s intellectual autobiography, Philosophische Lehrjahre,

which documented the many influences of his contemporaries; 145 the extensive Gadamer-

Bibliographie prepared by Etsuro Makita with Gadamer’s assistance in 1994;146 and a detailed

biography by Jean Grondin.147

2.1. Early Years (1900-1918)

Hans-Georg Gadamer was born in Marburg, Germany, on 11 February 1900, the second

son of Dr. Johannes Gadamer and Emma Caroline Johanna (Gewiese) Gadamer. From birth,

144 Gadamer recounted: “Nonum prematur in annumthis old principle, that all good things take nine years to ripen, fulfilled itself literally in my own attempt to work out the principles of a philosophical hermeneutics. Repeatedly the new semester would force me to break off work that had gotten into gear during the vacation.… The integration of my studies of philosophical hermeneutics, which finally took shape in 1959 under the title Truth and Method, ended a slow, often broken process of growth.” Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, trans. Robert R. Sullivan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985), 146.

145 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophische Lehrjahre: Eine Rückschau, 2. Auflage (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995).

146 Etsuro Makita, Gadamer-Bibliographie (1922-1994), (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995); Makita continues to update this bibliography online: http://www.ms.kuki.tus.ac.jp/KMSLab/makita/gdmhp/ghp_gabi_d.html.

147 Jean Grondin, Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography, trans. Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003). Gadamer assisted Grondin in his research by providing “restricted archives, documents, and correspondence” as well as private interviews (ix-x). 47 Hans-Georg was immersed in German academic culture. His father Johannes, a pharmaceutical

chemist, had gained acclaim for his doctoral research and was a Privatdozent at the University of

Marburg at the time of Hans-Georg’s birth. In October 1902, the family moved to Breslau (now

Wrocław, Poland) when Johannes was appointed to the Chair of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the

University of Breslau.148

Hans-Georg’s early Breslau years were marked by sorrow. His younger sister Ilse

contracted diphtheria and died at the age of five months. Then, within a year, his mother died of

diabetes. There remained only his father and his older brother, Willi, who was afflicted with

severe epilepsy, which no treatment could ameliorate; Willi eventually had to be

institutionalized.149 Johannes, a strict disciplinarian, was engrossed in his work. Whenever

Hans-Georg recounted life with his father, he admired Johannes’ dedication to his work, but

never failed to mention his austere discipline: “My father was a pharmaceutical chemist, a

significant researcher, a self-conscious, accomplished, energetic, and capable personalitya man who drastically embodied authoritarian pedagogy in the worst way but with the best of intentions.”150 Unsurprisingly Gadamer remarked, “My childhood was very lonely.”151 Yet

148 Grondin, 27.

149 Grondin, 20, 32-33. Johannes, having exhausted all means of treatment for Willi, institutionalized him in 1916; until that time, Hans-Georg was often his custodian and caregiver. Willi Gadamer died in 1944.

150 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 3. Gadamer described the Breslau of his youth as “more Prussian than Prussia” (3).

151 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Vom Wort zum Begriff. Die Aufgabe der Hermeneutik als Philosophie,” in Menschliche Endlichkeit und Komposition (Bamberg: Fränkischer Tag, 1995), 120; quoted in Grondin, 42 n. 27. 48 from this solitude grew an inwardness that Gadamer nurtured through reading poetry and his

father’s philosophy books.152

The Gadamer household was nominally Protestant, but the scientific rationalism of

Johannes, who might be described as a deist, determined the culture of the house. Hans-Georg

Gadamer described the intellectual culture of his home in these words:

I come from a very scientifically oriented home whose Protestantism was virtually nil, so to speak. It was no theoretical atheism. My father was a natural scientist and thought the secret of nature as such is proof of something that is not the object of natural science. That certainly existed, but for him the church certainly did not. My mother was quite the opposite. I hardly knew her. She died in my early years. She had religious and meditative but also artistic elements in her character. These all went together. My father’s gifts were more critical.153

Gadamer’s mother, who was inclined toward the Pietism of Baron Ernst von

Feuchtersleben,154 read Enlightenment spiritual literature such as Moses Mendelssohn’s Phädon

oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele.155 Her religious sentiments left their mark upon her son.

His biographer Jean Grondin remarked: “When Gadamer read a biographical portrait occasioned

by his ninety-fifth birthday, where his choice of the arts and humanities was described as a kind

152 Grondin, 27 and 42.

153 Grondin, 23 (Transcript of a tape-recorded interview with Gadamer, 18 September 1994).

154 Ernst von Feuchtersleben (1806-1849) was an Austrian medical doctor, poet and religious philosopher who wrote several popular books on spirituality and psychology, including Zur Diätetik der Seele (Vienna, 1838), which went through 46 editions by 1896, and Lehrbuch der ärztlichen Seelenkunde (Vienna, 1845). He also composed hymns which were set to music by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847). The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1909), s.v. “Feuchtersleben, Ernst Baron von” (by Arthur F. J. Remy).

155 Grondin, 21. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), a German Jewish philosopher, literary critic, and bible commentator, best known for Phädon (Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1767), was the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn and an instrumental figure in the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskalah movement. The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York: Funk, 1906), s.v. “Mendelssohn” (by Joseph Jacobs, I. George Dobsevage, et al.). 49 of rebellion against his father’s dictates, he found this description to the point, while adding that

it perhaps underestimated the absence of his mother.”156 Grondin also observed:

Later Hans-Georg Gadamer often voiced the opinion that his vaguely “religious disposition” came from her. By this he meant his receptiveness to what exceeded the boundaries of reason and science, which he himself would perhaps call the aesthetic or artistic.157

Young Gadamer’s experience of trying to reconcile the disparate worldviews of his scientific father and pietistic mother prepared him for his lifelong academic quest for a

hermeneutic that could defend the legitimacy of the truths discovered by the humanities against

the exclusionary claims of scientific rationalism. As the boy became a man, his youthful fascination with German military history gave way to a love for the contemplative life: “People

said I had an officer’s career in front of meuntil I was pulled away from this by dreams of the

inner man, poetry, and theater.”158

Gadamer received his secondary education at the Gymnasium und Realgymnasium zum

Heiligen Geist in Breslau. As the dichotomous name suggests, the school offered two different

programs of education. The Gymnasium program offered a traditional humanities curriculum

with an emphasis on Greek, Latin and German literature. The Realgymnasium offered a

curriculum designed to meet the needs of nineteenth-century Germans in the midst of a scientific

and industrial revolution: no Greek, less Latin, a course in English and preparation for further

study in math and science. The young Gadamer heralded a departure from his father’s ardent

desire for him to study science by pursuing the Gymnasium program and, in particular, German

156 Grondin, 20.

157 Grondin, 21.

158 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 2. 50 literature.159 Literature, not science, revealed what is most true about human life to Hans-Georg.

His convictions were not merely curricular; they were existential.

Unbeknownst to his father, Hans-Georg saved his modest streetcar allowance and walked

the long route to school each day so that he could buy an anthology of German lyric poetry. The

cherished book contained some of the most important German poets of recent decades: Christian

Morgenstern, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hermann Hesse, and Rainer Maria

Rilke. The hermetic poetry of Stefan George, in particular, struck him “[like] lightning, and I did

not know what happened to me.”160 In Grondin’s appraisal:

Whether one calls this poetic experience an epiphany, escapism, ersatz religion, or aesthetic fundamentalism … is not of fundamental importance. In George and poetry generally, Hans-Georg Gadamer found a world beyond the ironclad logic of science to which he was accustomed in his father’s house. This experience, this poetic truth became a continuing inspiration in Gadamer’s philosophy, and it fed his doubts about science’s monopolistic claim to have a corner on truth.161

Gadamer confirmed this appraisal: “The fact that a poet like George exerted such a powerful influence on people through the magical sound of his verse and the weight of his personality remained a continuing question for minds reflecting on it, and it exercised a corrective effect on the study of philosophy that could never be entirely forgotten.”162 Here one can see the genesis

159 Grondin, 39-40, 50.

160 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Die Wirkung Stefan Georges auf die Wissenschaft,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 9, Ästhetik und Poetik II: Hermeneutik im Vollzug (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1993), 260: English translation from Grondin, 48; hereafter Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke will be cited: GW, followed by the volume and page numbers, e.g.: GW 9:260.

161 Grondin, 50.

162 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Selbstdarstellung Hans-Georg Gadamer,” in GW 2:481; English translation quoted from Grondin, 50.

51 of Gadamer’s lifelong concern to defend the value of the arts and their creative interplay with philosophy.

In his last year at the Gymnasium, a class on religion introduced Gadamer to the writings of Kierkegaard and sparked his interest in the philosophy of religion. A debate between two of his teachers about whether religion originated in fear made a lasting impression on him.163 As

Grondin observed:

[T]his was his first encounter with the Enlightenment’s critique of religion, which he found once again in Bultmann’s discussion of demythologization. Moreover, the question of the limits of the Enlightenment became the subject of a crucial chapter in Truth and Method. At the beginning of his studies he read in Kierkegaard’s Either/Or a critique of the Enlightenment that laid bare the kernel of truth in the question of religion: it is a question about the meaning of one’s own existence. From that point forward, the question to be put to the Enlightenment was the question of whether its “knowing at a distance” was really sufficient to address the phenomenon of religion at all.164

In 1918, Gadamer entered the University of Breslau, where he displayed a voracious

intellectual appetite and broad-ranging curiosity which foreshadowed the breadth of his later

interests. He described his first year’s schedule: “Full of zeal and curiosity, I systematically put

together my class schedule according to the catalogue offerings. ‘Systematically’ meant as many

courses as possible.”165 He quickly found himself lost in a welter of interests: German literature,

163 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 2.

164 Grondin, 51-52.

165 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 4. 52 Romance languages, history, art history, Sanskrit, and Islamic studies.166 He was also intrigued

by the political diversity of the university.167 A common theme of his literary fare was

the verdict that the West was superannuated and that one must search for a new revelation that would point beyond the scientistic rationality that had brought Europe to the brink of the abyss. Kierkegaard’s appeal to the religious dimension and the … existential choice of life, Thomas Mann’s withdrawal into apolitical life … Lessing’s invocation of the East, and also the poetry of Georgeall point in the same direction.168

Gadamer’s first exposure to philosophy came in an introductory lecture series,

“Explication of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as an Introduction to the Study of German

Literature.”169 He recalled, “The first book of philosophy I picked up was Kant’s Critique of

Pure Reason.… I really brooded over the book, but not the slightest understandable thought

slipped out of it.”170 More formative was Gadamer’s encounter with the premier representative

of Breslau’s Neo-Kantianism, Richard Hönigswald. On the basis of his experiences with

166 Ibid., 3.

167 “My liberation from my parents was due to a book by a middling literary figure: Theodor Lessing’s Europa und Asien, a spirited and sarcastic work of cultural criticism that bowled me over. At last I had found something else in the world besides Prussian efficiency, performance, and discipline. Later, at a higher level, this initial orientation would be strengthened when I encountered similar cultural criticism in the circle of the poet Stefan George. Of course the dissolution of my frame of values that was the result of my early education also manifested itself in a new political orientation. This much was required by the appetite we had in those years for finding contradictions. Meeting representatives of the Social- Democratic, Democratic, and Conservative parties … meant above all a confrontation with the art of political speech and with democratic-republican ideas that had been foreign to my school and my parents' house.… Noteworthy was that one dayI was still a freshmanThomas Mann’s Reflections of Nonpolitical Man came into my hands and I found it wonderful” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 5).

168 Grondin, 58. Gadamer was also moved by reading Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (ibid., 56).

169 Grondin, 61.

170 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 5. 53 Hönigswald, Gadamer chose to pursue advanced study in philosophy. Gadamer studied

epistemology and the philosophy of science with Hönigswald during the academic year 1918-

1919. By special exception, Gadamer was allowed to attend Hönigswald’s advanced seminar.171

Hönigswald’s presentations that year drew Gadamer into the heart of the post-Kantian debate about the limits of human knowledge and the role of philosophy as a regulative discipline for all other fields of knowledge. Gadamer was so impressed by Hönigswald’s lectures that he transcribed some verbatim, retained them throughout his life, and years later donated the notes to the Hönigswald archive.172 In his lectures, Hönigswald distinguished between two types of

philosophy:

By the first is to be understood something absolutely exact; by the other, something absolutely inexact. The one corresponds to the model of logic; the other to the Romantic model of nonlogical experience. The one derives everything from concepts and conceptions; the other from what is registered in our intuitive life. The one constitutes its data on the model of science; the other on the model of art.173

Hönigswald then placed philosophy at the service of empirical science. Empirical science is

concerned with exact truths and philosophy’s task is to explicate the concept of truth itself, its

nature and conditions, as a precursor and foundation for modern science. In this regard,

Hönigswald was a typical Kantian, following the plan of Kant’s first Critique and Prolegomena.

Yet Hönigswald admonished his audience against the contemporary assertion that philosophy is related only to scientific truth. Grondin has summarized Hönigswald’s thesis:

171 Ibid., 5.

172 Grondin, 62.

173 Richard Hönigswald, “Einführung in die wissenschaftliche Philosophie,” Gadamer’s MS (lecture notes), 1; quoted in Grondin, 64. 54 There are many types of truth, Hönigswald insists: truths of science, knowledge, religion, and art. Thus Hönigswald defends a pluralist conception of truth, corresponding to Gadamer’s ambivalent attitude toward scientificity. Hence in respect to these different ways of knowing the question arises: What is truth here? This, according to Hönigswald, is the fundamental question of philosophy. We can detect an echo of this basic philosophical question in the opening pages of Gadamer’s magnum opus Truth and Method … where he announces that he will undertake to free the question of truth from being narrowed down to the scientific, methodological conception of truth, and legitimate its independence therefrom.174

By the end of Gadamer’s first year at university, several distinctive features of his

lifelong intellectual activity can be identified. First, the future philologist and man of letters was

pursuing Greek and Latin classical literaturenot merely as a linguist or historian, but precisely

because he believed that these ancient texts, just as much as contemporary German literature,

have existential truths to convey to the modern reader. Second, the future philosopher of

hermeneutics was vexed by the fragmented relationship that had developed in contemporary

German thought between the natural sciences, humanities, art and philosophy; so he sought a

perspective which can bridge the divides between these fields. This perspective helps to locate

Gadamer’s work on Plato and Aristotle in its proper context: Gadamer looked back to the Greeks

as a source for renewal in facing the philosophical problems of his own day.175 Third, one can

glimpse his questions about faith, revelation and religion, which were some of the last themes to

emerge in his written works. Gadamer’s very limited exposure to Christianity during his youth

made him reticent to comment about religionnot from disinterest, but from inexperience.

174 Grondin, 64-65. The enduring influence of Hönigswald’s assessment of contemporary philosophy on Gadamer’s perspective can be seen thirty-five years later in Gadamer’s 1954 essay “Mythos und Vernunft,” which began with a paraphrase of Hönigswald’s formulation (GW 8:163-169).

175 In Marburg, Gadamer discovered that Martin Heidegger shared this keen interest in the revitalizing power of Greek thought for contemporary philosophy and so the two men quickly became friends. 55 Gadamer’s early writings on religion indicate the formative influence of his later mentors,

Bultmann and Heidegger, who shaped Gadamer’s understanding of Christianity.

2.2. Marburg Period (1919-1938)

In April 1918, Johannes Gadamer accepted the Chair of Chemistry at the University of

Marburg and relocated his family there. In 1922, he was elected Rector, a position that he held until his death in 1928. Hans-Georg remained at Marburg for nineteen years, where he completed his bachelor’s degree, a doctoral degree and his Habilitation in philosophy. He also passed the Staatsexamen in classical philology and began his teaching career. During his

Marburg years, the neophyte philosopher developed his intellectual interests into lifelong academic projects. His zeal and his father’s prestige afforded him unparalleled opportunities to study with some of Germany’s brightest minds, including: the philosophers Martin Heidegger,

Nicolai Hartmann and Paul Natorp; the exegete Rudolf Bultmann; and the classical philologist

Paul Friedländer. Grondin commented:

It is striking that Gadamer had the good fortune to become acquainted with his most significant teachers precisely in the most productive phase of their work: Hönigswald just before the publication of his Grundzüge der Denkpsychologie … Hartmann before his Ethik, Heidegger before Being and Time, Bultmann in the middle of his dialogue with Heidegger … and the programmatic essays of the twenties.176

Always an assiduous networker, Gadamer also interacted with Edmund Husserl, Ernst Cassirer,

Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, Werner Jaeger and other prominent academics during his years as a graduate student.

176 Grondin, 120-21. 56 In 1922, Gadamer’s doctoral dissertation on Plato, “Das Wesen der Lust nach den

platonischen Dialogen,” began a series of publications about Plato which spanned seventy years.177 Written under the direction of Paul Natorp, the dissertation outlined the evolution of

Plato’s understanding of the relationship between hēdonē and agathon from the Gorgias to the

Philebus with the care of a philologist, yet with an eye to contemporary problems in phenomenology such as the origin of values. The introduction demonstrated Gadamer’s concern for proper hermeneutical method. He emphatically rejected the then-common approach of locating a work of ancient Greek philosophy within an established narrative of a “history of problems” spanning from the Pre-socratics to Aristotle. Such an approach struck Gadamer as presumptuous and rationalist: contemporary philosophy’s thematization of the Greeks’ philosophical problems should not be imported into the dialogue ab initio. Not only does such an approach jeopardize the reader’s ability to discern accurately the historical meaning of the

177 For Gadamer’s later publications, see Makita, 76-81, 179-85, and 239-44. Some of Gadamer’s later essays concerned the interpretation of Plato: Platon als Porträtist (München: Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Glyptothek, 1988); the 1991 essay “Dialektik ist nicht Sophistik: Theätet lernt das im ‘sophistes,’” (GW 7:338-369); and the short work, “Sokrates und das Göttliche,” in Sokrates: Gestalt und Idee, hrsg. von Herbert Kessler (Heitersheim: Die Graue Edition, 1993), 97-108. Gadamer always considered his doctoral dissertation an immature work. He neither revised it for publication nor permitted its inclusion in his collected works; a summary was provided by Grondin, 79-86. 57 work, it also diminishes the dialogue’s ability to correct deficits in contemporary philosophy’s

own perspective.178

In August 1922, Gadamer contracted poliomyelitis and was temporarily paralyzed and

unable to walk for several months. A female acquaintance, Frida Kratz, tended him through his

illness. After his convalescence, they married in April 1923.179 At that time, the Weimar

Republic was in an economic crisis due to the devaluation of its currency and the Gadamer

family, along with most of Marburg, was impoverished.

Heidegger joined the Marburg faculty in 1923. Gadamer attended all five of Heidegger’s

courses that Fall. He recalled being enthralled with Heidegger’s novel approach to

phenomenology, his daring interpretation of the ancient Greeks, and his proficiency with the

Catholic intellectual tradition, which was quite foreign to Gadamer: “I knew almost no Catholics

as a young man, and the same as a child.”180 Gadamer consequently was daunted by Heidegger’s casual references to patristic, medieval and reformation-era theologians:

The way in which the hermeneutic situation of an interpretation of Aristotle was worked out, with Luther and Gabriel Biel, Augustine and the Old Testament brought into play and with Greek thinking in all its peculiarities and freshness appearing in outlineI still do not know how much of this I really understood.

178 “This is the general problem involved in doing history of problems, namely that it removes a problem from its unique historical context and yet thinks it has comprehended its full content. Actually, though, its content is decisively determined by the context in which the problem emerged, and it is just this uniqueness which cannot be abstracted without loss.… It is a fundamentally false endeavor to try to point out, from within the standpoint of our present problematic, contradictions or mistaken inferences in Plato’s thought, and to explain them by appeal to a deficiency in the abstractive capability of Plato’s thought.” Gadamer, “Das Wesen der Lust nach den platonischen Dialogen,” 2; quoted in Grondin, 84.

179 Grondin, 92-95.

180 Grondin, 24. (Transcript of a tape-recorded interview with Gadamer, 18 September 1994.) 58 Despite my title of doctor, I was still a twenty-two-year-old boy who thought rather murkily, who reacted portentously to murky thinking, and who still did not really know what was going on.181

Though insecure about his academic talents, Gadamer hoped his Habilitationsschrift

would prove his scholarly merit to his father. These hopes were scuttled by a sharply worded

letter from Heidegger in April 1924.182 Not knowing what to do, Gadamer undertook a new

course of study at Marburg in classical philology, thinking that his gifts might be better suited for

success in this field. At best, he could gain a Habilitation in classics; at worst, he could become

a Greek teacher in a Gymnasium. For the next two years, Gadamer studied classics principally

with Paul Friedländer, a disciple of the internationally renowned philologist and authority on

Homeric Greek, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.

During this time, Gadamer was encouraged by Rudolf Bultmann, who came to Marburg

as Professor of New Testament in 1921 and taught there until 1951. In his memoirs, Gadamer

recounted the impressive theological debates at Marburg and the central role that Bultmann

played not only in these public contests but also in Gadamer’s own theological education:

The most unforgettable for us were the so-called theological slugfests. Everyone streamed into [the] room … not only to hear the famous guests but also to be

181 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 14. Gadamer’s remarks specifically concerned the so-called “Natorp Report” (also called “Anzeige der hermeneutische Situation”), which Heidegger wrote to Natorp in 1922 to outline his thoughts on Aristotle prior to his appointment at Marburg (Grondin, 94). Gadamer first encountered the works of Aquinas in 1923, when, as Heidegger’s assistant, he was charged with obtaining an edition of Aquinas which Gadamer called “the symbol of the entry of Heidegger into Protestant Marburg” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 11).

182 “If you cannot summon sufficient toughness toward yourself, nothing will come of you.” Quoted in Grondin, 117. Yet Gadamer confessed: “I had still not learned what real work was and no one really demanded such a thing of me. All of this changed when I met Heideggera basic event, not only for me but for all of the Marburg of those days” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 19). 59 present when they were put up against the wall in the discussion battles.… It was a dense atmosphere that surrounded us in Marburg, and every presentation, every discussion, made its waves. Heidegger especially, but also Bultmann, came back to these events in their lectures. I myself cannot claim to have been a competent listener at these first meetingsthis happened only later when I had deepened my own theological studies and learned from Bultmann.183

For fifteen years, Gadamer was a regular participant in the Bultmannsche Graeca—a

select study circle that gathered in Bultmann’s apartment every Thursday evening to read Greek

literature. There, Gadamer the philologist found common ground for a lasting friendship with

Bultmann the exegete.184 Gadamer’s close friendship with Bultmann also familiarized him with the internal debates of the Marburg theologians and philosophers. Through Bultmann, Gadamer

came to appreciate the tensions between historical theology, dialectical theology, and

Bultmann’s own exegetical project of demythologizing the New Testamenta project prompted

183 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 39-40. Gadamer averred: “And then I finally went to Marburg, and there I was more and more initiated [into theology], especially by Bultmann” (Grondin, 24, transcript of a tape-recorded interview with Gadamer, 18 September 1994).

184 Gadamer described the Bultmannsche Graeca: “Bultmann was a passionate humanist as well as a sharp theologian, and that brought us together in a different manner at a very early point. For fifteen years I attended the famous “Bultmannsche Graeca” … the little group that read the classics of Greek literature with Bultmann.… One of us was condemned to read out a German translation, and the others followed in the Greek text. We read thousands of pages in this manner. Sometimes a discussion developed and new outlooks resulted; but Bultmann was always calling us back to continue the reading. Whether it was Greek tragedy or comedy, a Church father or Homer, a historian or a rhetorician, we hurried through the entire ancient world one evening per week for fifteen years. This schedule was maintained by Bultmann with strictness and perseverance, week after week. We began punctually at 8:15 P.M. and read until the clock struck eleven. Bultmann was a strict man” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 40). 60 in part by Heidegger’s existentialism.185 Since Gadamer undertook no formal study with

Bultmann and wrote only a few essays which discuss his work, these biographical details are

valuable indicators of Bultmann’s influence.186

In 1925, Gadamer achieved scholarly acclaim for his insightful critique of Werner

Jaeger’s book, Aristoteles (1923).187 In July 1927, Gadamer successfully passed his

Staatsexamen in classical philology with distinction in the minor area of ancient philosophy.

Heidegger was one of Gadamer’s three examiners. After the exam, Friedländer thought

Gadamer should pursue the Habilitation in classics, but the next day, to Gadamer’s surprise,

185 Gadamer recalled: “More fruitful was the new impetus that Heidegger gave to the theologians in Marburg. The situation there was in any case tense. Marburg has been the leader of the historical school of theology, and the call ‘Karl Barth ante portas’ could still lead to a kind of panic. Especially significant, however, was the circumstance that Rudolf Bultmann, who himself came out of the liberal theology of Marburg, was at the time he came to know Heidegger being moved by the catchwords dialectical theology. Bultmann’s sharp sarcasm, and even more the incorruptible earnestness with which he struggled for clarity and distance from all theological pathos, had led him to a radical internal criticism of theology. In this he was encouraged and strengthened by Heidegger. It led to a true friendship … one supported by the community of their spiritual ends and efforts. As a result the student body developed a strong and proud group feeling” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 39).

186 Grondin stated: “Gadamer did not, or not regularly, attend Bultmann’s seminars on the New Testament, as can be seen from the detailed lists of participants in Bernd Jaspert, Sachgemäβe Exegese: Die Protokolle aus Rudolf Bultmanns Neutestamentlichen Seminaren 1921-1951” (Grondin, 414 n. 21). Yet Gadamer wrote of his graduate student days at Marburg: “First we went to hear Rudolf Otto. Then an hour later we went to Bultmann’s sharply gripping exegeses in order to receive weapons to use against the fortified dogmatics we had heard earlier” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 39). Perhaps Gadamer was an unofficial auditor in Bultmann’s seminar.

187 In 1995, Gadamer boasted of his critique: “Under Friedländer’s guidance, I became a classical philologist and played an influential role in that field, as you may know. In fact my essay on the Protrepticus turned the whole Jaegerean Aristotle conception completely upside down, did it not?” (“A Conversation with Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 26 [1995]: 117; quoted in Grondin, 123). 61 Heidegger offered the possibility of a Habilitation in philosophy, which Gadamer readily

accepted.188

In April 1928, Johannes Gadamer died of cancer; the dying Rector of Marburg

summoned Martin Heidegger to his deathbed, still mourning his son’s decision to become one of

the “prattling professors”189 and anxious about Hans-Georg’s future. Heidegger assured

Johannes that his son had a bright career ahead of him, but Hans-Georg never recovered from the

sting of his dying father’s skepticism about his vocation. Subsequently, Gadamer regarded

Heidegger as his “spiritual father.”190 The next year, 1929, Gadamer displayed both his

philological acumen and the influence of Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle in his

188 Gadamer recounted: “The next day I received a letter from Heidegger. He spoke to me about accelerating my dissertation, presumably because he would be going to Freiburg as Husserl’s successor and wanted very much to habilitate me before then. I felt very uncertain at this time and was somewhat astounded at this approach. Later I realized that Heidegger was quite right. One had only to think of the words of Nietzsche: ‘I have long been accustomed to judging philosophy professors according to whether or not they are good philologists.’ It could no longer be so terribly wrong, now that I had learned something, to open up to me the possibility of teaching” (Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 44).

189 “Schwätzprofessoren” (Gadamer, Philosophische Lehrjahre, 15).

190 In a letter dated 2 October 1928 (six months after Johannes’ death and after Heidegger’s departure to Freiburg), Gadamer wrote to Heidegger: “But you will have sensed that after the death of my father the occasional contact with you meant a lot to me. I feel as if, with the death of my father, many of the binding expectations that affected me in my relationship to my father, have gone over to you, and the awareness of being bound by such expectations is for me an essential support of my existence. I will strive to keep this awareness alive in me even without the remembrance of your personal presence” (quoted in Grondin, 417). Much later, in a letter dated 28 May 1976, Gadamer wrote to Heidegger’s widow Elfriede two days after his death: “You know it, you know that no man, not even my own father, meant so much for me as did Martin Heidegger. From the early years of the first inspiration and the first influence, the presence of Martin Heidegger was for me a real issue of being and not being, and it is one of the most enriching experiences of my life that, at the end, an unrestrained friendship grew between the admiring pupil and the admired teacher” (quoted in Grondin, 417-18). 62 Habilitationsschrift: Platos dialektische Ethik: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zum

“Philebos.”191

That summer Gadamer began his teaching career with a lecture series on “The Concept

and History of Greek Ethics” and another class on the Nicomachean Ethics.192 October 1929

brought Black Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange and the worldwide effects of the

Great Depression. Gadamer was unable to secure any employment beyond temporary teaching

positions at the University of Marburg until August 1933, when he was appointed Privatdozent

in philosophy to teach ethics and aesthetics. In the summer semester of 1936, Gadamer debuted

the course, “Art and History (Introduction to the Geisteswissenschaften).” Many central themes

of Truth and Method were developed from this class, which he offered six times before the

publication of his magnum opus.193

In January 1933, Hitler seized power.194 Gadamer was neither an outspoken supporter of

the Hitler regime (as Heidegger was), nor an ardent critic of it. Gadamer attempted to chart a neutral course, skirting conflicts with Nazi authorities while maintaining the nominal public

191 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Platos dialektische Ethik: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zum “Philebos.” (Leipzig: Felix Miner Verlag, 1931). On the influence of Heidegger’s 1923 seminar on Aristotle (particularly the treatment of phronēsis), see Grondin, 106-107 and 135- 140.

192 Grondin, 366. Grondin compiled a nearly complete catalogue of Gadamer’s announced classes at German universities by using university archives to corroborate, complete and correct Gadamer’s own records (ibid., 366-380).

193 Gadamer offered this class at Marburg in 1936; at Leipzig in 1939, 1942, and 1945; at Frankfurt in 1949; and at Heidelberg in 1951 (Grondin, 368-376).

194 The question of Gadamer’s cooperation with Nazism is a complex one which cannot be treated methodically and fairly in this short chapter. 63 support for Hitler necessary to maintain and even to advance his career.195 Gadamer described

his own reactions to Hitler’s ascendancy as follows:

[T]hen the year 1933 broke in. It was a terrible awakening, and we could not absolve ourselves of having failed to perform adequately as citizens. We had underrated Hitler and his kind.… Not one of us had read Mein Kampf, although I paid attention to Alfred Rosenberg’s The Myth of the Twentieth Century, which according to the Frankfurter Zeitung was the philosophical presentation of the intellectual center of National Socialism. That I failed to see any danger in this pale instrument is easy to understand. It was a widespread conviction in intellectual circles that Hitler in coming to power would deconstruct the nonsense he had used to drum up the movement, and we counted anti-Semitism as part of this nonsense. We were to learn differently.196

Regarding the situation in Marburg, Gadamer recalled:

Things were becoming grotesque … refusal of the Hitler salute would become an immediate cause for dismissal. Soon enough there developed a kind of stylization of the German greeting from which the student could very easily recognize the conviction of his teacher. There were very discreet forms of saluting with the hand, but there was also the terrorist opposite.197

Gadamer’s attempt to chart a neutral course seems evident in this statement:

Certainly it remained difficult to keep the right balance, not to compromise oneself so far that one would be dismissed and yet still to remain recognizable to students. That we somehow found the right balance was confirmed for us one day when it was said of us that we had only “loose sympathy” for the new awakening.198

Yet he also made statements of regret about such self-interested quietism:

195 For Gadamer’s own statements regarding the Nazi and post-war periods, see Philosophical Apprenticeships, 75-81 and 93-115. Grondin’s biography is a detailed resource, since he began it as an investigation of whether Gadamer had similar Nazi commitments to those of his mentor Heidegger; Grondin later expanded this investigation into a full biography (Grondin, ix); see chapters 9-11 for the most relevant information.

196 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 75.

197 Ibid.

198 Ibid., 76. 64 I then learned from myself and from others how easily one makes illusions and is prepared to take the situation as not really so bad, as long as it is not one’s own goose that is being cooked. One never learns this lesson well enough.199

Gadamer watched with regret as several of his Jewish colleagues were removed from their offices. His refusal to have anything more than “loose sympathies” with the Nazi movement apparently prevented him from being promoted from Privatdozent to Extraordinarius at Marburg. Gadamer, who received the very meager income of a Privatdozent for six years after his Habilitation—an unusually long time. He feared financial ruin. In October 1935, he voluntarily enrolled in what he called a “rehabilitation camp,” which the Third Reich called a

“Dozentenakadamie”:

I was the only one who was there voluntarily and who had already had a number of years of teaching experience.… By means of this rehabilitation camp I won an influential friend in Count Gleispach, who intervened for me in Berlin in my attempt to attain the title of professor. That it went well in the end was a consequence of high politics.200

Gadamer despaired of long-term advancement at Marburg. To make matters worse, he published little during this period: a short Festscrift essay on Dilthey in 1933; an essay, “Plato und die Dichter,” in 1934; and a journal article on ancient atomism in 1936.201 Gadamer certainly had other interests, but he was afraid to publish them in the politically-charged climate.

199 Ibid., 76.

200 Ibid., 79. The last statement also epitomizes Gadamer’s precarious relationship with the Communists at Leipzig a decade later.

201 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Wilhelm Dilthey zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstag am 19. November,” Literarische Rundschau 3/20 (1933): 1; idem, Plato und die Dichter, Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1934); this 36-page essay was published as a monograph: “Antike Atomtheorie,” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Naturwissenschaft einschließlich Naturphilosophie und Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft und Medizin 1, Heft 2 (1935/36): 81-95. 65 Only after he left Marburg did he publish his essays on “Hegel und der geschichtliche Geist,”

“Platos Staat der Erziehung,” and “Herder et ses théories sur l’Histoire.”202 Early in 1938,

Gadamer received an opportunity for advancement: the University of Leipzig needed a substitute

for an Ordinarius who was on leave. Gadamer accepted the appointment in March 1938 and

began teaching at Leipzig that summer. Gadamer was successful at Leipzig, where the

environment was far less politically charged. Leipzig then extended Gadamer a position as

Ordinarius, which he readily accepted in January 1939.203

2.3. The Leipzig Years (1939-1948)

Gadamer’s decade at Leipzig was the most tumultuous period in the university’s history.

Duties of teaching and administration limited the publications of the new Ordinarius to shorter works. In addition to the previously mentioned essays, Gadamer’s noteworthy publications from the Leipzig period included: a Festscrift essay, “Die Gottesfrage der Philosophie” and a small monograph, Goethe und die Philosophie in 1943; a conference paper on “Die Grenze der historischen Vernunft” in 1949, and several essays on the origins and scope of philosophical

rationality, including his Rektoratsrede in 1946, “Über die Ursprünglichkeit der Wissenschaft,”

which was followed by the publication of his lectures on the same topic: Über die

Ursprünglichkeit der Philosophie: Zwei Vorträge.

202 Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hegel und der geschichtliche Geist,” Zeitschift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 100 Heft 1/2 (1939): 25-37; idem, “Platos Staat der Erziehung,” in Das neue Bild der Antike, Bd. I, Hellas, hrsg. von Helmut Berve (Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1942), 317-33; idem, “Herder et ses théories sur l’Histoire,” in Regards sur l’histoire (Paris: Fernand Sorlot, 1941), 7-36. After attending Gymnasium, Gadamer was fluent in French, and sometimes his works were originally written in French.

203 Grondin, 186-195. 66 Gadamer ascended to higher positions at Leipzig as Europe descended into the chaos of

the Second World War. In a single day of bombing (4 December 1943), Gadamer witnessed the

destruction of fifty-eight of the university’s ninety-two institutes and clinics. Classes were often

held in rooms without heating, light, or even windows.204 In April 1945, the Allies occupied the

city. As part of the “denazification” of important civil offices, they restructured the university’s

administration. Gadamer was elected Dean of the Philological and Historical Faculty. In July,

Leipzig was occupied by the Soviets, who initiated their own restructuring of Leipzig. At the

conclusion of this process, Gadamer was elected Rector in 1946: “With energy and full of

illusion, I tried in those times to defend the scholarly status of the university.”205 The tedious bureaucratic struggles and endless political intrigues of Communist occupation quickly exhausted him and so he sought to escape to the West. Gadamer used his academic connections to obtain a position at Frankfurt and he politically finessed the approval of his transfer from the

Soviet administration. Yet the week of his departure saw his arrest, a four-day interrogation, and an imperiled journey to the West. In the end, Gadamer arrived safely at Frankfurt. In April

1949, he received a prestigious invitation to succeed Karl Jaspers in the Chair of Philosophy at

Heidelberg.

204 Grondin stated that the continued functioning of the University was essential to the morale of the city: “The cessation of instruction, the sole island of sanity in a sea of insanity, would have been psychologically catastrophic” (Grondin, 224).

205 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 109. For Gadamer’s account of this period, see ibid., 101-110. 67 2.4. Maturity at Heidelberg (1949-1968)

At Heidelberg, Gadamer could at last devote his full energy to writing and teaching.

Eighty-four essays, numerous reviews, and several major monographs, including Wahrheit und

Methode, appeared during his two decades at Heidelberg. His research into ancient philosophy

continued with essays on Parmenides, Plato’s relationship to the Pre-Socratics, a short book on

Plato’s Seventh Letter and a reprise of his Habilitationsschrift.206 During his Heidelberg years,

Gadamer began to emerge as an important interpreter of Heidegger.207 Religious themes also

entered more frequently into Gadamer’s writing. He contributed articles to a Handwörterbuch

für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft and wrote on philosophical ethics.208 He related

206 “Retraktationen zum Lehrgedicht des Parmenides,” in Varia variorum: Festgabe für Karl Reinhardt (Münster: Böhlau Verlag, 1952), 58-68; “Plato und die Vorsokratiker,” in Epimeleia: Die Sorge der Philosophie um den Menschen (Festschrift für Helmut Kuhn zum 65. Geburtstag), hrsg. von Franz Wiedmann (München: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1964), 127-142; Dialektik und Sophistik im siebenten platonischen Brief (Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1964); Platos dialektische Ethik und andere Studien zur platonischen Philosophie (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1968).

207 As a well-known student and devoted friend of Heidegger, Gadamer influenced the reception of Heidegger’s philosophy through his teaching as well as his scholarly writings, which include: “Zur Vorgeschichte der Metaphysik,” in Anteile: Martin Heidegger zum 60. Geburtstag, hrsg. von Hans-Georg Gadamer (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950), 51-79; “Vom Zirkel des Verstehens,” in Martin Heidegger zum siebzigsten Geburtstag: Festschrift, hrsg. von Günther Neske (Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1959), 24-34; “Anmerkungen zu dem Thema ‘Hegel und Heidegger’,” in Natur und Geschichte: Karl Löwith zum 70 Geburtstag, hrsg. von Hermann Braun und Manfred Riedel (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1967), 123-131. In 1983, Gadamer published Heideggers Wege: Studien zum Spätwerk (Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1983).

208 Gadamer contributed four entries to Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart: Handwörterbuch für Theologie und Religionswissenschaft, hrsg. von Kurt Galling, 3. Auflage (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1957-1965). “Über die Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik,” in Sein und Ethos: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Ethik, hrsg. von Paulus M. Engelhardt (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1963), 11-24. 68 Heidegger’s work to the formation of Marburg theology.209 Gadamer was elected to the

Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and became the head of a commission which

was preparing the Opera omnia of Nicolas of Cusa.210 Gadamer also published several articles

concerning the proper interpretation of poetry and myth, exhibiting his hermeneutics in theory

and practice.211

In 1950, Gadamer resolved to publish a major work which would gather the

hermeneutical ideas that lay at the basis of his many smaller research projects and articulate his

comprehensive view of the history and theory of hermeneutics. He devoted his teaching efforts

towards this theme and struggled during semester breaks to write the book. For years, the only

fruit of these efforts were small essays on one aspect of hermeneutics or another.212 Finally, in the winter semester of 1958-1959, for the first time in his life, Gadamer received a sabbatical, “in order to complete pressing scholarly work.”213 In 1960, Wahrheit und Methode appearedby

209 “Martin Heidegger und die Marburger Theologie,” in Zeit und Geschichte: Dankesgabe an Rudolf Bultmann zum 80. Geburtstag, hrsg. von Erich Dinkler (Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1964), 479-490.

210 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 149. Gadamer published essays such as “Nicolás de Cusa y la filosofía del presente,” in Folia humanística: Ciencias, artes, letras, vol. 2 (1964): 23:929-937 (originally published in Spanish, later in German).

211 “Mythos und Vernunft,” in Gegenwart im Geiste: Festschrift für Richard Benz, hrsg. von Walther Bulst und Arthur von Schneider (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1954), 64-71; “Das Gedicht zwischen Autor und Leser: Zwei Doppelinterpretationen (von Erich Fried / Werner Ross, Hilde Domin / Hans-Georg Gadamer)” in Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Europäisches Denken 20 (May 1966), 5:431-442; “Mythopoietische Umkehrung in Rilkes Duineser Elegien,” in GW 9, 289-305.

212 The essays “Wahrheit in den Geisteswissenschaften” (1953), “Was ist Wahrheit?” (1957) and “Vom Zirkel der Verstehens” (1959), were published in GW 2: 37-65, and are related to parts of Truth and Method.

213 Grondin, 358. 69 far his longest work and soon his most famous. The book brought Gadamer’s career to a new

level. International review of the work necessitated a series of responses and brought him into

dialogue with prominent thinkers in several countries. Five subsequent editions appeared; the

second, third and fifth editions contain substantial clarifications of key points and his responses

to critics.214 A series of debates began between Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas, his younger

Heidelberg colleague, who criticized Wahrheit und Methode from the perspective of critical theory.215

Wahrheit und Methode raised scholarly interest in Gadamer’s many essays and smaller

books, some of which were difficult to obtain. Thus 1967 saw the publication of the first two

volumes of Gadamer’s four-volume Kleine Schriften, which contain his most noteworthy essays.

In February 1968, at the age of sixty-eight, Gadamer retired from his Chair at the University of

Heidelberg.

2.5. Gadamer’s “Second Youth” (1968-2001)

Gadamer could scarcely have anticipated that his scholarly activity would continue

another thirty-three years after his retirement. He called his career as professor emeritus “a

second youth.”216 During his teaching years, Gadamer did not frequently travel outside of

Germany and when he did, he rarely went beyond neighboring countries. Gadamer felt a deep

214 Makita, 50-51.

215 See the prefaces to the sixth edition of Truth and Method as well as essays such as “Rhetorik, Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik: Metakritische Erörterungen zu Wahrheit und Methode,” in GW 2, 232-250. For details of the cordial relationship between Gadamer and his critic, see Grondin, 302-311.

216 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 158. 70 loyalty to Heidelberg and was always devoted to his classroom duties; he therefore eschewed invitations to teach at other universities as a visiting professor. After the publication of Wahrheit und Methode, such invitations mounted and, in retirement, Gadamer began to accept them.

The School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America had invited Gadamer to serve as a visiting professor before his retirement, and Professor Jude Dougherty renewed that invitation in 1968. Gadamer decided to make his first trip to America. He participated in an

International Schleiermacher Congress at Vanderbuilt University, visited The Catholic

University of America, and lectured at several other American universities, including Chicago,

Yale and Harvard. Then Gadamer traveled to Austria, to open the Fourteenth Annual Congress for Philosophy in Vienna, where he debated with the analytic philosopher, Karl Popper, who likened some elements of Gadamer’s work to his own critique of logical positivism, but had serious reservations about Gadamer’s antipathy to methodological standards of truth in the human and social sciences.217

In 1969, Gadamer returned to The Catholic University of America to serve as a visiting professor. He found that many American philosophy departments were interested in Husserlian phenomenology, Heidegger’s work, and recent continental developments in hermeneutics, including his own. For the next two decades, Gadamer spent most of his autumns teaching at

American universities, including Boston College (1974-1986).218 Gadamer often lectured at religious institutions, many of them Catholic, because he found there both a warm reception for continental philosophy and students well-trained in the classical tradition—without which most

217 Grondin, 297-299.

218 Grondin, 313. 71 of Gadamer’s thought is unintelligible.219 In this manner, Gadamer familiarized several generations of American scholars with key developments in contemporary German hermeneutics.

Gadamer received several prestigious awards for his scholarly work, including

Knighthood in the Order “Pour le mérite,” the Reuchlin Prize, and the Grand Cross for Service to the Republic.220 The death of Martin Heidegger in 1976 triggered a wave of commentary on

Heidegger’s philosophy and ideological commitments. Gadamer felt it appropriate to write about certain themes which he had refrained from mentioning during Heidegger’s lifetime out of respect for his mentor. Noteworthy is Gadamer’s increased emphasis on the religious dimension of Heidegger’s thought.221

In the 1980s, Gadamer engaged in dialogues with several figures of international importance. In April 1981, the Paris Goethe Institute hosted a debate between Gadamer and the deconstructionist philosopher Jacques Derrida.222 In August 1983, the Vienna Institute for the

Geisteswissenschaften facilitated a colloquium of several prominent philosophers including

Emmanuel Levinas, Paul Ricoeur, and Charles Taylor at Castelgandolfo at the behest of Pope

219 Grondin, 321.

220 Grondin, 360.

221 See the 1977 essay “Sein, Geist, Gott” (in GW 3:320-332) and the 1981 essay “Die religiöse Dimension” (in GW 3:308-319).

222 The somewhat antagonistic character of this dialogue put a damper on future exchanges with Derrida for the next decade. Yet on the occasion of Gadamer’s death, Derrida stated of the 1981 debate, “how right he was, then and still today!” (Grondin, 338) but a funerary encomium should not be taken as a statement of agreement. 72 John Paul II.223 The Popea former university professor and phenomenologisthad long been

interested in Gadamer’s work. Upon meeting Gadamer, he gave thanks “that Providence had accorded him the honor of giving Professor Gadamer his hand.”224 Gadamer also dedicated time

to editing his ten-volume Gesammelte Werke, the first volume of which appeared in 1985 and the

tenth in 1995. 225 Derrida and Gadamer met again in 1994 with Gianni Vattimo in Capri, this

time to discuss religion.226

Gadamer increasingly turned to religious themes in his writing, particularly the

phenomenology of ritual and the interpretation of prayer-speech. Yet he always represented himself as a humble outsider to the world of religion in general and academic theology in particular. For example, his autobiographical work, Philosophische Lehrjarhe, contained straightforward appraisals of the thought and works of a dozen former colleagues, but when

Gadamer commented on his many years with Rudolf Bultmann, he demurred from such analysis:

“Somebody who knows more than me [sic] would have to explain how the learned work of this great exegete structures itself.”227

Regarding his religious faith later in life, Gadamer sometimes identified himself as a

“Protestant” thinker, but only in contrast to the perceived “Catholicism” of Heidegger in those

223 Grondin, 323, 468 n. 25.

224 Grondin, 323.

225 Grondin, 316.

226 Grondin, 363.

227 Gadamer, Philosophical Apprenticeships, 57. 73 faculties where confessional differences were significant.228 After his frequent visits to

American Catholic universities in the 1970s and 1980s, journalists queried Gadamer about his

faith. When asked in 1993 whether he believed in an afterlife, Gadamer replied: “Not

personally, no. At least not in the sense the religious do.”229 Yet he added this qualification:

I believe that in our spiritual and personal world none of us can know our boundariesneither what speaks to us before we came to be, nor what perhaps might still be said when we are no more. This beyond always existsas the future that we have not yet lived and the past that has already receded into the distance. We know nothing of either. The flicker of light that our consciousness traverses is not the whole of our existence.230

In the same year, Gadamer permitted a Spanish journalist to refer to him as desgraciadamente

agnóstico, because, as Grondin recounted,

in his old age he declared himself unable to determine good reasons for accepting one thesis or the other. At most he professed what Plato called “the divine,” though only in the neuter: this neuter, he thought, referred to no living being, as

228 Grondin explained: “But often he presented himself thus to distinguish himself pointedly from Heidegger’s ‘Catholicism.’ In doing so he associated Heidegger’s religion not only with the cultic side of Catholicism, disposed toward ritual and art, but also with the scholastic conception of God as an intellectus infinitus, which conception, in his view, Protestantism does not need because of its insistence on the sacrifice of Good Friday. It is not the image of a harmonious and hierarchically ordered world of creation that occupies the foreground here but the sinful nature of finite human beings. Gadamer loved to express the Protestant emphasis on finitude by appealing to Kierkegaard’s formulation: ‘the edifying thought that before God we are always in the wrong.’ Gadamer had no problem admitting that his own conception of self-understanding has a distinctly ‘pietistic undertone.’ For Pietism ‘served as a reminder that it was not possible for human beings to understand themselves, and the pathway to faith led through the shattering of one’s own self-understanding and self-certainty. This is true, mutatis mutandis, for the hermeneutic use of the word in any case. For human beings, self- understanding is something that never comes to an end, something that is always again to be undertaken, a duty always still to be performed’” (Grondin, 21-22).

229 “‘Im Alter wacht die Kindheit auf’: Gespräch mit dem Philosophen Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Die Zeit, 26 March 1993, 22 (quoted in Grondin, 21-22).

230 Grondin, 23. 74 for Aristotle and later the Catholic church, but signified that we all know we have not made ourselves and our death is out of our hands.231

When asked by a German journalist in 2001 whether he believed in an afterlife, Gadamer replied

in the negative: “even if I often think how nice it must be to be able to believe in God!”232 From the beginning to the end of his life, Gadamer remained a sympathetic bystander on the periphery of religious faith.

The centenary of Gadamer’s birth occasioned several large-scale tributes in Germany.

The University of Heidelberg marked the day with an international conference, whose participants overflowed the largest auditorium of the university. The city followed with a

Festakt of its own. Later that week, the German Prime Minister hosted Gadamer and a hundred guests at a state dinner in Stuttgart, followed by further tributes at the Universities of Tübingen and Leipzig.

Still writing in his one hundred and first year, Gadamer witnessed the establishment of the Gadamer Chair at the University of Heidelberg. To some, he became a symbol of twentieth- century German philosophyboth by his work and by having collaborated with so many major figures in the field.233 Gadamer’s final year was a placid one at home with his daughter and

grandchildren; he died on 13 March 2001 at the age of 102.

231 Grondin, 23 and 385 n. 13, summarizing “‘El alma de la política es el compromiso’: Entrevisto con Isidoro Reguera,” Diario, 27 February 1993.

232 Grondin, 336, citing the interview in the Bild-Zeitung, 11 February 2001.

233 Grondin, 337. Chapter Two

The Writings of Henri de Lubac

This chapter analyzes Henri de Lubac’s works related to the interpretation of Scripture in order to discern his appraisal of the role of tradition, community and faith in the process of interpretation. His works are considered chronologically, with each work treated in a separate section. This chapter begins with an analysis of de Lubac’s first published essay¸ “Apologétique et Théologie.” This essay on fundamental theology investigated the relationship between faith, reason, modern science and theology within the broader perspective of human anthropology. In his treatment of anthropology, de Lubac broached several theological themes, including the relationship between the natural and supernatural orders, human finality and divine vocation, and

God’s providence in history. These themes provided the framework in which de Lubac approached the question of how reason and faith should cooperate in the field of apologetics and, tangentially, in exegesis. Some of de Lubac’s questions about the relationship between apologetics and theology have clear parallels to his later approach to the relationship between exegesis and theology.

Following is an examination of de Lubac’s programmatic work, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme, which provided a fuller view of his theology of history and fundamental theology. Its sixth chapter provided his first sustained treatment of both literal and spiritual exegesis as the centerpiece of the book. Catholicisme also introduced de Lubac’s idea of “integrated humanism” which sought to reintegrate the fragmented contemporary sciences with theology, and, by extension, guided the integration of ancient and modern techniques of exegesis. In Catholicisme, de Lubac emphasized the communal dimension of exegesis and set

75 76 the entire theological enterprise within the context of a liturgical and communal reditus in Deum.

Both “Apologétique et Théologie” and Catholicisme contained his early statements about the role of faith and reason in his understanding of exegesis and show his positive regard for the role of both modern sciences and modern critical methods of exegesis in the interpretation of

Scripture. These themes were not as prominent in de Lubac’s later works that were wholly dedicated to exegesis.

The analysis of de Lubac’s two major works on the history of biblical interpretation,

Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale, comprises the centerpiece of this chapter. First, the textual relationship between Histoire et Esprit and its sources is analyzed in reference to his later works. (Those themes which are merely repeated in Exégèse médiévale are analyzed in their debut in Histoire et Esprit.) De Lubac used this historical study of Origen to limn his mature position on biblical hermeneutics. Histoire et Esprit contained the richest presentation of de

Lubac’s theology of the spiritual senses, in which he showed how the spiritual senses unify and complement literal sense exegesis in light of the Mystery of Christ. De Lubac found in Origen’s work a potent articulation of a traditional Christian hermeneutic that was widespread amongst the Fathers of the Church and which continued in practice, more or less intact, until the

Enlightenment.

Together with the sixth chapter of Catholicisme, Histoire provided the fundamental theology, theology of history, and theological hermeneutics necessary to understand the Patristic approach to Sacred Scripture. De Lubac’s aim was ressourcement. In Histoire et Esprit, he

sought to separate the merits of Patristic exegesis from its limitations, and to integrate the best of

ancient and modern methods of interpretation for the benefit of the contemporary Church.

Because de Lubac restricted himself to the works of Origen in Histoire, his unified vision for 77 biblical interpretation is most manifest in this work. Simultanesouly his close study of Origen’s

biblical hermeneutics began to refer to Medieval exegesis, upon which Origen’s hermeneutics

had a profound effect.

Exégèse médiévale broadened the historical horizons of de Lubac’s Histoire, but the theoretical fundaments remained unchanged. Accordingly, this analysis focuses only on the refinements which Exégèse médiévale made to the biblical hermeneutic presented in Histoire and

the theoretical implications of his extensive history of exegesis from the Patristic to the early

Modern period. In his history, de Lubac considered key questions such as the relationship of

exegesis to systematic theology; how to integrate liturgical, catechetical and devotional use of

Scripture with critical, historical exegesis; and the regulative role of Scripture in the Church. De

Lubac also began to trace the devolution of spiritual interpretation and sought to overturn false

steps in the history of biblical studies, and to untangle a mass of presuppositions inherited by the

modern period which often disposed modern interpreters to be hostile to Patristic exegesis.

In spite of the undeniable centrality of the Bible in Catholic theology, de Lubac found no biblical hermeneutic that could satisfactorily integrate ancient and modern approaches to reading the Bible. De Lubac believed that a careful historical study must precede any systematic treatment of the question; accordingly, in Exégèse médiévale, he provided an historical theology of exegesis with an unparalleled scope (from the third to the nineteenth century) and depth (over ten thousand citations) as a prelude to a systematic theology of interpretation. In this history, both the brilliant insights and subtle errors of many major figures served as case studies in exegetical method and so assisted de Lubac in formulating his insights about biblical interpretation. 78 La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore completes the list of works analyzed in this

chapter. De Lubac’s final historical study came back full circle to his apologetical concerns

about the Church in the modern world and to fundamental theology—the projects of

Catholicisme and “Apologétique et Théologie.”1 In La Postérité spirituelle, he sought to trace

the origins of the error he called “Joachimism”—a term which covered far more than the errors

of Joachim himself. Theological Joachimism may be defined as the utopian expectation of a new

age of the Holy Spirit, which will bring as radical a transformation to the age of Christ as the

New Testament brought to the Old. In this future age, the Gospel would be surpassed by a new

revelation and the Church would be free from hierarchical governance, living in a wholly

contemplative state within a purely horizontal communion. In theological Joachimism, de Lubac

saw a posterity that extended from Joachim to the Spiritual Franciscans, to the Reformers, and to

some contemporary liberal theological movements. De Lubac believed that a secularized

Joachimism stood at the foundation of the most destructive forces of nineteenth-century

philosophy, for example, in the historical progressivism of Feuerbach, Marx, Comte and

Nietzsche insofar as they envisioned history as leading to the forthcoming triumph of the age of

atheistic reason over the age of Christianity. In this secularized Joachimism, the dereliction of

religion inaugurated a new dispensation of history, not an age of the Holy Spirit, but an age of

the human spirit, unshackled from God. In La Postérité spirituelle, de Lubac opposed the

displacement of the Christian worldview by this secular Messianism. First he traced secular

Joachimism’s origins and variations and then he sought to replace it with a contemporary

1 Mark Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970 (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), 112, noted how an early interest in fundamental theology played a decisive role in the theological projects of Henri de Lubac and several of his contemporaries (Blondel, Chenu, Congar, and Bouillard). 79 theology that could reclaim the centrality of the biblical worldview in modern culture.

Accordingly, de Lubac’s final work led back to fundamental theology, apologetics, human

anthropology, and overcoming the separation between the secular and the sacred. Only in this

way could a Christian culture properly assist men in finding the inexorable vocation God places

in every human heart.

La Postérité spirituelle was also ecumenically motivated. De Lubac’s chronicle of the

exegetical developments from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century provided deeper insight

into the hermeneutical divisions between Catholics and Protestants, and, more broadly, quasi-

Christian streams of modern spirituality. He traced the development of what he called “mystical

immanentism” from Medieval monastic exegesis into the Romantic period. In “mystical

immanentism,” he found the origin of the Reformers’ doctrine of private interpretation and the

beginning of fideism in exegesis. De Lubac also charted the rise of fundamentalist literalism in post-Medieval exegesis and he identified modern evangelical apocalyptic futurism as another line of Joachim’s exegetical posterity.

In these three historical studies—Histoire, Exégèse médiévale, La Postérité spirituelle—

the historical survey dominated; the systematic aspect always remained less developed. De

Lubac never completed his vast course of historical investigation with a final systematic

treatment of biblical hermeneutics.2 Accordingly, the goal of this survey of the several thousand

pages of de Lubac’s exegetical works is to systematize his principles of biblical interpretation in

2 As James R. Pambrun, “The Presence of God: A Note on the Apologetics of Henri de Lubac and Teilhard de Chardin,” Église et Théologie 10 (1979): 344, observed: “The scope and complexity of de Lubac’s apologetical contribution leaves any tight organization of it rather fragile. He has not systematically or explicitly presented his own apologetical design. It is left to a reader familiar with his work to pull together its coherence from the clues and figures of tradition which de Lubac incorporated in his dialogue with the contemporary world.” The same may be said of de Lubac’s theology of exegesis. 80 view of comparing them to those of Hans-Georg Gadamer.3 The following analysis of de

Lubac’s works employs a close reading of the primary sources in order to convey his

multifaceted expressions and sometimes diffuse language; this chapter also provides a few

concrete examples of how de Lubac’s hermeneutical principles may be applied to biblical

passages.

1. “Apologétique et Théologie” (1930)

In 1929, the Jesuit Superior General appointed Henri de Lubac to the Chair of

Fundamental Theology at the Catholic University of Lyon to fill an unexpected vacancy. De

Lubac’s tertianship was thus interrupted and his doctoral studies were accelerated owing to the

shortage of faculty. His inaugural lecture in October 1929, was published the following year as

“Apologétique et Théologie” in Nouvelle Revue Théologique.4

The principal theme of his essay concerned the relationship between recent trends in apologetics and “theology”—i.e., dogmatic or speculative theology. Although the interpretation of Scripture was not a central theme of this essay, it contained de Lubac’s earliest published statements on biblical interpretation. As his first published essay, “Apologétique et Théologie” provides a starting point for examining how his thought developed. In retrospect of his later works, this essay also reveals some synergies between de Lubac’s approach to apologetics and his approach to exegesis, which are based on his approach to nature, grace, faith and reason.

3 The hermeneutical principles of Hans-Georg Gadamer are analyzed in Chapter Three.

4 “Apologétique et Théologie,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 57 (1930): 361-378, translated as “Apologetics and Theology,” in Theological Fragments, 91-104; herafter cited: AT. This essay is one of de Lubac’s earliest published works, preceded only by two short book reviews, which he later called “insignificant lines” (At the Service of the Church, 15). See Neufeld and Sales, 10. 81 “Apologétique et Théologie” should be recognized as its author’s first lecture in a course

on fundamental theology. The newly-appointed professor opted to begin his course by critiquing

the inadequacies of contemporary apologetics.5 He did so in order to provide his students with a

concrete example for thinking more deeply about questions of fundamental theology and their broad-ranging impact on other areas of theology. He highlighted what he considered to be a dysfunctional relationship between apologetics and theology, which in turn had impaired the ability of apologetics to speak convincingly to modern culture. According to de Lubac, apologetics and theology had become estranged from each other. The estrangement was not caused by the inevitable drifting apart of theologians with very different specialties and audiences,6 nor was it due to the younger generation’s intellectual pride which disdained

5 The meaning of the term “apologetics” has shifted since the 1930s. Today the term is most frequently used to describe the defense of Catholic doctrine in response to other Christian denominations and religious traditions. In de Lubac’s day, the term signified what is often called “natural theology” or the explication of the preambula fidei and was often intended as a response to deism and rationalism. Apologetics in this sense typically concerned itself with demonstrating a person’s natural ability to know God, God’s ability to intervene in history through supernatural revelation, and a person’s obligation to accept such a revelation. This type of apologetics defended the reasonableness of Christian doctrine by showing how supernatural revelation does not conflict with reason without attempting to prove revealed doctrines on the basis of natural reason alone; this apologetics focused on the “fittingness” (convenientia) of God’s chosen means to lead people from the natural to the supernatural order and, accordingly, hoped to prepare people to accept the Catholic faith as a supernatural revelation from God by eliminating any obstacles that may arise from natural reason. This type of apologetical theology is exemplified in a seminary manual of de Lubac’s day: Adolphe Tanquerey, “De Religione Revelata in Genere,” in Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae, vol. 1, Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae Fundamentalis, 26th ed. (Paris: Desclée, 1937), 39-215.

6 “Some people have also considered apologetics an inferior science, condemning its practitioners to remain indefinitely at the threshold of the templethat temple within whose walls dogma nourishes deep thoughts. Is it possible that this disdain masks a timidity? Could it simply be a way of closing oneself in the ivory tower of theology … while the apologist is left to the stressful existence of one who is not only a spokesman for believers but whose primary role is ‘to say something that reaches those who do not [believe?]’” AT, 91-92. 82 catechetical literature in favor of purely speculative works of recent philosophers.7 These

tendencies had accelerated the estrangement between apologetics and theology, but were not its

root cause. The fault was in recent errors of fundamental theology: misconceptions about the

role of faith and reason in conversion, exaggerated tendencies in theological method caused by

the previous century’s battles with semi-rationalism and fideism, and an improper understanding

of the relationship between the natural and supernatural.8 These shortcomings of contemporary

apologetics challenged de Lubac’s audience to think more deeply about the central questions of fundamental theology that he would elaborate in his course.

After identifying the generic causes of estrangement between apologetics and theology, de Lubac made a more specific diagnosis. The first problem involved the “purely defensive”

stance of recent apologetics, which “exhausts itself in counterattacks that generally do not affect

an objection before it has been replaced by another one. It is definitely a labor of Penelope.”9

The result of this reactionary posture was a patchwork of situational responses, a “stack … [of]

syncretistic systems that collapse as soon as they are built.”10 To overcome this problem, apologetics must counterbalance its purely negative, defensive work of refuting objections to the

Catholic faith with an equally vigorous positive articulation of what makes Catholicism attractive and convincing to potential believers.

7 De Lubac gave the example of a catechumen who disdained his catechism in preference to Pascal, quite contrary to the expected intellectual progression from apologetics to catechesis to dogmatic theology (AT, 91).

8 AT, 92-95.

9 AT, 92.

10 AT, 92. 83 According to de Lubac, a second, more fundamental problem, was: the ability of

contemporary apologetics to articulate a positive vision of the Catholic faith has been stymied

because apologists have adopted a method which insists on a strict separation between natural

and supernatural truths. Contemporary apologists use only the former in argumentation, because

they think their role is to prove conclusions to those who do not yet accept supernatural

revelation. By refusing to make any statement premised on supernatural revelation,

contemporary apologists have merely shown how the Catholic faith is not irrational  rather

than showing how Catholicism is uniquely intellectually fulfilling, divinely inspired, and morally compelling. Yet the fault did not lie with the apologists of the previous century, but with its fundamental theologians: “this situation would have been less serious and less widespread if it had not been for a well-rooted error that apologists have often received from certain theologians.”11

The error consists in conceiving of dogma as a kind of “thing in itself,” as a block of revealed truth with no relationship whatsoever to natural man, as a transcendent object whose demonstration (as well as the greater part of its content) has been determined by the arbitrary nature of a “divine decree.” According to these theologians, when the apologist wishes to pass from reason to faith, he has only to establish a completely extrinsic connection between the two, just as one builds a footbridge to connect two separate banks. He has only to observe that “God has spoken” in history. And, just as it has never been his business to ask what man might be expecting, he is not to concern himself with what God has said. This twofold regard is forbidden to him because his trying to answer the first question would be proudly pretentious, and trying to answer the second one would be profanation.12

11 AT, 93.

12 AT, 93. De Lubac was deeply influenced on this point by Joseph Huby, S.J., with whom de Lubac studied in England. Huby, in turn, was developing the thought of Pierre Rousselot, S.J. Marcellino D’Ambrosio has traced this influence: “In his famous articles, ‘Les yeux de la Foi,’ Rousselot rejected the dualist conception of the traditional apologetics which seemed to produce a religion derived from deductive reasoning and cut off from the experience of faith. He denounced this separation of faith from its credibility as ‘a rationalization of the 84

Because dogma purportedly has nothing to do with “natural man” as recent theologians had

understood him, apologists who relied on propositions of natural reason found themselves in the

ironic position of proving the theoretical possibility of supernatural revelation, while unable to say anything whatsoever about its content—which was regarded as the exclusive prerogative of the theologian.13 Unlike St. Paul, St. Augustine, John Henry Newman and others,14 the modern apologist cannot present the doctrines of the Catholic faith in their full beauty as the fulfillment of the most abiding desires of the human heart and the ultimate truth which all people seek. As a result, the evangelical mission of the Church has suffered in recent times. Accordingly, de

Lubac challenged his audience: to what extent can natural reason alone make the Catholic faith more plausible to non-believers? This question immediately redounds to a more basic one: how does one understand the relationship between faith and reason?

Next de Lubac identified one cause of these problems: a deficient theology of revelation—which does not fully grasp the character of dogma—and a deficient anthropology,

divine.’ In a much discussed article entitled, ‘Miracle et lumière de grâce,’ Joseph Huby defended Rousselot’s position. He was committed to the project, begun by Rousselot, of purifying the Scholastic tradition of the rationalist accretions that it had picked up since the Enlightenment.… Looking back from the vantage point of 1985 on his own attempts to recover the original Thomist doctrine of the supernatural, de Lubac names Huby as the inspiration for the work that was to become the center of the … [Surnaturel] controversy.” Marcellino G. D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic” (Ph.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1991), 33. D’Ambrosio cited De Lubac, Mémoire, 33 as well as de Lubac’s tribute to Huby, “In Memoriam: Le Père Joseph Huby,” Recherches de Science Religieuse 35 (1948): 71-80.

13 De Lubac exclaimed: “This small-minded theology makes dogma into a kind of ‘superstructure,’ believing that, if dogma is to remain ‘supernatural,’ it must be ‘superficial’ and that, by cutting it off from all human roots, it is making this dogma all the more divine” (AT, 94- 95).

14 AT, 95. 85 since dogma must be understood in relation to its human recipient. Both deficiencies are

symptoms of the ultimate problem: contemporary theologians have misunderstood the

relationship between what is natural and supernatural. The solution to the problem thus requires

a correct understanding of the supernatural, a corrected theological anthropology, and a corrected

theology of revelation. An apologist only hinders his own effectiveness if he brackets what faith

tells him about the human person and argues as if he possessed only a natural knowledge of the

human constitution and its destiny, vocation, and desire for God. There is an intrinsic

relationship between the natural and supernatural which does not reduce one to the other:

For de Lubac, the apologist must be able to show how human nature finds its fulfillment in grace. Thus he disagreed with those who accorded contemporary apologetics the mantle of

tradition and insisted it was the only proper approach: such claims were not only historically

naïve, they also prevented effective evangelization by sustaining the estranged relationship

between apologetics and theology:

15 AT, 95.

16 AT, 95. 86 De Lubac caricatured contemporary apologetics as a kind of détente between faith and reason:

“two powers standing face to face, each in its own domain, and declaring that they have nothing

to dispute.”17

The ineffectiveness of contemporary apologetics was compounded by a third problem:

the desire of apologists to be “scientific” in their demonstrations in order to argue effectively

with those imbued with the rationalist spirit of the Enlightenment. De Lubac saw this approach

as dangerously close to the semi-rationalism condemned by the First Vatican Council.18 The deeper problem with this approach lies in its uncritical attitude toward what constitutes

“scientific” demonstration outside the natural sciences, in fields such as philosophy, history or the humanities. The apologist might make a temporary gain by adopting a style of argument amenable to his rationalist opponents, but does this gain come at the expense of compromise with a system of thought ultimately ill-suited as a vehicle for theology?

[I]t was hoped that they would be able to establish the fact of revelation more “scientifically”.… But the more the arguments were used, the less convincing they became. Because, to make them convincing, one had to close one’s eyes to the true problems and difficulties of the method. Thus, the only result of the pseudoscientific allure imparted to the “demonstrations” and “apologies” of the Faith by a theological bias was to cause men of science simply to shrug their shoulders.19

17 AT, 99, quoting Henri de Tourville, Lumière et Vie (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1924), 59.

18 AT, 94; de Lubac cited the views of Georg Hermes (1775-1831), a Roman Catholic theology professor at Münster and Bonn, whose writings were condemned by Gregory XVI and Pius IX; Vatican I (1870) rejected various Hermesian teachings about faith.

19 AT, 94. 87 De Lubac concluded the first half of his lecture by prodding his students to wonder: is a

reinvigorated approach to apologetics possible? What changes would it involve?20

In the second half of “Apologétique et Théologie,” de Lubac presented his solution to the problems he identified in the first half. Since this was an introductory lecture to a longer course of study, de Lubac sought only to present some basic principles of a revitalized apologetics and some hallmarks of its development. For de Lubac, apologetics and theology, should be viewed

“as intimately united and compenetrating without merging, not as being exterior or opposedor at least, not systematically ignoring each other.”21

A theology that does not consistently maintain apologetical considerations becomes deficient and distorted, while, on the other hand, all apologetics that wishes to be fully effective must end up in theology.22

De Lubac supported his assertion by observing that the “most eminent representatives of

Christian thought were often apologists”:23

20 Several themes of the first half of “Apologétique et Théologie” seem to be influenced by Maurice Blondel’s 1904 essay, “Histoire et Dogma,” which appeared as a series of articles in the biweekly publication, La Quinzaine 56 (16 January – 16 February 1904): 145-167, 349-373, and 433-458. The essay was republished in Henry Duméry, ed., Les premiers écrits de Maurice Blondel. Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matière d’apologétique (1896). Histoire et Dogma (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956). An English translation is found in Maurice Blondel, The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, ed. Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (London: Harvill Press, 1964), 221-287. “History and Dogma” critiqued the insufficiency of “separated dogmatic theology” (ibid., 286), warned against the “extrinsicist” view of dogma and Scripture as passing through history as a “block” (ibid., 229- 230) or as “an aerolith, to be preserved in a glass case” (ibid., 278), and used a similar metaphor to de Lubac’s “footbridge” between reason and faith: a “rope-ladder” (ibid., 263). “History and Dogma” also observed the central importance of Christian anthropology to questions of apologetics and exegesis (ibid., 284), called for a proper treatment of the interrelated nature of the natural and human sciences to solve contemporary theological problems (ibid., 234-236), and emphasized the unity of Catholic faith and action under the maxim, “lex voluntatis, lux veritatis” (ibid., 274).

21 AT, 96.

22 AT, 96. 88 Christian doctrine would lose its forcefulness of thought as well as its spiritual value if it were not first presented in an apologetic form, just as the Christian mind that was no longer interested in proselytizing would necessarily weaken. Our Faith is essentially “evangelism”; it is the Good News brought by Jesus to mankind. It is the truth as far as religion is concerned and, in this case, truth and life are one. Vita est lux.24

The evangelical dimension of Christian doctrine is its source of renewal and development.

Apologetics thus plays an important role in the development of doctrine:

Across the centuries, it has very often been the necessities coming from the outside that have forced theology to be more precise, to develop, to criticize and to purify itself. It would be possible to cite many examples showing that theology is indebted to apologetics for this fourfold progress.25

This fourfold progress is arduous. Theologians are tempted to take easier routes to

reconcile Christian doctrine with modern inquiry. Some are tempted to integrism or concordism,

which affirm Christian doctrine but fail to provide substantive responses to modern inquiry.26

Facile responses to modern problems ultimately fail to satisfy the modern mind and stunt the growth of theology, which benefits from interacting with the doubts and insights of each successive generation. On the other hand are those who “wish to ‘adapt’ dogma to accommodate the whims and caprices of intellectual fashion,” an approach which de Lubac decried as

23 AT, 96. De Lubac cited St. Augustine, Möhler and Newman as examples.

24 AT, 96. An allusion to John 1:4b: vita erat lux hominum.

25 AT, 92.

26 The problem with “integrism” (or “integralism”; see Chapter One) was its overconfidence in the accomplishments of contemporary theology, which was considered so perfect that very little could conceivably change. Thus radical new lines of inquiry were shunned either as unnecessary or as an impious lack of confidence in the work of the Church’s theologians. “Concordism,” by contrast, glossed over modern problems on the premise that they can be easily reconciled with Catholic theology. For de Lubac, integrism dismissed modern problems, while concordism blithely welcomed them with misplaced optimism; both failed to engage problems seriously, so neither produced satisfying responses. 89 “reprehensible” and “futile.”27 The ideal, which balances doctrinal development with the

unchanging nature of the truths of revelation, is:

to study human nature in general in order to discern the call of grace but also to listen constantly to the succeeding generations and to their aspirations so as to be able to respond to them, to understand and assimilate their thoughts. Only at this price can theology remain honest and alive. It cannot remain unchanging or ossified because it is meant to bring light, successively, to various aspects of the truth; neither the thought of any one man nor of one generation is capable of equally encompassing all of its aspects. However, even though theology is not immutable (that would be a deficiency), it does remain essentially the same, since it is always the explanation of the unique divine response freely given to human aspiration, a response that, in its various aspects, also remains the same in its essence.28

To maximize the potential for positive development, theology must be attentive to “frontier problems” where theology interfaces with “mixed subjects” and modern intellectual developments.29 While theology has a solemn obligation to be attentive to modern developments, this does not relegate theology to an intellectually subservient position: “it is doctrine that attracts and conquers intelligence.”30 Directly engaging differences of worldview

assists conversion more than focusing narrowly on particular objections to Catholic doctrine

without taking underlying differences into account:

The most formidable adversaries of the Faith, who are also the most interesting, have a conception of the world and a doctrine of life that they deem to be superior to ours. It is because of this conception and doctrine and not (most often) because of specific objectionsthe dates of the Gospels, the eucharistic presence, the resurrection of the bodythat they refuse Catholicism.31

27 AT, 96. De Lubac’s vehement rejection of accommodationism continued his whole life; see his remarks in 1975 in At the Service of the Church, 148-150.

28 AT, 97.

29 AT, 97.

30 AT, 97.

31 AT, 97-98. 90

Ultimately there is no higher apologetical argument than a life of grace and wisdom in the midst

of the modern world. Vita est lux epitomizes the successful integration of apologetics and

theology:32

We must work to convey a higher, richer, more coherent conception of the world and a more comprehensive and fruitful doctrine of life than those presented by our adversaries. The work must be carried out in a way that satisfies exacting minds and attracts souls of goodwill to the Faith even before the absolute transcendence of Christianity and the infinity of perspectives that it opens for the spiritual life have been revealed to them by the light of faith. Was this not what Clement of Alexandria did when he contrasted Christian and philosophic thought in the Stromata?33

De Lubac explained how this goal must be accomplished:

We must, by the fides quaerens intellectum, step forward to meet the intellectus quaerens fidem. But the task is twofold, at least in regard to analysis. First of all, the doctrine must be “understood” in itself so that it can be presented in its unity, harmony and beauty. Next, the doctrine’s principle of faith, which makes everything else understandable, must be shown. After the understanding of faith comes, as a necessary complement, the understanding through faith that makes dogma appear as a source of universal light.34

Yet de Lubac stopped short of proposing a specific methodology: “The ideal is to adapt oneself

spontaneously, without being specifically concerned about adaptation, just as one develops naturally without having recourse to a theory of development.”35 Theology’s dialogue with

32 AT, 96. See de Lubac’s chilling remark, in light of the atrocities of World War II: “The age of the proof is in decline, it is the hour of the ‘witness’ that is coming, hour of the marturia, very calm and very complete” (AT, 93 n. 8).

33 AT, 98.

34 AT, 98. De Lubac’s explanation of the content of doctrinal propositions in the light of faith is reminiscent of the approach of Bernard Lonergan in Method in Theology, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), 125-145.

35 AT, 97 n. 17. 91 modernity cannot be scripted beforehand nor is the theologian bound to a procedural method of

approach to these disputed questions.

De Lubac recommended the works of St. Augustine and St. Anselm as guiding lights for

a bold synthesis of natural reason and the truths of faith and lauded those modern thinkers who have resisted “rationalistic tendencies” and have “broken unequivocally with Descartes, who was always very careful … to limit his curiosity to natural things.”36 De Lubac extoled the maxim of

the French philosopher Maine de Biran: “religion solves the problems that philosophy poses.” De

Lubac exhorted his students to adopt “the Bérullian belief that dogma ‘reveals us to ourselves’”

and encouraged them to “search the most hidden mysteries for the key to the enigma both of

God’s Being and of our own on the natural level and, at the same time, for some protection against the unreasonable and almost fatal deviations of thought.”37

De Lubac concluded his lecture with a few brief replies in advance to potential critics of

his approach to apologetics. He denied the charge that merging the separate domains of

apologetics and theology entails confounding the natural and supernatural. He maintained that

only those who misunderstood him would accuse him of naturalism.38 He cited the work of John

Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel as examples of how careful study of interiority can bear

fruit for apologetics and rejected those who characterize “the element that one can call ‘interior’”

as something merely “‘subjective’, ‘individual’, ‘natural’.”39 De Lubac presented his approach

36 AT, 99.

37 AT, 99.

38 AT, 100. De Lubac repeated this defense twenty years later during the controversy following the publication of Surnaturel in 1946. Already in 1929, de Lubac anticipated some of the major criticisms of his theological perspective that were leveled against him later.

39 AT, 101. 92 to apologetics as a mean between two extremes: on the one hand, an apologetics based on wholly

extrinsic data such as historical testimony and the evidence of miracles; and on the other hand, a

naturalism which speaks to human interiority but without concern for man’s supernatural dimension and its unique fulfillment in Christ:

In confronting the religious problem, we are not reduced to the alternatives of believing either solely because of exterior evidence and its accompanying proofs, which authenticate the doctrines by authorizing the witness, or else because, after having judged the doctrine according to our own lights, we find that it suits our personal tastes.40

Treading de Lubac’s via media requires great care, but the result is superior to all other

approaches:

[I]f one is careful to explain the nature of human aspirationswhat there is in them that comes from the divine source, and hence, what there is in them that is of a supernatural and urgent characterthen it does not seem erroneous or even imprudent to state that Catholicism is the true religion because it alone brings the adequate response to the aspirations of humanity, and thus, its supreme guarantee is its own perfection.41

Thus de Lubac assured his audience that his approach to apologetics runs neither the risk of

naturalism by reducing grace to nature, or religious indifferentism by denying the uniqueness of

Christian revelation:

No violence is done to faith or to reason, because the latter’s need for light, which arises from its clashes with antinomies, brings faith to the rescue, just as when the call arose from the contradictions with which Judaism was struggling, it was Christ who brought the response: unexpected, undiscoverable but impossible not to recognize.42

40 AT, 101.

41 AT, 101.

42 AT, 103. 93 In the conclusion of his far-ranging inaugural lecture, de Lubac observed that the decisive

theological issues of the twentieth century are located within the domain of fundamental

theology.43

1.1. Analysis

Although de Lubac’s “Apologétique et Théologie” was not specifically concerned with

the interpretation of Scripture, he did make some general statements which anticipated important

themes of his later writings on the interpretation of Scripture. The first of these statements

concerning the interpretation of Scripture occurred in his criticism of the purely reactionary

posture of modern apologetics and its temptation toward concordism:

On the scriptural concordism of the last century, Fr. Lagrange wrote: “Apologetics is ashamed of it but cannot erase the memory.” One can say almost the same thing about the concordism, not more scientific, but religious, that inspires the apologetic work of Huet and the traditionalistsand about a certain social concordism.44

The book by the Dominican priest, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, the founder and director of the École

biblique catholique de Jérusalem, treated the attempts of nineteenth-century Catholic exegetes to

reconcile the Biblical accounts of the Flood and the Tower of Babel with the findings of modern

science.45 Concordism in its eagerness to reconcile the doctrines of faith with problems of

43 For an examination of de Lubac’s thought on apologetics, see James R. Pambrun, “The Presence of God: A Note on the Apologetics of Henri de Lubac and Teilhard de Chardin,” Eglise et Théologie 10/3 (1979): 343-368, and Pambrun’s “The Presence of God: A Study into the Apologetic of Henri de Lubac” (Ph.D. dissertation, The Institute of Christian Thought of St. Michael’s College, Toronto, 1978).

44 AT, 92 n. 7. The quotation is from Marie-Joseph Lagrange, La méthode historique, Édition Augmentée (Paris: Lecoffre, 1903).

45 Lagrange, La méthode historique, 131-132. 94 modernity, tended toward superficial if not disingenuous solutions. De Lubac endorsed

Lagrange’s statement and drew a parallel between the problems of apologetical concordism and

exegetical concordism. De Lubac believed that exegetes must directly engage modern scientific

and historical discoveries, especially when these discoveries conflict with conventional

interpretations of Biblical texts. Nothing is gained by ignoring genuine scientific discoveries or

superficially reconciling them with statements of Scripture; rather, one ought be “ashamed” of

such behavior.

A good exegete must understand not only the findings of modern science, but also the

scientific principles upon which these findings are based, just as a good apologist knows not only

the affirmations and denials of a modern philosopher, but also his first principles and motives.

De Lubac’s position followed directly from a central theme of the lecture—that the Catholic

belief in the compatibility of faith and reason should inspire confidence in the use of reason in

defending the truths of faith. Truth cannot contradict truth: whatever is true in the modern study

of history can and ought be reconciled to Catholic doctrine. Biblical interpretation is one area in

which this reconciliation takes place.46

While an endorsement of the rigorous use of modern historical research in exegesis might seem uncontroversial today, de Lubac was writing just two decades after the peak of the

Modernist Crisis during the pontificate of St. Pius X (1903-1914). During this time, the Holy

Office issued the decree Lamentabili (3 July 1907) and the Pope issued the encyclical Pascendi

dominici gregis (8 September 1907), both of which warned against the improper use of modern

46 De Lubac would likely have deplored the same deficiencies in exegetes that he deplored in some modern apologists: “Lack of historical perspective, ignorance of modern scientific methods, rudimentary philosophy, incapacity to understand even the significance of certain difficulties and problems: it has to be recognized that these reproaches, often directed at apologists by unbelievers, are far from being completely unfounded” (AT, 94 n. 11). 95 historical-critical methods in exegesis.47 On 29 June 1912, the Sacred Congregation of the

Consistory issued the decree, De quibusdam, which prohibited the use of some recently- published exegetical textbooks and commentaries— including those of Lagrange—and required their removal from seminary libraries.48 Lagrange was removed from his position at the École biblique and recalled to France; he ceased his exegetical publications until he was restored to his position at the École the following year after sending a letter pledging his fidelity to the Pope and stating his submission to these recent decisions.49 By quoting Lagrange, de Lubac not only rejected biblical concordism but also expressed sympathy with Lagrange’s approach, without explicitly endorsing “the historical-critical method.”50

De Lubac’s next explicit statement about the interpretation of Scripture concerned how the act of faith directly affects the manner in which Scripture is used in intellectual discourse.

47 The Pontifical Biblical Commission also issued numerous responsa on the same subject. The relevant Magisterial statements are available in Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum: Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, 36th ed. (Barcelona: Herder, 1973), hereafter cited: DS. For Pascendi, see DS 3490; for Lamentabili, see DS 3401-3419, 3422-3424, 3427, 3433, 3438 and 3461. For the responsa of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, see DS 3372-3373, 3394-3397, 3503, 3505-3509, 3512- 3519, 3521-3528, 3561-3578, and 3581-3593.

48 Authors explicitly named were the German exegetes, Karl Holzhey and Fritz Tillmann, as well as “alia habeantur similis spiritus commentaria in Scripturas Sanctas tum Veteris tum Novi Testamenti, ceu scripta plura P. Lagrange” (AAS 4 [1912]: 530-531).

49 For further detail on this episode, see François-Marie Braun, The Work of Père Lagrange, transl. Richard T. A. Murphy (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1963), 92-100.

50 An endorsement of the “historical-crticial method” might have been misunderstood, given the brevity of de Lubac’s footnote, the breadth of the term and the recent controversy surrounding its use. 96 He said that although apologetics and theology are closely related, there is a “real discontinuity

… between the two disciplines, well defined as they are by the act of faith”:51

For example, the use that one makes of Scripture will be entirely different depending on whether it is seen, before faith, as a simple historical document (whose historicity must first be established) or, after faith, as an inspired source.52

De Lubac, however, did not elaborate on the differences between reading Scripture as an historical document and reading Scripture as a divinely inspired source.53 In a footnote, he

commented on the difference that faith makes in interpreting controversial findings of modern

historical criticism:

The powerful cerebral dream to which L’avenir de la science bears witness sheds more light on Renan’s religious crisis than does what he tells us about the authenticity of Daniel, the historicity of Judith or the reality of Noah’s ark. If the author had not been secretly won over before, he would not have abandoned his Christian faith because of these “advanced” exegetical opinions.54

While de Lubac clearly stated that differences in worldviewincluding whether or not one has

faithexercise a direct influence on how one interprets the findings of modern higher criticism,

he did not specify why or how this is so.55

51 AT, 96.

52 AT, 96 n. 16.

53 Catholicisme elaborated in more detail the difference that faith makes in interpretation.

54 AT, 98 n. 19.

55 For example, a believer may be more stringent in evaluating the evidence against the historicity of a divinely inspired book, or he may search more diligently for ways to reconcile the data of history and the statements of Scripture because of his desire to avoid a conflict between the two authorities. De Lubac was seemingly giving strategic advice to apologists: those who are tempted to abandon Catholicism because of the influence of modern philosophy may seize upon a pretext such as a biblical scholar’s assertion that a book of the Bible contains serious historical error. If an apologist doesn’t perceive a person’s true motivation, he may waste his time responding to biblical arguments and never discover the true cause for a person’s dissatisfaction, 97 The relationship between the natural and the supernatural permeates all of de Lubac’s

thought. In “Apologétique et Théologie,” this theme is expressed by his repeated assertions that

fundamental theology must correctly conceive of the relationship between truths that can be

known by reason and the truths of revelation. If this relationship is misconceived, then the

various theological disciplines have difficulty relating both to each other and to other areas of

knowledge. The truths of revelation and reason are compatible, irreducible to each other, and

mutually oriented toward one another; moreover, the truths of reason find their completion in the

higher truths of revelation. This basic perspective decidedly influenced the way de Lubac

understood the relationship of apologetics to both modern science and dogmatic theology and the

way he later conceptualized the relationship of exegesis to these fields as well.

Because the truths of revelation and the truths of reason are compatible yet irreducible to

each other, de Lubac explicitly rejected exegetical concordism and advocated engaging modern

scientific and historical discoveries in the field of exegesis, just as he did in apologetics.

Simultaneously, he denounced the uncritical adaptation of scientific methods for use in fields

where they have no place. He detected the dangerous influence of semi-rationalism at work in

certain forms of apologetics which “became a system for ‘natural’ or ‘scientific’ faith.”56 Such an apologetics had been developed by theologians who believed that “[a]t all costs, arguments had to be improved, or, rather, the ‘signs’ of revelation had to be converted into scientific arguments.”57 Ultimately, such an approach is naturalism: the reduction of all supernatural truths

which, if correctly diagnosed, would cease to produce superficial arguments in favor of abandoning Catholicism.

56 AT, 94.

57 AT, 94. 98 to merely natural ones. He stated bluntly the failure of this approach: “the only result of the

pseudoscientific allure imparted to the ‘demonstrations’ and ‘apologies’ of the Faith by a

theological bias was to cause men of science simply to shrug their shoulders.”58

The failure results from two problems. First, semi-rationalist apologists did not

understand the true difficulties involved in applying the scientific method to fields outside the

natural sciences, resulting in the mere imparting of a “pseudoscientific allure” that was little

more than a stylistic façade. Second, some questions are not properly scientific and so ought not

to be settled by a scientific method, no matter how sophisticated its adaptation.59 His cautionary

remarks about the appropriate use of scientific methods in apologetics seem applicable to every theological discipline which addresses conflicts between faith and reason, including exegesis.60

De Lubac also insisted that whenever Catholic apologists make use of a modern scientific discipline, they must do so with a critical rigor that satisfies scientists, lest Catholic arguments be seen as specious or disingenuous. By alluding favorably to the work of Marie-Joseph Lagrange, de Lubac implied that exegetes should master the principles of modern textual-critical and historical-critical methods and use them in a careful and exacting manner:

The work must be carried out in a way that satisfies exacting minds and attracts souls of goodwill to the Faith even before the absolute transcendence of

58 AT, 94.

59 De Lubac stated: “Seeming to propose a scientific problem to them, apologists were defeated by better-armed opponents competing on their own terrain. In fact, the scientists should have been led to the only terrain where the religious problem is raised and is necessarily resolved by Christianity” (AT, 94).

60 The next chapter discusses how Gadamer devoted considerable thought to the manner in which scientific methods could be utilized in interpreting texts, as well as the limits and potential drawbacks to such use. 99 Christianity and the infinity of perspectives that it opens for the spiritual life have been revealed to them by the light of faith.61

Just as an apologist is attuned to the intellectual needs of his generation, so too all theologians, including by implication exegetes also, should

listen constantly to the succeeding generations and to their aspirations so as to be able to respond to them, to understand and assimilate their thoughts. Only at this price can theology remain honest and alive.62

This commitment anticipates the pastoral dimension of de Lubac’s hermeneutics, with its

insistence on critical rigor and spiritual fecundity and its preference for what is relevant over

what is archaic in historical inquiry.

Another consequence of the compatibility of reason and revelation is their mutual ability

to deepen each other. De Lubac observed this dynamic in the relationship between apologetics

and theology, but it also seems applicable to the relationship between exegesis and theology.

Both apologetics and exegesis consider what de Lubac called “frontier problems”—the place

where theology intersects with a wide variety of other disciplines. For example, both the exegete

and the apologist must contend with the findings of diverse disciplines such as biology, cosmology, sociology, history, politics and comparative religion. Anyone who confronts these

“frontier problems” will frequently be “led to speculations whose invigorating influence can make itself felt throughout the field of theology.”63 As long as the principles and boundaries of

these disciplines are properly understood, “frontier problems” are fertile terrain for the deepening

61 AT, 98.

62 AT, 97.

63 AT, 97. 100 of theology.64 Simultaneously, great prudence is required in this terrain where “fides quaerens

intellectum step[s] forward to meet the intellectus quaerens fidem.”65

Because no methodology for the relationship between these disciplines has yet been

clearly established, an apologist must discover the right way to proceed in his labors: “The ideal

is to adapt oneself spontaneously, without being specifically concerned about adaptation, just as

one develops naturally without having recourse to a theory of development.”66 De Lubac did not deny that such a methodology will some day be found, but in its absence, one must proceed prudently, lest one fall into the trap of imposing methods or principles alien to one’s subject

matter.67 Yet how does an apologist know whether his response to a “frontier problem” is successful? For de Lubac, the litmus test of apologetical (and by implication exegetical) success

is evangelical effectiveness, while spiritual sterility indicates failure. The ultimate goal is to

demonstrate that “Catholicism is the true religion because it alone brings the adequate response

to the aspirations of humanity.”68 At the heart of all human inquiry is not merely a desire to

64 Pope Leo XIII stated in Providentissimus Deus (18 November 1893), § 18: “There can never, indeed, be any real discrepancy between the theologian and the physicist, as long as each confines himself within his own lines, and both are careful, as St. Augustine warns us, ‘not to make rash assertions, or to assert what is not known as known.’”

65 AT, 98.

66 AT, 97 n. 17.

67 Insofar as the exegete is often confronting “frontier problems,” de Lubac would presumably have counseled the exegete in a similar manner. The next chapter of this dissertation discusses how Gadamer considered the challenges of interdisciplinary scholarship and, while he proposed a general theory of hermeneutics, he did not propose a procedural method for relating the findings of disparate disciplines.

68 AT, 101. 101 know, but also a desire to find something that “reveals us to ourselves,”69 which can ultimately

only be found in God.70

De Lubac’s belief that the truths of reason find their consummation in the higher truths of

revelation pointed to another similarity between fundamental theology and exegesis. Both

disciplines have their own norms governing their research that are distinct from those of the

dogmatic theologian; both disciplines provide dogmatic theology with its starting points, although in different ways. Because fundamental theology plays an important preparatory role for the work of the dogmatic theologian, failure of the former to relate to the latter causes problems for both. De Lubac considered the fundamental theology of his day impoverished because it accepted only principles known by reason alone, rather than considering revealed data

about the human person, even if such data could not always be used in discussion with non-

believers. In sofar as a similar relationship obtains between exegesis and dogmatic theology, de

Lubac’s critiques of the “separated” and “estranged” state of fundamental theology question

whether contemporary exegesis should proceed strictly according to principles known by reason

alone. Insofar as the “estranged” state of apologetics and theology hinders the work of both,

would not the same be true of a “separation” between exegesis and theology? For de Lubac,

“separated” apologetics was a kind of détente between faith and reason: “two powers standing

face to face, each in its own domain, and declaring that they have nothing to dispute.”71

69 AT, 99. Here one can see a general principle that de Lubac will later apply to judging the success of exegesis: the consummation of exegesis is found in the successful conduct of the spiritual life.

70 In this lecture, Vita est lux epitomizes the successful integration of apologetics and theology; in later works it will be a touchstone of exegetical authenticity.

71 AT, 99. 102 A theology that does not consistently maintain apologetical considerations becomes deficient and distorted, while, on the other hand, all apologetics that wishes to be fully effective must end up in theology.72

Finally, de Lubac stated that contemporary theology has an incorrect understanding of divine revelation and its relationship to its human recipient, which affects all areas of theology.

Thus a proper understanding of the supernatural, of divine revelation, and of theological anthropology would become foundational to de Lubac’s ideas about exegesis, since Scripture concerns divine revelation. “Apologétique et Théologie” made suggestive parallels between apologetics and exegesis, but did not develop them. Several of these insights would be developed explicitly in Catholicisme, the next work to be considered.73

2. Catholicisme (1938)

The themes of Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme, de Lubac’s first book-length

publication, were programmatic for many later works in his career.74 De Lubac, who developed

the book from several journal articles,75 wrote Catholicisme in response to increasingly

72 AT, 96. Mutatis mutandis, would de Lubac have maintained that a theology lacking exegetical considerations would be deficient and distorted, while exegesis that wishes to be fully effective must end up in theology?

73 In restrospect, insofar as “Apologétique et Théologie” contained de Lubac’s earliest published statements about central themes of his life’s work, it allows one to see that some foundations of de Lubac’s later theology of exegesis were already laid in 1929.

74 De Lubac, Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme, Unam Sanctam 3 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1938); English translation: Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind, translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard (London: Longmans, Green, 1950); and Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man, translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988); hereafter cited: Catholicism.

75 Neufeld and Sales, Bibliographie Henri de Lubac, 62-63, have provided a detailed summary of how the chapters of the book relate to various publications of de Lubac: 103 widespread accusations: that Catholicism is an “individualistic” religion; that salvation is

understood as a private affair between an individual and God; that Catholic religious life is a flight from the world (and thus a withdrawal from communal affairs); and that Catholics tend to have a primarily negative attitude toward the great collective endeavors of the modern world in contrast to secular thought which seeks good for humankind wherever it can be found. Such accusations not only gravely misrepresented Catholicism, they also masked a political threat to the Church in France.76 De Lubac believed that an individualistic mentality had taken hold in

some areas of the Church, in part because of the “neglect of dogma” and in part because of

“moral failure,”77 while on the opposite extreme, some Catholics needed “a preventative against

‘a social temptation’”78 namely, involvement with social movements hostile to the Church. As a

corrective, Catholicisme sought to show that

in reality Catholicism is essentially social. It is social in the deepest sense of the word: not merely in its applications … but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma. It is social in a sense which should have made the expression “social Catholicism” pleonastic.79

“Catholicisme,” Bulletin de l’Association Catholique Chinoise du Sud-Est de la France 3 (1932): 8-15; “Nécessité de Missions, tirée du rôle providentiel de l’Eglise visible pour le salut des âmes” in Actes du IIe congrès national de l’Union missionnaire du Clergé de France (Paris: L’Union missionnaire du Clergé, 1933), 37-54; “Catholicisme,” La Revue de l’AUCAM [Academica Unio Catholicas Adiuvans Missiones] 8 (1933): 130-141; and “Le caractère social du dogme Chrétien,” Chronique Sociale de France 45 (1936): 167-192, 259-283.

76 As mentioned in Chapter One, the politicians of the Third Republic were sometimes violently anticlerical. Labeling Catholicism as a form of “individualism,” opponents depicted the Church as a self-interested organization, out of touch with the social trajectory of contemporary philosophy, less relevant than socialist political movements of the day, and lower in social utility than secular humanitarian organizations.

77 Catholicism, 16.

78 Catholicism, 17.

79 Catholicism, 15. 104

In this regard, de Lubac’s earlier essay title, “Le caractère social du dogme chrétien,”

better illustrated his ultimate intent, but he eschewed that title for the less forceful “aspects

sociaux du dogme” because he did not want to give readers the impression that he was offering a

systematic treatment of this complex topic. In fact, the introduction to Catholicisme contained

four pages of disclaimers about what de Lubac would not provide: he did not intend to write a

treatise on the Church visible or the Mystical Body, nor did he address the issue of ecumenism, nor “the Catholic principle of Tradition” for fear of trying to do too much, although each of these topics contains an obvious social dimension.80 Rather, he sought to show that Catholicism has

an inalienable social character by observing how several major dogmas have an intrinsically

social dimension. By doing so, he offered Catholics some guideposts for restoring a robust understanding of the social character of their faith.

In the first chapter of Catholicisme, de Lubac discussed the Catholic doctrine of creation.

Many Patristic theologians “were not content only to mention the first man and the first woman,

but delighted to contemplate God creating humanity as a whole.”81 Primeval humankind enjoyed

both a natural unity and a bond of grace that was sundered by the Fall. Even after the Fall, every

human being still bears the image of God and this common endowment is the basis for

recognizing the solidarity of humankind. The fragmentation of the human family and the

adversarial relationships within it are conspicuous signs of the presence of sin. Just as sin

destroyed the primeval unity of the human race and marred the image of God within it, the

80 Catholicism, 17-20.

81 Catholicism, 25. 105 doctrine of redemption has as its chief object the restoration of humankind, and only derivatively the salvation of individuals.82

The second chapter presented the Church as God’s chosen means to restore the human race to its original unity. De Lubac reviewed the meaning of katholikos (universal) and examined texts from the Gospels and St. Paul about the unity of all peoples in the Church. He traced the origin of this concept through the prophets of the Old Testament and discussed the meaning of ekklēsia in the same light: salvation is understood through membership in a corporate body, the People of God, the Mystical Body of Christ. With this perspective on the Church, the third chapter discussed the role of individual sacraments within the life of the Church. De Lubac aimed to correct an individualistic understanding of each sacrament with one that emphasizes its social dimension. Baptism, for example, is not merely the remission of original sin and the infusion of sanctifying grace, but also the incorporation of the baptized into the Body of Christ; penance is readmission into communion, and so forth. A lengthy meditation on the Eucharist as the summit of Catholic sacramental life concluded the chapter and anticipated the themes of

Corpus Mysticum.

The fourth chapter focused on eternal life as the goal of salvation. In a more speculative and tentative fashion, de Lubac suggested that the beatific vision has an intrinsically communal dimension and that something is missing in the beatitude of the saintsnot so much a privation, but an unfulfilled “hope”until all earthly members of the Body of Christ join the members in heaven.83

82 Catholicism, 35-36.

83 Catholicism, 129-133. 106 Chapter five presented de Lubac’s theology of history. He began by contrasting the

Christian understanding of salvation with that of various religions (e.g., Mahâyâna Buddhism)

and philosophies (e.g., Plotinian mysticism) which understand spiritual perfection as “an

individualist doctrine of escape” from the material world and the vicissitudes of history.84 De

Lubac maintained that outside of Christianity, history is typically understood as cyclical, static or ultimately pointless:85

Christianity alone continues to assert the transcendent destiny of man and the common destiny of mankind.… [T]he entire history of the world is a preparation for this destiny. From the first creation to the last end … a divine plan is in operation.86

Christianity alone gave the ancient world a teleological conception of history—a view which

sees the progress of history as intimately bound up with the corporate destiny of humankind in

God. This revelation not only liberates insofar as it announces a goal of human life that

transcends mundane events, but it also invests mundane events with eternal significance. All

history becomes salvation history: “Henceforth the stages of history are important: they are in

reality the stages of an essentially collective salvation.”87

Chapter six, the longest chapter and the centerpiece of Catholicisme, was devoted to the

interpretation of Scripture. First, de Lubac showed that Christian allegory, in both its method

and its content, has an intrinsically social and historical dimension, which makes it radically

84 Catholicism, 137.

85 “For what, in fact, do we witness outside Christianity whenever a religious movement rises above the domain of sense and effectively transcends the limits of nationality? In every case, though appearances may differ considerably, the basis is the samean individualist doctrine of escape” (Catholicism, 137).

86 Catholicism, 141.

87 Catholicism, 148. 107 different from other kinds of interpretation commonly called “allegory.”88 Christian allegory is

founded upon the unique Christian concept of history. Because his ultimate concern in

Catholicisme was to oppose individualism, he indicated how many Patristic allegories stress the

communal or ecclesial dimension of the spiritual life. Even biblical texts which seem to concern only the spiritual life of the individual are commonly interpreted by the Fathers such that “the soul in question is the soul of the believer, anima in Ecclesia.”89 The Fathers tended to view the individual not on his own, but in communion: “This social exegesis … sees on all sides the human race in its relation to the Savior.”90 Returning to the sources of Christian exegesis can

then help to remedy the atrophied communal dimension of contemporary Catholic spiritual life.

The next three chapters considered particular theological questions. Chapter seven

discussed whether those who do not believe in Christ can be saved. Against narrow interpretations of extra ecclesiam nulla salus, de Lubac reviewed the teaching of the Church and

select Patristic writings which maintained the possibility of salvation for those outside the visible

Church. De Lubac insisted that such a belief neither attenuates the need for missionary activity nor diminishes the need for the duly evangelized to join the Roman Catholic Church. By combining the notion that all human history is oriented toward humankind’s return to God with

an awareness of the personal bonds that unite all members of the human family, de Lubac

proposed that every individual has some stake in salvation history, implicitly or explicitly, and

88 De Lubac contrasted Christian allegory with Hellenistic pagan allegory (e.g., that of Sallust or Plotinus) and the allegories of Philo of Alexandria, a Platonist Jew (Catholicism, 165- 170).

89 Catholicism, 206.

90 Catholicism, 206. 108 this stake imparts a theological character to every person’s activity, even those who lived in

unevangelized times and places.91

In contrast to chapter seven, which discussed a role in salvation history for all people in virtue of their interrelationships, chapter eight approached the same idea chronologically. De

Lubac considered early pagan objections to Christianity based on the so-called “late” arrival of

the Messiah in history: if God’s plan for the redemption of the human race was ordained from all

eternity, why did God wait thousands of years to send the Messiah? Why did He not send Christ

to fallen Adam? What does “the fullness of time” mean? In response, de Lubac reviewed some

Patristic theologies of “divine pedagogy”—which described God as gradually preparing the

human race for the full reception of revelation. Just as a good teacher provides harder lessons

only when the student is able to advance to them, so too God gives divine revelation in stages.

Thus, the entire human race throughout the agesin its advances as well as its setbacksis

bound up in a continuity that leads to the conditions required for the proclamation of the Gospel.

Chapter nine then relocated the theology of missionary activity within this perspective and

presented it as the consummation of the Catholicity of the Church in time and space.

In the third part of Catholicisme, de Lubac returned to questions concerning the Church

in the modern world. In chapter ten, he responded to the charges against Catholicism mentioned

at the beginning of the book and added a cautionary note that Catholic theology has been in a

purely defensive mode for too long. While combating error often leads to the development of

doctrine, an exclusive focus on refuting error can cause lopsided, unhealthy development.

91 De Lubac also proposed a novel idea concerning the way unbelievers might prepare for a later generation’s acceptance of the Christian faith and thereby merit salvation (Catholicism, 232-233). 109 Doctrinal reactions must be counterbalanced, lest Catholics understand themselves chiefly in

reaction to other denominations’ errors.92 In fact, Catholics have forgotten the social aspects of

Church doctrine and life as they opposed the successive waves of Protestantism, the

Enlightenment, and Socialism. The resultant theological impoverishment opened the door to

hostile movements outside the Church, which attempted to solve problems that the Church is

best disposed to solve: “Perhaps Marxism and Leninism would not have arisen and been

propagated with such terrible results if the place that belongs to the collectivity in the natural as

well as supernatural order had always been given to it.”93

In chapter eleven, de Lubac heeded his own advice about not being exclusively

reactionary and attempted to sketch in positive terms the ideal relationship between person and

society in both civil and ecclesiastical forms of community. In the final chapter, he presented

his idea of an “integral humanism”; this humanism is “integral” because all humanist pursuits are

located within a framework of a Catholic anthropology and theology of history, a framework

92 “It is a great misfortune … to have learned the catechism against someone” (Catholicism, 309).

93 Catholicism, 309. In this connection, Susan Wood has observed: “The key to an understanding of the social unity of the human race within de Lubac’s theology is the realization that for him anthropology is inseparable from Christology. In other words, what it means to be human is inseparable from union with Christ in the whole Christ.” For Wood, de Lubac’s approach was a direct response to problems in nineteenth century anthropology: “[his] emphasis on the social character of Catholicism and on the human person’s supernatural destiny may find its proximate historical impetus in his response to the nineteenth-century atheist hermeneutic represented by Comte, Feuerbach, and Nietzsche. De Lubac’s emphasis on the social character of Catholicism not only represents a retrieval of a Patristic theme consistent with the interests of the ‘new theology,’ but also responds to the neo-scholastic interpretation of human finality as well as to the nineteenth-century atheist humanism which converted theology into anthropology. Auguste Comte, in particular, criticized Christianity for being individualistic and therefore inherently selfish. By stressing the unity of the human race and then interpreting this unity by its reference to Christ, de Lubac in effect converts anthropology back into theology and responds to Comte’s charge of individualism.” Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), 130. 110 which posits man’s supernatural vocation as the basis for the solidarity of the entire human race,

and this solidarity as the goal of human history. De Lubac hoped that within such a framework

the natural and human sciences could be integrated with metaphysics and religion, avoiding the

mutually detrimental oppositions between religion and science which plagued Renaissance and

secular humanism.94 Thus the scope of integral humanism’s humanist concerns is even larger than those of Renaissance humanism.95 De Lubac was confident that integral humanism can incorporate within an ultimately Catholic worldview the most important scientific findings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as evolutionary biology, modern cosmology, and the anthropology of primitive man. The book concluded with a brief meditation on the mystery of the Cross as the center of all human unity.

2.1. Analysis

In retrospect, Catholicisme was a manifesto of de Lubac’s future theological program— containing points of departure for many of his later works. Its comparative brevity allows

94 De Lubac’s persistent interest in this theme gave rise to his study of Pico della Mirandola, the Italian Catholic Renaissance humanist, in Pic de la Mirandole: Études et discussions (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1974); this study omited any detailed discussion of Mirandola’s interests in exegesis, rabbinic literature and Kabbala: “C’est ainsi que nous ne dirons rien, sinon en passant, de Pic hébraïsant, cabbaliste et exégète, tel qu’il se montre en particulier dans l’Heptaplus” (33). De Lubac noted: “Nous en avons dit quelque chose, en des pages très insuffisantes, dans E.M. 4, 396-402” (33 n. 5); this section of Exégèse médiévale presented de Lubac’s views of Pico’s theology and exegesis.

95 According to Wood (Spiritual Exegesis, 138), “what Comte’s positivist humanism, Marxist humanism, and Nietzschean humanism have in common is antitheism in the form of antichristianism with a resulting annihilation of the human person.… [D]e Lubac in his Christocentrism offers an anthropology that is fundamentally communitarian rather than individualistic while at the same time enhancing the dignity of the individual. By converting anthropology to Christology, de Lubac responds to atheist humanism with a Christian humanism wherein a person realizes his greatness, not by getting rid of God, but by participating in the divine life.” 111 readers to see the interconnections of many topics that de Lubac later addressed in full-length works: atheism, ecclesiology, exegesis, the supernatural, and the Church’s relationship to the sciences. As a programmatic work, Catholicisme revealed a nexus of first principles which de

Lubac used to address these topics. These first principles could be called de Lubac’s

“fundamental theology”—in the sense in which he used the term in “Apologétique et

Théologie”—an account of the human person’s capacity for knowledge in light of both nature and grace—not in the “separated” and dysfunctional sense he rejected in that essay. These principles of “fundamental theology” also determined his view of Scriptural interpretation, which was treated not only in the sixth chapter, but throughout the work.

De Lubac was not a very systematic writer; he did not itemize these principles either in a single section of Catholicisme or as a preface to the later works devoted to exegesis. This dissertation treats de Lubac’s interpretation of scripture in Catholicisme under three headings: first, two main “areas of difficulty” for the modern exegete (section 2.1.1); second, theological anthropology as backgrounding the interpretation of Scripture (2.1.2); and third, fundamental theology as background to scriptural interpretations (2.1.3). In light of this analysis, one can discern how de Lubac thought these exegetical issues ought to be approached within the context of the human person’s capacity to know by nature and by grace (2.1.4-5). In this investigation, de Lubac’s view of the relationship between the interpretation of Scripture and developments in modern science will receive special attention: first, because this subject is a major theme in

Catholicisme; second, because, de Lubac repeatedly noted in later works that some scholars misunderstood his intentions in defending the use of the spiritual senses in contemporary

Catholic exegesis and routinely accused him of ignoring both the modern natural sciences and textual criticism. 112 In this regard, Henry Chadwick dismissed de Lubac’s claim at the end of Histoire et

Esprit that recovering spiritual exegesis is an important dilemma for the contemporary church:

Perhaps he [de Lubac] does not adequately consider that it is a dilemma which may be answered by another. The purpose of the historical study of the Bible has never been better annunciated than by Matthew Arnold: “We read the Bible to find from it what really those who wrote it intended to think and say, and not to put into it what we wish them to have thought and said.” It does not seem clear that the method of interpretation advocated by Fr. de Lubac can meet the challenge implied in that statement.96

Chadwick, however, overlooks de Lubac’s care to discern—using the full gamut of sciences

available to the modern exegete—the literal sense of the text in its original milieu. Even

sympathetic reviewers of de Lubac’s later writing typified his work as running counter to mid-

century literal exegesis. For example, the favorable review by Alex Vanneste recounted de

Lubac’s efforts in these terms:

En effet, au milieu du XXe siècle les exégètes catholiques étaient avant tout préoccupés de reconstituer soigneusement les sens littéral des textes bibliques en y appliquant notamment le principe herméneutique des «genres littéraires» ainsi que l’avait recommandé l’Encyclique «Divino afflante Spiritu» (1943). N’hésitant pas à s’engager à contre-courant, H. de L. rappela avec insistance aux théologiens que pour celui qui lit l’Écriture avec les yeux de la foi, c’est-à-dire dans l’Église, guidé par l’Esprit qui y est toujours présent, ce sens littéral est loin d’épuiser la signification dont elle est porteuse en tant que Parole de Dieu.97

Other reviews were less favorable; for example, David Granskou review of The Sources of

Revelation, a 240-page collection of excerpts from Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale

published as an abridged work for American audiences, stated this about de Lubac’s claims:

96 Henry Chadwick, review of Histoire et Esprit: L’Intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène by Henri de Lubac, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 2 (1951): 102-104.

97 Emphasis added. De Lubac would presumably have regretted that his efforts were described as contre-courant, rather than supplemental to literal-sense exegesis, since he saw no opposition between them. See Alex Vanneste, review of Histoire et Esprit: L’Intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène by Henri de Lubac, Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses: commentarii de re theologica et canonica 79 (2003): 204-205. 113 [It] is difficult to follow him in what appears to be sweeping condemnations of any position concerned with historical meaning in Scripture and in correcting the misunderstandings which can be found in Patristic exegesis.98

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Catholicisme provides ample testimony to de

Lubac’s convictions regarding the positive role of modern sciences in interpretation and his desire to integrate them with more traditional modes of interpretation. Accordingly it is important to investigate de Lubac’s statements about contemporary exegetical difficulties, the

“fundamental theology” that underlies de Lubac’s approach to a solution to these difficulties and the role of modern science in interpretation.

2.1.1. Two “Areas of Difficulty” for the Exegete

At first glance, Catholicisme addressed two seemingly disparate areas of difficulty for modern Catholic exegetes: biblical theology’s relationship to modern sciences, and the spiritual senses in exegesis. Not only do these questions of exegetical method appear quite disparate, de

Lubac also tended to alternate between discussing one problem and the other in Catholicisme without directly relating them to each other. Yet in viewing the work as a whole, one can discern some similarities which closely relate both areas of difficulty to the central themes of

Catholicisme and to each other. Both areas of difficulty concern the relationship of theology to scientific developments in the previous century: first, the natural sciences of evolutionary biology and cosmology; second, scientific methods of exegetical investigation such as the historical-critical or source-critical method.

98 David Granskou, review of The Sources of Revelation by Henri de Lubac, Journal of Ecumenical Studies 7 (1970): 586. While Granskou was admittedly working with an abridgement, which did not contain nearly as many admonitions about misunderstanding de Lubac’s work as did the originals, one would be hard pressed to find anything like “sweeping condemnations … of historical meaning” in The Sources of Revelation. 114 Both areas of difficulty are examples of “frontier problems” that de Lubac discussed in

“Apologétique et Théologie.” The first raises the theoretical question of the relationship of theology to the natural sciences, but it is also of great practical importance to apologists in dialogue with modern scientific atheists and agnostics, and to pastors who must minister to people of scientific background. The second arises in part from movements within Catholic theology: some Catholic interpreters in de Lubac’s time began to reject allegorical interpretation

as a Medieval extravagance and lauded critical methods of investigating the literal sense, which in turn depend on literary theory, historiography, archeology, paleography and other sciences.

Both areas of difficulty were then proving grounds for the “integrated humanism” that de Lubac proposed in chapter twelve. The first area concerns the reconciliation of theology and science in their approach to biblical subject matter; the second concerns the reconciliation of theology and science in the method of reading of the biblical text.

Both areas of difficulty also arise from different ways of considering human history. In the first, the physical history of the natural world and the biological history of man contrast with the Biblical narrative of creation. In the second, the interpretation of history arises on several levels, for example: how does one assess the historical reality of Old Testament events which have typological significance? How does one assess the biblical chronology of events when these contrast with the findings of archeology or textual criticism? How is the human author’s

intention related to the meaning of the text? Is allegory a case of later generations imposing their

values upon a text or is it part of the text’s intrinsic meaning? How does one understand the relationship between Israel and the Church, since this consideration often determines how one understands the spiritual sense of the Old Testament? Thus, in addressing these two difficulties, one’s understanding of history is central. 115 The way in which these difficulties are resolved determines not only one’s exegetical

method, but also how one makes use of the vast amount of Scriptural interpretation in Patristic

and Medieval theology. These works comprise a substantial portion of the Catholic theological

heritage, so the questions de Lubac considered were vital not only to the future of Catholic

theology, but also to its past.99 In both areas of difficulty, Catholic interpreters are faced with the

possibility of substantially modifying or entirely discarding long-held interpretations of Scripture

in light of modern scientific data: how ought contemporary Catholic exegesis to proceed in light

of both modern science and its own traditions? Insofar as the normative value of tradition is

concerned, the question of history again arises.100

De Lubac considered these issues several times in Catholicisme. At the outset, however,

he observed that the exegetical difficulties which often cause people “difficulties of belief” are

symptoms of a more fundamental problem, which he proposed to consider at a far deeper

level.101 To do so, he believed that he must provide a theological anthropology, a theology of

history, and a soteriological context for the interpretation of Scripture. These are the basis of de

Lubac’s “fundamental theology.” This approach is more laborious and more extensive; but de

99 As de Lubac stated in the Introduction: “I consider from this point of view the question of Scripture and its spiritual interpretation—a question that not only concerns the history of exegesis and of Christian thought for many centuries, but still remain at bottom a subject of capital importance whose essential connection with orthodoxy was noticed by both Newman and Moehler” (Catholicism, 19).

100 In another respect, the two questions are diametrically opposed. De Lubac believed that the first question is arduous to answer insofar as the problems posed by the advance of modern science are novel and require careful doctrinal development. The second question is arduous, because the theology of the spiritual senses has suffered tremendous attrition since the Patristic period and thus the second question requires careful doctrinal retrieval.

101 “Exegesis and history have not ceased to be a source of difficulties, but the problems that beset us today are rather of the social and spiritual order, and it is possible that they are even more fundamental” (Catholicism, 13). 116 Lubac believed that shallower approaches to the problem are ultimately pyrrhic. Until the root

causes of contemporary exegetical difficulties are identified, theological progress will not be

made.

2.1.2. Catholicisme’s Theological Anthropology, View of History, and Soteriology

A strong emphasis on community is a hallmark of Catholicisme and affects all areas of de

Lubac’s theology. The communal dimension of de Lubac’s soteriology rests in turn on his

theological anthropology, beginning with his theology of creation. In the first chapter of

Catholicisme, de Lubac began by describing the unity of all members of the human race and

their common destiny: unity with the same God. He saw an intimate connection between the

unity of the human race and the unity of God. The distinctive theological insight of Genesis is

not merely monotheism, but what he called a “divine monogenism, forging the link between the

doctrine of divine unity and that human unity, the foundation in practice of monotheism and its

full significance.”102 The New Testament frequently affirmed “divine monogenism,” beginning

with the words of Christ Himself: “The prayer taught us by Christ makes clear in its very first phrase that monotheism postulates the brotherhood of all men.”103 After the Fall, sin manifests

itself in the division of the human family, in competitive and fratricidal relationships, and by

alienation from God—all of which mar the image of divine unity in mankind. Yet not even the

Fall can eliminate the awareness that mankind was created for unity:

[A]gain, humanity tries to collect its members together into unity. Throughout the centuries a powerful instinct compels it through an apparent chaos of dispersal and conflict, collisions and strivings, social integration and disintegration, toward

102 Catholicism, 31.

103 Catholicism, 31. 117 a “common life”, an outward expression of that unity which is obscurely felt within.104

This intrinsic desire for unity is a good, but fallen man sometimes pursues it in perverse ways.

Ultimately, human society can only realize its desire for unity through the assistance of God:

But humanity, as we see only too clearly, can never overcome all the opposing forces which are everywhere at work, forces which it contains within itself and is always producing or reawakening. Cities expand yet are always closed societies, they combine together but only to fight more bitterly with one another, and beneath their outward unity there is always the personal enmity of the souls within them.… Only that Ideal which Christ gave to his Church is pure enough and strong enough—for it did not issue from the brain of man, but is living and is called the Spirit of Christ—to inspire men to work for their own spiritual unity, as only the sacrifice of his Blood can bring their labor to fruition. It is only through the leavening of the Gospel within the Catholic community and by the age of the Holy Spirit that this “divine Humanity” can be established, unica dilecta Dei.105

Because de Lubac understood God’s salvation of fallen mankind in terms of restoring this lost unity to the human race, his soteriology was stamped with a strong communal emphasis.

Redemption has a dual aspect, at once individual and communal. While the communal aspect has been neglected or forgotten in contemporary theology, it is a patrimony of the Patristic era

which ought to be recovered today:

Let us abide by the outlook of the Fathers: the redemption being a work of restoration will appear to us by that very fact as the recovery of lost unity—the recovery of supernatural unity of man with God, but equally of the unity of men among themselves. “Divine Mercy gathered up the fragments from every side, forged them in the fire of love, and welded into one what had been broken.”106

104 Catholicism, 225; the last sentence of the above quotation provides an example of de Lubac’s persistent mystical intuition that was described in Chapter One above.

105 Catholicism, 225-226.

106 Catholicism, 35-36, quoting St. Augustine, In Psalmos, 58. 118 De Lubac understood salvation in terms of grace conforming the individual to the image of

Christ, but at the same time, all individuals taken together are also conformed to the image of

Christ corporately, as members of His Mystical Body, the Church.107

De Lubac insisted that salvation occurs only through association with the Mystical Body

of Christ, but he did not equate the Mystical Body with the visible Roman Catholic Church. The

latter abides permanently in the former but is not co-extensive with it. All salvation is through

Christ; all grace derives from the merits of Christ, but Christ acts through means which extend

beyond the visible institution of the Church.108 At the same time, the visible Roman Catholic

Church possesses the fullness of both revelation and the means of grace. Membership in the

Mystical Body finds its perfection in the visible institution of the Church, which, in fulfilling the

Great Commission (Mt 28:18-20), seeks to incorporate all people into itself. In Catholicisme, de

Lubac understood “Church” as the communion of all those who are saved.109 From the

beginning of time to the end, God has ordained the Church to reunite mankind.

This soteriology shaped de Lubac’s understanding of history. From the human side, he

saw all of human history as driven by man’s desire for God and by the persistent though

107 “Thus does he raise up again man who was lost by gathering together once more his scattered members, so restoring his own image” (Catholicism, 36). Even the very act of the Incarnation itself has a communal character: “For the Word did not merely take a human body; his Incarnation was not a simple corporatio, but, as St. Hilary says, a concorporatio. He incorporated himself in our humanity and incorporated it in himself” (Catholicism, 37-38).

108 As noted above, de Lubac argued this point extensively in chapters 7 through 9.

109 “For them [some Patristic interpreters of the Old Testament], in fact, in a certain sense the Church was nothing else than the human race itself, in all the phases of its history, in so far as it was to lead to Christ and be quickened by his Spirit. It was the omnis humana conditio” (Catholicism, 191). De Lubac did not cite the text, but considered Aquinas (ST, III, q. 8, a. 3) on whether Christ is the head of all men; this article is a commentary on 1 Timothy 4:10 and 1 John 2:2. On the evolution of de Lubac’s thinking on this point, see Susan K. Wood, “The Mystical Body and Catholicity,” Spiritual Exegesis, 79-85. 119 “obscurely felt” desire for social unity.110 From the divine side, all of human history is shaped

by God’s preparation for the Church and its worldwide establishment, since the Church is the

means willed by God to achieve mankind’s supernatural end. God’s providence, in greater or

lesser ways, dispenses grace to every culture in every age to prepare it better to receive the

Gospel. The progressive development of the life of the Church in human society often takes

place in subtle and unnoticed ways until it becomes more apparent in retrospect. In distinctly

Teilhardian terms, de Lubac paralleled the slow historical evolution of a culture’s understanding

of God before its reception of the Gospel with the slow biological evolution of the human

nervous system before the first flickering of human intelligence.111 While all of human history is oriented toward the reunion of mankind in the Mystical Body, this is not to say that everything in

history is a positive development, nor does history monotonically proceed to its goal:

Now this wonderful spectacle of divine “economies” cannot be represented as a straightforward development. Spiritual life, like all life, takes shape in a suitable organism only after much hesitation. Outbursts of sudden energy are followed by long barren periods, and not every promise of progress is followed by fulfillment. For every concentration and fruitful effort there is a whole heap of material which

110 Since de Lubac did not yet use his later term “ natural desire for a supernatural end,” which is typical of Surnaturel, it has not been used to describe his view in this section of the dissertation; however, it could be argued that de Lubac already had this more precise conception in mind.

111 “Every created being, in fact, is subject in this world to the law of development. If salvation, which is God himself, is free from it, humanity in order to receive this salvation is not so free. Just as for intelligence to dawn in a corporeal organism and shine at last in human eyes it is first necessary that life should arise in the body and that it should discover ever-improving means of communication with the outside world, though its role is solely to prepare itself for receiving this intelligence which is of a high order and which it receives like a grace—the comparison is enlightening, although its details must not be pressed—so did it need thousands of years of preparation for Christ’s revelation to be received of men, and for the divine Likeness in all its splendor to shine in the eyes of his saints; and this is true not only of the Jewish revelation … but also of all those other, obscurer, more external preparations which went before it or were contemporary with it among the pagans, and of the whole gradual raising up, social, intellectual and material, of fallen man” (Catholicism, 230-231). 120 seems wasted. One success comes after hundreds of more or less abortive efforts and involves a certain number of miscarriages. And since nature had to produce an unbelievably extravagant profusion of living species so that in the end the human body could appear, we must not be astonished at the strange multiplicity of the forms of religion, before or outside Christianity, shown to us in history.112

De Lubac defended this position “on principles laid down by the Fathers” which allow us “to

harmonize their testimony to the Church as the sole means of salvation with their testimony…to

the universal action of our Savior.”113

Indeed it is very noticeable that when the Fathers allow the pagan world something of the light of Christ they generally set this light in a prophetic relationship with the full light of the Gospel.114

De Lubac cited the teachings of St. Irenaeus, St. Augustine, St. Leo, and particularly St. Clement

of Alexandria, the most optimistic of the Fathers about the value of pagan erudition.115 From this

112 Catholicism, 232. De Lubac’s appraisal of other religions is more guarded than other theories of comparative religion, such as those of Scheiermacher or Karl Rahner. While de Lubac, Schleiermacher and Rahner all began with an interior intuition of God that is common to all men and then discussed non-Christian religions as an attempt to thematize that intuition, de Lubac was resolutely Christocentric in his view of the course of human history and more pessimistic about the role of evil, especially outside of the means of grace available in the Church. For example, he stated: “Of course, no more than St. Paul or the Fathers do we wish to use this providential role to explain away any ‘infidelity’ of paganism. The part of actual evil in the latter is manifestly immense and it was not all inevitable. From this viewpoint, what is truly progress can sometimes appear to be deterioration: the corruption of a particular period or society, for example, may be bound up with the development of a civilization and the deepening of moral conceptions that are, in themselves, true progress. Corruptio optimi pessima. Not that history allows us to establish a law of inversely proportionate progress, the development of material and intellectual civilization having its counterpart in a movement of religious and moral decline, as some ethnologists have maintained. But human progress renders the possibilities for evil more and more formidable. Culture can become an obstacle to grace” (Catholicism, 231 n. 41).

113 Catholicism, 237.

114 Catholicism, 237.

115 De Lubac cited the famous passage of Clement: “Just as God sent prophets to the Jews, so did he raise up in the midst of Greece the most virtuous of her sons and set them as prophets amidst their nation” (Stromateis, book 6, chapter 5; PG 9, 261B). For a fuller treatment 121 perspective, de Lubac maintained: “Henceforward the stages of history are important: they are in

reality stages of an essentially collective salvation.”116

2.1.3. Catholicisme’s “Fundamental Theology”

One can see Catholicisme’s principles of “fundamental theology” at work on two levels, the natural and supernatural, which are mutually oriented and never separated from each other.

The natural level relates to de Lubac’s view of human rationality and the possibility of faith. The supernatural level relates to divine revelation, the act of faith, and the practice of theology within the Church. Both levels informed his understanding of the interpretation of Scripture.

On the natural level, de Lubac believed that human rationality, when fully and correctly exercised, always elucidates the interrelationship between the individual person, human society, and the natural world. In addition, human rationality relates these three to God who alone gives full significance to each of them. Sustained rational inquiry about one’s own nature, human history, or the nature of the world, ought eventually to lead back to this three-fold theistic

perspective. Intellectual history testifies that philosophy perennially struggles to present a worldview that fully incorporates all three aspects without developing one at the expense of the

other.

As noted in Chapter One, de Lubac believed that the historically unique phenomenon of

modern Western atheism was made possible only by grave distortions in philosophical

anthropology following the Protestant Reformation. De Lubac’s anthropology attempted to

of the Fathers on this subject, see René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1966), 85-150.

116 Catholicism, 148. 122 eliminate these errors and represents what he considered to be a more authentic view of man.117

Thus, de Lubac rejected the claims of any intellectual discipline which insists on separating the

consideration of God from its domain of inquiry in the name of “pure reason.” Such a stance

does not represent intellectual neutrality or openness to “the God question” but rather, is hostile to it and this hostility usually rests on decisive assumptions about the nature of the human person, history or creation. That is why de Lubac began by outlining a theological anthropology before addressing the norms of exegesis and its relation to modern science, because many problems in both exegesis and modern science arise from secularizing assumptions about the nature of the human person. For de Lubac, reason must remain open to the possibility of supernatural revelation and the correlative response of faith. Any discipline that excludes on principle the possibility of supernatural revelation has an incorrect view of human rationality and man’s relationship to God.

This three-fold theistic perspective was the basis of de Lubac’s optimism about the mutually enriching relationship that is possible between theology and both the modern natural sciences and the social sciences. De Lubac saw both the unfolding of the natural world and mankind’s course through history as governed by the same provident God who supplies supernatural revelation: “the book of nature” and “the book of revelation” both are authored by

God to direct man to deeper self-knowledge within this three-fold theistic perspective: as an individual, as a member of society, and as a creature of God. This principle of de Lubac’s fundamental theology was the basis for his belief that theology must synthesize history,

117 In Catholicisme, de Lubac defended this point by using resources from Patristic theology. In other early works, such as Causes de l’atténuation du sens du sacré (1942) and Le Drame de l’humanisme athée (1944), he took a more apologetical approach and argued more from reason than from revelation. 123 metaphysics and the modern sciences with divine revelation and also directly shaped his view of

exegesis as will be presented below.

Before considering de Lubac’s exegesis, however, it seems expedient to consider his

view of the role of history and tradition in shaping the thought of an individual or an entire

culture. For de Lubac, the full meaning of a concept is only grasped in the process of

understanding its genesis and its influence on subsequent generations. To neglect the communal

aspect is to neglect the inherently social fabric of human rationality and the collective aims of

God’s providence for His creatures. De Lubac’s emphasis on understanding ideas diachronically

is a direct result of his fundamental theology.

On the supernatural level, this emphasis is deepened for a person who has received divine

revelation and made an assent of faith. After establishing that man’s supernatural vocation has

as its goal the restoration of the unity of the human race in God through Jesus Christ and after

identifing the Church as God’s chosen instrument for this restoration, de Lubac located the

activity of theology within this framework. Accordingly, theology must serve the end of unity

by building up humanity in both charity and truth. If theology’s goal is to explicate divine

revelation and if revelation’s ultimate purpose is the unification of the human family, then

community is not ancillary, but rather essential to every consideration of divine revelation. In particular, since this communal dimension is understood from the very beginning as oriented toward the Church, the communal dimension is always explicitly understood as ecclesial communion. Communio is not merely one important theological point among many, rather, it is genuinely a dimension: no matter what area of Catholic theology one considers, the notion of communion in the Mystical Body is always present. If this dimension is completely absent, theology ceases to be Catholic, since the very notion of Catholicity rests on the revelation of 124 God’s desire to reunite all people in Christ.118 In addition, because de Lubac understood membership in the visible institution of the Catholic Church to be the perfection of membership in the Mystical Body, the communal dimension of his theology is often expressed with reference to the sacramental life, the Magisterium, and the traditions of the Church. For de Lubac,

Catholic theology which lacks reference to ecclesial communion is deficient.

The historical dimension further implies that theology must be attentive to factors such as the progress of revelation, covenant history, the development of doctrine, and the reception of doctrine through history. His understanding of the teleology of human history led him to be attentive not only to the history preceding supernatural revelation (such as how the Old

Testament prepared for the Gospel), but also to the subsequent doctrinal development of that revelation, since such development has a purpose in God’s providence. In a subtle fashion, de

Lubac transformed what he first called “the uniquely Christian concept” of the teleology of human history into a distinctively Catholic teleology of theological tradition.119 Traditions are a divinely ordained part of mankind’s social and historical nature, and this applies not only to natural traditions, but to Sacred Tradition and the Deposit of Faith as well as to the theological traditions which develop from them. If supernatural revelation is the Word of God, “living and active,” then the history of its reception is the record of this divine life active amongst men.

This record is not always a happy one, because of sin and the slow evolution of human reasoning about God. De Lubac was well aware of the potential for centuries-long distractions, distortions, and errors in theological tradition, since the free cooperation of fallen men is an essential part of the process of reception. The section of Catholicisme entitled “Spes non

118 Catholicism, 49.

119 Catholicism, 137. 125 confundit” best encapsulated his understanding of the paradoxical imperfectability of human

tradition and theological tradition.120 While hoping for the full reception of the Gospel in human

history, including its thorough enculturation and reception throughout the world, there will never

be a time when this reception of divine revelation has subdued the destabilizing forces of sin and

ignorance, until the Second Coming. Human tradition and theological tradition remain open to

the possibility of error. At times, tradition may be misused in a positively destructive fashion,

just as any other great good may be misused. Yet supernatural revelation is given for a reason

that ultimately relates to mankind’s social end and so de Lubac expected the healthy

development of human understanding of supernatural revelation to be expressed in a robust

theological tradition, even if its perfection in time was impossible.121 Tradition must always be

open to critique.122

120 Catholicism, 271-281. These statements about tradition would not apply to Sacred Tradition, however, since, like Sacred Scripture, God is its Author.

121 “As she expands, the Church discovers the world within herself, a subtler threat. She is fully aware of it. She knows, too, that man’s most certain and glorious triumphs always contain an equivocal element from which evil may profit. The ‘mystery of iniquity’ has not yet wrought its greatest destruction, and the Church, as in all ages of her history … can see its formidable shadow.… So it is that, despite the ever-recurring illusions of those won for her cause but not completely imbued with her Spirit, she awaits no other triumph than that of her Bridegroom who reigned from the Cross.… Her establishment on earth, a source of temptation for so many of her sons, can never be for her anything but a semblance, for she knows that after all she, like the Truth itself, is only a stranger on earth, scit se peregrinam in terris agere. Her outlook remains, as it was in her early days, essentially eschatological. Nevertheless, here on earth she is tireless in attempting the impossible” (Catholicism, 272-273).

122 As important as these positions are, de Lubac did not provide a full treatment of this complex issue in Catholicisme; he explicitly stated at the beginning of the book that he would not attempt a systematic treatment of the nature of tradition. A deeper examination of de Lubac’s understanding came in his later works, yet we can see the foundations for such an understanding being laid in 1938.

126 2.1.4. “Historika pneumatikōs, pneumatika historikōs”

Chapter Six of Catholicisme—“The Interpretation of Scripture”—opened with a maxim

which can be used to organize de Lubac’s interpretation of Scripture:

As a consequence [of the previous chapters’ view of history], historical realities possess a profound sense and are to be understood in a spiritual manner: historika pneumatikōs; conversely, spiritual realities appear in a constant state of flux and are to be understood historically: pneumatika historikōs.123

These two Greek phrases may be translated literally as “Historical things spiritually; spiritual

things historically.” The Greek has a slightly wider sense, since historikos may also bear the

sense of “exact, precise, scientific,”124 and so carries a nuance which can encompass de Lubac’s

concerns about both natural sciences and history. Accordingly, historika pneumatikōs

exemplifies his resolution of the first difficulty: approaching historical things spiritually is the

key to reconciling theology and the modern sciences. Pneumatika historikōs exemplifies his

resolution of the second difficulty: divine revelation has an essentially historical dimension,

which affects the way that one interprets the literal sense of Scripture and is essential for

understanding the spiritual senses in a way that does not divorce them from the perspective of

modern criticism.

What then did de Lubac mean by understanding “historical things spiritually”? On the

natural level, it meant interpreting historical events within the three-fold theistic perspective

described above. On the supernatural level, it meant interpreting historical events according to

123 Catholicism, 165.

124 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940), s.v. “historikos.” The older sense of the term bears a similar meaning to akribologeomai, the characteristic of the scientific mindset in Aristotle. Using the older and broader sense of a science, one might gloss the expression: “scientific things spiritually, spiritual things scientifically.” 127 his principles of fundamental theology and his teleology of human history, including what divine

revelation indicates about history’s telos. To understand “historical things spiritually,” de Lubac

considered historical events within three different timelines: the history of the cosmos, the

history of the human race, and salvation history as recorded in Sacred Scripture. All three timelines of historical development have an inner moment—a “profound sense”—which relates

them to their divine end. The “spiritual understanding” of an historical event requires making

sense of the event within all three timelines. In this way, he sought to interrelate the perspective of the natural sciences, the social sciences and theories of modern biblical criticism in understanding historical events “spiritually.”125

In the first two areas, de Lubac was optimistic about the goods which modern sciences

offer to people of faith:

We see every individual rooted in humanity as humanity itself is rooted in nature, and the scientific enrichment of this perception provides a natural basis of great value for a better understanding of our Catholicism.126

In the case of discoveries in cosmology and evolution, de Lubac considered reticence about adopting the verified findings of modern science a groundless intellectual fear. While the notion of a four-billion-year-old earth and pre-human hominid species would have been foreign to nearly all of the Fathers and medieval theologians, one ought not to presume such data are irreconcilable with a Catholic worldview just because they are novel. Rather, he maintained that

125 For example, the exegetical treatment of the events of the Exodus requires the coordination of natural science (e.g., for information about the plagues, the Nile, the geography of the region, archeology), social science (e.g., for the reconstruction of ancient Egyptian, Canaanite and pre-Mosaic Hebrew culture) and modern biblical criticism in dealing with an ancient text and its potential stratification by a series of redactions.

126 Catholicism, 351. 128 the Fathers give us principles to use in reconciling the findings of modern science even if the

Fathers could not have anticipated its content:

We have often been toldand in tones of finalitythat all the paltry ideas of our Christian forebears about human history have been swept away by modern discoveries, which have shown to us the vastness and the complexity of this history. Even today theologians are to be found who perpetuate the objection by their timorous attitude toward these discoveries. Do not we see some of themincredible as it may seemafraid to acknowledge in all simplicity that man’s existence on our planet is of much longer standing that [sic] the authors of the biblical chronologies ever suspected?… Defense of our faith requires us to be neither timorous nor blind. We realize that the men of each generation could possess no more than the science of the time, that revelation makes no difference here: its light is of another order. Neither the biblical writers nor the Fathers nor the medieval theologians could have known, obviously, about Neanderthal man or Sinanthropus, nor could they have had precise knowledge about the Chinese. But the material narrowness of their view was no hindrance to its formal breadth.127

In the case of cosmology, de Lubac assumed that the reconciliation of biblical and astronomical

chronologies had been satisfactorily accomplished and that the salutary effects of modern

cosmology were being felt in Catholic theology:

Discoveries in astronomy, at first so disturbing, have resulted in the freeing of Christian thought from the confines of an ancient cosmology, ill-suited to its genius; and what was at first taken to be a dogmatic crisis was only a wholesome surprise. Thus we can be assured that fresh conclusions about our history and our empirical origins will help us, after their own fashion, to probe more deeply into the meaning of our Catholicism, in its concern for the whole history of man and its solicitude for each member of the human family.128

De Lubac was evidently confident that the findings of modern cosmology, if interpreted properly

by theologians, would serve to deepen their perspective on creation and enrich their

understanding of how God has disposed the universe to lead humankind to its collective end in

God.

127 Catholicism, 352.

128 Catholicism, 353. 129 De Lubac also believed that the deeper thinkers penetrate into the mysteries of human

origins, the more they will be led back to questions of an ultimately religious nature.

Accordingly, advances in modern scientific knowledge must “lead men of good will to the

threshold of Catholicism, which alone can effect this unity in its highest sense.”129 This salutary

influence is not initiated only from the side of the sciences. Attentive consideration of divine revelation should renew the desire for scientific inquiry:

For through the Christian revelation not only is the scrutiny that man makes of himself made more searching, but his examination of all about him is at the same time made more comprehensive.130

De Lubac offered the following picture, taken from an earlier era, of a healthy synthesis

between revelation and inquiry into the natural world:

Of course there was no need for the Church to repudiate the harmony between the Earth and the cosmos. Just as her doctors have preserved, often felicitously, many habits of thought and turns of phrase which are tainted in origin, so does the Church gather to her vast treasury riches rescued from all sides. She took the sumptuous setting of her worship from dying paganism, making a halo for the Sun of Justice out of the glory of the Sol Invictus, adorning her cathedrals with the signs of the zodiac, harmonizing her ceremonies with the rhythm of the seasons. But it is neither the natural cycle nor some extra-cosmic deliverance that is portrayed by her liturgical year: it is the past history of our redemption.131

Thus for de Lubac, the theology of creation is deepened by the findings of natural science, and both are enriched by being subsumed within a larger picture of humankind’s social destiny in

Christ which is informed by divine revelation and expressed in sacred worship.

129 Catholicism, 353.

130 Catholicism, 340.

131 Catholicism, 153. A work which develops this idea by using architectural observations from European cathedrals is J. L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 130 Regarding the history of human civilization and the social sciences’ effect on theology,

de Lubac wrote:

The progress effected in the last century or two by the social sciences has accustomed us to a better realization of the dependence of the individual upon those various communities that are far more than a mere framework or external support to him.… At the same time, progress in the physical and natural sciences … has enabled us to discover not only the immensity but also the fecundity of the historical process.132

This openness to the social sciences constantly has a spiritual dimension. For de Lubac, the

“vertical” dimension of human unity (union with God) is the basis for the “horizontal” dimension

of human unity (union of people with one another), in regard to both individuals and whole

societies.

As regards individuals, de Lubac described the alienation of modern people from one

another:

If modern men are so absent from each other, it is primarily because they are absent from themselves, since they have abandoned this Eternal which alone establishes them in being and enables them to communicate with one another.133

Regarding whole societies, he made a similar point:

If there is not admitted beyond all visible mortal societies a mystical and eternal community, beings are left in their solitary state or are crushed into annihilation; in any case they are destroyed, for suffocation too can cause death.134

Such quotations examplify de Lubac’s position that one must simultaneously relate

human nature, human society, and the natural world to each other and to God. When theology

fails to do so, grave consequences arise. For example, into the void created by contemporary

132 Catholicism, 351.

133 Catholicism, 362.

134 Catholicism, 333. To expand the metaphor: individuals are “crushed” by the weight of totalitarian statism or “suffocated” by the vacuum of modern solipsism. 131 theology’s lack of attention to the social dimension of human life, philosophies antagonistic to

religion have arisen in an attempt to provide a godless vision for the unification of mankind, such

as certain types of Enlightenment rationalism and particularly Marxism or Leninism.135 De

Lubac rejected these forms of social philosophy as incompatible with a Christian view of man

and history:

[Against an] entirely secularized concept of society, which at the present time dominates men’s minds everywhere and only degrades what it has inherited of the historical and social character of our Faith, we must have the courage to show ourselves resolutely reactionary.136

In reaction to these social philosophies, de Lubac proposed a return to a Biblical view of the solidarity of the human family, as read by the Fathers and updated for the modern period:

The Bible, which contains the revelation of salvation, contains too, in its own way, the history of the world. In order to understand it, it is not enough to take note of the factual details it recounts, but there must also be an awareness of its concern for universality, in spite of its partial, schematic and sometimes paradoxical mode of expression. It was in this way that the Bible was read by the Fathers of the Church.… Had they known all the facts now in our possession, doubtless the treatise would have been of far greater complexity, but the essential form would have been the same.137

An updated, Biblical-Patristic theology of history thus stands at the crossroads of three different agenda in Catholicisme: political, exegetical, and sacramental. It is political because such a theology is necessary to respond to modern atheist political systems which thrive on alternative

views of history; it is exegetical because of the need to synthesize the perspective of modern

science with a biblical worldview; and it is sacramental because the restoration of true human

communion needs to occur through a re-establishment of man’s relationship to the divine, the

135 Catholicism, 309.

136 Catholicism, 357.

137 Catholicism, 165-166. 132 vertical dimension of communion which de Lubac saw as the only way to correct the rise of

secularism.

De Lubac then stated a fundamental principle for his entire biblical hermeneutics:

For they [the Fathers] would have been faithful, as we ought to be, to that fundamental principle they learned from Scripture: that if salvation is social in its essence it follows that history is the necessary interpreter between God and man.138

Thus Catholicisme, which was intended to be a meditation on the social aspects of Catholic

dogma, arrived at the recognition that “history is the necessary interpreter between God and

man.”139

Yet, for de Lubac, one major obstacle impeded the development of such a theology of

history in the modern period:

[T]he theology of history which occupied so large a place in the Fathers’ thought never foundor was never provided withits essential groundwork, a more or less systematic philosophy of history; I mean a philosophy of history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time.140

In effect, de Lubac argued that if salvation is social in essence, the philosophy of history

becomes a mediating science of comparable importance. Just as the reconciliation of the

physical sciences and Biblical revelation is mediated by a philosophy of nature, so too the

138 Catholicism, 166; emphasis added.

139 Ibid. It is no accident that de Lubac’s next major work on Scripture focused on Patristic biblical hermeneutics: Histoire et Esprit.

140 Catholicism, 308. De Lubac saw the unfinished beginnings of such a philosophy in the writings of certain Fathers, but their inchoate notions were undeveloped, indeed abandoned, by Medieval theology: “the suggestions made by Gregory of Nyssa or Augustine were only the beginnings and were insufficient to bring out and compel recognition for the idea of the spiritual continuity, essential for each individual and common to all, within which all our acts are registered in a concrete order. Medieval thought, with that overriding anxiety for rationality which is one of the causes of its greatness, was inevitably bound to disregard one aspect of a teaching which at that time appeared so obscurely” (Catholicism, 308). 133 reconciliation of the human sciences with a Biblical vision of history will be mediated by a

“philosophy of history as such.” A philosophy of history constitutes the vital link needed by

contemporary theologians to understand “historical things spiritually” and “spiritual things historically”—yet it was never developed in either the Patristic or the Medieval period.141

In the course of Catholicisme, de Lubac did not identify any particular exegete or school of thought whose work he considered deficient or erroneous. Yet one can perceive some implications for some contemporary exegetical approaches. For example, de Lubac critiqued any school of historical criticism that rejected the possibility of miracles or the supernatural, or which methodologically isolated these events from a literal reading of the text. Likewise, he differed from those exegetes who insisted biblical history must be read in a fundamentally secular sense and so refused to allow events in the Old Testament to have significance in light of their fulfillment in the New. He also rejected exegetical approaches based on the immanentism of people like Schleiermacher and Loisy, as incompatible with his theological anthropology, because in such immanentism, divine revelation is vitiated of its historical character.

De Lubac also critiqued those Catholic thinkers who adhered to creationism as being insufficiently open to the place of scientific inquiry in biblical interpretation; indeed, he called them “concordists” and labeled their approach “embarrassing.” Likewise de Lubac might have chided those Catholics who resisted theories of textual criticism or comparative religion, because these exegetical approaches challenged traditional theories of authorship and indicated that Old

Testament literature comes from pre-existing traditions, oral or written, and even sources in other religious cultures. For de Lubac, such “integrism” failed to appreciate the full scope of God’s

141 As will be seen later in this dissertation, this remark of de Lubac offers a fruitful connection with the work of Gadamer, who was one of several modern philosophers who devoted themselves to a philosophy of humanity in time. 134 use of human history and culture in communicating divine revelation. Nonetheless, de Lubac did

not want to define his exegetical approach against his contemporaries; rather, he preferred to maintain a positive focus on all the benefits his approach to exegesis could offer.

2.1.5. Understanding “Spiritual things historically”

De Lubac then described his understanding of “spiritual things historically” with an eye to resolving the second “area of difficulty”: the relationship between the literal and spiritual interpretation of Scripture. De Lubac again considered the events of biblical history, this time from the supernatural perspective, as divine revelation, that is, as historical events with theological content to be expounded from the perspective of faith. On the one hand, biblical events are historical events, subject to the same norms of interpretation as other historical events, even though they concern spiritual things. (For de Lubac, this historical approach never employed a “separated” method of interpreting history that is functionally rationalist or agnostic.) On the other hand, faith recognizes these events to be the key to the meaning of all history and so they function like a thesis statement to the whole narrative of history. These historical events bear within themselves profounder levels of meaning accessible only through faith, which affects their interpretation according to the literal and spiritual senses. While the events are the same—the events of Old and New Testament history— the interpreter’s perspective has changed insofar as they are considered as “historical things” considered spiritually—as spiritual things embedded in the fabric of history.

De Lubac ascended from literal to spiritual interpretation in stages. First, he considered the literal sense of the text in itself. Second, he wove together his discussion of the narrative function of the literal sense (how it describes what happened in salvation history) with his 135 discussion of doctrinal interpretation of the biblical text, a further step in the process of interpretation, similar to what would today be called doing “biblical theology”; de Lubac called this the doctrinal sense of the letter.142 Finally, as the crowning stage of his discussion of understanding “spiritual things historically,” he examined the allegorical sense. He showed how these spiritual senses have an intrinsically historical and communal dimension, indicating another way in which one may understand “spiritual things historically” specific to the spiritual level of interpretation.

2.1.5.1. The Literal Sense as Narrative Sense and Its Relationship to Biblical Doctrine

In regard to the literal interpretation of Biblical history, de Lubac affirmed the importance of using modern historical disciplines. The tools of ancient Near Eastern historical research, comparative religion, and a critical history of Israel are vital to capturing the meaning of Judeo-

Christian revelation. For example, he maintained that anyone who wishes to develop an Old

Testament theology must be attentive to Israel’s slow emergence from the religious views of surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures, because the spiritual beliefs of Israel, like any other historical reality, have a genesis:

[W]e are not to be astonished that the “blessed Patriarchs, scarcely delivered from the habits of idolatry and the error of polytheism”, should on many points give evidence of “quite imperfect ideas.” Their immediate descendants “who had grown up among the Egyptians” had also maintained their “barbarous ways.” Mosesthat is, God who dictated his law to himwas obliged to adapt himself to this situation.143

142 The doctrinal sense is drawn from both the literal and spiritual meanings of the text, not the letter alone, as de Lubac made clear in Histoire et Esprit. In Histoire, he called the allegorical sense the chief source of doctrine, but in Catholicisme the discussion of the doctrinal sense of Scripture arose in connection with the literal sense.

143 Catholicism, 253-254. 136

Yet the historical sense does not operate solely in retrospect. Recovering the original

context of the Biblical message and its antecedents is just the first step. Equally important is

reading a Biblical passage in light of the whole history of revelation of which it is a part. The

data of subsequent history, including revelation, should also inform exegesis. In giving divine

revelation, the Fathers “all affirmin spite of their differences of opinionthat the passage of time was necessary: non pauci gradus qui adducunt hominem ad Deum.”144 De Lubac also

averred that correctly interpreting the moral sense of the Old Testament is not possible without a

progressive historical view of divine revelation.145

De Lubac’s diachronic approach to interpreting Biblical history rested on his fundamental theology with its intrinsically historical nature of human reason and his understanding of revelation as “divine pedagogy.” Even with unaided human reason and mundane events, one commonly observes how a later event reveals part of the meaning of an earlier one.

Ramifications are often seen in hindsight.146 But the analogy is inexact when applied to Sacred

Scripture. In the case of historical events which are divine revelation, God, the Author of

144 Catholicism, 260, citing Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, 4.9.3 (PG 7: 998-999).

145 “[I]t is not advisable to judge the past by the standards of the present. Elias was right to call down fire from heaven on the guilty, for such severity was required to strike the imagination of a people that was still immature; but James and John, wishing to imitate the prophet, were blamed for it by our Savior. Some things were fitting pro tempore prophetiae which today are fitting no longer. Polygamy would be an evil today, but it was not so in the days of the Patriarchs. The whole of the Mosaic law should be appraised not only in the light of the circumstances of its promulgation but also in respect of what it brought about and prepared for.… The whole Old Testament, in all its long duration, was not too long to prepare for the great day of the New. A paidagōgia, a necessary preliminary to the philosophia” (Catholicism, 256).

146 For example, it is not sufficient to explain the formation of the American Constitution and the debates of the Continental Congress about secession and slavery solely with reference to antecedent conditions in the colonies and the Founders’ political theories; these debates in many ways set the stage for the Civil War a century later. 137 revelation, foreknows the subsequent stages of salvation history and the full scope of what He

will reveal in Christ even when He is revealing the earlier stages.147

God, on the other hand, inspires each stage of the writing of Sacred Scripture so that it is

oriented to the complete revelation accomplished in Christ. Accordingly, revelation is called pedagogy, by analogy to the way a teacher plans each lesson with an eye to the ultimate goals of a course. Part of the genuine meaning of each class, therefore, lies in what will be revealed later as the course comes to its conclusion. Some indication of what is to come may be made at the outset of the course, but the parts are only understood fully in relation to the whole when students reach the end of it. De Lubac argues that historical criticism that operates solely retrospectively—without a sense of the teleology of history—can do justice neither to the historical meaning on the merely natural level nor can it grasp the deeper, spiritual sense that is going forward throughout the pages of Scripture. For de Lubac, the coming of Christ is the highpoint of salvation history, so the entirety of Scripture must be understood in light of Christ:

The historical character of the religion of Israel can be understood in all its originality only through its consummation in the religion of Christ. We should never forget that the explanation of Judaism is not to be found within itself.148

For de Lubac, faith in Christ is decisive in the act of interpretation. Without a Christocentric

perspective, the spiritual meaning of biblical history cannot be adequately grasped, and biblical

history is narrated according to a spirit not proper to it.

147 In contrast, the Founding Fathers did not foresee all the consequences of their actions, nor could they have anticipated all the later decisions of Constitutional law which were later made upon the basis of their debates.

148 Catholicism, 164. 138 De Lubac was on guard against those who agreed that the Scripture must be interpreted

according to a teleological conception of history, but viewed its telos differently. The Christian

dispensation is the summit of revelation until the end of time:

[T]he Spirit of Christ cannot lead further than Christ. The New Testament will never date; it is of its very nature the “Testament that never grows old,” the last Testament, novissimum Testamentum. It should therefore be interpreted … in accordance with those principles that are laid down in it; whereas the Old Testament, beyond the facts and events which the literal meaning of the text teaches us, designates also “something else,” the very reality of which … is yet to come. In consequence it is true to say that its symbols are prophetic ones, prophētika sumbola: a declaration, a foreshadowing, protupōseis, as well as a preparation, Praeparatoria figurativa, said St. Thomas Aquinas.149

In this way, de Lubac defended against such movements in Christian theology as Christian

Hegelians who interpreted Judeo-Christian revelation within a larger narrative of the self-

manifestation of the divine Spirit through the dialectics of history; similarly, de Lubac guarded against millenarian tendencies in Catholic exegesis, such as that of Joachim of Fiore, who interpreted the Scriptures in expectation of a future age of the Holy Spirit which would surpass

the New Testament of Christ and its doctrines, perfecting them in a similar fashion as the New

Testament perfected the Old.150 For de Lubac, the Christ event is the central event of salvation

history and the moment of God’s maximal self-disclosure. Because it shall not be surpassed, it

remains the reference point for all history.

For de Lubac, faith in Christ is the hermeneutical key to the meaning of both Testaments:

Since it is through its prophecies of the mystery of Christ and of the Church that the Old Testament acquires the right, so to say, of imitating eternal veritiesno man can journey from the earthly to the heavenly Jerusalem save in the train of him who came down therefromso it is only on condition that we see in both

149 Catholicism, 172.

150 De Lubac’s examination of the widespread effects of such an error is the central theme of his last major work, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. 139 Testaments a single twofold mystery, that we have the right to elucidate its spiritual sense. For there is no authentic spiritual life which does not depend on the historic fact of Christ and the Church’s collective life. Nothing exceeds the scope of this twofold but single mediation and “of his fullness we have all received.”151

Since de Lubac believed that the totality of what is to be believed about the Christ-event is preserved and definitively taught by the Church, he immediately proceeded from the recognition that faith is essential to the act of interpretation, to understanding faith explicitly in the context of the Magisterium of the Church.

Schism and heresy are then fatal to understanding the historical events of the Bible spiritually. In this way, de Lubac repristinated what the Fathers called the “Rule of Faith” in exegesis: Scripture ought not be interpreted contrary to the doctrine of the Church.152

151 Catholicism, 206-207, quoting John 1:16.

152 Irenaeus provided an early statement of the rule in Adversus Haereses, 3.4.1: “It is not necessary to seek the truth among others which it is easy to obtain from the Church; since the apostles, like a rich man [depositing his money] in a bank, lodged in her hands most copiously all things pertaining to the truth: so that every man, whosoever will, can draw from her the water of life. For she is the entrance to life; all others are thieves and robbers.… Suppose there arise a dispute relative to some important question among us. Should we not have recourse to the most ancient Churches with which the apostles held constant discourse, and learn from them what is certain and clear in regard to the question? For how should it be if the apostles themselves had not left us writings? Would it not be necessary to follow the course of the tradition which they handed down to those to whom they did commit the Churches?” (translation from Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, editors, The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, volume 1, The Apostolic Fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), 416-417. Cf. St. Augustine in his Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called “Fundamental,” chapter 5: “Perhaps you will read the gospel to me, and will attempt to find there a testimony to Manichaeus.… For my part, I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church. So when those on whose authority I have consented to believe in the gospel tell me not to believe in Manichaeus, how can I but consent? Take your choice. If you say, Believe the Catholics: their advice to me is to put no faith in you; so that, believing them, I am precluded from believing you;-If you say, Do not believe the Catholics: you cannot fairly use the gospel in bringing me to faith in Manichaeus; for it was at the command of the Catholics that I believed the gospel” (translation from Philip Schaff, editor, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, volume 4, St. Augustine: The Writings Against the Manichaeans and 140 Concerning heretics “who do not have a correct idea of Christ,” de Lubac quoted with approval

the words of Clement of Alexandria: “for if Christ is the key to the Scriptures, they therefore

have the wrong key.”153 For de Lubac, schism is opposed to the foundational principle of our

redemption: communion in the Church established by Christ. Truth unifies; neither unity or truth

can be sacrificed without harming the other:

This makes it possible to understand why schism has always inspired the true believer with horror, and why from earliest times it has been anathematized as vigorously as heresy. For destruction of unity is a corruption of truth, and the poison of dissention is as baleful as that of false doctrine.154

Conversely, exegesis properly conducted edifies in both senses of the word: it informs the mind

and also builds up the Mystical Body. Since the purpose of revelation is to reunite humanity in

Christ, consequently the proper interpretation of Scripture should result in an increase in the

bonds of truth and charity which unite those who read the interpretation. In this way, de Lubac

reintroduced the other great rule of Patristic exegesis, the Rule of Charity.155

Against the Donatists [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1887; reprint, 1979], 131). Contemporary definitions tend to follow the language of the First Vatican Council: “Wherefore, by divine and Catholic faith all those things are to be believed which are contained in the word of God as found in Scripture or tradition, and which are proposed by the Church as matters to be believed as divinely revealed, whether by her solemn judgment or in her ordinary and universal Magisterium” (Dei Filius, 3, 8). See, for example: “Regula fidei … Catholica, quae est verbum Dei in libris sacris et Traditione contentum et ab infallibili Ecclesiae Magisterio praedicatum” (Adolphe Tanquerey, Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae, vol 1: Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae Fundamentalis, 742-743).

153 Catholicism, 181 n. 61, citing Clement, Stromateis book 7, chapter 17.

154 Catholicism, 77.

155 St. Augustine of Hippo succinctly stated the Rule of Charity in De Doctrina Christiana, I.86: “So anyone who thinks that he has understood the divine Scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this double love of God and neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them” (On Christian Teaching, translated by R. P. H. Greene [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], 27). 141 These dynamics of faith and communion give the act of interpretation a moral character.

In abiding by the Rules of Faith and Charity and in aiming at the edification of the Mystical

Body, all who seek to interpret the Sacred Page do so within an ecclesiastical context that

functions as a kind of disciplina: a formative culture which aims simultaneously at the spiritual

formation of the interpreter and the glory of God. As de Lubac explained:

We may recall Origen’s emphatic commendation of that consonantiae disciplina without which no offering can be acceptable to the Lordwithout which, indeed, a proper idea of God is wanting. For they who do not give him glory do not know him, and this glory can be given to him only in the ChurchIpsi gloria in ecclesia!156

When exegesis is practiced faithfully within an ecclesial context, there arises a synergy between the sacramental life and the act of interpretation, since both arise from the same sources of faith and revelation and tend toward the same end:

The law of “spiritual intelligence” is the very law of all spirituality, which is never authentic and trustworthy save only as it is not an individualist way, but a spiritualization of the liturgyan application, that is, to the life of the soul of the Church’s life-rhythm. For one and the same essential mystery permeates the whole of Scripture and liturgy, apart from which there is no participation in the mystery of God.157

Just as holiness can increase interpretational acumen by a kind of connatural knowledge of

spiritual things,158 so too, excellence in exegesis advances the spiritual life of the Church.

156 Catholicism, 77-78, quoting Ephesians 3:21.

157 Catholicism, 215. The scope of this communal orientation extends far beyond the liturgy and exegesis to all areas of the spiritual life: “The letters of Maximus the Confessor often stressed the duty to ‘universalize’ every personal aspiration; it is in that way that the unity willed by God is achieved” (Catholicism, 81, n. 129).

158 De Lubac indicated that the foundation of this connatural knowledge, though he did not use this term, may be the analogia fidei: “[Medieval liturgists] take their inspiration, as did their brethren the exegetes, from the analogy of faith” (Catholicism, 105). 142 As noted in the discussion of his fundamental theology, de Lubac always understood rational inquiry within a three-fold theistic perspective: relating the individual, society and the natural world to one another and all three to God. Although de Lubac emphasized the cosmic and historical aspects of exegesis in Catholicisme, he also considered the individual person.

Rational inquiry about the meaning of the text is simultaneously rational inquiry into oneself. In regard to the literal way in which some Fathers received the text “He was pleased to reveal his son in me” (Galatians 1:15-16),159 de Lubac commented:

It is not merely to reveal his Son to me, to show him to me in some vision whatever we may say about the external prodigy recounted in the Acts of the Apostlesor to cause me to comprehend him objectively, but to reveal him in me.… By revealing the Father and by being revealed by him, Christ completes the revelation of man to himself. By taking possession of man, by seizing hold of him and by penetrating to the very depths of his being Christ makes man go deep down within himself, there to discover in a flash regions hitherto unsuspected. It is through Christ that a person reaches maturity, that man emerges definitively from the universe, and becomes conscious of his own being.160

Just as Paul reconceived his entire life in light of what Christ revealed to him, so too does every reader of Scripture who encounters Christ in the Sacred Page:

Now in the same passage of the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul adds: “That I might preach him among the Gentiles.” His conversion is a vocation. He cannot remain in quiet recollection with the Christ whom he has just discovered within himself. By the same token, and with the same urgent need as the service of this Christ, the service of men, his brethrenof all men without respect of personscalls him.161

159 The critical text of Galatians 1:15-16, according to Biblia Sacra Vulgata Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), reads: “cum autem placuit ei qui me segregavit de utero matris meae et vocavit per gratiam suam ut revelaret Filium suum in me ut evangelizarem illum in gentibus.”

160 Catholicism, 339.

161 Catholicism, 340. 143 Here is a linkage between exegesis, spiritual self-discovery, and the evangelical dimension of the act of interpretation.

As noted in Chapter One, evangelical effectiveness is the litmus test of theological authenticity for de Lubac, a belief which Catholicisme based on the intrinsically communal dimension of revelation. Exegetical research withers on the vine if it remains unshared. So too when academic exegesis loses sight of its service to the life of the Church, it can become misguided and remains incomplete. Thus for de Lubac, the full context of interpretation begins and ends with a consideration of interpretive activity within God’s plan for the reunification of humanity in Christ. All the major points—the Rule of Faith, the Rule of Charity, the inadmissibility of heresy and schism, the moral formation of the interpreter as an essential component of his act of interpretation, and the ultimate goal of producing exegesis which edifies the Body of Christ—trace back to this central insight of Catholicisme. These norms also apply

to the interpretation of the spiritual sense of Scripture, which builds upon the literal sense.

2.1.5.2 Understanding “Spiritual Things Historically” and the Spiritual Senses of Scripture

In Chapter Six of Catholicisme, de Lubac mentioned the use of the spiritual senses in

interpreting Scripture, but only a brief analysis will be made here, because the vast majority of de

Lubac’s opinions on this subject are found in much greater clarity and detail in Histoire et Esprit

and Exégèse médiévale. This section will only analyze de Lubac’s treatment of the spiritual

senses with respect to three themes: (a) how the spiritual senses are not contrary to a vigorous investigation of the historical sense; (b) the subtle hermeneutical point that the Paschal Mystery is not merely foreshadowed by the Old Testament, but actually creates the allegorical meaning within the Old Testament; and (c) the intrinsically communal dimension of the spiritual senses. 144 While de Lubac often talked about “the spiritual senses” generically, the majority of his remarks

concern the allegorical sense in particular. The moral and anagogical senses did not receive

nearly as much attention in Catholicisme.

In discussing the relationship between the historical sense and the allegorical sense, de

Lubac distinguished Christian allegory from both Hellenistic pagan allegory and the allegories of

Philo of Alexandria, a Platonist Jew. De Lubac referred to the principle that “if salvation is

social in essence, it follows that history is the necessary interpreter between God and man”; this

principle “divides very sharply” the whole of Christian allegorical interpretation from pagan and

Philonic allegory.162 While de Lubac acknowledged a diversity of opinion among the Fathers

regarding the principles and practice of allegory, he nonetheless claimed: “For all, the Old

Testament was at once preparation and figure, whatever their different proportions might be.”163

Pagan allegorical interpretation of the texts of Hesiod and Homer, such as that of Sallust or

Plotinus, had as their object explaining away the literal sense of the Olympian myths, which were seen as too primitive for belief at this stage in Greco-Roman history. These texts were allegorized in order to present an eternal truth that was already known by human reason:

They do not see mythical events as symbols of spiritual happenings; but perceive beneath the historical veil scientific, moral or metaphysical ideas: “it is not that these things ever happened—for they are thus from all eternity.”164

For the pagan allegorizers, the only true meaning of the text was what de Lubac called “the

symbolic meaning,” which treats the realities indicated by the literal sense of the text as fictional

162 Catholicism, 166.

163 Catholicism, 260, n. 48.

164 Catholicism, 166. 145 symbols of an eternal meaning. So for pagans, allegorical interpretation directly opposed the literal sense as history.

Philo of Alexandria had a more subtle position, but one which still placed the primary meaning of a text on realities which are fundamentally not historical but eternal. In interpreting the Law of Moses, for example, Philo did not deny the normative character of the Law for his fellow Jews, nor the historical character of the Exodus narrative. At the same time, Philo believed that the reader must ascend to the allegorical sense of the text, from which perspective all that is historical in the Books of Moses becomes a symbol for an eternal reality which is already known through Platonic philosophy. This conception of allegory shared with the pagan

Greeks the idea that the symbolic meaning is primary, and points to eternal verities of philosophical character, but Philo, unlike the pagans, did not deny the historicity of the literal sense. Yet, according to de Lubac, Philo had a rather tenuous connection between the literal and allegorical senses:

Yet even Philo in trying to derive a spiritual teaching from the Bible denudes it somewhat of its historical significance. Facts interpreted in this way, whether they are real or not, are of no interest save through what they symbolize.… The student of the Scriptures thus abandons the religious plane for that of abstract speculation—this is especially true for Philo’s Allegory of the Laws—or at least strays into an individualistic mysticism.165

For de Lubac, “It is quite otherwise with the Fathers.”166 The differences are two-fold. First,

Patristic allegory does not deny the literal sense of the text or derogate Biblical history to a position of secondary importance. The allegorical symbolism of the Fathers has no other reference than salvation history itself. For the pagans and Jews, the allegorical reading of

165 Catholicism, 167.

166 Catholicism, 167. 146 religious texts transferred their meaning from “the religious plane” (the domain of supernatural

revelation in history or in quasi-historical myth) to “the philosophical plane” (the domain of

human reason). In both cases there is a transference from an historical plane to an ahistorical

one. Thus the deeper meaning of a text was not one derived from divine revelation, but from

human reason alone. With Christian allegorical interpretation, the opposite is the case. What is

symbolized by allegorical passages is itself historical revelation.167 When Christian allegorists interpreted David as a type of Christ, or the earthly Jerusalem as a type of the heavenly city to come as described in the Book of Revelation, they were doing something which their non-

Christian Hellenistic counterparts would have found unthinkable:

The idea of a spiritual Reality becoming incarnate in the realm of sense, needing time for its accomplishment, that without prejudice to its spiritual significance should be prepared, come to pass, and mature socially in history—such a notion is entirely alien to these philosophers. Confronted with it, they find it a stumbling- block and foolishness.168

The allegorical sense in Christian exegesis finds its point of departure in what de Lubac

described as the Christian method of understanding “historical things spiritually.” The Christian interpreter of the literal sense of biblical history already sees all historical events in a

Christocentric orientation; the allegorical sense then provides a further level of meaning. Divine

Providence disposed the events of salvation history in such a way that the facts, events, and persons of the Old Testament are themselves symbolic of realities yet to come. This level of

167 While de Lubac understood the different approaches of the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of interpretation as well as the approaches of various Church Fathers, he did not wish to burden his discussion with such observations (which he made at length in his later works). In spite of all their differences, when the Fathers speak of allegory, “They all mean ‘to understand the spirit of history without impairing historical reality’. For ‘there is a spiritual force in history’ … by reason of their finality the very facts have an inner significance” (Catholicism, 168).

168 Catholicism, 166-167. 147 significance is not something the human author of Scripture always perceived in the process of writing, but it is part of the intention of the Divine Author. This meaning is genuinely part of the text, because it is genuinely a part of the meaning of the historical realities considered in their full, diachronic perspective.169 In this way, a recognition of the symbolic value of historical events does not come at the expense of their intrinsic historical significance, unlike pagan and

Philonic allegory.

Because the basis for the allegorical sense of Scripture is the coming of Christ in human history—rather than the eternal realities of the Platonizing allegorists—the ability to discern the allegorical sense of Scripture is created by the Incarnation of Christ. Accordingly, de Lubac sometimes spoke of the Incarnation as creating the allegorical meaning, but he meant this not with respect to the Divine Author’s intention in inspiring the text which contains an allegory, but only with respect to the human interpreter’s ability to perceive it:

Yet the act of redemption is not a key which by unlocking the Old Testament reveals a meaning already present in it. This act in some sort creates the meaning. It is only for God, from the eternal point of view, that the Old Testament contains the New already in a mystery: semel locutus est Deus et plura audita sunt. The entire Bible contains no other Logos than him whom we adore in the flesh; so that if, to suppose an impossibility, Christ had not come, no man confronted with the sacred text would have the right to go beyond its literal meaning; “the Lord is the Spirit”. By their rejection of Christ the Jews were deprived of this right. Moses and Elias are transfigured only in the glory of Thabor, and the two Testaments, like the two angels in white garments at the tomb of Christ, appear as identical only in the bright light of Easter day. If therefore it should happen that on some point or detail the same “spiritual” interpretation is found in a Jewish and

169 “[T]he question of genius does not arise here.… We have not to do with some wonderful creation, some scheme invented by an intellectual, the vision of some contemplative. Rather was it the consequence of the fact of the Incarnation on the conscience of some few Jews. In the end what was originally known by intuition was developed into a skillfully constructed theory capable of withstanding Jewish attacks on the one hand and those of the Gnostics on the other, at the same time providing the means for preserving the Scriptures and using them as a basis, while yet freeing itself from Judaism: gladius bis acutus like the Scriptures themselves” (Catholicism, 175). 148 Christian exegete, such a coincidence … does not alter the fact that their fundamental principles of interpretation are entirely different. In some sort Christ took Scripture into his own hands, and he has filled it with himself through the mysteries of his Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection.170

In other words, since knowledge of Christ is the hermeneutical key to Christian allegory, no one

possessed this key except the Eternal Father until “the mystery hidden for ages in God” had been

revealed. One may say that the spiritual meaning of the Old Testament was “created” with the

coming of Christ, as long as one retains the idea that the Divine Author foreknew the eventual

creation of this meaning and planned for it in inspiring the Old Testament human authors, and

indeed, in creating the world.

Finally, de Lubac emphasized what he called the intrinsically social dimension of

Christian allegory. For de Lubac, the recovery of a proper understanding of the spiritual senses

and their retrieval in theology, preaching, and meditation would reawaken Catholics’ awareness

of the social dimensions of the faith. While de Lubac described the relationship between the

allegorical sense and the literal interpretation of history on the level of hermeneutical principle,

he believed that the practice of Patristic allegorical exegesis best reveals its intrinsically social dimension:

The social character of the most spiritual Christian exegesis is just as noteworthy as the historical. The latter chiefly concerns the principles of interpretation; the former is manifest in the subject matter.171

Why are there no theoretical statements by the Fathers about the social dimension of

allegory? De Lubac maintained that such a conviction was widespread yet entirely implicit in

170 Catholicism, 180-181.

171 Catholicism, 183. 149 the understanding of the Fathers, and so has been largely unexamined as a principle, although it

is reflected always and everywhere in their exegetical practice.

The social dimension of allegory is not accidental. Insofar as Christ is the basis for all

Christian allegory, the social dimension of allegory is rooted in the fact that Christ must be considered in three ways: in His own Person; in relation to the individual soul; and as Head of

His Mystical Body in relation to the whole Church. This gives rise to what de Lubac called “the two registers” of allegorical interpretation: one individual and the other collective:

Tradition, whether it deals with the Old Testament or the Gospel, and especially when it deals with the parables, preserves both these aspects of the mystical meaningone has in view the collective destiny of man, the other the interior life of the soul. Thus all that we are taught by Scripture finds its fulfillment in each one of us.172

De Lubac provided a number of concrete examples from the Fathers concerning this

tradition of allegorical interpretation. The use of these “two registers” often gave rise to suggestive parallels between the course of the individual viator through life and the course of humanity throughout history.173 In a passage with Teilhardian influence, de Lubac gave an

example of this type of two-fold reading—individual and collective—in the writings of St.

Augustine:

St. Augustine, following St. Paul, uses his profound psychological insight in a description of the four states, those four essential moments of consciousness which are at the same time the four successive states of humanity: natura, lex,

172 Catholicism, 207. These “two registers” of allegorical interpretation became the basis for de Lubac’s development of a two-fold tropological sense in Histoire et Esprit, insofar as the tropological sense directs the reader toward salvation, both individually and as a member of the Church.

173 “The Fathers, with a wonderful discernment, which can be explained only by their habit of envisaging the religious life in historical terms, also noticed that the six parables of the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew followed each other just like the six ages of the world” (Catholicism, 204). 150 gratia, patria, spiritual growth and temporal development, thus becoming symbols of one another. Mystical ontogenesis is only a reflection of phylogenesis. The exegesis of the Canticle of Canticles is a good example of the use of these two registers.174

Again, in de Lubac’s use of a maxim of evolutionary biology to explain the parallelism between the spiritual life of the individual soul and the course of salvation history, one can see the continual thrust in Catholicisme to relate the individual soul, human society, and the natural world to each other and to God. Although the Fathers did not articulate this three-fold theistic perspective explicitly, de Lubac saw this mentality underlying their use of the allegorical sense.

The Mystical Body as Christus totus is the dominant concept which unites both individual and collective varieties of allegory. Thus the Church, according to de Lubac,

is the central symbol, the guiding spirit, as it were, of the whole interpretation of the Old Testament. This interpretation occurs in a threefold indivisible sense: spiritual, historical and social; and it is merely to give it these attributes altogether if we say that its subject matter is, in one word, the Church. Prophetia semper figuris variantibus loquitur, sed res una in omnibus invenitur.175

Susan Wood summarized these connections in these words:

The value of this spiritual exegesis is that while it provides an interpretation of history which confers meaning on historical realities from a faith perspective, it also grounds spiritual realities historically. These two poles provide the continual historical check and balance which differentiates the spiritual interpretation of Scripture from non-Christian allegory. The social character of Christianity finds its basis both in this historical nature of revelation and in the fact that history mediates salvation. In de Lubac’s theology, grace is concretely embodied in the world because revelation has, in Christ, taken historical form. The Church, as social institution, is a social embodiment of this grace because of its inherent relationship to Christ.176

174 Catholicism, 210.

175 Catholicism, 192.

176 Susan Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 23-24. 151

2.1.6. Conclusion

Although an early work, Catholicisme was programmatic for the next four decades of de

Lubac’s career. The book contained the first deployment of his thoughts about exegesis, including many noteworthy statements about the role of tradition, community, and faith in the activity of interpretation. De Lubac’s earliest ideas about exegesis were closely connected to other themes which would figure prominently in later works, such as the supernatural, ecclesiology, and atheism. An eclectic work, Catholicisme developed its insights about exegesis in many directions simultaneously.

This chapter began with an analysis of de Lubac’s “fundamental theology” in

Catholicisme, which stands at the foundation of his thoughts about exegesis. An important principle that emerges from his theological anthropology might be termed his “three-fold theistic perspective” which considers the knowing human person simultaneously as an individual, a member of society, and a creature—all in relation to God. Whether reason is operating in the order of nature alone or of grace, de Lubac believed that this perspective should be maintained for a full understanding of the human person and the proper conduct of exegesis.

Regarding the relationship between nature and grace, de Lubac maintained the same position as he did in “Apologétique et Théologie,” namely, that the orders of nature and grace are mutually oriented, irreducible to each other, and compatible: the order of nature finds its fulfillment only in the order of grace. The truths known by natural reason and those known by revelation have the same kind of relationship: mutually oriented, irreducible to each other, and compatible, with the former being elevated, complemented and fulfilled by the latter. De Lubac enthusiastically embraced both orders of knowledge as part of God’s design for human reason. 152 An immediate consequence of this perspective was de Lubac’s insistence on making full use in exegesis of the gamut of natural and social sciences, such as ancient Near Eastern research, archeology, comparative religion, historiography, textual criticism, etc. Catholic exegesis should have a rigor that satisfies secular practitioners of these sciences. For the same reason, de Lubac staunchly resisted the tendency of some modern exegetes to separate the scientific side of exegesis from theological considerations. Any discipline which attempts to close itself off from questions of God and the supernatural in the name of “pure reason” becomes “separated” and

“estranged” and has adopted premises hostile to a Catholic view of nature and grace, reason and revelation.177

Another important principle arising from de Lubac’s fundamental theology was his concept of the teleology of history on the natural level, which on the supernatural level becomes a theology of providence and divine pedagogy. In Catholicisme, de Lubac described how the entire human race throughout the ages is united in an historical process that leads to the conditions required for the proclamation of the Gospel: “Henceforward the stages of history are important: they are in reality stages of an essentially collective salvation.”178 De Lubac developed this “uniquely Christian” teleology of history into a distinctly Catholic esteem for tradition, both human tradition and Sacred Tradition. His view of history and tradition directly informed his emphasis on diachronic exegesis. He believed a text should be studied diachronically in both chronological directions, examining its antecedent history and its consequent effects. The full meaning of a text requires understanding both its genesis and its

177 This view had direct ramifications for de Lubac’s approach to historical criticism, source criticism, biblical historiography and a biblical theology of creation and covenant history.

178 Catholicism, 148. 153 reception. To neglect either aspect would be contrary to the intrinsically social, historical fabric

of human rationality. He also believed that interpreting the moral sense of Scripture correctly is

not possible without a progressive view of divine revelation. While the Fathers frequently read

Scripture in this fashion, he believed that neither the Patristic period nor the modern one had developed the “essential groundwork” for its systematic exegetical use. The absence of this essential groundwork is an impediment to the integration of ancient and modern exegetical techniques. Accordingly, he sought “a philosophy of history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time” as the anthropological foundation in the order of nature for his theology of history in the order of grace: “If salvation is social in its essence, it follows that history is the necessary interpreter between God and man.”179

For de Lubac, the role of faith is decisive in the act of interpretation. Without a

Christocentric perspective, the spiritual meaning of biblical history cannot be adequately

grasped, and biblical history is narrated according to a spirit not proper to it. The Christ event is

the moment of God’s maximal and definitive self-disclosure. Christ is the hermeneutical key

without which Scripture remains, in part, closed. Since de Lubac believed that the totality of

what is to be believed about Christ is preserved and definitively taught by the Church, he

deduced what the Fathers called the Rule of Faith in exegesis, namely, that Scripture must be

interpreted in accordance with what the Church has definitively taught. This rule could guide

contemporary exegesis in many ways. For example, exegetes undertaking biblical Christology

should align their findings with Nicene-Chalcedonian orthodoxy. Conversely, dogmatic

179 In looking ahead to the next chapter, the question arises whether Gadamer’s thought could assist de Lubac in providing this groundwork, since Gadamer was deeply concerned with the philosophy of history as it relates to the interpretation of texts.

154 theologians should not reduce their Christology to biblical proof-texts and Denzinger statements,

lest the richness of biblical revelation and the historical fabric of the development of doctrine be

lost. For de Lubac, “theological impoverishment” may occur whenever theology is chiefly

developed “against someone.” In contrast, biblical ressourcement is the antidote to this

theological myopia; accordingly, there must be a fruitful exchange between biblical and

dogmatic theology. As he hinted in “Apologétique et Théologie,” any dogmatic theology that

does not consistently include exegetical considerations becomes deficient and distorted, while,

on the other hand, all really effective exegesis must end up in dogmatic theology. Separation of

the two fields only results in their mutual impoverishment.

Because the revelation of Christ will not be superseded in human history, de Lubac

rejected exegetical approaches based on philosophies which derogate Christian uniqueness in

favor of philosophical universalism or which try to accommodate Christianity to a philosophy of

history foreign to it. For this reason, de Lubac rejected exegetical approaches influenced by

Hegelian progressivism, Marxist dialectical materialism, the immanentism of Schleiermacher or

the millenarianism of figures such as Joachim of Fiore.

De Lubac’s emphasis on the communal dimension of all theology led to his concept of

“social exegesis”—exegesis by and for the anima in ecclesia.180 Exegesis properly conducted

180 De Lubac’s indirect influence on the development of liberation theology lies beyond the scope of this dissertation, however the social emphasis of his exegesis was adopted by Christian socialist thinkers: J. W. Hellman focused on the role of Emmanuel Mounier (1905- 1950) as a mediating figure between French socialism and Brazilian liberation theology; see J. W. Hellman, “Emmanuel Mounier: A Catholic Revolutionary at Vichy,” Journal of Contemporary History 8, no. 4 (October 1973): 11-14. The influence of Catholicisme on Mounier was discussed by Hellman, Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left 1930-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981), 50 and 142. On the influence of French social theory and Mounier in particular on Brazil’s Christian left in the 1960s, see Michael Löwy and Claudia Pompan, “Marxism and Christianity in Latin America,” Latin American Perspectives 20, 155 must edify in both senses of the word: informing the mind and building up the Mystical Body.

Truth unifies in charity; in contrast, schism “has always inspired the true believer with horror.”

This belief underlies de Lubac’s presentation of what the Fathers called the Rule of Charity in

exegesis: one has not succeeded in understanding the Scriptures unless one has increased in the

two-fold love of God and neighbor. For de Lubac, evangelical effectiveness is the litmus test of exegetical authenticity. If academic exegesis loses sight of its service to the life of the Church, it can become misguided, and at the very least, it remains sterile, incomplete. The social dimension of exegesis also motivated de Lubac’s concern to present a proper understanding of

the spiritual senses. In his view, returning the spiritual senses to frequent use in exegesis—and

also in theology, preaching, prayer, etc.—could reawaken Catholics’ awareness of the social

dimensions of the faith.

De Lubac’s view of the spiritual senses was not deeply elaborated in Catholicisme. Most

of the time, when he wrote about the spiritual senses, he had in mind allegory, rather than the

tropological or anagogical senses of Scripture. The spiritual senses received far less attention

compared to the literal sense; nevertheless, he made some important remarks about allegory in

Catholicisme. For de Lubac, allegory is genuinely part of the meaning of the text, rather than a

creation by later interpreters, because it is due to the divine Author of Scripture who both

inspired the human author and who had the foresight to dispose history such that earlier events in

history are symbolic of events yet to come. De Lubac called this arrangement “divine pedagogy”

in the economy of salvation. He also argued that the distinctive feature of Christian exegesis,

no. 4 (Autumn 1993): 28-42. Lastly, Surnaturel directly influenced Gustavo Gutiérrez, Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation, translated by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis, 1973), 69-72. 156 which sets it apart from both pagan and Philonic approaches to interpretation, is that the type and

its referent are both historical events in the same continuity of salvation.181

For de Lubac, there was no tension or opposition between the literal and allegorical

senses of Scripture. The allegorical sense develops out of the literal sense and can be understood

as the last stage in the reception of the spiritual meaning of a text. For de Lubac, the literal sense

must be approached first, since it is the foundation of the spiritual senses, and must use all the

critical tools that modern history and biblical criticism affords, since using the tools of natural

reason is proper to the study of history. The literal sense of a text must then be understood

spiritually, in light of its doctrinal implications and in the fuller context of divine revelation. The

exegete should proceed from understanding “historical things spiritually” to understanding

“spiritual things historically,” by examining the development of spiritual principles in covenant

history. In the course of this examination, some events in Scripture may appear to be “at once a

preparation and a figure” of things to come; they resemble in some way that for which they

prepare. If this connection is discerned, an allegorical meaning becomes apparent in the text and

so the full historical meaning of the text can be an allegorical one.

For example, Patristic commentators often observe that the imperial kingship of David over all tribes of Israel and the surrounding Gentile nations is a prefiguration of the Kingship of

Christ over the universal Church. Thus there is an allegorical relationship between the Davidic

181 De Lubac later summarized the difference between biblical allegory and the literary device of extended metaphor—sometimes called allegory—by stating that biblical allegory is allegoria facti, a relationship between deeds in history, rather than merely allegoria verbi: “Biblical allegory is therefore essentially allegoria facti. More precisely, it is allegoria facti et dicti.… The other form, which … [has] the name ‘symbol,’ is called allegory of word and not deed … symbols are [a likeness of] … what are said, not done” ME 1/2: 88-89. See Bede, “Nor again when a fact is allegorized, do people lose faith in the actual accomplishment of the deed” (ME 1/2: 7, and ME 1/2: 231, n. 68 among other places). 157 monarchy and the Messianic office of Jesus Christ. In a way, the former prefigures the latter, and the latter fulfills the former. To arrive at this allegorical sense of Scripture, one must begin with careful attention to the letter, including the historical reality of the Davidic monarchy and its conditions. If David was merely a didactic fiction or a national myth, an allegory (one historical

reality prefiguring another for which it prepares) would be impossible. Furthermore, the

particulars of David’s reign and that of his heirs are important. In the covenant promise to David

(2 Samuel 7), one notes not only elements with immediate reference to his successor, Solomon,

but also the promise of the eternal stability of the kingship in Israel within David’s line of descendents (vv. 13, 16). If the Judean monarchy would have been held by a different royal house or if Christ was not a descendent of David, the spiritual sense would be impossible: there must be a dynamic of fulfillment involved. In this text, there is an unfulfilled spiritual expectation that attaches to the covenant promises to David which are not realized by any of his proximate descendents. This historical fact sets the stage for the formulation of later Jewish

theology of the Messiah. As René Latourelle eloquently expressed it:

Through this prophecy [2 Samuel 7], the dynasty of David becomes directly and forever the ally of Yahweh…; it becomes the pivot for the axis of salvation. Ever after, the hope of Israel will rest upon a king: a present king first of all, and then the king to be, eschatological, as the infidelities of the historical kings gradually dim the hope for a king according to the Davidic ideal. This prophecy is the point of departure for a theology, elaborated by the prophets, which is primarily a promise, constantly turning to the future, much more so than the theology of the Sinai covenant, whose demands are more a matter of everyday concern.182

Thus, from the period of the divided monarchy through the exile and return, one witnesses the historical factors which led to the diminution of the royal house of David, and, at the same time, precisely because of these historical circumstances, Israel’s development of a theology which

182 René Latourelle, Theology of Revelation, 26. 158 could reconcile God’s covenant promises in 2 Samuel 7 and the tradition of the monarchy in

Israel with the apparent removal of any proximate earthly fulfillment of these promises and the

abeyance of its monarchial tradition. This initial discordance between Israel’s national history and its covenant expectations creates pressure to rethink the spiritual significance of the covenant.

What is the true nature of Messianic kingship in Israel? In rethinking these “historical things spiritually,” the prophetical movement under divine inspiration gave rise to the spiritual concept of the Messiah and his role as Savior of both Israel and the Gentiles. This spiritual concept grew and developed in Israel’s history. If one examines the development of this concept over Israel’s history from Davidic times into the Common Era, one is examining “spiritual things historically.” This spiritual concept of the Messiah thus prepares for its fulfillment in the coming of Jesus Christ. When Christ arrives, one can understand His Messianic office in historical perspective by tracing the development of the concept of “King of Israel” from David to Christ.

Christ stands as the fulfillment of that spiritual concept of Messiah which began to be prepared, inchoately, at the time of David, and which developed more explicitly and vigorously during the age of the prophets. This spiritual concept of the Messiah, in turn, focuses the exegete’s attention anew on certain aspects of David’s biography more than others, insofar as they relate to the Messianic ideal (for example, David’s faith, justice, fidelity, and his willingness to suffer for the sake of His kingdom like a good shepherd of God’s people). Viewing David in light of the spiritual tradition of the Messiah brings to light many similarities between David and Christ, so that David can be said to prefigure Christ. Certain aspects of David’s biography, initially considered as mere historical facts, have become the basis of a spiritual tradition about the

Messiah. Thus, seeing David as a type of Christ is not artistic musing on provocative similarities 159 between the two figures, nor is it making casual analogies in retrospect; rather, for de Lubac,

seeing David as a type of Christ means that certain aspects of David’s kingship find their exemplary fulfillment in Christ’s life, for which they prepare a role in history. 183

Finally for de Lubac, exegesis requires disciplina on the part of the interpreter. The

activity of interpretation should take place within a formative ecclesial culture that aims at the

intellectual formation of the interpreter (an individual focus), the handing-on of the meaning of a

text to others (a communal focus) and the glory of God (a doxological focus). There is a

reciprocal relationship between the interpreter and the text interpreted. For de Lubac, the act of

interpretation simultaneously develops one’s understanding of both oneself and the text: the

subject and the object of the activity of interpretation. Because de Lubac understood human

rationality in a three-fold theistic perspective, this self-discovery takes place on several levels,

insofar as an intepreter is an individual, a member of society, and a creature of God. On the

183 Other historians of biblical interpretation have expressed this point in similar terms: Hans Frei (Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974], 2), apparently independently of de Lubac, observed: “Far from being in conflict with the literal sense of the local stories, figuration or typology was a natural extension of literal interpretation.… It was literalism at the level of the whole biblical story and thus of the depiction of the whole of historical reality”; and: “Figuration was at once a literary and a historical procedure, an interpretation of stories and their meanings by weaving them together into a common narrative referring to a single history and its patterns of meaning” (ibid). Gerhard von Rad (“Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament” in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, edited by Donald K. McKim [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986], 41) voiced a somewhat similar approach in writing about Old Testament passages which were the foundation of rich typological interpretation: “Here nothing carries its ultimate meaning in itself, but is ever the earnest of yet greater wonders” and “There is, therefore, in the portrayal of the facts very frequently something that transcends what actually occurred. The narrator, or better—since it is something that for the most part took place on a far broader basis—the ‘tradition,’ is so zealous for God that the event is straightway broadened into the typical.” For an example, see the literary analysis of the death of Sisera and the Canticle of Deborah provided by Isaac M. Kikawada and Arthur Quinn in “Epilogue,” Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), 129-134. Kikawada and Quinn illustrated von Rad’s point, though they did not refer to him in their analysis. 160 individual level, exegesis is self-discovery; this point is an application of what de Lubac said in

“Apologétique et Théologie”—citing Bérulle: “dogma reveals us to ourselves.” So too in

Catholicisme; in the activity of interpretation. one understands oneself more completely as a

moral being by interpreting the word of God.184 On the social level, exegetes more deeply

experience their Catholicity (in the order of grace) and their fellowship with all humankind (in

the order of nature). This social exegesis can motivate the reader’s involvement in “integral

humanism” (in the order of nature) and evangelism (in the order of grace). On the creaturely

level, in the order of nature, exegesis should prompt a deeper awareness of one’s place in the

cosmos and in the plan of history. In the order of grace, the doxological consummation of exegesis takes place in worship: in lectio divina, in praying the psalms, in liturgical proclamation of the Gospel and homiletics. As de Lubac said, “For one and the same essential mystery permeates the whole of Scripture and liturgy, apart from which there is no participation in the mystery of God.”185

This mutual relationship between interpreter and text gives rise to some practices of interpretation which are not methodological or scientific. Because spiritual advancement, grace, mystery, and the dynamics of human community are all involved, the activity of exegesis is often more like an art—a discipline requiring habit, formation, custom, prudence, insight and inspiration—than a cut-and-dry technical science. For example, saints who lack the benefits of linguistic erudition and critical methods of reading can, by a type of connatural knowledge,

184 See Hebrews 4:12-13: “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.”

185 Catholicism, 215. 161 discern profound meanings in the biblical text; in contrast, those burdened by sin may be less

perceptive of aspects of the biblical text. Accordingly, training in spiritual exegesis in the

Patristic period was chiefly done in a devotional environment, rather than by teaching students

principles and methods of allegory, which were scarcely formalized by its practitioners. To this

founding generation’s intuitive exploration of the Christian mystery, one might apply de Lubac’s

words from “Apologétique et Théologie”: “the ideal ... develops naturally without having

recourse to a theory of development.”186

With this perspective on exegesis, one can see why for de Lubac, contemporary exegesis

ought to unite modern science, culture, the arts, liturgy, history, metaphysics, all within a

Catholic theological framework. In de Lubac’s theology of interpretation in Catholicisme, one

can grasp the underlying parallelism between the “two areas of difficulty” presented at the outset

of the book. The challenge of understanding both scientifically and biblically one’s

cosmological, biological, and sociological place in the cosmos, requires that exegetes

understand themselves within a progressive unfolding of history which must be understood in

light of reason and revelation. In this progressive unfolding of history according to God’s divine

plan, earlier knowledge, often shadowy and expressed in simple and symbolic ways

accommodated to earlier man’s understanding, contains genuine historical truth and can be seen

as the earnest of the greater understanding of these mysteries in the future. De Lubac used the

same basic perspective to integrate exegesis and science as he did to integrate the literal and

allegorical senses. For example, he understood Genesis as conveying genuine historical

186 AT, 97 n. 17. De Lubac elaborated this idea more explicitly in Histoire et Esprit: “Every epoch, every historian, returning to the great works of the past, illuminates one aspect of them while leaving others in shadow” (HS, 13). The essentially historical and communal fabric of human rationality also means that different ages and cultures may be better able to penetrate some aspects of the text than others. 162 truths,187 admittedly incomplete and in many ways figurative,188 but nonetheless the true

foundation for later scientific knowledge. In light of this later scientific knowledge, some

aspects of Genesis may be re-read with greater depth and deductions from the literal sense

corrected. Likewise this same perspective is required to understand correctly the allegories of the Old Testament, which contain genuine historical truths, although incomplete and figurative, which can be, in the further progress of divine revelation, understood more deeply. In light of this later knowledge of revelation, some aspects of the Old Testament may be re-read (as allegories) and also some literal deductions corrected.189 The processes are parallel: one process

integrates the reading of Scripture with later discoveries of science; the other integrates the

literal reading of Scripture with later discoveries of faith. Both processes are rooted in the three-

fold theistic perspective and Christian anthropology of de Lubac’s theology of history.

This “integrated” exegesis, which enables ressourcement, could provide an hermeneutical

basis that enables modern Catholics to take seriously the large amount of Patristic and Medieval

theology that exists in the form of exegesis, by providing explicit critical norms that separate the

wheat from the chaff in spiritual exegesis, as well as guiding the integration of past scriptural

understanding with the modern progress of science. While the Fathers did not foresee the state

187 For example, that the One God created the heavens and the earth, monogenism, and that there is a divine purpose for the whole created order.

188 For example, de Lubac understood the six days as symbolic of the stages of creation.

189 For example, the first mention of “Messiah” in Hannah’s Canticle (“The LORD will judge the ends of the earth; / he will give strength to his king, / and exalt the power of his anointed.” (1 Sam 2:10) might be read as referring primarily not to David, but to Jesus. In Histoire, but especially in Exégèse Médiévale, de Lubac called literal-sense readings that remain unadjusted in light of the Gospel, the “letter that kills” (2 Cor 3:6). 163 of today’s knowledge, de Lubac believed that “the material narrowness of their view was no

hindrance to its formal breadth.”190

3. Review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè (1945)

De Lubac’s review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè in 1945 was one of only two book

reviews chosen for inclusion in the anthology, Théologies d’occasion (1984).191 According to de

Lubac’s preface, the review was included because of persistent scholarly interest in it.192

Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè was a three-volume work which examined how Christians have understood these two types of love from the Apostolic period through the Reformation. Nygren contended that in earliest Christianityrepresented by the Synoptics and St. Paul rather than St.

Johnthe pagan Hellenistic concept of eros was diametrically opposed to the Christian concept of agapē. Then, beginning with St. John, a gradual and lamentable commingling of the notions occured, which greatly accelerated during the Patristic period and was commonplace by the

Middle Ages. This syncretism of eros and agapē persisted until Luther and the Reformation restored the concept of agapē to its pure, original form and granted it exclusive dominion in

Reformation theology.193

190 Catholicism, 352. Articulating the principles of that “formal breadth” was the task that de Lubac undertook in his programmatic work, Catholicisme.

191 Originally published in the debut edition: Revue du moyen âge latin 1 (1945): 194- 197; English translation: “Eros and Agapē” in Theological Fragments, 85-89; hereafter cited: RevEA. The other review (1931) was of Maurice Blondel’s Une énigme historique: Le vinculum substantiale d’après Leibniz et l’ébauche d’un réalisme supérieur (Paris: 1930).

192 Theological Fragments, 7.

193 At the time of writing, Nygren was professor of systematic theology at the University of Lund; he became the Lutheran bishop of Lund in 1948. Erôs et Agapè appeared in a single- 164 What makes this book review interesting is that de Lubac appraised a work very similar

to his own lengthy historical studies. In criticizing Nygren’s analysis, de Lubac enunciated his

own criteria for good historical study of a theological problem. The review was written in 1945,

when de Lubac was in the midst of his major preconciliar historical studies: Corpus Mysticum

(1944), Surnaturel (1946), and Histoire et Esprit (1950).194

In its scope and approach, Nygren’s study is very similar to de Lubac’s Surnaturel, and to

a lesser extent, Histoire et Esprit. In Erôs et Agapè, Nygren attempted to retrieve an important

early Church doctrine in its pristine form, in spite of centuries of sometimes distorted

transmission, just as de Lubac attempted to retrieve the authentic teachings of Augustine and

Aquinas in Surnaturel and the authentic teaching of Origen in Histoire et Esprit. In the course of

this retrieval, Nygren carefully traced the interplay of the concepts of eros and agapē through dozens of authors, just as de Lubac traced the interplay of the concepts of nature and grace in

Surnaturel and the development of the doctrine of the spiritual senses in Histoire et Esprit. Both

de Lubac and Nygren believed that the theological tradition they were tracing began to unravel

with a fatal misstepnot so much an outright error, but an unbalanced synthesis and

ambiguityin the writings of figures so prominent that the later tradition could not fail to be

influenced. For Nygren, this figure was St. John; for de Lubac in Surnaturel, it was Cajetan. In

parallel, just as de Lubac divided his update and expansion of Surnaturel (1946) into two

volume English translation: Agape and Eros, translated by Philip S. Watson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

194 De Lubac briefly mentioned Nygren’s criticism of Origen as a corrupting pagan influence on Christian thought in Histoire et Esprit 14 and 14, n. 12; History and Spirit, 16 and 16, n. 12. Another point of interest was de Lubac’s treatment of man’s natural desire for God—a topic investigated in his Surnaturel. 165 volumes, The Mystery of the Supernatural (1965), containing his main doctrinal conclusions, and

Augustinianism (1965), containing the bulk of his historical study, so too Nygren divided his

work into a first volume containing the doctrinal findings and two subsequent volumes of

historical analysis.

After outlining Nygren’s work, de Lubac began his assessment by stating that “the

subject is of major importance”195 and praising Nygren for the vigor of his analysis:

The contrasting of the two loves that he emphasizes is classic, and his merit is to push that opposition much deeper than many have done in the past, thanks to a series of often penetrating analyses.196

Yet, de Lubac considered Nygren’s work flawed because of his presumptuousness as an

investigator: “one cannot escape the impression that Mr. Nygren is defending a thesis rather than engaging in a truly historical inquiry.”197 According to de Lubac, Nygren did not query his

historical sources in an open dialogue, by initially suspending his own judgments, so that he might hear what an author genuinely has to say. Already convinced of the merit of his thesis,

Nygren hindered his own investigation: first, he made hasty conclusions that may not be warranted by the text, but were favorable to his thesis: Nygren’s defensive “stance … leads him to accept so quickly, without very clear arguments, the identity of gnosis and eros in Paul’s text.”198 Second, Nygren overlooked authoritative data contrary to his thesis: “what justification

195 RevEA, 87.

196 Ibid.

197 Ibid.

198 Ibid. 166 is there for rejecting, as coming from Hellenism, all idea of desire, when so many biblical texts

express precisely the thirst for God?”199

Nygren’s commitment to his own thesis created a “logic that is a bit too rigid and

simplistic, and sometimes it results in absurd exaggerations.”200 It also resulted in Nygren’s failure to think more deeply about whether a Christian synthesis of eros and agapē is indeed possible, despite the fact that so many writers in the tradition thought it is possible.201 De Lubac

then showed how, if Nygren properly understood man’s natural desire for God, as man’s

supernatural end, he could have recognized the possibility of synthesizing Gospel agapē with a

Christian adaptation of eros as an innate, unitive desire for God, without damage to either

concept.202 Thus Nygren’s shortcoming in method “distorts an otherwise valuable work.”203 De

Lubac surmised that Nygren’s inability to countenance the possibility of a Christian adaptation

of the Hellenistic concept of eros was partially due to Nygren’s tendency to assume that “ideas

… pass through history in blocks.” 204 De Lubac questioned: “Why refuse to see the

transformations to which eros was subjected by the doctrine of the creation of man in the image

199 Ibid.

200 Ibid., 88.

201 Ibid.

202 “For Mr. Nygren, eros can be only an egotistic love. He seems to have no notionwe could even say that he consciously rejects all notionof a ‘natural desire’” (ibid., 88). De Lubac’s basic outline (88-89) was prescient of Benedict XVI’s encyclical, Deus Caritas Est (25 December 2005).

203 RevEA, 88.

204 Ibid., 88-89. The original French which is translated “in blocks” was not en bloc, but “Mais les idées ne traversent pas l’histoire comme des blocs.” Revue du moyen âge latin 1 (1945): 197. 167 of God?”205 Lastly, the fact that Nygren favored the Synoptics and Paul over John was unacceptable to de Lubac: “What, after all, is the criterion that permits us to state, historically,

that one Apostle is more authentically Christian than another?”206 For de Lubac, one New

Testament author cannot be afforded preferential treatment over another as a reliable Christian

source, since all are canonical.

In retrospect, de Lubac’s review contained some important statements about his own

methodology, as well as some illustrations of how he assessed the role of tradition in the

propagation of a Christian doctrine. De Lubac, like Nygren, sought to ascertain the meaning of a

doctrine both by examining the original text and by studying the reciprocal dynamic of how

doctrine was received by later writers and how, for better or worse, these recipients interpreted

and shaped the meaning of the text.

Nonetheless, in reading historical sources, one cannot proceed without initial prejudices

and hypotheses. De Lubac praised Nygren’s ambition in framing an hypothesis which has great

import for the Christian life and for his vigor in seeking to verify this hypothesis by examining in

depth both obscure and well-known Christian texts in light of his hypothesis. Yet de Lubac

strongly insisted that scholars should be aware of their prejudices as much as possible so as not

to distort their reading of their sources. For de Lubac, this was where Nygren fell short: one

205 RevEA, 88-89. Nygren’s shortcoming struck an already sensitive nerve in de Lubac, who criticized just such an approach with respect to the Fathers in Catholicisme: “[W]e should beware of adopting the practice known in accountancy as double-entry, as so many Protestant historians do in dealing with the Fathers and the Bible. For in the Fathers they will see nothing but Hellenistic borrowings and influence, whereas in St. Paul and St. John they will find nothing but ‘pure revelation’ or at least ‘pure religion’. So severely critical an attitude on the one hand, such naïve simplicity on the other, are in fact equally the causes of their blindness” (Catholicism, 40). Nygren, who departed a little from this stereotype insofar as he saw St. John as tainted by Hellenism, had in effect adopted a canon within the canon.

206 RevEA, 87. 168 must always remain open-minded and must investigate historical sources in the form of a dialogue, whose fruits may or may not support one’s hypothesis. De Lubac critiqued Nygren for

“defending a thesis rather than engaging in a truly historical inquiry.”

De Lubac also highlighted how the historical development of even a single concept may be complicated. Good historical research must be perceptive enough to capture these nuances.

Rarely does the development of a doctrine monotonically progress to its final expression. One should expect to find divergences, misinterpretations, and differing emphases throughout the historical tradition of its reception. Yet if an investigator is attentive and fair, through all these variations, the central concept ought to emerge in greater clarity and relevance. In critiquing

Nygren for conceiving the meaning of eros as “a block that passes through history,” de Lubac indicated that an investigator must be attentive to what Gadamerian theory calls “the sedimentation of meaning” and to the manner in which the meaning of a concept or text can be constructed, transformed, and deconstructed over time.207 Sketching the evolution of a doctrine with refinement and accuracy is an essential task of historical investigation; only when the process is concluded is a scholar warranted in claiming the merits of his own hypothesis and so presenting his conclusions as the latest stage in the history of the reception of the text.

4. Histoire et Esprit (1950) and Its Associated Essays

Bibliographical studies, such as those of Neufeld and Sales, have charted the elaboration of de Lubac’s major works, Catholicisme and Surnaturel, from the essays which preceded them, but there apparently are no similar studies that trace the formation of his major work, Histoire et

207 De Lubac’s remark echoed that of “Apologétique et Théologie”: “The error consists in conceiving of dogma as a kind of ‘thing in itself,’ as a block of revealed truth with no relationship whatsoever to natural man” (AT, 93). 169 Esprit. As co-founder of Sources chrétiennes, de Lubac was closely involved with its publications in the 1940s. During that time, he wrote two lengthy introductions to the Sources

chrétiennes editions of Origen’s homilies on Genesis and Exodus;208 these two introductions were the principal antecedents to Histoire et Esprit.209 A comparison of these introductions with

the text of Histoire et Esprit indicates that Histoire et Esprit is an expansion of these

introductions.210 In writing Histoire et Esprit, de Lubac retained over 90% of the introductions,

very largely verbatim and very little re-sequenced.

208 Henri de Lubac, introduction to Origen’s Homélies sur la Genèse, Sources chrétiennes 7 (Paris: Cerf, 1943), 5-62, and introduction to Origen’s Homélies sur l’Exode, Sources chrétiennes 16 (Paris: Cerf, 1947), 7-75. The 1976 and 2003 editions of Homélies sur la Genèse are enumerated Sources chrétiennes 7 bis, and lacked the lengthy introduction that de Lubac supplied for the original edition in 1943. Sources chrétiennes 7 bis contained a much smaller introduction by de Lubac, unrelated to the first. The last two pages of the introduction to Homélies sur l’Exode contained a printing error which transposed the first and last lines of the last page, as indicated by an erratum slip. Neither of these introductions have been translated into English, presumably because they are so closely related to Histoire et Esprit, which has been translated as History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, translated by Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007).

209 A footnote on the first page of the introduction to Homélies sur l’Exode states: “Cette introduction fait suite à celle des Homélies sur la Genèse.… Elle-même sera complétée par l’introduction aux Homélies sur la Lévitique, qui suivront prochainement” (De Lubac, introduction to Homélies sur l’Exode, 7); however, the volume of homilies on Leviticus did not appear as planned, so the third and final installment of de Lubac’s lengthy introduction was never published in Sources chrétiennes; these volumes appeared in in 1981 as Sources chrétiennes 286 and 287; de Lubac was not involved in the publication of these volumes. and did not write the introductions to them. See “Sources Chrétiennes: Liste des Publications (Avril 2008),” at: http://www.sources-chretiennes.mom.fr/upload/doc/liste_numerique.pdf .

210 De Lubac remarked in the Introduction to Histoire that the homilies are not abridgements of a draft of Histoire: “Several friends had undertaken to translate the Homilies on the Hexapla from Rufinus’ version. These translations naturally appeared some time later in the Sources chrétiennes series, and I was asked to write an introduction. That was the occasion for this study.… The very strangeness of it was stimulating to me. But it was quickly apparent to me that in order to discuss this subject to any advantage, it was necessary to consider it at the same time within the larger framework of Origen’s entire work” (History and Spirit, 10-11). The texts of the two introductions total 127 pages; of these, 120 are distributed nearly verbatim throughout Histoire et Esprit, which had 446 pages in the 1950 French edition. Part of 170 The supplemental materials which were added to the introductions were of three kinds:

quotations in extenso, elaborations, and footnotes. First, de Lubac provided many quotations in

extenso in Histoire et Esprit which only appeared as references in the introductions. Second, de

Lubac often elaborated points in Histoire et Esprit which were briefly mentioned in the introductions. Third, Histoire et Esprit contained many more footnotes—a vast array of Patristic

and Medieval citations typical of de Lubac’s mature works. He also included more citations of

contemporary Origen scholarship to defend his claim that Origen had been unfairly appraised by

contemporary scholars.211

In addition to these two introductions, de Lubac published three essays relating to

exegesis prior to the publication of Histoire et Esprit. These essays concerned the spiritual

senses: “Typologie et Allégorisme” (1947),212 “Sur un vieux distique: la doctrine du ‘quadruple

sens’” (1948),213 and “Sens spiritual” (1949).214 Sections of “Typologie et Allégorisme,” which

the additional length of Histoire et Esprit is due to the fact that its last 91 pages are not found in the text of the two introductions; these 91 pages consist of two sections of the penultimate chapter and the last chapter of Histoire et Esprit.210 The first 355 pages of Histoire et Esprit expanded, but rarely departed from the order of, the introductions.

211 Especially evident was de Lubac’s growing set of notes from theologians who figured prominently in Exégèse médiévale, such as Augustine, Cassian, Chrysostum, Gregory the Great, Rupert of Deutz and Bernard of Clairvaux. As indicated in Chapter One, the concluding chapter of Histoire et Esprit anticipated the continuation of this study in Exégèse médiévale.

212 Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947): 180-226; English translation: “Typology and Allegorization” in Theological Fragments, 129-164.

213 In Mélanges offerts au R. P. Fernand Cavallera (Toulouse: Institut Catholique, 1948): 347-366; English translation: “On an Old Distich: The Doctrine of the ‘Fourfold Sense’ in Scripture,” in Theological Fragments, 109-127; hereafter cited as “Distich.”

214 Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 542-576; there is no English translation of this essay. De Lubac also published the brief note “Origène et Saint Thomas d’Aquin” in the same volume of Recherches de science religieuse, 602-603. This note suggested a text from 171 was a close study of how Christian and pagan thinkers in Origen’s Hellenistic milieu used the words “type” and “allegory,” appeared in condensed form in Histoire et Esprit.215 “Sur un vieux

distique” can best be conceived as a bridge between Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale,

generalizing de Lubac’s findings in Origen and tracing the influence of Origenian exegesis into

the Medieval period.216 “Sens Spirituel” appeared less than a year before Histoire et Esprit and

made reference to the forthcoming book at the beginning of the essay.217 “Sens Spirituel,” which

was taken almost verbatim from the first half of the concluding chapter of Histoire et Esprit,

summarized the chief doctrinal points from de Lubac’s lengthy historical study of Origen; as

such “Sens Sprituel” represented a partial summary and an advance advertisement of Histoire.218

De Lubac wrote Histoire et Esprit to restore a proper understanding of how Origen interpreted Scripture. After de Lubac’s close study of Origen’s homilies for Sources chrétiennes, he concluded that many scholars of the previous century had a poor grasp of the thought of this

Origen’s De Principiis which might have bearing on St. Thomas’s theology of the desiderium naturale and, as such, did not relate to Histoire et Esprit.

215 Histoire et Esprit, 8 n. 6; History and Spirit, 10 n. 6. Since only a fifth of “Typologie et Allégorisme” was reproduced in Histoire et Esprit, de Lubac referred readers of Histoire to this article for a fuller treatment of this point.

216 “Sur un vieux distique” was closely related to the main conclusion of Histoire et Esprit, which traced the doctrine of the four-fold sense of Scripture into the Medieval period, but there was no textual identity between them. Portions of this essay later appeared at the beginning of the first volume of Exégèse médiévale.

217 “Ces réflexions seront complétées dans un ouvrage qui paraitra, nous l’espérons, prochainement: Histoire et Esprit …” (“Sens Spirituel,” 542, n. 2).

218 A detailed comparison of the textual relationship between Histoire and its sources is provided in Appendix I; accordingly, it will not be necessary to examine the introductions to the Sources chrétiennes volumes nor “Sens spirituel” because these works are contained almost verbatim in Histoire et Esprit. “Sur un vieux distique” and “Typologie et Allégorisme” will be examined along with Histoire et Esprit below. 172 great Alexandrian exegete who had influenced so many Fathers of the Church. De Lubac saw

Origen as both needlessly maligned and unexpectedly compelling. As de Lubac explored the theological underpinnings of Origen’s approach to Scripture, he encountered “a whole world view”—once distinctive of early Christianity but now scarcely understood—of which Origen was “less the author than the witness.”219 Histoire et Esprit thus sought to retrieve Origen’s approach to Sacred Scripture, to overturn scholarly misunderstandings of it, and to explore the worldview of Origenian exegesis.

Such an investigation naturally raises the question of whether de Lubac intended to use his study of Origen as a springboard for a treatise on early Christian biblical interpretation in general. De Lubac considered this possibility:

The time is not ripe, however, for a complete synthesis. Rather than consider the question in all its breadth, which would have required a rather adventurous foray into the biblical field, I have therefore stayed within my original plan. Origen remains at the center of my perspective. It is he whom we are examining; it is within his axis that we place ourselves. A mere chapter—though one of unparalleled importance, it is true—of that history of spiritual exegesis that might itself be an important chapter in the history of theology.220

Because Origen played such a foundational role in the history of spiritual exegesis, de Lubac considered it more than enough work for one monograph to recover an authentic picture of

Origen’s manner of biblical interpretation. Yet Histoire et Esprit opened a broader vista that de

219 De Lubac recounted: “The subject I first envisioned assumed a broader scope in my eyes. It was no longer a matter of measuring, in any given exegesis, the part allotted to the ‘letter’ or to history. It was no longer even a matter solely of exegesis. It was a whole manner of thinking, a whole world view that loomed before me. A whole interpretation of Christianity of which Origen, furthermore, despite many of his personal and at times questionable traits, was less the author than the witness. Even more, through this “spiritual understanding” of Scripture, it was Christianity itself that appeared to me, as if acquiring a reflective self-awareness. This is the phenomenon, one of the most characteristic of the early Christian period, that, in the final analysis, I sought to grasp” (HS, 11).

220 HS, 11. 173 Lubac later surveyed in Exégèse médiévale, which was a more “adventurous foray” into biblical

interpretation in general.

Histoire et Esprit had two aims. The principal aim was an accurate retrieval of Origen’s

exegetical methods, including the assumptions of his underlying worldview which made these

methods possible. In pursuing this aim, de Lubac intended to function in a purely descriptive

mode, as an objective historian of early Christianity: “I have sought, not to ‘defend’ Origen, but

simply to know what in fact he thought and said.”221 A little later, he added: “My purpose is thus historical.… Let me repeat, I am seeking to discover what Origen thought … through as extensive a reading and as literal an exegesis as possible.”222 This first aim dominated the first

five chapters of the book.

De Lubac’s second aim was to judge the utility of Origenian principles of exegesis for the

modern interpreter. This second aim, which was more apparent in chapters six through eight,

was somewhat stymied, because de Lubac did not deem Histoire to be the book in which to

develop fully this ambition, yet he could not abstain from all mention of it. As a result, the conclusion of Histoire is somewhat torn between summarizing technical points about Origen’s terminology, principles, and methods, and a much broader, but more hesitant, recommendation of the value of Origenian exegesis to modern Catholic interpreters.

The basic structure of Histoire et Esprit may be outlined as follows. In the introduction, de Lubac stated the principles of investigation he used to recover a proper picture of Origen.

Like his review of Anders Nygren’s book, the introduction is noteworthy because of de Lubac’s

statements about his own methods as an historian and interpreter.

221 HS, 10.

222 HS, 11-12. 174 The first two chapters were aimed at rehabilitating Origen as a theologian after centuries

of misrepresentation. Chapter One, “The Case Against Origen,” considered how Origen has

been maligned, condemned, misunderstood, or rejected by theologians from his own day to the

twentieth century. Chapter One was divided into four sections. The first section (“A Series of

Anathemas”) summarized the more acerbic judgments of twentieth century authors, who had

condemned Origen for practicing a “chimerical method” and “fallacious hermeneutics” in his

interpretation of Scripture.223 Other critics saw Origen’s use of the spiritual senses as an attempt

to subordinate Scripture to Greco-Roman philosophy and mythology; some saw in this a forced

reinterpretation of Scripture according to the doctrines of rationalism.224 Still others declared

that Origen’s use of the spiritual senses distorted the historical sense of Scripture, so that “by the

fallacy of his allegories, he corrupts the truth of history” never ceasing to “melt and dissolve the

whole solidity of Scripture into dreams and reveries.”225

In the second section, “The Old Quarrels,” de Lubac reviewed the judgments of various

Patristic writers—from his contemporaries in the third century to Byzantine writers in the eighth—who praised or condemned Origen,. De Lubac’s concern was to counter historical sources of disinformation about Origen, such as those arising from the “regrettable” antagonism between the Antiochene and Alexandrian schools of exegesis, or from pagan public adversaries of Origen, such as Porphyry the Phoenician.226

223 HS, 15.

224 HS, 16.

225 HS, 18-19.

226 HS, 27-31. 175 In the third section, “Origen against Origen,” de Lubac reviewed the statements in

Origen’s own work that have been frequently taken out of context and used against him as well

as statements poorly understood because of their ambiguity. De Lubac maintains that if Origen’s

critics had read more of his Scripture commentaries and homilies, rather than concentrating on

his more abstract works (such as Peri Archōn), they would have better grasped Origen’s exegetical methods by considering copious examples. De Lubac lamented that many scholars relied on hearsay that Origen’s exegetical methods were flawed, and never bothered to read his commentaries—a vicious cycle which, if broken, would remedy many misunderstandings:

[I]t is above all important to see Origen at work rather than to limit ourselves to some abstract methodical statement or to several exoteric, necessarily tendentious texts. To see him at work: this, we must repeat, is what has been most lacking. Many of the allegations we have recalled would have fallen away on their own after reading him.227

The fourth section, “Origen’s Work,” provided a brief overview of Origen’s vast corpus

of writings and noted the decimation that resulted from the condemnation of Origen by the Edict

of Justinian in 543 and the subsequent anathematization of the Second Council of Constantinople

in 553. De Lubac asserted that the anathemas were aimed at later figures (Evagrius, Stephen

Bar-Sudaile) who laid claim to the authority of Origen in their teachings, and so Justinian,

wanting to condemn the position of these men, condemned Origen for things he did not really

teach.228 Perhaps de Lubac anticipated that some of his readers would not be swayed by this

227 HS, 37. The situation which Pamphilus decried at the end of the third century still persisted in de Lubac’s day. De Lubac quoted approvingly Pamphilus’ remark: “We see his adversaries blame and insult him without any consideration.… There are many who, if asked to specify the book and passage in which the ideas they oppose are to be found, are obliged to admit that they do not know, that they have never read anything of him and know him only by hearsay” (HS, 38, citing Pamphilus, Apology for Origen, PL 17:546).

228 HS, 40 and 43. This important topic received scarcely a paragraph of mention in Histoire et Esprit. De Lubac amplified his treatment of the anathemas against Origen in 176 attempt to bracket the relevance of an ecumenical council’s anathema, for he added that, in any

case, the anathemas do not concern Origen’s exegetical practices. As a result of these sixth-

century condemnations, widespread ignorance developed about the real thought of Origen since

his written works perished. While some works survived in the West through the Latin

translations of Rufinus, scholars to this day have been hesitant to use them as a basis for assessing Origen’s true thought. De Lubac admited that Rufinus’ translations are rather free— filled with glosses and summaries, and not a few flaws—nonetheless, if more scholars would read them, they would convey a more honest overview of Origen’s manner of biblical interpretation, even if particular passages cannot be pressed too hard as Origen’s ipsissima verba.

The second chapter, “Origen, Man of the Church,” was also divided into four sections.

The first section, “The Twofold Front,” described how Origen’s interpretation of the Bible was designed to meet opposition on two fronts, both of which concern the worth of the Old

Testament. On the one hand, Origen engaged Gnostic groups and pagans who derided the Old

Testament as a primitive revelation ill-suited to a divine being. On the other hand, Origen engaged Jewish groups who were still prominent in third-century Alexandria. These groups included both Jews who rejected the New Testament as incompatible with the Old, and Judaizing heretics, such as the Ebionites, who subordinated the New Testament to the Old. Throughout

Medieval Exegesis, 1/1:183-184 (hereafter cited as ME). In Histoire, de Lubac was content himself to quote Providentissimus Deus of Pope Leo XIII as an antidote: “When there arose, in various Sees, Catechetical and Theological schools, of which the most celebrated were those of Alexandria and of Antioch, there was little taught in those schools but what was contained in the reading, the interpretation and the defence of the divine written word. From them came forth numbers of Fathers and writers whose laborious studies and admirable writings have justly merited for the three following centuries the appellation of the golden age of biblical exegesis. In the Eastern Church, the greatest name of all is Origen—a man remarkable alike for penetration of genius and for persevering labour; from whose numerous works and his great Hexapla almost all have drawn that came after him” (HS, 40 n. 136, citing Providentissimus Deus [17 November 1893], AAS 26 [1894]: 274). 177 Histoire, de Lubac repeatedly observed how Origen’s use of the spiritual sense was driven by a

desire to demonstrate the unity of the two Testaments. Chapter Two’s second section,

“Piety and Orthodoxy,” aimed to rehabilitate Origen’s spiritual life and his relationship to the

Church. De Lubac addressed the stereotypes of Origen as an individualistic intellectual elitist, a rationalist who syncretized his own view of Christianity and Hellenism and valued his own esoteric doctrines over the doctrines of the Church. In contrast, de Lubac highlighted the central role played by Origen’s ecclesiastical offices in shaping his life: first as a teacher and catechist, and then as a priest. Origen frequently declared himself to be “a man of the Church,” “living in the faith of Christ and placed in the midst of the Church.”229 As a teacher, Origen counted

himself among those who “ecclesiastice docent verbum.”230 Origen believed the Church to be

the repository of sound doctrine and that “the purpose of seeking the ‘spiritual meaning’ of

Scripture is … to treat it as Catholic, verbum Dei catholice tractari.… It is to receive it from the

hands of Jesus and to have it read by him.”231

De Lubac then discussed the charge that Origen peddled an elitist version of Christianity

tailored to the intelligentsia. Some scholars have maintained that Origen’s constant emphasis on

spiritual understanding and his frequent exhortations to his readers to “become spiritual” if they

seek to live the Christian mystery, deprecates the faith of the common Christian and holds intellectual self-development as the highest form of Christian piety—a view similar to

Gnosticism. In response, de Lubac maintained that “spiritual understanding” according to

229 HS, 61, citing Origen’s ninth homily on Joshua, first homily on Leviticus, and seventh homily on Isaiah.

230 HS, 62.

231 HS, 73. 178 Origen is essentially about seeing all things from a Christocentric perspective, rather than about intellectual sophistication (although intellectual sophistication should also develop in all those

who are capable of it, since a Christocentric perspective cannot fail to elevate the receptive mind

to new heights). Thus, “becoming spiritual” for Origen was something within the reach of any

Christian, regardless of his native intellectual endowment. Moreover, Origen’s constant emphasis on understanding things “spiritually” should be understood in the same manner in

which Paul upheld the spirit over the letter in his epistles—once again, the common patrimony of

all Christians and not a doctrine simply for intellectuals.

Chapter Two’s third section, “Origen and Saint Paul,” explored the connection between

Origen’s exegetical principles and those of St. Paul. According to de Lubac, Origen understood

his manner of interpreting Scripture as essentially Pauline in character.232 De Lubac partly

endorsed Origen’s self-perception and partly critiqued it: “the allegorism of our Alexandrian

took a turn and a development that the Apostle could obviously not have foreseen and of which

he undoubtedly would not always have approved.”233

Chapter Two’s fourth section, “Wisdom and the Cross,” treated the complicated

relationship between reason and revelation in Origen in order to address the claim that Origen

subordinated Christian revelation to the intellectual categories of Greco-Roman philosophy. De

Lubac distinguished Origen’s more guarded attitude toward philosophy from the great optimism

of his predecessor as head of the Catechetical School, St. Clement of Alexandria. De Lubac then

assessed Origen’s statements about the value of philosophical erudition, but also its dangers if

232 For Origen, “Pauline” included Hebrews, which Origen believed to be closely connected to Paul, even if Paul was not personally its author (HS, 77-86).

233 HS, 82. 179 pursued apart from divine revelation. For Origen, the Cross is the central Christian mystery.234

Surprisingly, de Lubac did not address Origen’s more controversial doctrines, such as his universalism or his tendency to subordinate the Holy Spirit, presumably because de Lubac believed they do not affect Origen’s interpretation of Scripture.

After these two chapters rehabilitating the portrait of Origen, de Lubac then focused exclusively on Origen’s approach to Biblical interpretation for the remainder of the work.

Chapter Three discussed Origen’s approach to the literal sense of Scripture—a simple but essential point to make in light of the common criticism that Origen tended to disregard the literal sense. To refute this criticism, de Lubac believed there was no better place to turn than to

Origen’s commentaries and homilies, which provide copious examples of Origen’s attention to the literal sense. De Lubac also noted that Origen was perhaps the foremost textual critic of his day because of his production of the Hexapla. The chapter also illustrated the variety of ways that Origen took in interpreting the text “according to the letter.”

Chapter Four described Origen’s approach to the three spiritual senses of Scripture: the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. De Lubac explored how Origen used these three senses, together with the literal sense and an awareness of apostolic tradition, to provide a complete interpretation of the text. De Lubac examined both the theory and practice of the spiritual senses, together with a broader-ranging discussion of the relationship between Christian spiritual interpretation and the similar (but not identical) methods used by Philo and pagan

Greeks.235

234 A closer examination of the content of the last two sections of Chapter Two will be provided below.

235 De Lubac developed this idea more fully in “Typologie et Allégorisme.” 180 Chapter Five discussed the relationship of the Old Testament to the Gospel and how the

texts of the New Testament may also have spiritual senses. Reading the spiritual sense of New

Testament texts not only involves perceiving the meaning of parables and the symbolism of

miracle stories, but also the moral sense of various accounts. On a deeper level, spiritual reading

grasps how the Gospels reveal eternal realities—not those of Platonism, but those of the

“heavenly Jerusalem” toward which the Christian earthly journey is directed.

Chapter Six analyzed Origen’s view of history. As Catholicisme already indicated, de

Lubac believed that exegetes’ views of history are critical factors in their interpretation of the

Bible. In the first part of this chapter, de Lubac noted the contemporary scholarly tendency to

divide the Church Fathers into two camps when assessing their views of the historical progress

of revelation, particularly the value of the Old Testament as a preparatory revelation for the New.

On the one hand were “symbolists,” who located the value of Old Testament history largely in its

typological anticipation of New Testament events and doctrines. On the other hand were

advocates of divine “condescension” (synkatabasis), who viewed the progress of revelation as a

pedagogical formation in which God prepared Israel in a gradual, providential economy of

instruction to be sufficiently prepared in the fullness of time to receive the complete instruction

given by Jesus Christ. De Lubac found the dichotomy between symbolists and condescensionists

too restrictive and indicated that elements of both approaches may be found in several Fathers,

particularly in Origen and Irenaeus, who have often been considered as a pure symbolist and

pure condescensionist respectively. De Lubac then discussed the theoretical shortcomings of 181 such a dichotomy: “Why would the preparation for a coming reality not be symbolic of that

reality? And why would the symbol have no pedagogical value?”236

De Lubac then discussed both the human and divine authorship of the Old Testament in

view of its preparation for the New. He examined Origen’s opinions on a topic debated amongst

the Fathers: whether certain Old Testament authors (e.g., Moses, David, the prophets) were given a full revelation of the Gospel ahead of time, comparable to what the Apostles knew about Jesus

Christ. This debate essentially concerned how much of the preparatory value of the Old

Testament was present in the intention of the human author when he wrote. Without taking sides, de Lubac observed that all the Fathers agree that the Divine Author must be acknowledged as the principal cause of the preparatory value of the Old Testament, regardless of how much the inspired human author knew at the time he wrote.

In Chapters Seven and Eight, de Lubac began to intersperse more of his own judgments about Origen and his own evaluations of contemporary trends in biblical interpretation. He did

so, in part, because the subject matter treated in these chapters was not something which Origen

systematized in his own writings (or at least those which have survived). In attempting to

formalize the principles which make Origenian exegesis possible, de Lubac introduced more of

his own view of what constitutes exegesis according to the mind of the Fathers and how early

Christian exegesis relates to dogmatic theology. Chapter Seven discussed Origen’s view of

the divine inspiration of Scripture and how divine revelation relates to the human interpreter.

This topic had interested de Lubac since his inaugural lecture in fundamental theology at Lyon.

This chapter’s focus was fixed on the dual role of the Holy Spirit: just as the Holy Spirit acts to

236 HS, 285. Here is a continuation of an idea in Catholicisme, namely that an allegory is at once both preparation and figure: it exemplifies the historical reality for which it prepares. 182 inspire the human author in order to write what God intended to communicate, so too the Holy

Spirit is necessary for the reader to penetrate this meaning and appropriate it fully. Only

superficial reading is possible without the Spirit. De Lubac then discussed the need for

conversion of heart in order to read the Scripture deeply as well as the ecclesial context of this

conversion. The Spirit draws the reader into the heart of the Church, and only there, as anima in

ecclesia, can the reader discern the fullness of the meaning intended by the divine author.

Chapter Eight discussed the various “Incorporations of the Logos,”237 which was de

Lubac’s term for the manner in which the Divine Word may be found in Scripture, the Eucharist,

the soul, and the universe. This chapter presented a Christological metaphysical basis for interpreting Scripture within the Church using the two lights of natural reason and grace. De

Lubac connected the subject matter of the Sacred Page, the community in which it is read, and the two lights which illuminate it (natural reason and grace), to the Divine Word which makes all four of them possible. This was a further development of the three-fold theistic perspective presented in Catholicisme.

The conclusion of Histoire et Esprit was somewhat eclectic, because of the tension between de Lubac’s two aims in writing the book. De Lubac recapitulated some of his key themes with an eye to how his analysis of Origenian exegesis could be used to revitalize

contemporary biblical exegesis. Yet, de Lubac made it clear that a retrieval of Origenian

principles and their integration into contemporary biblical interpretation requires a far more

complicated synthesis than he had presented.238 For the most part, he contented himself with the

237 “Les Incorporations du Logos.” HE, 336.

238 HS, 428. “We will propose to the reader, by way of conclusion, some reflections, extending far beyond Origen, concerning the spiritual understanding of Scripture such as it 183 more modest goal of providing a nuanced presentation of several key concepts in Origenian

exegesis which have been long misunderstood or lost in the passage of time.239 Yet these

passages of careful historical retrieval were interspersed with enthusiastic recommendations of

the rejuvenating power of Origen’s perspective on Scripture.240

The conclusion bristled with qualifications about the utility of Histoire. De Lubac

admitted that, on the one hand, Origen’s approach to biblical interpretation still seems rather

foreign to our modern approach. It is tempting to think that “today’s Christian has nothing more

to do with it.”241 On the other hand, those who were already enthusiastic about the retrieval of traditional exegesis should not “canonize these doctrines to the point of not being able to discern the weak or no longer valid parts of them”;242 indeed, many of Origen’s individual readings may

need to be discarded as untenable by the modern exegete. Yet Origen’s principles, if correctly

recovered, still offer a precious and fertile basis for contemporary interpretation. Yet a recovery of these principles requires a careful avoidance of the many misunderstandings that litter sixteen hundred years of Christian history.

Furthermore, Origen’s exegesis, while more historical in character than commonly believed, suffered from “a dangerous climate” of Alexandrian Platonism in which the “world of

appears during the course of history. Our present problems will not be resolved by this. Perhaps they will at least receive some light.”

239 HS, 432-456; 467-473.

240 HS, 428-430; 456-467; 489-507.

241 HS, 429.

242 HS, 429. 184 history was no more solidified in it…than the world of nature.”243 Origen lacked a robust view

of history as compared to modern historical scholarship; this lack is a major obstacle to the

successful incorporation of his exegesis into modern exegesis. Moreover, modern biblical

criticism itself suffers from a number of aberrant tendencies.244 All these problems need to be

adjudicated before Origenian and contemporary exegetical approaches can be synthesized, a task

which requires critical self-awareness of the principles that guide contemporary exegesis. Such

disclaimers continued: “we will not consider explicitly the relationship between the spiritual understanding and the idea of tradition, which is nevertheless one of the main aspects of the problem.”245 De Lubac seemed torn between a desire to sketch at least an outline of what a

successful retrieval of Origenian exegesis would entail and his customary reserve about treating

theological problems superficially.

In the end, de Lubac recommended returning to Origen’s view of the unity of the literal

and spiritual senses, and the unity of the Old and New Testaments. He offered a lengthy consideration of a relatively minor point: whether “allegory,” “typology” or “spiritual sense” is the best term to use in contemporary discussions seeking to reintroduce this concept of Patristic exegesis. This point gathered many of the subtle nuances of terminology de Lubac had sketched throughout the work and was intended to assist modern scholars in not misreading these Patristic terms. Next, he contrasted “the history of the religion of Israel” to the “spiritual sense of

243 HS, 430.

244 Including “bad literalism, ‘taking everything literally, through wanting to follow the literal sense alone,’ … the mania of concordism … false ideas concerning biblical inerrancy or tradition.” HS, 430.

245 HS, 432 n. 5. 185 history”246 as a prelude to discussing how to achieve a balanced and integral treatment of the

historical and doctrinal unity of the two Testaments.247

Lastly, de Lubac sketched several vectors of Origen’s influence on the Medieval period

and provided an outline of how the notion of the spiritual sense degenerated over the centuries.248

The book concluded with an ebullient series of beatitudes, exhorting readers to consider the spiritual value of the Christocentric perspective on Scripture that is a defining feature of Patristic exegesis, as a way to underscore the ultimate worth of integrating Origen’s perspective on

Scripture into contemporary biblical interpretation.249

4.1 Analysis of Histoire et Esprit

This analysis of Histoire et Esprit begins with an examination of its Introduction, where

de Lubac makes several important statements about his principles of historiography and

hermeneutics. Then the book itself will be analyzed with particular emphasis on the spirit and

practice of Origen’s exegesis in light of de Lubac’s views about tradition, community and faith

in the act of interpretation. Thus, attention will be focused on those statements in Histoire in

which de Lubac either affirmed or critiqued Origen’s style of interpretation as indicative of his

own biblical hermeneutics. Fortunately, those statements are many.

246 HS, 450-456. These two phrases are a reprise of Catholicisme’s “understanding spiritual things historically, and historical things spiritually” (analyzed above).

247 HS, 456-467.

248 This section provided several points of departure to Exégèse médiévale.

249 HS, 506-507. For example: “Happy those who can cast their eyes into these ‘unfathomable riches of Christ’ that the ancients desired to see and yet did not see! Happy those who are invited to see, through a return shock, Moses and Elijah all illuminated with the unique Light of Christ!” 186 4.1.1. The Methodological Introduction

De Lubac’s Introduction to Histoire et Esprit contained a dense four-page excursus on his method of historical investigation.250 The Introduction, which contained explicit statements of a

properly hermeneutical character, stands in contrast to his review of Anders Nygren’s book,

where de Lubac’s interpretive norms were largely implicit and must be inferred from his

critiques of Nygren. In his Introduction, de Lubac discussed the activity of interpretation—not

of Scripture, but of ancient Christian texts in general. He related his own approach to historical interpretation to schools of thought prominent in the mid-twentieth century.251

De Lubac’s methodological remarks in the Introduction are nonetheless somewhat

indefinite for three reasons. First, they are brief. Second, these remarks all spring from his discussion of the shortcomings of modern historical studies of Origen. De Lubac believed that many recent scholars had erred in their assessment of Origen because of their improper methods as historians of early Christianity. Thus de Lubac felt it necessary to contrast his approach to the others and to comment on the challenges of historical recovery and objectivity more generally.

Yet he only vaguely delineated the approaches he critiqued. He did not name individual authors,

but only referred to broad movements in historiography. Thus, de Lubac’s own position

remained somewhat nebulous, since it was defined largely by contrast to the approaches he

critiqued. Third, while de Lubac was clearly conversant with contemporary trends in continental

hermeneutics and historiography, this section has a highly uncharacteristic sparsity of footnote

references, which makes further investigation difficult.

250 HE, 9-12; HS, 11-14.

251 These statements facilitate comparison with Gadamer, who described his own hermeneuthical approach with reference to the same movements. 187 De Lubac began: “My purpose is thus historical—and I intend my method to be so as

well.”252 Several times, he stated that his goal was an objective recovery of Origen’s thought.253

But precisely what did he mean by “objectivity”? He explained that

basic objectivity … consists in seeing him [Origen] accurately within the framework of problems contemporaneous to him and in understanding his doctrine according to the questions to which it was actually responding.254

This notion of objectivity, achievable only through historical contextualization, was in contrast to

other approaches which also claimed to be “objective.” He described some (unnamed) scholars

who used “too extrinsic a method, one by which we could at best obtain only an almost insignificant exactitude—a betrayal worse than many misinterpretations.”255 He continued: “Sur

les textes origéniens, bien des contresens ont été commis en effet.”256 “[S]uch a concern forces

us to react against that kind of unjust objectivity of those who can see only the outside and the

252 HS, 11-12.

253 Already quoted: “I have sought, not to ‘defend’ Origen, but simply to know what he in fact said” (HS, 10). “I am seeking to discover what Origen thought by finding out, without any preconceived decision, what it was he said” (HS, 12). “I am employing with regard to him … basic objectivity” (HS, 12).

254 HS, 12. This entire statement is given in quotation marks in both the English and French editions, but no source for this quotation was given.

255 HS, 12.

256 HE, 10. The passage is quoted in the original French because the English edition mistranslated it, giving the exact opposite meaning to contresens (ironically enough) and rendering en effet without reference to the preceding sentence: “Many interpretations [sic] have in fact been made of Origenian texts” (HS, 12); a more exact translation would be: “Indeed, many misinterpretations have been made of Origenian texts.” 188 fixed endings of a work that has become distant.”257 A page later, de Lubac seemingly aligned

this shortcoming with “historicism” stating:

Thought is not rediscovered in the same way as a fact is reconstructed. Whether it be from today, yesterday, or long ago, whether it offers greater or fewer difficulties of approach to be overcome by the resources of historical science and its auxiliaries, it has an interior that historicism is obliged to disregard.258

While the term “historicism” has several possible meanings in the mid-twentieth century,

the two most likely meanings come from two related but distinct theories of historiography—

now called rationalist historicism and empiricist historicism. A central axiom of both theories is

that a work must be understood as the product of the age in which it was written; correct

interpretation is impossible without a deep knowledge of the period of history concerned. As a

result, both schools of historicism tended to subordinate the genius of the individual thinker to

the conditions of his age. As Ilse N. Bulhof commented:

As a theory of history, historicism explained the phenomenon of the human world on the basis of their historical context, stressing the uniqueness of each.… Historicists evaluated the variety of past and present cultures positively as the specific manifestations of the creativity of the particular force that they saw as giving birth to history. They contended that the individual belongs to his contemporary environment and that human behavior should be judged only according to the value systems operative at that time.259

Rationalist historicism, influenced by Hegel, viewed the intellectual achievements of

individuals as a product of dialectical historical movements, either spiritual or economic in

nature. Given the context of de Lubac’s remarks, he probably had in mind the empiricist

257 HS, 12. “Il force à réagir contre cette sorte d’objectivité injuste de quiconque ne sait plus voir, d’une œuvre devenue lointaine, que les dehors et les terminaisons figées” (HE, 10).

258 HS, 13.

259 Ilse N. Bulhof, Wilhelm Dilthey: A Hermeneutic Approach to the Study of History and Culture, Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library 2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980), 18-19. 189 historicism practiced in the field of cultural anthropology (e.g., Graebner, Boas) and history (e.g.,

Ranke, Droysen).260 Empiricist historicism emphasized the use of modern empirical techniques

of historical investigation to recover a highly detailed portrait of an historical period. It associated objectivity with a purely descriptive mode of analyzing events or texts, systematically bracketing the perspective of later time periods and ideas, and understanding authors only according to the ethos of the age in which they wrote.261 Thus the objectivity of the historian

was measured in terms of his detachment: how well he succeeds in isolating his own intellectual

commitments from the time period he describes. Marcellino D’Ambrosio has described historicism in contrast to de Lubac’s “hermeneutical” approach to history:

Although his [de Lubac’s] immediate aim is to understand the past historically and on its own terms, his ultimate goal is some sort of critical reappropriation of the past in the present. This hermeneutical approach is in contradistinction to that elaboration of the history of Christian thought associated with certain nineteenth century figures and often labeled “historicist,” which restricts its aim to a scrupulously detached and “objective” reconstruction of the original meaning of a text and which so emphasizes the difference between the text’s historical milieu and the present that little or no contemporary application can be hoped for. The “hermeneutical” method is also able to be distinguished from a restorationist approach which seeks to apply ancient texts to the present in a literal, naïve, and

260 De Lubac was familiar with these authors, whose works he referenced in his earlier writings on world religions. Cf. his 1936 essay, “L’origine de la religion,” which was translated as “The Origin of Religion,” in God, Man, and the Universe: A Christian Answer to Modern Materialism, ed. Jacques de Bivort de la Saudée (New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1953), 197.

261 Often quoted in this regard is the remark of Leopold von Ranke: “Man hat der Historie das Amt, die Vergangenheit zu richten, die Mitwelt zum Nutzen zukünftiger Jahre zu belehren, beigemessen: so hoher Aemter unterwindet sich gegenwärtiger Versuch nicht: er will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen.” Forward to Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514, dritte Auflage (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1885), vii. [To history has been attached the office of judging the past and instructing one’s fellow man about the use of future years: the present attempt does not submit itself to so high an office: it will merely show, how it really was.] 190 uncritical manner with little or no cognizance of the difference between the text’s historical milieu and our own.262

Similar to those nineteenth-century empirical scientists, who tried to be completely detached

from the phenomena they studied, so too empirical historicists understood their objectivity as

independence from the historical data under consideration.263

Empirical historicism sometimes manifests a tendency toward historical relativism.

Insofar as historicism rejects the idea of judging one age by the values of another, some historicists asserted that all ideas are a product of some period in history and so there is no transcendent standard by which one can judge the actions, ideas or values of another time or place. Historicism, as described by Gadamer,

no longer measures the past by the standards of the present, as if they were an absolute, but it ascribes to past ages a value of their own and can even acknowledge their superiority in one respect or another.… [I]t was romanticism that gave birth to the historical school.… Nineteenth-century historiography is its finest fruit and sees itself precisely as the fulfillment of the Enlightenment, as the last step in the liberation of the mind from the trammels of dogma, the step to objective knowledge of the historical world, which stands on par with the knowledge of nature achieved by modern science.264

This type of relativist historicism came to associate objectivity with the abandonment of

“dogmatic” foundations of the intellectual life. It denied the place of religion, metaphysics or

any intellectual system which claimed to be certain.265 Given de Lubac’s interest in cultural

262 Marcellino G. D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic,” xiii.

263 See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1995), 5-8; Gadamer’s thought will be considered in detail later.

264 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 275.

265 By the late twentieth century, the contemporary philosophical term “antifoundationalist” came to describe the idea that no belief system can claim to be certain and so serve as the sure basis for a person’s worldview or a standard by which to judge others. 191 anthropology (e.g., his studies of Far Eastern culture and Buddhism, the ancient Levant, etc.),

and his statements that “historical science and its auxiliaries” are absolutely necessary but

incomplete on their own, and his arguments in the Introduction, empiricist historicism was likely

what he had in mind.266

De Lubac believed historicism may very well grasp the “exterior” and “setting” of the

work, but not its “interior,” its “movement of spirit.”267 How does the historian reach the

“interior” or “heart” of an ancient thinker’s work? De Lubac answered:

To reach the heart of the vigorous thought, nothing is as inadequate as a certain pretension to pure objectivity. Truly illuminating analysis is neither a photograph nor a material summary. It must bring out the essence, which is nearly always implicit. It must lay open hidden categories, determine lines of force.268

De Lubac described the first step to “bringing out the essence” from the historical data as a

sympathetic alignment of the interpreter with the text:

266 Yet another school of thought is commonly called “historicist” today, but this is a postmodern and antifoundationalist movement in hermeneutics, which rejects the idea of a single, objective meaning of a text. According to this school, in a text, there is no fixed set of ideas which are to be recovered as the “true” meaning of the text. Instead, this postmodern historicism views the work of an interpreter as making a text relevant to his own contemporary situation. The “meaning” of the work, diachronically considered, would then be the history of such acts of appropriating the text and making it relevant, and thus its meaning could be completely in flux from one historical period to another as the appropriation of the text varies from time to time and place to place. For this school, the intention of the author is largely irrelevant. Not only does this sense of “historicism” not fit with de Lubac’s positive use of the term (since he presumed that there is an objective meaning to be recovered and explored Origen’s mindset at length), but the chief representatives of this school (the poststructuralist Roland Barthes, the deconstructionist Jacques Derrida, et al.) published their representative early works (from the late 1950s into the 1960s) after the publication of Histoire et Esprit. For a review of these schools, see Grant R. Osborne, The Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation, rev. ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 476-490.

267 HS, 12-14.

268 HS, 12-13. 192 [W]ith texts that very often disconcert us, an extra effort becomes necessary in order to reproduce within ourselves the movement of the spirit that once made them come alive. An intentional sympathy, methodical docility—which are not grounds for concluding that I am presenting Origenian exegesis as a model to be followed in every respect. I am far from doing that.269

Moreover, one cannot approach the intellectual content of the text in a disinterested way, as a

mere archivist cataloging opinions. The text must be “interpreted” in the process of reading it so

that the text engages the intellectual commitments of the interpreter. The interpreter’s mind must

be challenged by the text:

If we want to have any chance of understanding it, even as a mere historian, it is necessary, whether we like it or not, to explain to ourselves what we read; it is necessary to translate, to interpret. That cannot be done without risk, but this risk must be run.270

One risk is existential: he who reads deeply and sympathetically may be converted by

what he reads. The other risk is hermeneutical: in making the text relate to oneself by

“intentional sympathy,” one may read one’s own interests and ideas into the meaning of the text

and attribute them to the author; de Lubac cautioned against this by stressing “methodological

docility” as an equal component to “intentional sympathy”; methodological docility means

letting the text speak. For de Lubac, the ultimate goal of the dialectical engagement between the

reader and the text is to “penetrate beneath the particularities of time and place to what is

269 HS, 13-14. De Lubac distinguished what some of his critics would conflate, regardless of this advance warning. His “method” of intentional sympathy with an author’s text is a preliminary stage of understanding its meaning and is quite distinct from a sympathetic endorsement of the text, which is a judgment about the text’s value that can only be made once it has been adequately understood. To put oneself in another’s shoes is not to endorse every act of the other person.

270 HS, 12. As in Catholicisme, the act of interpretation is simultaneously an act of self- discovery. 193 eternal.” 271 That is to say, the goal of interpretation is not merely to ascertain the meaning of the text, but to find what is true within that meaning.

In attempting to recover the thought of another, every interpreter must recognize his historically-conditioned standpoint:

This is, without doubt, a task that is always incomplete, an interpretation necessarily partial. Every epoch, every historian, returning to the great works of the past, illuminates one aspect of them while leaving others in shadow. In that sense, too, subjectivity is unavoidable. Yet the work is indispensable, all the more indispensable as the thought being studied is more actually thought.272

Thus the interpreter’s ability to recover the meaning of the text is conditioned by his own intellectual disposition and his place in history. There is no transcending this historicality, no naïve objectivism that circumvents the accidents of history and intellectual perspective in order to put the interpreter “directly” in touch with the meaning of the text. Meaningful interpretation results from the intersection of the worldview of the interpreter and the text—a hermeneutic which Gadamer later termed the “fusion of horizons.”

Nonetheless, history is not simply the creator of distance which must be overcome by the activity of interpretation. History can also play a constructive role in opening the text when the text and the interpreter stand in a common tradition, as members of the same community—a dynamic which historicism fails to appreciate:

In the present case such historicism would be doubly deceptive. for we are not at all concerned with the work of one solitary thinker or with a problem that in no way affects us. This work fits into a tradition that touches us ourselves. This problem—in assuredly very different forms according to the century—has

271 HS, 13; emphasis added. For the purpose of this emphasis and the two that follow, see below.

272 HS, 13. 194 commanded the attention of all Christian generations. In the final analysis, all have to resolve it in the same light.273

De Lubac also briefly discussed the role of faith in interpreting Origen’s work:

Living in the same faith as Origen, members of the same Church, afloat, so to speak, in the same stream of tradition, it would be pointless for us to wish to behave like outside observers in everything concerning him—or concerning anyone else in the long chain of witnesses that goes back to the apostles of Jesus. It would prohibit us a second time from understanding him. It would deprive us of any valid principle of discernment with which to judge him.274

Common faith provides another point of contact with Origen and his writings, since they concern

things of faith. To bracket, for the sake of an “objective” methodology, the perspective that this

faith lends, would be to diminish the “intentional sympathy” between the interpreter and the text

which de Lubac believed essential to good interpretation. Bracketing the perspective of faith

273 HS, 13; emphasis added. De Lubac did not elaborate the constructive role of tradition in the activity of interpretation in his Introduction. Therefore one may only make a few basic inferences about it. De Lubac had already discussed the importance of the interpreter’s personal intellectual engagement with the thought of the author; the seventeen centuries between Origen and the contemporary interpreter are replete with Christian scholars engaging the thought of Origen to discern the place of his exegetical methods in the Church. Insofar as some of these concerns have remained the same over the centuries, the questions that earlier generations raise about Origen can be insightful for modern interpreters. Obviously not all interpreters of Origen have been correct or constructive; de Lubac wrote a large portion of Histoire to defend Origen against a host of interpreters, both ancient and modern, who misunderstood him, and to recover, in some ways contrary to received tradition, a correct view of Origen. De Lubac believed in the critical appropriation of tradition; at the same time, tradition plays a positive role, even the traditions which de Lubac assessed critically. At a minimum, tradition transmits a wealth of perspectives on Origen and prompts the interpreter to ask deeper questions than he would ask if unaided by it. (For example, what is Origen’s view of history? Does allegorization come at the expense of the literal sense? How does one separate allegorical exegesis from eisegesis? Should Origen’s interpretations be used in Christian homiletics? Does Origen’s exegetical method rest on a fundamentally Platonic worldview and is it relevant in a post-classical philosophical milieu?) The passage of time can help to unlock the meaning of the text. Insofar as “every epoch, every historian illuminates one aspect” of a great work while “leaving others in shadow,” a diachronic review of the interpretation of a text throughout history has the potential to reveal more aspects of it than a synchronic analysis alone.

274 HS, 13. 195 also reduces an interpreter’s ability to question and to appropriate the text to his own intellectual

concerns, since these concerns are informed by faith, as were the concerns of Origen.275 In support of his position, de Lubac appealed to Möhler:

The methodological principle put forward by Möhler for the history of the Church, is, a fortiori, true for the history of Christian thought: “We must live the Christianity of the history to be described, and this Christianity must live in us…”276

Although de Lubac did not copy the rest of the passage, Möhler was even more emphatic:

The person who holds the view that Christianity could have perished, or did so at any time, or that the Church could ever be anything other than it is or was, cannot write history. In every era, from that in which Christ founded the Church to the present, Christianity and the Church were always the same, and they will always be the same, because he was and is and will be the same. The person who now lives in the Church and truly lives in her, will also live in her earliest era, and understand her, and the person who does not live in the Church of the present will not live in the earliest Church and will not understand her, because both are one and the same.277

275 In this light, one can better understand de Lubac’s remark: “It would prohibit us a second time from understanding him.” De Lubac defined the goal of interpretation as grasping the work’s “interior.” One can fail to reach this goal due to mere historicism or naïve objectivity. These erroneous approaches are the first obstacle “prohibiting” good interpretation. Even if these pitfalls are avoided, if an interpreter were to discard the perspective that faith affords, it would “prohibit us a second time” from understanding the text.

276 HS, 13, citing the first preface to L’Unité dans l’Église.

277 The version of Möhler’s first preface which de Lubac cited in Histoire was not published in all of the early editions of L’Unité. For the text de Lubac possessed, see the critical edition: Johann Adam Möhler, Unity in the Church, or The Principle of Catholicism: Presented in the Spirit of the Church Fathers of the First Three Centuries, edited and translated with introduction by Peter C. Erb (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 376. De Lubac’s view of the role of faith in interpreting early Christian texts is a generalized version of what was presented in Catholicisme’s understanding of the role of the Rule of Faith in exegesis. Those who break with the faith of the Church diminish their ability to understand texts which stand in that tradition. 196 Later in Histoire, de Lubac described a particular historian as “too imprisoned by his rationalism

to perceive the true nature of the regions into which he forbade himself to enter.” Other

historians, de Lubac continued,

have shared his lack of understanding. Their imaginations as historians have not been able to supply them with what their insertion into the life of the Church would have provided them. All the works coming from the school of liberal Protestantism are invalidated by similar defects, and it is to be regretted that they have not been without some degree of influence on a number of Catholic works.278

In a pithy comparison of his interpretative approach with the methods of other contemporary schools, de Lubac stated: “If, therefore, our historical effort must not deviate into historicism,

neither must our parallel effort at objectivity deviate into objectivism.”279

De Lubac endorsed the historicist emphasis on understanding individual works as

products of their time. He appreciated the particularism of historicism insofar as he routinely

affirmed the need to recover fully the historical context of a work in rigorous, descriptive detail

as a necessary step for its proper interpretation. He embraced “historical science and its

auxiliaries,”280 critical biographical research,281 and historical investigation of the cultural milieu of the author. Yet all of this historical contextualization, on its own, is preliminary and

incomplete without a further effort to determine objectively the meaning of a text by a closer

278 HS, 47-48.

279 HS, 13. De Lubac did not cite any particular authors and provided no footnotes about how to avoid historicism and objectivism.

280 Such as the manuscript studies of Origen’s Homilies on the Hexapla, which de Lubac coordinated at Sources chrétiennes.

281 For example, the frequently-cited recent works of René Cadiou (HS, 8, 9, 30, 49, 56, 57, 102, 248); or the work of de Lubac’s contemporary, Jean Daniélou, who had just published his landmark biography, Origène (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1948). 197 discernment of its genius (which will relate to objectivism) and finally, an assesment of how text

might speak to us today. Simultaneously, de Lubac eschewed the tendency toward historical

relativism that sometimes accompanied historicism. While he appreciated the difficulty in

bridging the divide that separates a modern reader from an ancient text, he did not consider the

task insurmountable, because of his belief in the perennial relevance of objective truth:

I find the distance to be as great as anyone else does, that distance which separates us irremediably from this Alexandrian of the third century and from his intellectual universe. The river does not flow back to its source. No more than life itself does thought retrace its steps. Even if it wished to do so, no miracle would allow such a dream to be realized. Yet perhaps after the long course it has run through the parched lands of rationalism and positivism it will find itself more likely to be understood and even taken in today … in order to bring to life in us what is expressed of the eternal in these forms now dead. The wells once dug by Origen have long been covered over with sand. But the same deep layer of water is still there, which he can help us find once again in order to quench the same thirst.282

De Lubac therefore did not affirm other aspects of historicism, particularly its claim “that human

behavior should be judged only according to the value systems operative at that time”283 and its

tendency to deny the place of religion, metaphysics or any intellectual system which claimed to

be certain.

For de Lubac, dedication to historical particularity need not come at the expense of denying objective truth, nor did it go hand-in-hand with positivism’s denial of metaphysics or the

Enlightenment’s hostility to dogma. De Lubac believed that the fruit of dedicated historical research is individual engagement with a text in order to find what “is eternal” about it, so that all generations of readers—disparate as they may be in time and place—might ideally judge the meaning of the text “in the same light.” To temper historicism’s tendency to subordinate the

282 HS, 14; emphasis added.

283 Bulhof, 19. 198 individual genius of a thinker to the conditions of his age, de Lubac highlighted the value of

objectivism, but just as he selectively embraced only some tenets of historicism, so too, he

selectively embraced only some tenets of objectivism.

Among the common features of the objectivist school of hermeneutics, first and foremost,

is a belief that a text has a definitive, objective meaning, independently of the perspective of any

individual interpreter—a meaning, which the activity of interpretation must recover as the “true”

meaning of the text for all time. This objectivist view, which reacts in part to the relativism of

the historicists, implies “a sharp dividing line between studying subject and studied object,”

since the ideas of the interpreter may or may not correspond to the ideas of the text.284 Perhaps

the most distinctive feature of this school, owing to its origins in the hermeneutical works of

Schleiermacher and Dilthey, is the belief that “through a ‘congenially intuitive,’ empathetic re-

enactment (Einfühlung) of a past experience, the researcher would achieve an understanding of

individuals in times gone by and of the meaning with which they imbued their behaviour.”285

Such an empathy parallels de Lubac’s principle of “intentional sympathy” and the need to

“reproduce within ourselves the movement of the spirit that once made them come alive.” Some objectivist authors,

went further, by positing the possibility that readers are in a position to understand the meanings of the texts better than the authors themselves. Since readers intersect authors’ minds from outside and bring to bear many techniques they can re-create meanings that go deeper than the authors themselves realized.286

284 Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg, Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research, Second Edition (London: Sage Publications, 2009), 95. This notion becomes more significant in light of the later development of historicism into an antifoundationalist movement ; see above n. 227.

285 Reflexive Methodology, 94-95.

286 Osbourne, The Hermeneutical Spiral, 468. 199

While de Lubac stated explicitly that every interpreter and every age is able to bring to light different aspects of a text, due to the intersection of the perspective of the interpreter with the text, de Lubac did not give evidence in his Introduction nor in the rest of Histoire that he believed an interpreter to be so privileged a reader as to exceed the understanding of the text possessed by the author personally. Nonetheless, de Lubac embraced the main tenet of objectivism insofar as sympathetic alignment with the text permits accurate interpretation. Yet he avoided the pitfall of making a complete psychological reconstruction of the author a necessary preliminary for interpreting a text. De Lubac kept his central focus on aligning oneself with the text, rather than psychologizing the author. The text, not the author, is always the object of “intentional sympathy,” “reaching the heart,” and “what is eternal.”

Yet de Lubac was not satisfied with objectivism. He did not rest with a reading which merely establishes intentional sympathy and then recovers the ideas objectively present in the text. For a foundationalist, an existentially engaged reading must concern the truth value of what has been interpreted. Just as historical recovery should not become historicism, neither should a concern to grasp the text objectively remain mere objectivism: readers must discover how they stand with respect to the questions they interpret. Intentional sympathy and dialogue with the text must give way to rational adjudication of the meaning of the text, in order to find what is eternal in it, and how an interpreter stands in relation to what is eternal. For de Lubac, knowledge of the text always develops simultaneously with some level of knowledge of oneself.

In conclusion, the methodological Introduction to Histoire is extremely valuable because it is the first time that de Lubac discussed his approach to the activity of interpretation in theoretical terms, while making reference to contemporary schools of hermeneutics and 200 historiography. One may identify de Lubac’s approach as one of Catholic foundationalist

objectivism, with a strong affinity for historical particularism and a positive regard for the role of tradition, community and faith in the act of interpretation. No single author seems to have been the inspiration for de Lubac’s position, although the indirect influence of Dilthey seems undeniable in de Lubac’s method of intentional sympathy.287

4.1.2 The Literal Sense

Turning to the body of Histoire, de Lubac’s hermeneutics may be discerned from what he

endorsed about Origen’s hermeneutics and what he critiqued. His statements about Origen in

Histoire can be summarized under five headings: the literal sense, the spiritual senses, the

philosophy of history in Histoire, the role of divine inspiration, and the ecclesial context of the

activity of interpretation.

The literal sense received the least theoretical development in Histoire, yet de Lubac did

add some important refinements to his earlier statements about it. “We will begin at the

foundation: the literal sense.”288 For de Lubac, as for Origen, the literal sense is absolutely

foundational: no sure progress in interpretation can be made without discerning the literal sense

of a passage. The literal sense relates God’s commandments, it narrates the activity of the people

of God in history, it teaches through story, psalm and parable, and it serves as a basis for

doctrine.289 In addition, the literal sense is important insofar as it serves as the foundation of the

287 HS, 12-14.

288 HS, 103. See also “Distich,” 114.

289 In Histoire, de Lubac treated the literal sense principally as narrative. Although he recognized the variety of biblical genres, de Lubac’s equation of the literal sense broadly speaking, with narrative was his way of expressing the intrinsically historical character of 201 spiritual senses. As he indicated in Catholicisme, there is no question of a tension between valuing the literal sense in itself and valuing it as the foundation of the spiritual senses. One develops naturally into the other, and a full appreciation of the narrative, historical dimension of the text is essential to grasp its spiritual significance:

Thus every time it is possible, “the text of the story edifies us first of all.” It is only after having set this forth that we wonder in addition what more interior meaning hidden there, what “allegory,” might be appropriately drawn from it. We will comment on it “spiritualiter” only after having explained it “simpliciter.” In particular, we will beware of the tendency to neglect the literal meaning of certain precepts in order to rise immediately to the “allegory” or to escape through “tropology:” such a spiritualism is not respectable, and the more refined perfection of which it boasts is in danger of failing in the elementary duties of the Christian.290

Thus for de Lubac, the complete meaning of the text “is built, in principle, on the ground of

history.” As Origen stated: “Si intellexisti quid historiae contineat, adscende nunc ad

splendorem mysterii.”291 On this basis, one can enumerate those places where de Lubac believed

that Origenian and modern exegesis support each other and those places where de Lubac believed that modern exegesis could serve as a corrective to Origenian exegesis.

biblical revelation. He addressed this point directly in Exégèse Médiévale: “Indeed, considered both in its totality and in its letter, Scripture first delivers us facts.… It recounts a series of events which have really transpired. It is neither an exposition of abstract doctrine, nor a collection of myths, nor a manual of the inner life. It has nothing atemporal about it.… Divine revelation has not only taken place in time, in the course of history: it has also a historic form in its own right. It is contained within the res gesta: a thing that has been accomplished. It is first of all a fact of history” (ME, 1/2:44; emphasis in original).

290 HS, 110; emphasis in original.

291 HS, 281, quoting Origen’s fifth homily on Numbers. 202

4.1.2.1 Origenian and Modern Exegesis of the Literal Sense

De Lubac identified six areas of agreement between Origenian exegesis and modern

exegesis of the literal sense. De Lubac first reminded his readers that Origen did not always

employ precise terminology,292 nor did he use the same vocabulary as modern criticism. Thus

many of the cases wherein Origen denied that a passage has a literal sense are merely cases

where Origen believed that a strictly literal or crudely literal interpretation would be a mistake

and a more nuanced application of the literal sense was necessary. De Lubac then showed, with

a penchant for paradox, that many cases in which Origen sought a “more spiritual understanding

of the letter” were not denials of the literal sense, but calls for a more intelligent understanding,

an understanding which resonates even with contemporary biblical criticism.

First, allegory must never detract from history. For Origen, as for de Lubac, a strong

commitment to the spiritual sense did not require mythologizing the literal sense or detracting

from the historical authenticity of its narratives:

One must believe, first of all, in general, that the things happened as they are recounted. They took place epi tō rhētō (in the way stated). The Jews were simply wrong in restricting themselves to it. Against them and those who are like them, “we defend both the letter and the spirit of the Scriptures,” not wanting to “curse the letter” any more than “to blaspheme the spirit.”293

While Origen made heavy use of allegory in his interpretations, he reprimanded those who

“allegorized away” the literal truth of certain passages (such as miracle stories) or denied the morally binding force of “hard sayings” of the Gospels.294 Thus de Lubac affirmed Origen’s

292 HS, 166-167.

293 HS, 105.

294 HS, 231. 203 underlying principle of never using the spiritual senses against the literal sense. Such a

conception of allegory is distinctive of the Christian approach to allegory in contrast to pagan or

Philonic approaches.295

Second, an exegete must pay attention to genre and literary form. De Lubac observed

that Origen’s commitment to the authenticity of the historical narratives of Scripture did not go

so far as to make him a crude literalist, such as contemporary fundamentalists. De Lubac

endorsed Origen’s sophisticated approach to employing the literal sense in the interpretation of

narratives. For example, in his commentaries on the Gospels, Origen was attentive to genre, the

possibility of multiple levels of literal meaning being in play in a single episode, and the importance of context in interpreting the literal sense.296 With regard to genre, Origen was sensitive to whether a pericope was a parable, a sermon, a miracle story, a travel narrative, etc., since each genre must be interpreted accordingly. One recognizes these same concerns and methods in contemporary form criticism. With regard to the context of a passage and its place within the overall Gospel narrative, de Lubac endorsed Origen’s subtle approach to complicated questions of the chronological order of Gospel events. When Origen commented on the

Cleansing of the Temple, for example, he noted the disparity of narrative order between the

Synoptics (who recount the Cleansing shortly before Christ’s Passion) and John (who recounts it at the outset of his narrative of Christ’s public ministry) and concluded that the Synoptic and

Johannine accounts referred to the same historical event, which John merely narrated early in his

295 Cf. “Typology and Allegorization,” 151-160.

296 For example, for Origen a miracle story, such as the healing of the paralytic, both recounts a real supernatural event and simultaneously provides a Messianic sign and reveals something about Jesus as Savior that is true for His relationship to all members of the Church, such as His mission to forgive the sins of repentant sinners who come to Him in faith. 204 Gospel for symbolical reasons.297 Commenting on Origen’s approach, de Lubac stated

approvingly:

In thinking to observe in our Gospels a kind of rather supple historicity joined to an in-depth interpretation of the reality they [the evangelists] had a mission to proclaim to the people, he is not far from agreeing with the best of our recent historians, believers as well as others.298

De Lubac then addressed several instances where Origen denied there was a literal sense to the text. These denials must be carefully considered, since Origen was not always careful about using precise terminology,299 and he lacked the vocabulary developed by modern biblical

criticism. Thus, when Origen denied that there is a literal sense of a passage or stated that it can

only be understood “spiritually,” it was for a variety of reasons, several of which are also affirmed by modern biblical scholarship.

Third, an exegete must distinguish between strictly literal and metaphorical or figurative expressions. Origen sometimes denied there is a literal sense to the text and merely meant that the passage is figurative:

His terminology is different from ours. Anytime he encounters an anthropomorphism, a metaphor, a parable, a figurative expression, he says that must be taken in a spiritual sense.300

297 This is in contrast to other Fathers who maintained two separate Cleansing events. For a short hermeneutical reflection on how certain Fathers handled Gospel chronology, see David Laird Dungan, A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition and the Interpretation of the Gospels (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 65-88 (Origen) and 112-141 (Augustine).

298 HS, 228.

299 Origen was not particularly concerned to develop it; de Lubac quoted Origen’s remark: “Whoever is concerned with the truth is little troubled about names and terms” (HS, 166- 167, quoting Peri Archōn 4.3.15).

300 HS, 129. 205 “When, therefore, Origen rejects the corporal sense of certain passages of Scripture, he only

repudiates the proper literal sense, which is, in fact, often unacceptable.”301 Today, one might

say that the passage has no strictly literal or proper literal sense, and speak of the meaning of a metaphorical expression as an “improper literal sense” or “figurative literal sense,” such as when

John the Baptist calls the Pharisees, “You brood of vipers” (Matt 3:7).302

Conversely the meaning of “spiritual sense” varies with its literal counterpart. When

Origen referred to the “spiritual” meaning of a metaphor, in contrast to its “corporal” or “literal”

meaning, he did not mean the “spiritual senses” of allegory, tropology or anagogy. Rather, he was contrasting consideration of the text on the level of appearances (“corporally”, “literally”)

versus consideration of the text on the level of the intellect (“spiritually”). For Origen,

“spiritual” and “intellectual” are much closer together than they are for the contemporary reader.

Any time a metaphor or figurative expression or anthropomorphism is encountered, a reader’s mind should rise from the level of sensible imagination to the level of intellection in order to avoid misunderstanding. For example, when the sentence, “You (Pharisees are) a brood of vipers” is first encountered, the plain meaning of each word prompts a reader to consider the subject (the Pharisees) under the sense of the predicate, “brood of vipers.”303 Since this sense

301 HS, 130 n. 113, quoting Henri Lusseau and Marcel Collomb, Manuel d’études bibliques (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1936), 1:500.

302 For an example of this terminology, see Bernard Orchard, Edmund Sutcliffe, Reginald Fuller et al., eds., A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture (New York: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1953), 54.

303 The terms “sense” and “reference,” now commonplace in the philosophy of language, originated with Gottlob Frege in his “Über Sinn und Bedeutung” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Neue Folge 100 (1892): 25-50. The reference is the object to which the words refer; the sense is the way the object is referred to, as determined by the meaning of the words in the sentence. 206 prompts a visual image of snakes and Pharisees are people, the incompatibility of images

prompts a person to recognize that the statement cannot be taken literally. Other associations

between the sense and the terms must be found, such as the poisonous aspects of the viper or the

way the serpent in Eden misled Adam and Eve by asking cunning questions about God’s law.

When the mind finds an appropriate comparison between vipers and Pharisees, it has moved

from the level of images and phantasms (the “corporal” level of the text) to the level of the

intellect (a “spiritual” level of the text, in the sense of “involving the understanding rather than

the senses”). All of this remains within the ambit of the literal sense of the text, which Origen

sometimes called the “spiritual” sense in contrast to the literal, because he lacked the later

terminology of “proper” and “improper” literal sense that is often employed today.304

Fourth, special norms govern the interpretation of the symbolic language of prophecy.

Sometimes Origen denied that a text has a literal meaning when he dealt with particular genres, like the vision accounts of the prophets or the visions of St. John’s Apocalypse. Here Origen merely eschewed a crude literalism—though one popular amongst millenarians of Origen’s day.

De Lubac wrote of Origen’s commentary on the Apocalypse, which interpreted the episodes of

St. John’s visions symbolically: “Origen…had the merit of dissipating the millenarian dream while preserving the authenticity of the holy book. He was in this way the providential instrument to whom we owe the possession of this treasure.”305

304 The term “improper literal sense” could be no less misleading to readers of another epoch, insofar as it connotes that something amiss occurs when a metaphor is employed and perceived correctly. Defining what is “improper” about this mode of the literal sense is no less tricky than specifying how correct interpretation of a metaphor is a “spiritual” (i.e., intellectual) activity.

305 HS, 118. 207 Fifth, the exegete should sometimes advance a literal sense of the text even when source criticism reveals that the text is insecure. Sometimes Origen repudiated a literal sense of the text when confronted with a case of manuscript variation:

With respect to the fact that the part of man that had just been fashioned on which God breathes a breath of life is called “nose” in the text of Aquileia and “face” in the Septuagint, it must be said that one ought not to be attached to the letter of the Scripture as to the truth but must seek the treasure that is hidden in it.306

What Origen meant was that the text is insecure, yet what a text conveys on the narrative level can still be intelligible because of the overlap of the semantic ranges of the two variants, as is the case above; regardless of whether the original text read “face” or “nose,” a reader can discern a face-to-face communication of life into the body of man through ruach elohim, the spirit or breath of God. Thus the text still has an “intelligible meaning,” which Origen called “spiritual”

(i.e., “comprehensible”) although the letter itself was insufficiently determined.

Sixth, insofar as the literal sense interprets the moral significance of laws and commandments (in contrast to the broader realm of tropology), an exegete must be able to appraise the value of derogated commandments of the Old Law. Sometimes Origen denied the literal sense of Old Testament commandments or ritual injunctions that had been superseded by the New Testament, such as the yearly slaughter of the Paschal lamb or abstaining from work on the Sabbath. What Origen meant is that there is no more literal sense for the reader insofar as the literal sense of a divine commandment requires obedience.307 When Origen denied a literal sense to such passages, he did not deny their narrative sense, only their imperative sense.308

306 HS, 130 n. 118, quoting Origen’s second homily on Genesis.

307 HS, 143-144.

308 The manner in which an Old Testament commandment still has enduring relevance will be described below in the section on the spiritual senses. 208 In the foregoing cases, de Lubac did not prefer Origen’s terminology, but he did not differ with Origen’s judgments about how to read texts with figurative language, symbolical genres, ambiguous variants or imperatives of the Old Law. Yet there were several cases in which de Lubac disapproved of Origen’s treatment of the literal sense of a text in contrast to its spiritual sense. This second set of cases occurs when Origen dismissed or denied the literal sense by passing over it rather quickly in order to treat the spiritual senses. In these cases, de

Lubac believed that modern criticism was well-equipped to remedy these defects of Origenian

exegesis.

4.1.2.2 Areas of Critique

Sometimes Origen denied a literal sense to a passage which he felt was unedifying.

Examples in Origen’s commentaries included: the precise numeration of the various tribes of the

Israelites in Numbers; whether a certain cereal offering must be baked in an oven, cooked in a pan, or fried on a griddle according to Leviticus; the manner in which the King of Ai was captured and executed in Joshua. At other times, Origen could not fathom the relevance of passages where the literal sense is “shocking,” “apparently contradictory” or “banal.”309 In these

passages, Origen proceeded almost immediately to consider the spiritual sense of the passage, as

for example, in his treatment of the hanging of the King of Ai, from his eighth homily on Joshua:

And what good does it do me to know that some obscure king from long ago was hung on a double wood? The Holy Spirit certainly would not have taken care for me to know this fact for its own sake; but if I thereby learn that there is a twofold power in the Cross of the Savior, and this “mystery” becomes still greater by invoking the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then my soul is edified and the consignment of the fact in the inspired Book has found its sufficient reason.310

309 HS, 121.

310 HS, 122-123. 209

De Lubac commented:

The spiritual interpretation seems in this case like an expedient intended to find in certain passages a meaning they would otherwise lack—unless it is the overly quick renunciation of finding a meaning in them that serves as an expedient in view of their spiritual interpretation.… If we are to believe what Origen says, he would resign himself to it only as a last resort; he would abandon the struggle only “reluctantly, conquered by reason.” But, be that as it may, he consents to it sometimes a bit quickly, following the example of Clement and Philo.311

De Lubac cited the judgment of some modern critics in this regard: “Father Lagrange has very

well characterized ‘this strange insistence on reducing the letter to the absurd through too literal

an interpretation in order to free oneself from it.’”312 De Lubac concurred: “Too convenient a

311 HS, 112-113. Later in Histoire, de Lubac partially exonerated Origen for this fault, by observing that often such a procedure occured in Origen’s homilies, where the preacher would be pressed to say something immediately edifying for his congregation on whatever the lectionary may hold: “Had not the Apostle written that all divinely inspired Scripture is useful ‘ad docendum, ad increpandum, ad doctrinam quae est in justitia?’ [2 Tim 3:16] The preacher, therefore, had to draw from his text the elements of a doctrinal exposition and to pass from that to practice, to arouse his listener, to awaken his soul, to encourage his momentum toward God. He had to adapt what was said of people long ago to the necessities of the listener. That committed him to pouring new wine into old wineskins, to practicing … ‘homiletic allegory,’ which is not ‘exegesis’ properly speaking and which has value simply through ‘the spiritual content placed there by the author.’ In Origen’s case, this ‘spiritual content’ is nearly always rich and, on the other hand, if the explanation, taken its detail, often comes close to what we would call an accommodating use of Scripture, it remains nonetheless governed most often … by several broad principles and oriented in a few well-controlled directions that communicate a kind of objectivity to it” (HS, 153).

312 HS, 113n51. De Lubac also noted that sometimes Origen’s proclivity to jump over the historical and even dogmatic aspects of the literal sense and to proceed straight to allegory in his homilies and commentaries was due to the fact that the audience of these works did not consist of catechumens, but initiated Christians who had already received what Origen considered to be adequate historical and dogmatic instruction, but who had not yet tasted much of spiritual exegesis. Cf. HS, 205-206. 210 process, based on a singular conception. Here we can speak with some justification of the

‘escape mechanisms of the allegorical school.’”313

While disagreeing with Origen’s tendency to dismiss or reject the literal sense of a text,

de Lubac believed that the underlying motivation for Origen’s behavior could constitute, in part,

the antidote to it. He explained why Origen was overly eager to depart from the level of the

literal sense:

This is because, persuaded that everything is given in the Bible “principally in view of the spiritual sense,” that “its principal end is spiritual teaching,” Origen is always ready to admit in wonder that divine providence has scattered accounts and precepts with certain absurd or impossible details as “stumbling blocks,” “in order to urge the most penetrating and attentive minds to search the depths of Scripture and to seek there a meaning truly worthy of God.”314

De Lubac concurred with Origen that the telos of Scripture is the edification of its readers—all

readers, and not just the original audience. De Lubac rejected, however, Origen’s application of

this principle and refused to treat puzzling passages as divine traps or stumbling blocks, whose

sole purpose is to elevate the mind of the reader. Origen’s profound attachment to the spiritual

telos of Scripture motivated his overly eager ascent to the spiritual sense, but this ascent was

jeopardized by his failure carefully to examine the literal sense, which Origen himself admitted

was the foundation of all exegetical progress. Thus Origen was inconsistent in the application of

his own hermeneutical first principles. As de Lubac later explained in Histoire:

One principle, although justifiable in itself, was particularly dangerous. This was the principal, already invoked by Justin and Clement, according to which … everywhere, we should find a meaning that is “worthy of the prophetic spirit” and that responds to the divine “majesty.” In difficult passages, we should strive to avoid any explanation that would be “unworthy of the Holy Spirit.” … A view of

313 HS, 114, quoting Robert Devreesse and Raymond Tonneau, Essai sur Théodore de Mopsueste, Studi e Testi 141 (Vatican City: 1948), 72.

314 HS, 113. 211 faith for which we will not at all reproach Origen. But how are we to judge by our human criteria what is worthy or unworthy of God? At least, as we have seen, our exegete usually resisted the temptation to deny the facts that might have provoked scandal … let us say, while he was often wrong in the details, on the whole he was right to think that, viewed according to the spirit, nothing in the Bible is “small”; rather everything is “great.”315

The fault thus consists in a certain exegetical hubris that results from a mixture of piety for the

spiritual sense of Scripture and a lack of humility before the challenges of interpreting its literal

sense with accuracy. Quoting Jacques Guillet, de Lubac wrote:

Such a principle of exegesis … was based on a justifiable idea, on the conviction that the religious depth of the Bible surpasses human logic. But it requires in its application a familiarity with the proper style of the Bible that neither Origen nor Theodore could possess. 316

Thus Origen sometimes dismissed a plain meaning of the text as “unedifying” or “banal” or

“shocking” because he did not fully appreciate its meaning in its historical or literary context.

315 HS, 351; emphasis added. By “resisted the temptation to deny the facts that might have provoked scandal” de Lubac was referring to the tendency, perennial in both Christian and Jewish interpretation, to sanitize those passages which recount the immoral behavior of a patriarch, king or otherwise admirable figure. For an example from classical rabbinic literature, see the treatment of David and Bathsheba in Nosson Sherman, ed. The Prophets: The Early Prophets with a Commentary Anthologized from the Rabbinic Writings, vol. 1, I-II Samuel (Brooklyn, NY: Mesorah, 2006), 264-269. “This chapter relates the story of David and Bath- sheba. On the surface, David’s behavior appears a grievous sin and an inexplicable moral weakness; a lapse that is inconceivable for a man of his righteousness and moral greatness. On the other hand, the Talmud states clearly that ‘whoever says David sinned is simply in error’ (Shabbos 56a) and that Bathsheba was predestined to be David’s wife from the beginning of Creation (Sanhedrin 107a)” (ibid., 264).

316 De Lubac pointed out that such a method did not originate with Origen: “We could also say that ‘this habit of using inconsistencies or oddities in the text as a pretext for finding some new significance in it went back to the beginnings of Christianity. It was one of the preferred arguments of Saint Justin in his polemic against the Jews. It had been the argumentation used by Jesus in confronting his adversaries with the enigma of Psalm 110: The Lord said to my lord’” (HS 115, quoting Jacques Guillet, “Les Exégèses d’Alexandrie et d’Antioche, conflit ou malentendu?” Recherches de science religieuse 34 [1947]: 265) De Lubac cited this essay frequently in Histoire.) De Lubac later noted that rabbinic midrashic exegesis often included this type of exegetical procedure (HS, 348). 212 De Lubac saw this as a systemic problem in Patristic exegesis which could be remedied by the

advances of modern criticism:

Father Camelot, discussing the exegesis of the Fathers of the Church, has noted that often “their ignorance of literary genres, differences of style, language, and so on, makes them stumble on difficulties that seem childish to us and which they escape only through at times very subtle allegorizing.” More prolific and more acute than most, Origen falls more frequently than they into this failing.317

De Lubac believed that Origen’s own commitment to the profoundly historical character of the

biblical text could have assisted him in avoiding this fault. Origen already possessed an

incarnational view of divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures:

In his Scripture as in his earthly life, Origen thought, the Logos needs a body; the historical meaning and the spiritual meaning are, between them, like the flesh and the divinity of the Logos.318

These two principles could have provided the antidote for Origen’s exegetical hubris. Yet their

full potential remained unrealized for Origen: “Is this to say that he shows a true historical

sense? Assuredly not, and this deficit prevents him from understanding many things.”319 By a

317 HS, 349, citing Pierre-Thomas Camelot, “Bulletin d’histoire des doctrines chrétiennes,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 32 (1948): 263.

318 HS, 105. Origen’s condescensionist (synkatabasis) view of divine pedagogy in human history as already been noted in the summary of Histoire. The broad-ranging and profound influence of Origen’s perspective on this matter was reflected in contemporary Protestant statements such as the 1982 Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, Article II, which stated: “We affirm that Christ is God and Man in one Person, so Scripture is, indeed visibly, God’s word in human language. We deny that the humble, human form of Scripture entails errancy any more than the humanity of Christ, even in His humiliation, entails sin” and contemporary Catholic statements such as Dei Verbum, section 13, which states: “ For the words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like human discourse, just as the word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.” The text of the Chicago Statement is available in Norman L. Geisler and James I. Packer, eds., Explaining Hermeneutics: A Commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics (Oakland, California: International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, 1983). De Lubac noted similar statements among the Medievals in ME 1/2: 60-63.

319 HS, 281. 213 more thorough application of these principles, rooted in an awareness of the slow, progressive,

historical tutelage of mankind by divine revelation in terms and concepts native to human culture at the time, Origen could have maintained his commitment to spiritual exegesis while appreciating the historical character of the literal sense of a text that is embedded in an ancient time and place. Origen’s primary failure lies in not taking “spiritual things historically” enough; he falsely concluded that the divinely inspired character of the biblical text must entail doctrinal

sophistication in the original recipients. De Lubac cited an example from Origen’s homily on

Genesis 25:

For example, does he not imagine that Rebekah must have had a concept of the Divinity that was very intellectually refined? To suppose the contrary, he declares, to believe that she was rather simple to localize God, would be “absurd.” He thus transforms the dwelling of the patriarchs into a kind of institute of spiritualist philosophy. He does not imagine that in distant ages a profound religious sentiment and even a faith of great worth could have coexisted with a rudimentary metaphysics and representations that were still childish.320

Historical criticism and form criticism today give great insight into these developmental aspects of the literal sense and de Lubac lauded these methods as important correctives and complements to the exegetical practices of the Fathers and saw them as compatible in theory with Origen’s understanding of history and inspiration, regardless of his actual practices.

320 HS, 282. Such a shortcoming was common in Origen’s time, yet de Lubac claimed it had accidental advantages: “He shares these kinds of naïveté with his whole time, even more, with very many ages. ‘The lack of any historical sense that weighs so heavily on all exegesis up to the nineteenth century’ has been justly pointed out. The historical sense—which is more than the critical sense —is in large part a recent conquest. There is no reason to scorn it: it has enriched the human mind. We would be foolish to do without it. But it also includes its dangers. The inferiority in this regard of one of the ancients like Origen was not without its compensation; notably—and perhaps we are not sensitive enough to this advantage—he escaped all the narrowness, all the illusions, all the pitfalls of historicism.” (HS, 283, quoting J. Guillet, “Les Exégèses d’Alexandrie et d’Antioche,” 295.) 214 Another principle of Origen which could have helped him avoid a preemptory derogation of the literal sense, but didn’t, came from his understanding of the divine inspiration of the human author:

Origen is hardly interested at all in the psychology of the prophet … he does not believe, as did Philo and many others before and after him … that the prophet is essentially an ecstatic or that he speaks or writes under the incompressible impulse of the Spirit. Concerned here as everywhere to save in man the element of freedom and morality, he insisted on retaining in the prophet, as against what happened in pagan divinations, the whole play of his normal faculties.321

Origen never developed the implications of these convictions with a more historically-

conditioned reading of the literal sense:

Origen’s reaction against the idea of an ecstatic inspiration might have led him to a better discernment of the human element of the Bible in all its variety. In fact, we note nothing of the kind. This element did not interest him enough to make him think of emphasizing it or even at first of noticing it. So his justifiable conviction of the overall inspiration, too forgetful of the inevitable infirmities of the human author, often led him to seek profound intentions beneath minuscule particularities of the text that did not have any such intentions. Christians had naturally made their own “this fundamental principle of rabbinic exegesis that there is no superfluous word in the Bible and that the apparent pleonasms or repetitions necessarily conceal a profound meaning.” They therefore believed themselves obliged to “scrutinize the Scripture down to details that might seem tiny”—and which in fact are—in order to find marvels in them.322

In this way, de Lubac indicated some major shortcomings of Origen’s practice of exegesis, and

ways in which de Lubac believed it should be overcome, both in principle and with the employment of contemporary exegetical techniques in reading the literal sense.

De Lubac evaluated other exegetical practices of Origen which are advanced for his day

and which were compromised to a lesser extent by his insufficient appreciation of the historically

conditioned nature of divine revelation. One consequence of Origen’s belief in the divine

321 HS, 342-343.

322 HS, 348. 215 inspiration of the whole of Scripture is what one would call today “canonical criticism.”323 The interpreter may use any part of Sacred Scripture to enlighten another, and the doctrinal sense must be understood within the context of the completed revelation that is the entire canonical

Scripture:

Origen applies here the words of the First Letter to the Corinthians: pneumatikois pneumatika sugkrinontes.… Which is to say that we will methodically place the different parts of Scripture in relation to each other—”Scripturam sacram sibimet ipsi conferentes” (comparing Sacred Scripture to itself)—in such a way as to comment on it always by means of itself.324

In “Sur un vieux Distique,” de Lubac wrote that the believer

receives Scripture from the Tradition and reads it within the context of the Church, because it was given to the Church, it was written within it, under the inspiration of the Spirit. Thus, from the beginning, the believer sees it as a whole, as a unique book—”quae tota biblioteca unus liber est.”325

For example, Origen frequently undertook thematic analyses:

To obtain a just idea of the conduct and sentiments of God towards man, he compares all the passages of the Bible in which there is a question of punishment,

323 J. A. Sanders coined the term in his Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972). Brevard S. Childs further developed it in his Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979) and Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993). For Childs, who rejected the term “canonical criticism” and preferred “canonical approach,” the canonical approach focuses on the final form of the biblical text as normative for the Christian interpreter; accordingly, the canon “not only serves to establish the outer boundaries of authoritative Scripture … [but also] forms a prism through which light from the different aspects of the Christian life is refracted” (Biblical Theology, 672). Childs developed this unitary approach to interpretation in contrast to the historical-critical method’s tendency to focus on sources and to interpret passages only from the perspective of their original authorship.

324 HS, 353. This formula was similar to Luther’s 1519 dictum to Eck, “Scriptura sacra sui ipsius interpres”; in Origen’s formula, the role of the interpreter was central, while in Luther’s statement, the text was self-interpreting.

325 “Distich,” 121. 216 and such a study allows him to conclude that divine justice is always, in the end, mercy.326

In addition, Origen’s belief in the divine authorship of Scripture entailed his careful attention to

certain literary features of the text, including the structure of the pericope under consideration

and its context. De Lubac endorsed this approach, even if for Origen it was rooted in a greater

awareness of divine authorship than human authorship at work in the text:

The more the exegete advances in his investigation … the more he is thus overcome with admiration before such a marvelous arrangement, in which there is not one detail that does not receive its place in the whole and that is not taken into the unique movement: “Vides quantus ordo et quanta in Scripturis sanctis rerum consequentia custoditur, quomodo nihil nisi modo et ratione et ordine geritur! Intuere diligentius, et in omni Scriptura haec sit invenies ordinata.”327

Origen’s convictions about divine authorship also informed his careful lexical analysis:

He also compares with each other the various expressions using duplicated terms—sabbata sabbatorum, sancta sanctorum …—in order to make something like a procession of them up to the one that seems to him the most mysterious of all: Song of Songs. He enumerates the various places where the same word figures, and for that he usually makes use of a lexicon.328

But here too, Origen’s failure to consider the genuine human authorship of the text and the

historically-conditioned nature of the human author’s vocabulary tainted his results:

Scientifically conducted, such a method could be fruitful.… But in this “congregatio in unum” … Origen does not take into account either the human contexts or lines of development. His study “is vitiated by a fundamental confusion: verbal continuity does not signify historical continuity; similarity of expression does not signify similarity of situation.”329

326 HS, 355.

327 HS, 357.

328 HS, 355.

329 HS, 358, quoting J. Guillet, “Les Exégèses d’Alexandrie et d’Antioche,” 295. Later de Lubac explained: “That is because the principle that guides Origen is not ordinarily the intuition of a certain unity of the biblical world or the perception of certain influences. It is a principle of pure faith that flouts all the empirical diversities. So the resulting exegesis seems to 217

If Origen had more deeply appreciated “the human element of the Bible in all its variety,” he

might have organized his word studies by tracing usage through individual human authors or

periodizing his data, and so his findings would have been more reliable. Nonetheless, de

Lubac’s praise of Origen’s textual criticism was unalloyed:

There is no need to recall here that he did not scorn any of the scientific advances that were known at the time. He, more than any other, put them into practice himself. His critical demands were higher than those of most of the ancients. His Hexapla is without doubt an unequaled monument.330

In summary, de Lubac’s exegetical principles with regard to the literal sense may be discerned indirectly from what he endorsed about Origen’s hermeneutics and what he critiqued.

First, one can identify three foundational principles guiding de Lubac’s approach to the literal sense. First, a deep, critical reading of the literal sense must be the foundation of all interpretation. Second, the spiritual senses ought never to be employed at the expense of the historicity of the literal sense, but rather in harmonious connection with it: one must never

“allegorize away” the literal sense that stands at the foundation of all interpretation, since that would leave all spiritual interpretation arbitrary and bankrupt. De Lubac discerned Origen’s own commitment to these fundamental principles, even if Origen did not always consistently employ them or methodically develop them in reflecting on his own practices. Third, one must be attentive to the way in which history conditions the reception and transmission of divine revelation, with regard to the role of both the divine and human authors of Scripture. While

us especially to increase the arbitrary; and in fact, still from the point of view of pure history, one cannot judge otherwise.” When Origen nevertheless managed to extract solid doctrinal theology or allegorical associations from such “surface misinterpretation,” it was because of the central guiding influence of tradition or the “analogy of faith” (HS, 359-360).

330 HS, 352. 218 Origen was partially aware of this third principle with his incarnational view of Scripture and his condescensionist, pedagogical approach to salvation history, he tended to let his commitments to the full engagement of the faculties of the human author become overwhelmed by his understanding of the divine authorship of the sacred text, and so he compromised his approach to the literal sense in ways which modern criticism often detects.

De Lubac also appraised Origen’s individual exegetical procedures, judging them in the light of the foregoing norms and so indicating the direction in which contemporary biblical interpretation should go. De Lubac positively appraised Origen’s attention to the role of genre, the presence of multiple levels of meaning within the literal sense, and the structure and context of a passage in interpreting it. These principles constitute a bridge to the contemporary practice of form criticism and a means to integrate it with Patristic exegesis. These principles safeguard

Catholic exegesis from a crude literalism and fundamentalism which arise from commitments to divine authorship of Scripture which, like Origen, sometimes overlook the facets of human authorship. De Lubac gave unqualified endorsement to Origen’s critical manuscript studies, which presage the modern commitment to textual criticism and which serve as a bridge to modern redaction criticism, although Origen did not anticipate the approach of redaction criticism and might not have agreed with it. De Lubac saw partially-utilized merits in Origen’s commitment to interpreting the literal sense within the textual framework of the inspired canon as a whole and within the historical framework of salvation history. Origen’s commitments form a bridge to contemporary canonical criticism.331 De Lubac commented favorably on the effects of this approach on interpreting the Old Testament law and in Origen’s thematic analyses of

331 Although the term “canonical criticism” did not exist at the time de Lubac wrote Histoire, the approach was common among more conservative exegetes. 219 biblical topics, such as God’s mercy, the nature of faith, etc. Origen did less well in deploying this approach in his lexical analyses, which should have been better informed by his commitments to the engagement of the full faculties of the human author in writing. Thus lexical analysis must be informed by Semitics and Hebrew grammar (areas where Origen strove to deepen his knowledge), periodized (something Origen did not do) and organized within the usages of individual human authors (which Origen also did not do), all of which contemporary lexical analysis does today. De Lubac felt that these sciences were well done in the twentieth century and were rooted in a distinctly modern critical awareness of the role of history on the natural level. While Origen’s theology of divine inspiration and salvation history could have made him more aware of the historically-conditioned nature of human vocabulary and the concepts in which divine revelation are couched, he did not develop his insights in this direction and his canonical approach and commitments to spiritual interpretation frequently heightened his neglect of them. The problem ultimately goes back to the “dangerous climate” of Origen’s

Alexandrian milieu, in which:

[t]he world of history was no more solidified in it, so to speak, than the world of nature. In consequence, we see the rather rapid passage to the spiritual meaning from the one as from the other, the tendency not to stop at literal exegesis any more than one dwelled on the natural sciences. Thus the historical information often remains brief because it serves as a springboard for thought and does not provide a goal for it.332

Here Origen failed to meet his own standards of understanding “spiritual things historically,” because the Patristic period lacked “a philosophy of history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time”333 which could serve as the basis for a more critical approach. Modern Catholic criticism

332 HS, 430.

333 Catholicism, 308. 220 stands in an advantageous position to correct this erroneous method and to revise Patristic exegesis accordingly.

4.1.3. The Spiritual Senses

De Lubac’s treatment of the spiritual senses of Scripture in Histoire added much to his approach to this subject in Catholicisme; once again, his position must be discerned indirectly— from his appraisal of Origen’s exegesis. According to de Lubac, the foundation of Origen’s approach to the spiritual senses of Scripture comes from St. Paul and Jesus Christ, rather than pagan or Jewish sources.334 Key Pauline passages which Origen frequently cited were 2

Corinthians 3:6: “For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”; 1 Corinthians 10:11 which spoke of the events of the Exodus: “ Now all these things happened to them in figure [de tupikōs]: and they are written for our correction”; and Paul’s allegory of the two wives of Abraham as representative of the Old and New Covenants in Galatians 4:24: “ Now this is an allegory [hatina estin allēgoroumena]: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.”

Key words of Jesus which Origen frequently cited were John 5:46: “If you believed

Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me” and the Emmaus discourse (Luke 24:25-27):

And he [Jesus] said to them, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

334 Influences of Greco-Roman and Philonic allegory and tropology may be present in his work, but they are not the central, determining influence of Origen’s approach to allegory according to de Lubac: “ If he speaks several times of Philo with praise, he never uses him as a reference to authorize his method. On the contrary, in his presentation of this method in the fourth book of the Peri Archōn, he devotes a whole chapter to Saint Paul” (HS, 77). This point was more thoroughly defended in section II of “Typologie et Allégorisme.” 221 To a lesser extent, Origen also made reference to the moments in the Gospel where Jesus stated

that certain Old Testament events allegorically prefigured Him, such as Jacob’s Ladder (John

1:51), the Bronze Serpent (John 3:14), and Jonah’s three days in the belly of the whale (Matthew

12:40).335 According to de Lubac, Origen saw in these texts the foundation for an entire method

of approaching Scripture, which charged the interpreter to engage it far more extensively than the few canonical examples provided in Scripture itself:

In Saint Paul, he [Origen] finds two things: the principle of his exegesis and a few examples of its application. The letter kills, but the spirit brings life; the law is spiritual: it contains the shadow of goods to come; all that happens to the Israelites happens to them in figure and was recorded for our instruction: that is the principle. When he articulated it, Paul knew what he was saying…. Admittedly the Letters of Paul contain only a limited number of examples of this spiritual understanding. But through these examples, the Apostle indicates to us an entire method. And some of his words are like keys, “which through a narrow opening open immense perspectives to us”. Did he not say himself: “This is not the time to go into details” [Heb 9:5], as if to imply that it would be necessary to do so later? He has “handed on [to us] a rule for understanding”. It is thus for us to go forward on the path he has opened for us, to “cultivate the seeds” that the Apostle has sown, to apply the principles he has given, to take advantage of the symbols whose outline he has traced.336

Origen’s engagement of this rule for understanding Scripture was “limitless”:

[For Origen] the quarry is infinite because the principle is without limitation. If “the law is [truly] spiritual”, then it must be recognized in everything. If the story of Abraham and his wives is an “allegory”, the other accounts concerning the patriarch must also be so.… And if all that happened to the Israelites “happened to them in figure”, there is no reason for us to restrict ourselves to the few aspects that the Apostle had occasion to explain to the Corinthians. Everything, “for our instruction,” must be spiritually transposed.337

335 HS, 190.

336 HS, 80.

337 HS, 80-81. 222 Was Origen excessive? De Lubac first affirmed: “This conviction of Origen’s is not merely

sincere. It is, let us recognize, in large part well founded.”338 Yet he added: “Under the

influence of many other factors, the allegorism of our Alexandrian took a turn and a development

that the Apostle could obviously not have foreseen and of which he undoubtedly would not

always have approved”;339 however, de Lubac did not immediately provide further clarification.

By the end of chapter seven of Histoire, it becomes apparent that de Lubac had no quarrel with the extent of Origen’s usage of the spiritual senses, provided that one properly understands how the spiritual senses function in Origen. De Lubac did criticize, however, some aspects of

Origen’s spiritual interpretation because they neglected the literal sense or because they were adversely influenced either by Platonism or Philonic allegory, or because they were poorly deployed because of Origen’s own lack of methodological clarity. These aberrant spiritual readings are the “turn and development” of which the Apostle would not approve, rather than the comprehensive scope of Origen’s application of the spiritual senses to all of Scripture.

What did Origen mean by “spiritual interpretation” and by the spiritual senses he called

“allegory,” “tropology,” and “anagogy”? Here again the interpreter of Origen encounters imprecise terminology similar to that of the “literal sense.” De Lubac explained:

[I]t is necessary, more objectively, to distinguish in Scripture a threefold meaning, forming an organic system and relating to the three orders of reality, at once distinct and connected. All historians of Origen set out this doctrine. But they do not always consider that, if it is true that nearly everywhere, in theory as in practice, he affirms a tripartite division, he is far from understanding and applying it in a uniform manner. Nowhere, moreover, even in the Peri Archōn, does he make a rational methodological explanation of it. In order to understand his real thought in its various aspects, here as in the preceding chapter, it is appropriate,

338 HS, 81.

339 HS, 82. 223 then, to investigate all his exegesis in actuality, in addition to some passages where he formulates it ex professo.340

Thus, one of de Lubac’s major goals in Histoire was to present Origen’s understanding of the

individual spiritual senses and the nature of spiritual interpretation in general by an account of

Origen’s own exegetical theory and practice. Here as elsewhere, de Lubac’s own position must

be discerned through his analysis of Origen.341 Unfortunately, while de Lubac distinguished the various meanings of terms Origen used equivocally, de Lubac did not coin more precise names to encapsulate his more precise distinctions. Thus, some assessment of Origen’s polyvalent

terminology will be necessary below in order to present de Lubac’s appraisal of Origen’s use of

the spiritual senses—sometimes using the present author’s own terms.

In de Lubac’s appraisal, the organic unity between the three spiritual senses must be

grasped in order to see what Origen meant when he referred to them collectively as “sensus

mysticus” or “sensus spiritualis”:

For as long as they are understood well, they are interior to each other and form a real unity. All three concerned, indissolubly, that unique “great mystery that is accomplished in Christ and the Church.” In the end, the essential division will thus be neither threefold or fourfold. There are in Scripture, fundamentally, only two senses: the literal and the spiritual, and these two senses themselves are in continuity, not in opposition. The spirit is in the letter like honey in its honeycomb.342

340 HS, 160-161.

341 Since the focus of this dissertation is de Lubac’s own exegetical theory, it will not be necessary to summarize all the vicissitudes of de Lubac’s study of Origen’s usages. Only de Lubac’s finished analysis will be presented here; however, even in this finished analysis, de Lubac spoke primarily through Origen’s own words.

342 HS, 205. De Lubac also noted that sometimes Origen called all three spiritual senses “allegory” (i.e., allegory properly speaking, tropology, and anagogy). This use of “allegory” in a broad sense is no longer retained today, but for Origen it signified the unity of the three senses with one another. Similarly, Origen sometimes designated allegory properly speaking as “the mystical sense,” yet at other times, he called the unity of all three spiritual senses the “mystical sense,” a further source of confusion. 224 4.1.3.1. The Individual Senses

Origen referred to three distinct spiritual senses: the allegorical, the tropological, and the

anagogical. In interpreting a biblical text, Origen did not always employ all three spiritual

senses, nor was his enumeration of them always consistent, nor were the names he gave them

consistently used.343 In all cases, the spiritual senses were interpreted after the literal sense, which stands as their foundation. The spiritual senses develop from the literal sense and signify a deeper level of meaning within the literal sense, rather than something extrinsic that is imposed on them or “superadded” to them by the reader.344

In the literal sense, the words of the sentence indicate realities, as they do in any kind of

text. When a spiritual sense is present, the realities indicated by the literal sense are symbolic:

they point to a more profound significance of the things described by the literal sense. De Lubac

summarized Origen’s thinking as follows:

[T]he reality of biblical history will also be a figure for the things of salvation and will serve as their “foundation.” The deeds and gestures of the personages it presents are, in their very reality, full of a mysterious meaning.345

343 HS, 166.

344 “[I]t is most appropriate to liken this, not to some superadded embellishment, but to the weft of a fabric” (HS, 437). “And everything is, in fact, in a certain way, contained in the literal meaning, since everything that is not the foundation would be superadded to the text and thus arbitrary” (HS, 439). De Lubac’s frequently used the term “superadded” in his works on nature and grace (Surnaturel, Augustinianisme, etc.) to describe his view of the extrinsic relationship of grace to nature in the neo-Thomist tradition following Cajetan. This “separated” view of nature and grace (cf. Chapter One), according to de Lubac, treated grace as something wholly extrinsic to a complete-in-itself natural order, and thus when grace is given to man, it is “superadded” to him. De Lubac saw a parallel between the separated relationship between the natural and supernatural orders and the “separated,” wholly extrinsic conception of the spiritual senses’ relationship to the literal sense which emerged after the Reformation.

345 HS, 104. 225 Thus there are two levels of signification at work when reading a spiritual sense. First, on the

literal level, the words of the text signify a reality; second, on the spiritual level, the reality itself

is symbolic of something else. Generically, then, one can distinguish the two levels of interpretation as follows:346

Literal Sense: Words of the Biblical Text → Reality1 Spiritual Sense: Words of the Biblical Text → Reality1 → Reality2

While Origen did not use the more precise vocabulary of signs and symbols employed by

Augustine in Book Two of De Doctrina Christiana, much of the same underlying conception is

present in his writing.347 De Lubac saw St. Thomas’ well-known treatment of this relationship between the literal and spiritual senses in the first question of the Summa as a “relic” of a long- established understanding going back to Augustine and Origen.348

The nature of the second level of signification determines what kind of spiritual sense is

present. An allegory is present when the reality signified by the words (Reality1) is an historical

reality that prefigures a future reality in salvation history for which it prepares (Reality2). For example, “David” in 1 Samuel 16:13 refers on the literal level to the historical person, David, son of Jesse. But the historical David (Reality1) is symbolic of Jesus Christ (Reality2), the

346 The arrows indicate the intentionality of the reader proceeding from the words to the object of understanding.

347 Cf. Saint Augustine, On Christian Teaching, translated by R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 30-75.

348 Cf. ST I, Q. 1, a. 10. De Lubac commented that in the Medieval period, spiritual interpretation “was organized and codified. Several texts from Augustine and Cassian, among others, were the origin of a classification of scriptural senses that would be repeated by the great theologians of the thirteenth century and transmitted by them to our own times…. From this point of view, the advent of Scholasticism did not bring about any conscious change. The formulas of Saint Thomas successfully epitomized and filtered the tradition” (HS 481). Cf. also “Distich,” 125. 226 Anointed One for whom David prepared when he was anointed king by Samuel. Thus David

signifies Christ, and there is an allegorical sense at work when 1 Samuel 16:13 is read in this

fashion.349

The tropological sense involves a different manner of signification. Sometimes God’s

will for human moral conduct is contained on the literal level of the text, such as the commandment, “You shall not kill” (Exod. 20:13). At other times, the biblical text teaches

virtue by example rather than by commandment. For example, one can read the entire narrative

of the patriarch Abraham (Gen. 12-25) without ever encountering the precept: “Therefore have faith like Abraham, who trusted in God’s promises above all his attachments to earthly goods, whether his homeland, his possessions, his own life, his wife or his posterity.” When a reader discerns that there is an admirable aspect to Abraham’s life for the reader to imitate, then the reader has advanced from the literal level which narrates the events of Abraham’s life as history

(Reality1) to a deeper level which indicates a moral value (Reality2) within the historical reality.

This type of spiritual sense is called tropology; but at other times, Origen called it the moral

sense. The term “moral sense” is broader however, since it includes both what the literal sense

teaches by commandment or precept and what is taught by the spiritual sense of tropology.

Third, the anagogical sense is present when biblical realities symbolize heavenly realities,

the last things, or things which pertain to man’s final beatitude in God. Sometimes Origen did

not distinguish this sense from allegory and treated it as a subset of allegory: the special case in

which the prefigured historical realities are the ultimate ones in salvation history (e.g., the

349 The manner in which one event prefigures another is reflected in the etymology of allēgoreō, compounded from allos (other) and agoreuō (to speak or proclaim; originally, to speak in the agora); thus the basic meaning of allēgoreō is to speak of one thing using another. Cf. Henry Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, s.v. “allēgoreō.” 227 general judgment), or the ultimate ones in the course of an individual’s salvation (e.g., the

beatific vision). At other times, Origen accorded anagogy a more personal sense, relating on a

practical level to the spiritual state of the reader in his journey toward his own final state.

In all cases, the second level of signification that is perceived when the spiritual sense is

interpreted is not the creation of the reader. For de Lubac, as for Origen, the ability of some

biblical realities to signify other ones is rooted in God’s providential arrangement of history and

His pedagogical intent in inspiring the authors of Scripture to narrate the literal sense in such a

way that these providential arrangements can be perceived by the reader.350 It is God who

creates these allegories, not man.351 De Lubac saw the precedent for this manner of re-reading texts in light of later salvation history as established in the Old Testament itself:

Certainly Israel did not remain fixed in its earliest representatives. “In the Old Testament itself, history is already interpreted.” When they spoke of “entering into the land,” of “possessing the land,” the Psalmists were evoking the past conquest of Palestine, but this was in order to indicate the happiness awaited by the just in the “kingdom.” In Lot’s wife, the bronze serpent, the column of clouds, the garments of the high priest, the Book of Wisdom saw symbols. That is a consideration readily emphasized today by historians concerned to connect

350 HS, 274.

351 This is the basis for the essential distinction between the Biblical notion of “allegory” and its literary use. A poet or playwright might construct an extended metaphor that explains reality, such as Dante’s allegory of Purgatory, or Plato’s allegory of the cave. Such literary allegories are human constructions and the first level of signification is imaginary (neither Plato’s cave nor Dante’s depictions actually exist), yet they are genuinely a feature of the text and so require sober and objective interpretation. God, in his providence, is able to construct such correlations between two realities in history, such that neither the signifier nor the signified is fictional. When a divinely inspired human author records these in the Biblical text, it is a record of God’s artwork, God’s allegory. When a human interpreter interprets these with the spiritual senses, he does not allegorize, but rather interprets the allegory. This confusion between literary and theological allegory has been the cause of much condemnation of allegory in the twentieth century. Cf. Alex Preminger, ed., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), s.v. “Allegory.” 228 the Bible itself to the spiritual exegesis given by the Fathers of the Church for it. It was not entirely foreign to Origen.352

According to de Lubac, these later canonical re-readings of the Old Testament are the products

of divine inspiration which permitted the human author to grasp deeper levels of the text, which had been present since their inception. These re-readings are genuinely readings of the Old

Testament, which perceive a meaning that is objectively there; they are neither progressive accretions “around” the original meaning nor a merely human renovation:

So one should not see in the “spiritual sense” of the Jewish Scripture the more or less refined product of a secular and slowly spiritualizing tradition as can be observed in many instances in religious history. That spiritual sense does not result from the fact that we decide to take symbolically some archaic data whose original meaning has been lost or because we find it distasteful to preserve that data in their original coarseness.353

De Lubac amplified this point at the conclusion of Histoire with reference to the manner in

which the later prophets, Jesus Himself, and the authors of the New Testament engaged in this

re-reading of the Old Testament. These divinely inspired, canonical examples of exegesis

provide the hermeneutical warrant for the exegetical methods of the spiritual senses for both

Origen and de Lubac.354

The same historical reality may have different spiritual senses depending on its context in

the biblical passage under consideration. The city of Jerusalem provides an example from

Origen’s commentaries. On the literal level, “Jerusalem” refers to an historical city, which was

once the capital of the entire Jewish nation and the location of the Temple. Jews from near and

far would journey to Jerusalem on pilgrimage for the three great feasts of the Jewish year:

352 HS, 307.

353 HS, 308.

354 HS, 434-436. 229 Passover, Pentecost and Booths. This historical reality of the capital city, surrounded by people

from around the world, provided Origen the foundation for spiritual interpretations. Sometimes,

Jerusalem has an allegorical sense, when it symbolizes the Church, where the People of God are

gathered from around the world and worship today. Tropologically, Jerusalem can symbolize

the soul, which governs the body (like a capital city) and which serves as the dwelling place of

God (like the Temple). Positive descriptions of Jerusalem (e.g., Psalm 125) symbolize the well-

ordered soul in a state of righteousness, while negative descriptions of Jerusalem symbolize the soul beset by its enemies or corrupted by sin (e.g. Psalm 51:18). At other times, anagogically,

Jerusalem can symbolize the heavenly city which is to come (Rev. 21:2), which is the ultimate spiritual destination of the elect and the final dispensation of God in salvation history.355

Does every passage have a spiritual sense? In “Sur un vieux distique,” de Lubac stated his opinion:

St. Augustine clearly explained a long time ago the approach to be taken. For him, as for the Church, all Scripture was full of Christ. But, he added, Scripture is a lyre, and, even though everything about the lyre is designed for producing sound, not everything resonates. The image is taken up again across the centuries.… One can assume that it was familiar to Medieval thought. The idea that it expressed was certainly common.356

Accordingly, de Lubac maintained that Scripture as a whole has a “fourfold sense,” insofar as all

parts of Scripture are oriented toward the spiritual sense that is expressed only in certain parts of

it. Each passage has the potential to contain a spiritual sense, but not every passage must have

one, despite the impression given by Origen’s zeal for interpreting the spiritual senses of so

355 De Lubac gave a briefer example using Jerusalem in “Distich,” 115.

356 “Distich,” 120-121, citing Augustine, Contra Faustum, book 22 (PL 42:463). 230 many passages of Scripture. De Lubac’s careful language was corroborated by the 1941

statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission about the literal sense of Scripture;

Ora se è proposizione di fede da tenersi per principio fondamentale, che la Sacra Scrittura contiene, oltre al senso letterale, un senso spirituale o tipico, come ci è insegnato dalla practica di Nostro Signore e degli Apostoli, tuttavia non ogni sentenza o racconto contiene un senso tipico, e fu un eccesso grave della scuola alessandrina di voler trovare dappertutto un senso simbolico, anche a danno del senso letterale e storico.357

Even when spiritual senses are present, the needs and the insight of the interpreter often

dictate whether they are noticed and developed in interpretation in any depth:

Origen ordinarily does not feel obliged to develop methodically or even to trace distinctly the three stages of a complete exegesis. Most often, he passes immediately from the historical sense, briefly recalled, to the “interior” sense on which he dwells: he hastens to come “ad interiora mysteria.”358

A single passage may have multiple spiritual senses; in such cases, Origen sometimes considered

the various spiritual senses separately, treating each sense as a new perspective on the passage.

For example, he might read the literal sense, then expound it tropologically; then, returning to the starting point of the literal sense again, he might give a different spiritual reading of it, this time allegorically, in effect providing multiple spiritual senses “in parallel.” For example, a parallel reading might contain multiple spiritual senses in a single passage:

Literal Sense → Allegorical Sense Literal Sense → Tropological Sense Literal Sense → Anagogical Sense

However, on numerous occasions, Origen read the spiritual senses in such a way that one spiritual sense gives rise to another, in other words, “in sequence”:

357 Pontifical Biblical Commission, “Litterae ad Exc’mos PP. DD. Archiepiscopos et Episcopos Italiae” (20 August 1941), Acta Apostolicae Sedis 33 (21 Nov. 1941): 466; emphasis added.

358 HS, 170-171. 231 Literal Sense → Allegorical Sense → Tropological Sense → Anagogical Sense

De Lubac believed that Origen’s practice of developing one spiritual sense from another revealed

more about the underlying unity of the senses than anything Origen ever stated explicitly. In

“Sur un vieux distique,” de Lubac succinctly stated his view of the unity of four senses of

Scripture when developed in this fashion:

These four levels of meaning do not fan out in different directions; they follow each other in a continuous series and form a simple whole.… [T]hey are not just parts of the same whole: the same reality exists in each of them; it is just that its different aspects are viewed successively. The mystery is not only announced, prefigured or assured by the facts: the facts themselves have an interior that in diverse ways is already pregnant with the mystery. Therefore it would be a great mistake to oppose allegory to history, as if the one denied or at least neglected the other in principle. Even generalized—surely, too much so—medieval allegorization never sheds [its historical character.]359

4.1.3.2. Sequence and Unity of the Spiritual Senses

Sometimes in discussing the senses of Scripture, Origen enumerated a three-fold sequence of senses: Sequence 1: Literal, Tropological, Allegorical. At other times, he enumerated a different sequence, comprised of the same terms: Sequence 2: Literal, Allegorical,

Tropological.

Although the terms are the same, de Lubac maintained that “the difference between them

[the sequences] is great.”360 For de Lubac, the two different sequences indicate a different

methodology and set of hermeneutical principles at work, depending on whether the tropological

or allegorical sense is approached first after literal-sense interpretation: “We now see that it is

359 “Distich,” 116-117. Cf. Catholicism, 160-183, and section 2.1.5.2 above.

360 HS, 163. 232 impossible to confuse two divisions whose order and principle are so different.”361 The

difference “is of paramount importance for us to distinguish clearly.”362 At other times, Origen

used a four-fold sequence: Sequence 3: Literal, Allegorical, Tropological, Anagogical. This

sequence of the spiritual senses became a classic formula of the Medieval tradition.363

De Lubac devoted much care to studying how Origen understood these senses and their sequence in both his exegetical theory and his practice.364 De Lubac believed that scholars who

confined themselves largely to Origen’s theoretical statements about interpretation, neglecting to

read his voluminous commentaries, often formed mistaken notions of his exegetical methods.

For this reason, Sequence 1 has received more attention:

The first is the only one whose schema is clearly traced in some texts, and that is why it alone has been retained by some historians. In fact, however, it is rather rare.365

In regard to Sequence 2, he stated: “And if the latter is not mentioned in any theoretical text,

there are, on the other hand, very many examples of texts in which it surfaces in the clearest

possible way.”366

361 HS, 166.

362 HS, 161.

363 “Distich,” 109-113.

364 In the second chapter of the first volume of Exégèse Médiévale, de Lubac expanded this study to include numerous authors in the Patristic and Medieval tradition, who ordered the spiritual senses and understood their relationship. In the English edition, see “The Opposing Lists,” ME 1/1:75-115.

365 HS, 167.

366 HS, 163. 233 De Lubac believed that the first sequence tended to foster more capricious, less reliable exegesis than the second sequence because its method encouraged the exegete to think about the moral life (found in the tropological sense) before considering the Christian mystery and the course of salvation history (found in the allegorical sense). In Sequence 1:

[The consideration of] Scripture includes first of all … a historical sense: it is the account itself of events or the text of laws; then a moral sense: this is the application that is made of it to the soul, without anything specifically Christian necessarily intervening; finally, a mystical sense, relative to Christ, to the Church, to all the realities of faith.367

The second sequence is more reliable because it locates the moral sense squarely within the perspective of the Christian faith:

[The tropological sense] about which Origen now speaks to us in the third place [in the sequence] is something quite different from what the moral sense was a moment ago, coming in the second place. If in both instances, it is equally a question of the soul, the point of view has changed. A moment ago, it was a question of the soul in general, of the soul in itself, so to speak, of its nature, of its faculties, of its vices and virtues, independent of Christian realities. It is now a question of the “faithful” soul, of the soul “seeking God,” of the soul “turned toward God” and “adhering to the Logos,” of the “perfect soul,” or at least the soul “tending toward perfection.” It is a question of the soul that is renewed day by day in the image of its Creator, the soul “in which God dwells,” and “which has the heavenly Jerusalem for mother.” In other words, it is a question of “the soul in the Church,” which is the royal dwelling where the Logos instructs it.368

The first sequence is not necessarily an invalid way of proceeding; it can be used profitably in a manner complementary to the second sequence, but de Lubac believed that it entailed more risks. The first sequence permits—although it does not require—an examination of the soul from a purely natural perspective. For Origen, this meant from within the framework of contemporary Greco-Roman moral philosophy and metaphysics. Such an approach could be

367 HS, 161; emphasis added.

368 HS, 163-164. 234 insightful. De Lubac did not wish to deny the role of natural speculation as a basis for

exploration of the spiritual meaning of the Bible.369 If, for example, an interpreter sees an

elucidation of the Aristotelian virtue of magnanimity in David’s treatment of his enemies, there

is no harm in observing this, nor in deepening one’s understanding both of magnanimity and of

David in light of this connection. Although the human author of 2 Samuel would not have

known the term, “magnaminity,” the reality signified is indeed present in David, so the

tropological observation is objective, even though it is expressed by a term that comes from

outside Semitic thought.

If such an approach to the tropological sense remains only on the natural level, it is, at

best, partial. At worst, it opens the door to naturalism and an exegete risks being misguided by

erroneous concepts of metaphysics or by morals of secular inspiration. De Lubac believed that

Origen erred most frequently when he followed the first sequence of interpretation and became

overly enthusiastic about incorporating concepts from Platonic, Stoic or Philonic thought into his

interpretations.370 These inclusions abet the false charges of Origen’s critics that he subordinated

369 On the contrary, he stated emphatically: “[It is] necessary, moreover, to keep from thinking that any integration of an element of rational reflection about the revealed text is doctrinal contamination and corruption of the Gospel. Such intransigence would bear little resemblance to the Catholic doctrine on the relations between reason and faith. It would be equivalent to denying any union of nature and the supernatural in the order of thought” (HS, 178). As indicated above, these commitments were part of de Lubac’s “foundationalist objectivism.”

370 De Lubac’s mildest judgments of Origen’s excesses were in Histoire, likely because the work was intended to rehabilitate Origen. In “Sur un vieux distique,” de Lubac was more stern: “Sometimes, in fact, Origen derives from sacred texts various moral precepts that have nothing particularly Christian about them, and then goes on to read into them some allusion to the mystery of Christ (here, especially, is found what we customarily identify today as his allegorization, a term that hardly conforms to its early usage). And sometimes it is after the explanation of this mystery that he presents the spiritual consideration that depends on it. Sometimes he derives a kind of anatomy and physiology of the soul, and, sometimes, an asceticism and mysticism with a christological and sacramental air. In the latter case, relating 235 divine revelation to human reason by reinterpreting Scripture according to the dictates of

philosophy. In fact, it was merely an expression of Origen’s enthusiasm for the ultimate

compatibility of philosophy and revelation.

Origen’s commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah provides a concrete example.371

First, Origen considered the formal structure of the book (an acrostic poem using Hebrew letters), its historical reference (the destruction of Jerusalem), and the setting of the author and his original audience (Jeremiah writing to the newly captive Israelites). Proceeding verse by verse, Origen began each part of his commentary with an analysis of the literal sense. He carefully addressed the grammatical and translational aspects of the poem, and he provided the historical details of the events narrated. In each step, Origen moved from literal analysis to tropological analysis, following the pattern of Sequence 1. In his tropological reading, Origen

completely to the anima credentis, to the anima ecclesiastica, his exegesis is completely Christian in both content and form. In the former case, the formal principle itself is arbitrary, because it is not based on any plausible particulars of the biblical text or revelation. His exegesis is sacrificed to the mentality of a period and a milieu” (“Distich,” 112). Similarly, de Lubac stated in ““Typologie et Allégorisme”: “If one looks with special attention at his tropology, one is led to conclude, on the contrary, that the heritage or memory of Philonic moral interpretations has all too often prevented the specifically Christian spiritual meaning—which is dependent on the allegorical meaning—to blossom. Origen’s exegesis is filled with examples of this failure— although there is good reason for emphasizing their arbitrariness rather than denouncing their inspiration. Even though they give us nothing substantial as far as biblical knowledge or meditation of the Christian mystery is concerned, they can be admired as a part of a culture that this great man was frequently able to turn to very good account. Happily, however, he did not stop there. The spiritual meaning, relating to the anima in Ecclesia, of his exegesis interiorizes the Christian mystery according to the law of the mystery itself and thus carries us to a region very far removed from Philonic as well as ancient Greek exegesis” (“Typology and Allegorization,” 159-160).

371 Joseph W. Trigg has provided a translation and commentary on surviving fragments of this early commentary in Origen (London: Routledge, 1998), 73-86. Trigg used the critical text of the fragments from Origenes Werke, vol. 6, herausg. v. Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Leipzig: J.C. Hinricks, 1902). In the quotations that follow, Trigg’s translation is used. 236 saw fallen Jerusalem as a figure for the soul—once holy, but now enslaved by vice.

Commenting on Lamentations 1:1 (“How does the city sit solitary, that was filled with people?”),

he interpreted the multitudes of Jews once resident in Jerusalem as the good soul’s “wealth of

theoretical insights” and the Gentiles as its “good works.” Fallen Jerusalem is likened to a

widow because “her husband,” the Logos, has left her. Commenting on Lamentations 1:4 (“the ways of Zion mourn”), Origen first discussed the roads leading to Jerusalem and the festal practice of pilgrimage, then, tropologically, he found that “the many ways are the various

[intellectual] disciplines—mystical, physical, ethical, logical—that lead to apprehension [of the truth]…. All these ways, therefore, lament whenever someone…is confused…taken into captivity by the passions,… [and] diverted into inferior pursuits.” Commenting on Lamentations

1:9 (“uncleanness is before her feet, she has not remembered her last things,”), Origen found a figure of the inconstant soul, tripping over earthly concerns and failing to persevere in the pursuit of long-term goods. Concerning the Gentiles who polluted the sanctuary in Lamentations 1:10, he wrote:

[The] “nations” in our passage must be understood allegorically as the mob of vices “entering” into the governing faculty that was crafted to be capable of containing God and to be the true “holiness” of the person wishing to rely on a pure mind.372

The pattern continued throughout the commentary. On Lamentations 2:7 (“The Lord has

handed over his altar of incense”), Origen wrote: “The soul’s altar of incense is the rational

faculty, through which the passions, put to death, are offered as a sacrifice.” Origin’s

tropological commentary resembles a Christian adaptation of the soul-city metaphor in Plato’s

372 Trigg, 80. The term hēgemonikon, translated as “governing faculty,” “is originally a Stoic term … [for] the part of the soul responsible for decisions, whether of intellect, affection or will” (Trigg, 256 n. 15). 237 Republic, loosely occasioned by the verses of Jeremiah’s poem, rather than a close commentary on the spiritual sense of the text. Modern readers may worry that Origen “constructs a poem of

his own with the centos of the Bible just as schoolboys did with the centos of Homer or

Hesiod.”373 With the passage of time, such interpretations can appear tendentious, dated, and arbitrary to the modern interpreter—because they are.

De Lubac preferred the second sequence and argued that Origen preferred it too—judging by the frequency with which he employed it, even if he never explicitly schematized it in his statements about spiritual interpretation.374 While Origen reflected more on his method than

some Fathers, de Lubac did not believe Origen fully grasped the significance of his own methods

and principles that guided him in using the second sequence:

“Methodology is a modern invention, and in the first centuries of the Church Scripture commentators entrusted themselves to the Holy Spirit without being concerned to have recourse to a rationally established method.” That remains true for someone like Origen.375

In the second sequence, which considers allegory before tropology, the tropological sense is

considered in light of divine revelation. The soul is considered against the background of the

Christian mystery. The moral subject is seen as “anima in ecclesia,” on a journey toward

373 HS, 358. De Lubac rejected such an alluring comparison, since he believed Origen did not seek to remodel the meaning of the text according to an extraneous motif as happens in centonization.

374 “An author can delude himself about his true sources. He can reverse in his conscious thought the reasoning of his subconscious” (HS, 176).

375 HS, 161 n. 9, quoting J. Brisson’s Introduction to Hilary of Poitiers, Traité des Mystères, Sources chrétiennes 19, (Paris: Cerf, 1947), 14. De Lubac had already appraised such a pre-methodological approach as natural and legitimate in new theological terrain in “Apologétique et Théologie”: “The ideal is to adapt oneself spontaneously, without being specifically concerned about adaptation, just as one develops naturally without having recourse to a theory of development” (AT, 97 n. 17). 238 Christian perfection and heavenly beatitude. This change of perspective does not occur simply

because of the temporal sequence of thought in the mind of the interpreter. The second sequence

does not merely prime moral reflection by recalling an episode from salvation history so that the

interpreter is more likely to interpret the tropological sense in a Christian fashion. What occurs

in the second sequence is that the mind of the interpreter explicitly adopts a Christocentric view

of history and an anthropology that includes both nature and grace, for the allegorical sense (as

Origen understood it) cannot be interpreted without consideration of those dimensions. This is

why de Lubac spent so much time defending the uniqueness of Origen’s view of allegory; for de

Lubac, Origen’s understanding of allegory is the linchpin of his entire exegetical approach. Just

as the literal sense is the foundation of all the spiritual senses, so too, the allegorical sense provides the foundation for tropology and anagogy.376

The spiritual senses of interpretation are determined by the manner in which one reality

signifies another (Word → Reality1 → Reality2). The second level of signification in spiritual interpretation requires a connection between two realities—a relationship that is metaphysical and historical, not merely semantic or based on suggestive common imagery. Correct spiritual interpretation thus demands that an interpreter has correct metaphysical and historical convictions. When the tropological sense is interpreted after the allegorical sense, consideration

376 The importance of de Lubac’s objectivist foundationalism and his criticism of historicism is central to his acceptance of Origen’s position. The literal sense of the Gospel message, as seen in the quotations of Jesus and Paul, maintains that the New Testament is the fulfillment of the Old. If one eschews historicism and seeks the truth-value of the claims, then one must judge for oneself the Gospel claims about the course of salvation history and human anthropology. The Christian reader, who has accepted the Gospel message as truth, must therefore interpret the Scriptures in an existentially-engaged way that gives rise to the moral and anagogical senses. Thus for both Origen and de Lubac, the theoretical foundations of the allegorical sense spring from the literal sense of the Gospel and give rise to tropology and anagogy. The spiritual senses are in no way extrinsic to the literal sense, but arise from it, given certain general hermeneutical contexts that are sufficiently objective. 239 of Christian morality is framed, at least implicitly, within a specific metaphysical and historical context. The soul is seen within the drama of salvation, as fallen and redeemed, and as subject to the operation of both grace and nature in human history. An interpreter, having proceeded in this way, can readily view the soul from the “three-fold theistic perspective” and place it on the

timelines of the natural world, human history and salvation history. Thus is the soul considered within the full scope of its natural and supernatural potential and with a clear vision of its telos, without which any attempt to describe its ultimate beatitude will be mistaken. In an insightful

but overly sharp contrast, Susan Wood has commented: “the allegorical sense reveals the

meaning of Scripture while the tropological sense reveals the human person to himself.”377 From his earliest writing, de Lubac emphasized how profound reading of any text leads to self- knowledge as well as knowledge of the subject of the text. The superlative example of this

377 Susan Wood, Spiritual Exegesis, 43. She later tempered the contrast: “While the tropological sense considers the mystery as appropriated by an individual person, this is never an individualistic appropriation—because of the social character of life in the Church and the solidarity which unites each person in Christ” (43-44). One must use Wood’s analysis of the tropological sense cautiously, insofar as she seemed to be unaware of the two-fold nature of the tropological sense. In both her book and dissertation, she treated only the individual level of tropology. In the previous quotation, the communal dimension of tropology only arises due to the extrinsic factor of the reader’s membership in the Church, rather than treating the communal tropological sense as an intrinsic part of tropological interpretation. Wood defined tropology such that a collective tropological sense is a contradiction in se: “we can summarize the relationship between the tropological and the allegorical senses by noting that the allegorical sense refers to the Church as the body of the Christian people in communion with their Head, while the tropological sense refers to the individual members of that body as participants in that communion” (43). Given her frequent footnotes to Chapter Nine of Part One of Exégèse Médiévale, perhaps a misleading statement of de Lubac is the cause of her oversight: “If allegory, starting from the facts of history, envisions the mystical body in its head or in its totality, tropology envisions it in each of its members” (ME 1/2:132). While tropology does do this in its individual mode, it is clear from the context of Chapter Nine (and its first section, “Une double tropologie,” ME 1/2:127-134) and from Catholicisme that de Lubac maintained a two- fold tropological sense and a corresponding two-fold anagogical sense: each sense has both an individual subject (the Christian person) and a communal-ecclesial subject (the Church as Mystical Body). 240 dynamic is found in Scripture, and the tropological sense is the primary avenue of existential

engagement with the biblical text.

The second sequence also stresses the communal dimension of the moral life, because of

the communal nature of the biblical understanding of creation and redemption; as de Lubac

remarked in Histoire:

The mysteries [of allegory] … are not past events or distant truths: they are lived even today … but nevertheless they merely make present in each of us the great and unique Mystery of Christ. They develop, from one and the other, within this Mystery … with an objective character and social importance, even when the latter remains implicit.378

The historical perspective at the basis of the allegorical sense helps an interpreter of Scripture to

see his own moral advancement or decline in communion with the spiritual struggles of the

People of God in every age, since the economy of salvation that affected them also affects him.

The second sequence is thus the basis of a two-fold tropological sense in Origen: one may focus on the individual soul, or on the Church collectively, giving rise to what de Lubac has already called “the two registers” of Patristic spiritual exegesis. Tropologically, one may view the Church as the collective subject of Christ’s redemptive activity, or the Christian soul as the individual subject of it, for the latter is only possible through the former. In other words, insofar as tropology considers salvation, and salvation comes through the Church, then the fullest consideration of the tropological sense moves from considering the individual member to considering the whole mystical body, following the model of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 12:26-27:

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together. Now

378 HS, 171. 241 you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”379 De Lubac believed that this was the underlying reason why Origen so readily moved between reflections on the spiritual life of the Church and the spiritual life of the individual Christian in his exegesis:

The burnt offering and sacrifice for sin that the law prescribes are obviously figures for the Sacrifice of Christ, which every Christian must then imitate, reproduce, and, so to speak, consummate in his heart. What use, in fact, would there have been in Christ coming upon earth if he did not then come into our souls? His coming must therefore be realized in us every day. We ourselves are referred to as Jerusalem, “we who are sinners in the Church,” only because Jerusalem is first of all a symbol of this entire Church of which we are a part, and so on. Throughout the commentary on the Song of Songs, the interrelationships of these two last senses are clearly marked—although never with any formal rigidity. The mystical application of the text is made to the Church, and the individual soul is “introduced” only through a “tertia expositio” … this individual soul, who is united to the Logos of God as the Church was united to Christ, can enjoy this union with the Logos and can be taught by him only within the royal house … within the Church.380

Accordingly, de Lubac saw a parallel between the history of the Church and the history of the spiritual life of an individual member. Echoing his earlier statement in Catholicisme that

“mystical ontogenesis is only a reflection of phylogenesis,”381 de Lubac wrote in Histoire:

Christian existence is a deception if it does not reproduce, first of all in its inner rhythm, but also in the order of an external moral activity and social relations, this Mystery of

379 In this regard, de Lubac wrote: “The mystery of the spiritual life, which, in the final analysis, the mystery of Scripture translates, is revealed to be identical to the mystery of what would long afterward be called the ‘Mystical Body.’ With Saint Irenaeus … Origen is one of its first great Doctors. He certainly did not make any abstract exposition of it, but his thought it nourished by it.… To keep what is directly related to his exegesis, we would observe that it is to him in particular that we owe that kind of ‘communication of idioms’ which, in the interpretation of sacred texts and according to the circumstances, applies to the Head what is said of the members and to the members what is said of the Head. He finds the principle for this in the words of Jesus: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ [Mt 25:40], as well as those of Saint Paul: ‘you are the body of Christ and individually members of it’ [1 Cor 12:27]” (HS, 244).

380 HS, 170.

381 Catholicism, 210. 242 Christ that was prefigured in the law of Israel and in its history which is reproduced sacramentally in the Church.382

In “Typologie et Allégorisme” de Lubac made the same point by quoting Saint Gregory the

Great: “spiritales fructus allegoria germinet, quos tamen ex radice historiae veritas producit.”383

This two-fold aspect of the tropological sense influenced de Lubac’s development of the concept of anagogy in Origen, which arises from several dynamics of the second sequence.

First, there is the future-oriented nature of the tropological sense in general. Moral reflection, which concerns actions to be undertaken, their anticipated outcomes, and the ultimate goods pursued, is oriented toward both the immediate future and final ends. Second, the progression from allegory to tropology in the second sequence places the interpreter in a perspective in which he moves from a consideration of past to present, from “history to mystery,”384 from the already-

accomplished acts of salvation history to the present question of how to continue them in the

future. Thus the “rhythm” of the spiritual senses proceeds from past, to present, to future. De

Lubac epitomized this movement in another quotation from Gregory:

382 HS, 207-208. Following Augustine, de Lubac identified the stages in this history as a passage from natura to lex to gratia to patria, a sequence de Lubac called Pauline in origin (Catholicism, 210). Borrowing an image from Plato’s Republic, that the polis is the soul “writ large” (368d-e), de Lubac wrote in Exégèse Médiévale that the Bible depicts the moral sense to man writ large in the history of the community (ME 1/2:134).

383 “Typology and Allegorization,” 136, quoting St. Gregory the Great, Moralia in Job, l. 6, c. 1 (PL 75:730c). In this connection, Susan Wood insightfully remarked: “Here de Lubac closely approaches a sacramental view of history. As Christ is the sacrament of the Father, so in an analogous way the allegorical meaning is the sacrament of the historical meaning” (Susan Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church, 37-38).

384 HS, 192. “To understand the law spiritually is therefore, ‘to pass from the Old Testament to the New.’ It is to observe ‘the order of faith,’ which goes from history to mystery. When St. Paul teaches us that ‘the law is spiritual,’ he means to say to us that it is none other, in truth, but the Gospel.… Then the marvellous harmony that reigns between Moses and Jesus is discovered everywhere.” 243 [T]he most traditional typological exegesis, the one whose source is in the New Testament, does not necessarily rest on dogmatic content, but includes, at least in principle, the moral and spiritual application. For the Christian mystery cannot be stopped short of the Christian life. “Res gesta, aliquid in sancta Ecclesia signat gerendum.”385

The momentum of this chronological progression naturally continues to the future. When an

interpreter considers the drama of the individual soul within the collective drama of the People of

God, reflection on the final state of this drama more readily arises. In this way, Sequence 3

(allegory, tropology, anagogy) sometimes arises as an extension of Sequence 2.

When the tropological sense has been developed with a communal focus, the anagogical

sense ponders the fate of the People of God at the end of history. This is the more common

usage of the anagogical sense, when biblical realities (such as darkening of the sun and moon at

the death of Christ) prefigure eschatological realities (the passing away of heaven and earth).386

When the tropological sense has been developed with an individual focus, however, Origen’s use

of the word “anagōgē” and its cognates can refer to something more personal, relating to the

spiritual trajectory of the individual soul. While still concerned with “the last things” (death, judgment, hell, heaven), this sense of anagogy is related in a practical way to an individual soul’s progress toward beatitude, which is the end of all moral activity.387

385 TA-Eng, 163, quoting St. Gregory, In evangelia, homily 21 (PL 76:1170c).

386 Origen, like some other Patristic and Medieval interpreters, did not always distinguish this sense of anagogy from allegory, because this eschatological prefiguration is a case of one historical reality pointing forward in time towards another for which it prepares. In this sense, de Lubac was content to consider anagogy as a subset of allegory that is concerned only with the ultimate realities in salvation history.

387 “Here we are concerned with final ends, heavenly and divine realities, mysteria futuri saeculi, that are ultimate and no longer symbolize anything else. The anagogical meaning is also the eschatological meaning” (“Distich,” 115). 244 Accordingly, whenever an interpreter reads Scripture with the intention of placing

himself within the historical narrative of salvation, aiming at final realities, he is thereby

“ascending” (anagein). In this sense, any interpretative activity that is oriented toward “spiritual ascent” is sometimes called “anagogy” by Origen. Grasping this second meaning of anagogy is

key to not misinterpreting Origen’s writings in a Platonizing direction when he frequently urges

the reader to transcend historical realities in the pursuit of eternal realities:

It will thus not be enough to “allegorize” … the events and persons of the Old Testament so as to see in them figures of the New if we continue to see in them only other events, other persons.… In its turn, then, in order to be understood as it must be, in its newness, which is to say, in its spirit, in order to merit its name as New Testament, the content of this second Scripture must give way to a perpetual movement of transcendence. The spirit is discovered only through anagogy: tēn epi ta pneumatika aptaiston anagōgēn (the uninterrupted anagogical ascent to spiritual realities). We must consequently always anagein tēn historian (ascend above the history).388

Here, de Lubac indicated that it is insufficient to rise only to the level of the allegorical sense, whose aim is not to discover, in a “disinterested” fashion, a series of correspondences in salvation history. The end of the allegorical sense—of understanding the plan of salvation as figured in Scripture—is what one might call “personal” anagogy: entering oneself into the plan of redemption by beginning spiritual ascent to heavenly beatitude. For Origen, “anagogy” describes both the lofty goal and the process of ascent itself. When Origen spoke of using the anagogical sense “to transcend history,” he by no means counseled a flight from things historical, but rather the most existentially-engaged embrace of salvation history: working out one’s own salvation within it (Phil 2:12-13). De Lubac commented “This is why we find facts everywhere

[in Origen] that we must eis tēn Ekklēsian anagein.… After Saint Irenaeus, before Saint

388 HS, 323; emphasis added. 245 Augustine, Origen magnificently illustrated this cardinal idea.”389 This kind of “ecclesial

anagogy” signifies the appropriation of an ancient text within the contemporary spiritual life and

doctrine of the Church. Examples of ecclesial tropology and spiritual ascent (anagogy) range

from the practice of lectio divina in a parish setting, to the pastoral care of a bishop for his

flock,390 or Magisterial teaching, such as that of John Paul II in Salvifici Doloris which meditates

on the problem of human suffering and the Church’s history of dogmatic teaching.

De Lubac’s systematization of the spiritual senses, as found in the progression of

Sequence 2, indicates what he called the “inner unity” among the four senses of Scripture. For

de Lubac as for Origen, “spiritual interpretation” of Scripture refers to this whole movement of

interpretation. An interpreter begins with history and the literal sense of the text and then

proceeds to understand historical things spiritually through allegory; then his reading engages his

own person in the moral sense and he is drawn into a perspective of salvation that is at once

individual and communal in tropology. Finally, anagogy reveals the final goal towards which

Christian hope is directed, which is also individual and communal, namely, the union of the

believer with Christ in glory, understood within the context of the eschatological union of Christ

with His entire Mystical Body. De Lubac’s concept of “spiritual interpretation” is a fully engaged reading, in which a reader both interprets, and participates in, the spiritual tradition he

389 HS, 202-203.

390 For a recent example, see Bishop Paul S. Loverde’s “Bought with a Price: Pornography and the Attack on the Living Temple of God” (30 Novenber 2006), which addressed the scourge of pornography by placing his diocese in spiritual solidarity with the Christians of Corinth and expounding the contemporary relevance of First Corinthians’ teaching on human sexuality. Loverde, Bought With a Price, 2nd ed. (Arlington, VA: Catholic Diocese of Arlington: 2014), 4, 37, 59, 72. 246 receives. This is the “traditional structure of Origen’s thought,” about which de Lubac warned:

“In misjudging this, we risk misjudging the originality of Christianity itself.”391

Prepared in history, realized in the Church, transmitted by the Church to individuals, and

passed down through history to the present-day interpreter, this spiritual tradition aims at uniting

all men in eternal beatitude in Christ. At once informative and transformative, moral and

sacramental, individual and communal, the “spiritual meaning” of Scripture for de Lubac is

nothing other than the historical realization of God’s salvation of his spiritual creatures.392

One can then see why de Lubac believed the difference between Sequence 1 and Sequence 2 was so great and also why he said of Sequence 2:

This exegesis is not merely Christian…because of its content…[but also because of its] principle; it puts into play a new working of the spirit. It presupposes a totally different idea of the economy of revelation and of the sense of biblical history.393

Sequence 1, in de Lubac’s appraisal, was often sterile. It produced “sequential” readings of the

spiritual senses far less frequently. De Lubac believed Sequence 1 has a tendency to naturalism

or rationalism, which encouraged Origen to get distracted by his Alexandrian milieu, producing

arbitrary readings which would become in time the target of attacks against allegory itself.

Sequence 1 often produced “a tropology that is truly different from the literal sense; it is a sense

removed from the literal by the process of classic allegorism,”394 or by Platonic psychology,395 or

391 HS, 187-188.

392 “If it were necessary to sum up in a single word the spirit of this exegesis, we would say that it is an effort to grasp the spirit in the history or to undertake the passage from history to spirit. An effort both twofold and single, which, by the fact that it transcends history, serves as the basis for this history by giving it a meaning” (HS, 317).

393 HS, 187.

394 HS, 167. 247 by the influence of his predecessor Philo396—all of which de Lubac considered infelicitous

departures that betray, not portray, Origen’s fundamental guiding hermeneutical insight, which is

clearly displayed in Sequence 2.397 Thus he wrote of Sequence 1:

It is easy to see that between this moral sense and the mystical sense that theoretically follows after it there is scarcely any homogeneity, and this undoubtedly explains why very often it remains alone after the literal sense: so that, there again, one has two terms but not three.398

When Sequence 1 produced orthodox interpretations, de Lubac offered various reasons for its

success. Sometimes a firm grounding in dogma had been established earlier in the exposition.

At other times, Origen already had the allegory in mind when interpreting the tropological sense

(effectively following Sequence 2 in his order of thought, but Sequence 1 in his order of exposition). At other times, Origen simply propounded the literal and tropological senses because that was all his audience was capable of absorbing: “The great majority of the faithful, moreover, are more open to preaching of an especially practical character. Not everyone can be introduced immediately into the depths of doctrine and spirituality.”399 Still at other times, the

moral sense of the text had to be expounded first, because a moral impediment had to be

395 HS, 168.

396 Regarding Philo, de Lubac stated “In our opinion, he borrowed too much from him” (HS, 186).

397 Whether de Lubac was right in his appraisal of this key point of Origen scholarship is beyond the scope of this dissertation. For two criticisms of de Lubac’s view, see R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen’s Interpretation of Scripture (London: SCM Press, 1959) and John L. McKenzie, “A Chapter in the History of Spiritual Exegesis: de Lubac’s Histoire et Esprit,” Theological Studies 12 (1951): 365-381.

398 HS, 168. Here de Lubac refers to the tropological sense as “moral sense” and the allegorical sense as “mystical sense,” being as broad in his use of terminology as Origen.

399 HS, 168. A similar point is made in “Distich,” 113. 248 removed from the minds of the audience before expounding the allegorical sense.400 De Lubac

thus delineated several different variants of Sequence 1 that Origen followed in practice.401

4.1.4. “Christ is the Living and Concrete Exegesis of Scripture”

Another key theme in Histoire is the christocentric focus of Origen’s exegetical

method.402 De Lubac maintained that the exegetical approach which emerged in Origen was a

classic articulation of early Christianity’s conception of the unity of the Testaments and of the

unsurpassable zenith of what has been revealed in Christ. Consistent with his own method, de

Lubac articulated this point by “understanding historical things spiritually.” Starting with the

history of the religion of Israel, he asserted that the transition between Old Testament and New is

marked by discontinuity, despite the precedent of re-reading older Old Testament texts by later

ones:

400 De Lubac used the example of two cities to which Paul wrote: “The first—moralis locus (the moral lesson)—is appropriate for the Christians of Corinth; the second—mysticus intellectus (the mystical understanding)—to those of Ephesus” (HS, 162). The Corinthians received an epistle filled with moral instruction, because they could not make further progress until they had cast off their moral confusion and licentiousness. The Ephesians, in contrast, as already more “spiritual,” received a more meditative epistle. Both epistles discussed the Church under the figure of Christ’s Body and Bride and so provided a study in contrasts. The theme is brief and admonitory in 1 Cor. 6:15, only rising to a greater height in 1 Cor 13, after the bulk of moral instruction has been given. In Ephesians, the figure’s employment is immediate and it is richly developed in several different ways in the epistle, because the Ephesians did not have as much difficulty with the notions of body and bride as did the Corinthians.

401 A closer analysis of this point is not necessary to identify the key hermeneutical principles de Lubac sought to retain.

402 See the summary of Histoire above. In Chapter Two of Histoire, de Lubac discussed how Origen’s approach to the unity of the two Testaments in Jesus Christ was shaped by his apologetical engagement with the mutually opposed forces of Judaizing heresies and Marcionism (Chapter Two, Section One of Histoire, “The Two-fold Front,” HS, 51-60). In Chapters Three through Six of Histoire, de Lubac studied Origen’s position in more detail; he focused on the role that the Christ-event plays in the interpretation of the Old Testament for Origen. 249 The historical sense, however, does not entirely fit into the idea of development, of a necessary maturation. It also includes … the essential role played by certain actions that transform everything, analogous to what one calls in biology “sudden mutations.” Continuity and discontinuity are both equally historical categories. If broad, simplistic evolutionary schemes are deceptive in the natural sciences, how much more so are they in history, and even more in salvation history! Jericho fell abruptly, to the sound of trumpets. Idolatrous Babylon was conquered in a single stroke by the Passion of the Lord. The consummation of all things will be sudden. Here, it is not a question of ruin but a sudden flowering.… Israel did not gradually, as if naturally, become the Church.403

He then added that this discontinuity is without parallel in the history of religions:

Whatever might have been the preparations, the progress, the approaches, the decisive passage was accomplished abruptly, in the Act set down by Christ. A supernatural metamorphosis, without analogy in history, and not a process of spiritualization, like what is offered by more or less all religious tradition maintained through long centuries.404

In the conclusion, de Lubac returned to this point: “If in fact the whole of the Old Testament

manifests ‘the uninterrupted continuity of a homogeneous historical development’”—a protasis

de Lubac did not in fact endorse but granted for the sake of argument—even then

this development does not lead us, by virtue of its internal force alone, up to… the New Testament. There is indeed “organic evolution,” but this evolution stops at the threshold of the Christian reality. The flowering of the latter comes from the insertion of a new principle. Up to then, all the supervening novelties, all the metamorphoses still leave us in the Old Testament. At the end of the successive “transpositions” that punctuate the religious history of Israel, the Christian transposition is of a different order. It constitutes, “under the pressure of the Holy Spirit,” a radical transfiguration. Without it, we can already admit a great unity in the biblical literature, which comes from its being perpetually taken up again in an ascending line, but we do not yet have … the spiritual sense. Insofar as the Spirit was not yet given, this sense could not appear. And the gift of the Spirit presupposed the accomplishment of the event of Christ. Then the veil was torn with one stroke.405

403 HS, 306.

404 HS, 307.

405 HS, 459-460. 250 Histoire explored this shift of meaning of the Old Testament with the coming of Christ

by expanding Catholicisme’s brief statements about how Christ “creates” the meaning of the Old

Testament by His coming.406 De Lubac developed this idea in several directions by tracing

nuances of Origen’s thought. Origen often used language which described Christ as having a

transformative effect on the meaning of the Old Testament. Origen spoke of Christ as “re-

creating” the meaning of the Old Testament, or as “creating the spiritual meaning” within it; he

also described Christ as “leavening,” “harmonizing,” “transfiguring” or “giving life to” the Old

Testament with the New.407 De Lubac believed that Origen was attempting to express an

important insight with this language, but his manner of speaking was imprecise.

In the first place, de Lubac rejected the notion that the coming of Christ caused a change

in the meaning of the Old Testament—an idea he also rejected in Catholicisme. He asserted that

there is no “retroactive change” in the meaning of the Old Testament with the coming of Christ.

Objectively speaking, the meaning intended by the Divine Author has always been present in the

text from its inception. The Paschal Mystery is the actualization of that meaning in history.408 If

406 The text of Histoire here borrowed heavily from Catholicisme, although not in linear order. Compare Catholicism, 177-183 and HS, 310-316.

407 HS, 313. See Origen’s commentary on John 1: “Before the coming of Christ, the law and the prophets did not yet have the proclamation of what is clearly defined in the Gospel, since the one who was to clarify their mysteries had not yet come. But when the Savior had come to us and had given a body to the Gospel, then, through the Gospel, he made everything similar to the Gospel” (HS, 313; emphasis in original). Also: “We note once again the incomparable importance that Origen accords the Cross.… Without this act, the Old Testament would have remained sterile in its pure history, even harmful in its ‘letter that kills.’ Like that water of Marah, up till then bitter … [it] suddenly becomes sweet and delectable because the wood of the Cross is thrown into it” (HS, 310, alluding to Exodus 15:22-25).

408 Just as an event which fulfills a prophecy is the historical actualization of the meaning of the prophecy, so too in the case of a spiritual sense, except that the latter does not explicitly describe the future fulfillment in the letter of the text. 251 Christ can be said to create the meaning of the Old Testament by His coming, it is not by altering

the signification of the text, but by bringing into being the things already signified by the

spiritual sense of the text, which are historical realities. De Lubac maintained that Origen

expressed himself more precisely in other places, and concurred with Origen’s more precise

articulations.409 De Lubac preferred this precision because it safeguarded the important

principle that the spiritual sense of a text is intrinsic to it, endowed there by the original act of divinely-inspired human authorship. Even Christ’s interpretation of the spiritual meaning of the

Old Testament, such as He gave on the road to Emmaus, did not impose, add to, or alter the meaning of the text; He only elucidated it.

In the second place, Christ genuinely caused a change in the potential for human beings to understand what is signified by the spiritual sense of the Old Testament, since human understanding is historically conditioned in ways that the divine understanding is not:

Since God is above all duration in time, Scripture, as soon as it exists, has a whole spiritual meaning that it has in the divine intention. Since Christ is man and God, pre-existing and incarnate, the figures and shadows that he projected of himself in Israel before his coming in the flesh are in themselves, if you wish, immediately open to their full meaning, although they must be so for us, in law as in fact, only after this coming in the flesh. But it is he alone who gives this full meaning to them.410

Thus Christ elucidates something genuinely hidden within the text: there, but undiscoverable without the further assistance of revelation.

409 “Of course, we can very well say, and it is thus that Origen expresses himself rather often, that Christ ‘raised the veil,’ that the Gospel makes the law understood in its true sense, and that the Cross changes the understanding of Scripture and not Scripture itself. This language is based … in the idea of divine inspiration. But this is precisely when Scripture is considered, no longer from the point of view of man and his earthly history, but from the point of view of God and eternity; no longer in its temporal writing by a human author, but in its permanent inspiration, which transcends all time” (HS, 314).

410 HS, 315. 252 In the third place, de Lubac believed that Origen’s statements about the meaning “created

by Christ” were intended to emphasize that Christ elucidated the meaning of the Scripture in a

way that is unique to Him and unsurpassable. De Lubac then expanded Catholicisme’s treatment

of the pedagogical view of progressive revelation often used by the Fathers: revelation is

dispensed by God in stages like a wise teacher arranges his lessons so that, at the end of the course, a complete understanding of the subject has been given to the students.411 At times, the

students may not grasp the full significance of what they are learning, but in light of the final

synthesis which they (hopefully) receive at the end of the course, the purpose of all the

individual classes becomes apparent in retrospect. In Histoire, de Lubac makes an important

adaptation of this metaphor. Christ is not only the teacher; He is also the lesson:

To tell the truth, Jesus Christ, therefore, does not come to show the profound meaning of the Scriptures, like a teacher who has no part in the things he explains. He comes, actually, to create it, through an act of his omnipotence. Now this act is none other than his death on the Cross, followed by his Resurrection. It is the redemptive drama and the Paschal Mystery.412

From this conception of Christ’s role in the history of revelation, de Lubac traced two

further points: for both Origen and de Lubac, Christ’s manner of “explaining” the Old Testament

is, first and foremost, by fulfilling it. The entire didactic course of Christ’s public ministry,

together with the Old Testament that provided its context, is not merely an exposition of

411 De Lubac believed that Origen had a profound understanding of this pedagogy that was motivated by the beatific vision and the centrality of charity: “In a more general way, it is connected to the idea of an educational providence, an idea that was everywhere in the air in the second and third centuries. Is this to say, once again, that Origen is simply enrolled in the line of philosophers of his age? Far from that. For, without speaking here of other considerable differences, the mercy and goodness that he discerns everywhere in the history of the chosen people are for him only the sign of and preparation for a work of love that is far more marvelous, that will one day open to us the very interior of the Divinity … this work of love is handed over to us by the Gospel” (HS, 274).

412 HS, 310; emphasis in original. 253 Scripture but the culmination of its central themes. Likewise for Origen, Christ provided the

definitive exposition of Scripture by enacting the solution to the problem of man’s separation

from God announced on Scripture’s first pages. Christ’s “creation” of the meaning of the Old

Testament thus relates to His premier authority as interpreter of the Word because He is its

author and the accomplisher of the salvation announced therein. The events of the Incarnation

and Paschal Mystery are the unforeseen brilliant revelation in which all Scripture converges and finds its ultimate synthesis.

De Lubac expressed this point through meditation on the Transfiguration:

Moses and Elijah, who are the law and the prophets, that is to say, the whole of the Old Testament, the whole ancient “economy,” have no glory of themselves, and, just as they are distinct from each other, they are also distinct from Jesus, which is to say, the Gospel. But here on the mountain, they appear suffused with the glory that radiates from Jesus.413

De Lubac’s enthusiasm was limitless for this Origenian image of Moses and

Elijah unified with Christ only in His transfigured glory as a symbol for the manner in

which Christ provides, paradoxically, the unity of Scripture through his singular,

unexpected, “discontinuous” and transcendent coming into history.414 Histoire contains

413 HS, 315.

414 In a footnote, de Lubac wrote: “This Origenian theory of the transfiguration of the Old Testament is expressed in a way that may seem paradoxical, and some surprise has been expressed with regard to it. However, correctly understood, it seems to us to be one of the most fruitful and most justifiable of Origen’s theories, one of the most respectful of natural contingencies and the work of the historian, and one of the best expressions that can be found of the awareness of the Christian newness in its link with the Old Testament” (HS, 316 n. 178). De Lubac cited Harald Riesenfeld, Jésus transfiguré (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1947) as an inspiration for these thoughts. 254 several such passages,415 but the following deserves special mention because it concludes

with a phrase that resonates with Dei Verbum some fifteen years later:

Let us say, therefore, that Jesus Christ does not so much explain the Old Testament as he transforms it. Or rather, he explains it only after having transformed it. Just as it carries out the passage to the New Covenant, his death, followed by his Resurrection, is the transfiguration of the Book in which the Old was taught. It is not by chance that this unification of Moses and Elijah in his own glory has a place symbolically in a scene that prefigures his own Resurrection. No more than it is by chance that the conversation about the Scripture that unfolds along the road from Emmaus with the two disciples is situated after the Passion. Better still: if we want to comment with precision on these latter texts of Origen, let us say that Jesus Christ himself, through his personal presence, through his work, through his sacrifice, is the living and concrete exegesis of Scripture.416

The Second Vatican Council placed a similar emphasis on Christ’s entire person and work as the

definitive exposition of Scripture:

415 HS 306, 315-316, 466, 502 and the antepenultimate sentence of the work: “Happy those who are invited to see, through a return shock, Moses and Elijah all illuminated with the unique Light of Christ!” (507). The French phrase, un choc en retour (HE, 446) was borrowed from a well-known phenomenon in electromagnetic physics and may best be translated as “by a returning stroke.” De Lubac’s metaphor is subtle, yet exact. The example is taken from a static electricity generator which can charge one metal sphere to a high voltage, and this sphere, in turn, may charge a second by increments. If the generator is switched off, and the first sphere is grounded (thereby exhausting its electrical potential), the second sphere will suddenly respond with a brilliant, intense returning stroke of electrical current, flashing back to the first sphere. In an instant, all the accumulated energy from the gradual charging of the second sphere is transmitted back to the first. In this Teilhardian comparison between the natural and supernatural world, de Lubac depicted the relationship between the preparatory figures of the Old Testament and Christ for whom they prepare. Moses and and the Prophets, gradually received from God (the “generator”) an incremental revelation which prepared for Christ; when the moment of maximum potential had arrived, the Christ appeared. The Law and the Prophets were in a sense “discharged” by being fulfilled by Christ, but, in a returning stroke of brilliant illumination, a whole new level of meaning is passed back from Christ to the prophets of Old. De Lubac’s frequent use of such metaphors from the scientific world is a testament to his belief in God’s design of the natural world as revelatory of and oriented toward the supernatural. For the English origin of the phrase “returning stroke,” see Charles Stanhope, Principles of Electricity (London: P. Elmsley, 1779).

416 HS, 316; emphasis added. 255 For this reason Jesus perfected revelation by fulfilling it through his whole work of making Himself present and manifesting Himself: through His words and deeds, His signs and wonders, but especially through His death and glorious resurrection from the dead and final sending of the Spirit of truth. Moreover He confirmed with divine testimony what revelation proclaimed, that God is with us to free us from the darkness of sin and death, and to raise us up to life eternal. The Christian dispensation, therefore, as the new and definitive covenant, will never pass away and we now await no further new public revelation before the glorious manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ.417

In the fourth place, de Lubac developed Origen’s understanding of the eternal and

sacramental character that Christ imparts to the biblical word—a view which stems from

Origen’s understanding of the actions that Christ performs as the culmination of salvation history

as having themselves an eternal and sacramental character: Christ is far from being “a teacher

who has no part in the things he explains.” Beginning with the narrative structure of the Gospel

accounts, Origen observed that Christ created the meaning of the lesson he teaches in the very

act of teaching it. He taught how He is the forgiveness of sins by forgiving sins. He revealed

Himself as the Light by healing blindness. He showed Martha, who already believed in the

general resurrection, that He is the Resurrection and the Life in a dialogue that occurred in His

raising of Lazarus from the dead. More generally, Christ’s act of teaching the Gospel (the

message of salvation) was an essential part of the lesson itself (since believing the Gospel is what

saves). His proclamation of the Gospel was, ipso facto, part of the accomplishment of what He

proclaimed.418 Origen did not limit this understanding of the word of God to the original proclamation of the Gospel. Just as Christ’s saving power is still in operation, the entire Biblical

417 Dei Verbum, 4. Vatican translation; emphasis added.

418 To use a Medieval definition of sacrament that Origen and de Lubac did not employ, “the Gospel is an effective sign: it accomplishes what it signifies when it is received in faith.” 256 text, since it either prepares for or reveals the Good News that Christ has accomplished,

possesses an eternal and sacramental character.

In this regard, de Lubac believed that Origen correctly noted the transformational manner

in which Christ’s coming affects the Old Testament. Christ endowed the Old Testament with a

salvific power that it previously did not have. Before Christ’s coming, the “old law” was only a

letter of condemnation, “a letter that kills” (2 Cor 3:7; Gal 3:21-22), because it can only indict

transgressions, not atone for them. After Christ’s coming, the Old Testament becomes

manifestly related to the Gospel and thus related to the salvation of the individual in a way that

was not possible before. While Christ did not change the spiritual meaning of the Old

Testament, He unlocked the human potential to grasp its spiritual meaning: He is that spiritual

meaning, full of salvific import. Christ not only made the spiritual meaning of the Old

Testament discoverable, He also made it salvific, by revealing it as pointing to Himself, the

Savior.

Thus Christ created the meaning of the Old Testament in four ways: first, by bringing into being the historical realities signified by the spiritual sense of the text; second, by creating

the human potential to understand the spiritual sense; third, by presenting Himself as the

revelation in which all Scripture converges and finds its ultimate thesis; and fourth, He makes the

Old Testament salvific.

4.1.5. The Spiritual Senses of the New Testament

De Lubac also systematized what Origen sometimes called the “spiritual meaning” of the

Gospel, in contrast to its “historical meaning” or “carnal meaning.” At other times, Origen

ascribed a “spiritual sense” to the New Testament as a whole. Also, Origen sometimes claimed 257 that the temporal Gospel that Christ announced is a prefiguration of “the Eternal Gospel” which

is to come. How is such language to be understood? De Lubac took up this point in Chapter

Five of Histoire, where he was concerned that such language of Origen does not mislead.

First of all, if one understands the spiritual senses according to Sequence 3, there is no surprise in seeing an allegorical, tropological and anagogical sense to the texts of the New

Testament. An allegory occurs when later events in salvation history are prefigured by earlier events which prepare for them. In this case, the earlier events are the historical events of the

Gospel narratives and the later events are Christ’s salvation of subsequent generations of

Christians through the Church.419 These later historical events are both prefigured and prepared

by the saving events He performed during His time on earth:

Let us come, then, to that principle which governs all New Testament exegesis in Origen and that, by that very fact, constitutes one of the foundations of his interpretation of Christianity. “The Savior wanted to make the actions reported to us by the evangelists … symbolic of his own spiritual operations.” It is in this conviction that, after having carefully sought the exact meaning of the text, he proposes that we understand “the sacrament of the Gospel,” … that we “transform the Gospel at the level of the senses into the spiritual Gospel.”420

The “spiritual Gospel” is nothing more than an understanding of the “historical Gospel” (itself a record of past events) in such away that one understands the Gospel’s present salvific import, as revelatory of the salvation still extended to mankind by the Eternal Savior. Thus when Origen

419 In maintaining a true allegorical sense of the New Testament, de Lubac reversed his earlier opinion in “Sur un vieux distique” about the spiritual understanding of the New Testament: “In the case of exploration in depth, the word allegoria seems less appropriate, given that the New Testament facts relating to the history of Christ neither signify nor announce anyone other than him (and his Church, which is the same thing)” (“Distich,” 123). Here de Lubac had in mind the etymology of allēgoreō, which means to speak of one thing using another. By the time he wrote Histoire, de Lubac judged that there could be an allegorical relationship between New Testament events and later ones in Church history.

420 HS, 235. 258 urged his readers to “transform the Gospel at the level of the senses into the spiritual Gospel,” he invited them to see that Jesus still today heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, calls certain disciples to be fishers of men, weeps over sinners, raises the dead, and invites men to be with him this day in paradise.421 Quoting Origen, de Lubac wrote:

In short, it must be said that “everything that was accomplished according to the flesh when the Savior came down to earth was the figure of what was to be accomplished subsequently.”422

Christ operates today through His Mystical Body, the Church, and this operation was both prepared for, and prefigured by, Christ’s activities on earth. For example, by hallowing the wedding at Cana by His presence and blessing it with wine, which was already a symbol of grace, Christ makes the historical event of the Wedding at Cana an allegory for the Sacrament of

Matrimony. 423 De Lubac quoted St. Leo the Great:

421 HS, 236-237. For Origen, even within these physical actions of healing, there is a more profound spiritual operation to be uncovered; for example, in the healing of the paralytic (Mark 2:1-12), where the obvious problem is a physical disability, Jesus looked at the man and first said: “My son, your sins are forgiven” (v. 5) before He said: “Rise, take up your pallet and go home” (v. 11). For Origen, the curing of the physical ailment is a sign of the greater restoration Christ works in the soul. Similarly, with the story of the man born blind (John 9), which uses the more obvious, sensible defect of literal blindness to refer to the more important matter of spiritual blindness which Jesus healed in the man by revealing himself, but which remained in the Pharisees, despite the soundness of their physical eyes.

422 HS, 239, quoting Origen’s sixth homily on Isaiah. De Lubac wrote: “‘Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ Jesus cries out. These words are addressed to ‘whoever refuses to know anything beyond the letter,’ to whoever [sic] ‘clings to that bare letter’ and remains systematically on the surface of the Master’s teachings. For it is not a rare occurrence for Jesus to speak ‘mystically.’ What happens to him also bears a mystical significance. Nothing around him is ‘devoid of mystery.’ None of his words … is to be taken in vulgar sense; but it is necessary to scrutinize with great care even those that seem completely clear … [to] find something worthy of that sacred mouth. Then that will be like a second coming of Christ: his coming to the depths of the soul, that which makes, according to the Apostle, the wise and the perfect” (HS, 224-225).

423 As Origen stated: “When we read the things that happened to Jesus, we must not stop at the simple and literal sense of the story, as if the truth were contained in that. Those who 259 “Quod Redemptoris nostri conspicuum fuit, in sacramenta transivit. (What was conspicuous in our Redeemer has passed into the sacraments.)” There could be no better summary of Origen’s doctrine on the spiritual sense of Scripture—and there could be no better indication of the principle of his spirituality.424

Thus reading the spiritual sense of the New Testament means to read it in relation to

one’s own salvation in Christ. To stop at the literal sense would be to read the Gospel text as

ancient history. Yet both Origen and de Lubac found it hard for anyone who engages in an

“honest” and attentive reading of the New Testament even on the literal level to miss its salvific

import. For Origen, even those who approached the Gospel “like scribes” could still be touched

by it, unlike those scribes and Pharisees in the Gospels who approached the Old Testament in a

literalistic way. The difference lies in the fact that readers of the Gospel do not have to traverse

the discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New to arrive at the Gospel’s spiritual

sense:

If, then, Origen happens to say that there is a letter that kills even in the Gospel, this “letter that kills” is basically, for him, only the fruit of a false interpretation: it is not truly the letter of the Gospel itself, “cujus et spiritus vivificat, et littera non occidit sicut littera legis.” So we can speak with praise of “Gospel scribes,” although their exegesis is incomplete. Cut off from its relation to Christ, adopted as sufficient in itself, the Old Testament is truly lethal. But a similar separation is not possible for the New: whoever holds to the letter of it with honesty keeps the latent spirit of it. In this way, those who touched the clothes of Jesus received already something of the power emanating from his body.425

The remaining stages of the spiritual interpretation of the New Testament are easy to grasp once the nature of its allegorical sense has been clarified. The tropological and anagogical senses

consider them with a knowledgeable mind recognize that there is not one of them that is not the symbol and figure of something else” (HS, 239, quoting Contra Celsum, book 2, chapter 69).

424 HS, 242, quoting St. Leo, Sermo 74 (PL 54:398a).

425 HS, 263; emphasis in original. 260 follow from allegory just as they did in Sequence 3, and both the tropological and anagogical

senses can bear both a personal and communal-ecclesial aspect.

The personal tropological sense is used to discern the application of the text to one’s own

conduct, while the personal anagogical sense is used whenever the Gospel texts are read in

relation to the soul’s progress toward heavenly beatitude.426 In this manner of existentially-

engaged reading, the interpreter begins by following literal sense methods which are well-

determined, and is guided broadly in his discernment of its content by defined doctrine, yet the

personal tropological and anagogical senses have no methodical manner of application; they are

part of the individual soul’s spiritual struggle: “the Gospel does not hand over the whole of its

secrets to either banal meditation or impersonal science.”427 In regard to this “unceasing

transformation of the Gospel at the level of the senses into the spiritual Gospel,” de Lubac wrote:

Just as it cannot be determined by the work of scientific exegesis, even when carried out in the spirit of faith, it will never be fixed in a certain number of established and controlled results, in a series of objective meanings, capable of being inscribed in a kind of canon. This way of understanding it would allow its essence to escape. This spiritual understanding is, so to speak, the breathing of Christian reflection because it translates the rhythm of Christian life.428

For both Origen and de Lubac, the process of spiritual interpretation could easily transition into lectio divina, or spiritual reading, or the applied sense of Scripture, or into homiletics, or pastoral theology. For de Lubac, the exegetical process begins on the literal sense level with both universal methods and critical objectivity, but it concludes on the spiritual level with a reading

426 The explicitly ecclesial context of this consideration will be considered in more detail in section 4.1.7.1 below.

427 HS, 236.

428 HS, 240. De Lubac’s frequent recourse to the metaphor of the “rhythm of the Christian life” is discussed below. 261 that can be markedly individual—indeed, it should be stamped by the spiritual development of

each exegete and be related to the needs of his audience. Above all, these interpretations should

be guided by the Rule of Charity, since Christ Himself taught that love was the fulfillment of the

whole law and revealed Himself as Love. The personal tropological and anagogical senses fail if

they were to remain on the level of impersonal instruction; they cannot be pursued like modern

science that insists that the investigator be independent observers, because these senses, by

definition, must contribute to the moral development of the exegete or his audience. These

senses cannot do so if they remain on a detached and impersonal level.429 As de Lubac said

earlier: “What use, in fact, would there have been in Christ coming upon earth if he did not then

come into our souls?”430

De Lubac observed that Origen’s exegeses often waxed personal or were shaped by the pastoral needs of his Alexandrian congregation, or, at times, crossed over into doxological

prayer:

This wealth of spiritual meanings spread throughout Origen’s exegetical work is … the display of an exuberant confidence that naïvely overflows before the listeners or before God. It is a superabundance of faith in the divinity of the Scriptures, the mystical outpouring. Whence that kind of gratuitousness spread like an aura over some of his exegeses. Whence the captivating and lasting charm of so many passages that are commended by neither scientific acuteness nor brilliant imagery or style. Scripture is his joy and his consolation. It is his family estate. It is the refreshing water in which his soul is renewed. It is the vast space where he explores God.431

429 De Lubac addressed the question of the norms that govern the interpretation of each sense in Exégèse Médiévale; for example, at the outset of that work, de Lubac stated that the interpretation of history is the most rigorous, governed by leges; anagogy has rationes; allegory observes consequentia; and tropology is the most free “circumscribed only … by piety … and coherence” (ME 1/1:15-17).

430 HS, 170.

431 HS, 86. 262

Thus sometimes Origen’s exegesis overflowed into devotional meditation; the line is not always

clear. For Origen, this was a natural and salutary part of spiritual interpretation. Although this may strike the modern reader at times as unguided reflection, insufficiently methodical and at times capricious, for de Lubac, it was also the hallmark of a great advantage of Origen’s exegetical approach: it was capable of integrating biblical interpretation, doctrine and spirituality in a way that modern exegesis often does not.432

While modern exegesis offers great critical and historical advances, it suffers from a

certain fragmented relationship to dogmatic theology and tradition which did not plague exegesis in the Patristic period. Thus, despite the fluidity of Origenian exegesis—crossing over into what one would now call devotional, pastoral, homiletical, or practical concerns without warning, and returning—it also possessed a certain harmonious integration with the whole Christian life which

de Lubac saw as a sign of strength and an indication that Origen had grasped the profound

relationship between exegesis and the spiritual life that modern exegesis seems to have lost with

its technical rigor and spiritual sterility. Simultaneously, one must recognize the provisionality

of many of Origen’s readings, since they are shaped by individualistic factors which may no

longer be shared by modern readers. 433 De Lubac was optimistic that a contemporary Catholic

integration of Patristic and modern exegesis could retain the unified approach, while limiting the

432 As noted in Chapter One, a major reason why de Lubac wrote Histoire and Exégèse médiévale was to “provide a basis, or at least an occasion, for setting up a very desirable exchange between exegetes, theologians and spiritual directors” (At the Service of the Church, 85).

433 De Lubac commented: “These processes do not differ essentially from those we have seen at work with respect to the Old Testament. Processes, of course, that are very artificial, at the service of an exegesis that is often no less so. Dubious expedience. Annoying subtleties. Audacity that is at times worrisome. Small aspects, all too obvious, of a theory whose essential inspiration is otherwise reliable” (HS, 234). 263 fluidity and demarcating the provisional, through a new level of reflection on exegetical method

not present in the Fathers.

For Origen, at least, the personal tropological and anagogical readings are genuinely part

of the meaning of the text, not merely “applications” of its meaning for the reader. The spiritual

sense of the text concerns God’s plan for salvation of the human race: this includes how God

saves me. Origen’s conviction rests on the belief that Christ is a genuine author of the text in

divinely inspiring it as well as the Author of the salvation it narrates. If Christ is truly the Divine

Word, the Incarnate Son of God, then when He performs His saving acts on earth, He intends

and foreknows all the recipients of that salvation; when he performs actions on earth that are

typical of that saving power (i.e., allegorical acts), the reader who receives this saving power can

rightly place himself within the meaning of the biblical text.

The tropological and anagogical senses of the New Testament text can also be read on the

communal level. On the communal level, the tropological sense directs the conduct of the

Church, the collective recipient of Christ’s teaching and salvation. The communal tropological

sense of Scripture is the foundation of kerygmatic theology. Its wellspring is the prophetical character of the public proclamation of the Word.434

434 Relating the phenomenology of verbal expression to the noetic and dynamic character of the Word of God, René Latourelle (Theology of Revelation, 29-35), commented on the transition of the Word of God from spoken to written form in Israel: “In its written form, the word of God takes on a quality of durability and eternity: it abides, irrevocable and infallible. On the other hand, in its fixed form, it runs the risk of losing something of the dynamism that it had in the prophets. It always needs to be actualized and applied to new situations in history, by a constant re-reading, which is itself the key to a new depth of understanding” (ibid., 29). The tropological sense performs precisely this necessary function in the life of the Church. 264 Finally, the communal anagogical sense of the New Testament relates to Origen’s use of the problematic phrase, “Eternal Gospel.” Origen sometimes spoke of an Eternal Gospel, prefigured by the historical one, which prepares for it:

This eternal gospel alone is to reveal clearly to perspicacious minds all that concerns the person of the Son of God, the mysteries that are proposed to us by his discourses as well as the realities of which his actions were the figure. Thus, just as each object from the Old Testament was a sign announcing the New, so each object of the New is in its turn a sign whose reality is found “in the ages to come.”435

De Lubac argued that this “age to come” is nothing other than the final state of the Church glorified, that is, the communion of the saints in heaven. Concerning the communal anagogical sense in Origen, de Lubac stated:

It is the whole New Testament, understood as the complete progress of the Christian economy up to the last day, that also appears to him to be oriented toward a more profound, absolutely and solely definitive reality; a reality that it has the duty to make known by preparing for it, serving thus as an intermediary between the Old Law and the “eternal gospel.”436

According to de Lubac, the only correct way to understand Origen’s term is with reference to the way in which the Church, living in the New Covenant, progresses toward heavenly beatitude.

Thinking of the Augustinian progression of natura, lex, gratia, patria, de Lubac stated that for

Origen, the last three stages of this sequence—the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the

Beatific Vision—are ages signified by the terms “shadow,” “image,” and “truth” respectively.437

In this sense, the Gospels can be said to prepare for, and prefigure, an ultimate truth yet to come.

435 HS, 248.

436 HS, 248.

437 HS, 250. 265 De Lubac believed it was imperative, however, to distinguish this understanding of the

“Eternal Gospel” from another one in use from Origen’s time to the present:

But a more serious error in interpretation has at times been committed. Some have thought to see here something like an outline of subsequent speculation on the third kingdom, the kingdom of the Spirit, particularly musings made by Joachim of Fiore, in the twelfth century, under the title of the Eternal Gospel.… There is not really anything more in common between Origen and Joachim of Fiore than this name, eternal gospel—but this is a biblical title drawn from the Apocalypse.438

De Lubac then held it to be a grave error to interpret Origen’s statements about the “Eternal

Gospel” in a way that made the New Testament only a provisional, transitory and penultimate historical dispensation of God. The age of the New Testament will not pass away and give rise to some future age of the Church in the same way that the Old Testament gave rise to the New.

The New Covenant and the New Testament will endure until the end of time. Only then will grace give way to glory, and the New to the Eternal. Even this transition, however, will be unlike the discontinuity that marked the passage from the Old to the New, because the New

Testament revealed all of the key doctrines relating to the means and end of human salvation.

The difference will be one of clarity and finality:

Similarly, the Gospel understood and lived in the Church is already what he calls the “eternal gospel”—and this is precisely what makes him seem at times to call nothing else by this name but the spiritual understanding of the New Testament.439

De Lubac emphasized this point in Catholicisme:440

438 HS, 251. Cf. Rev. 14:6.

439 HS, 260-261.

440 See Catholicism, 118 n. 31 and 170-174, where de Lubac commented briefly on this subject in his discussion of the relationship between the Two Testaments. 266 [T]he New Testament does not contain, any more than the Old, a complete meaning in its literal sense. Both contain, then, a spiritual meaning, and equally in both this spiritual meaning is prophetic. Yet from the expositor’s point of view, their position is very different. For truth itself is present in the New Testament, though it can be perceived only as a reflection, and to such effect that if the Christian Passover is a transition, yet this necessary and continual transition from the Gospel in time to the Gospel in eternity never goes beyond the Gospel. If Christ is beyond all figures of him, the Spirit of Christ cannot lead further than Christ. The New Testament will never date; it is of its very nature … the last testament, novissimum Testamentum. It should therefore be interpreted … in accordance with those principles that are laid down in it.”441

De Lubac returned to this topic repeatedly because he believed that this misinterpretation of Origen was an error which recurred in Church history from the chiliasts of Origen’s day to the twentieth century. There have always been interpreters of Scripture who treated the New

Testament as a provisional dispensation that stood as shadow to reality with respect to a coming age of the Church. Often these interpreters claimed that their own insight into the “spirit” of the

New Testament permitted them to grasp the coming reality in advance and to behave prophetically in anticipation of the future ordering of God’s people. Since tropology relates to anagogy as means to end, alternative views of the anagogical sense naturally give rise to alternative Christian ethics. From the time of Joachim of Fiore, to the spiritual Franciscans, to some groups of Reformers, to figures in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, this view usually went hand-in-hand with a desire to alter, reject, reform or prophetically revise the structure of ecclesiastical governance as well as doctrine. By the end of his life, de Lubac believed this error was so broad and far-reaching that he devoted a two-volume study to it:

Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore.442 Although Origen’s critics falsely attribute this error

441 Catholicism, 170-171.

442 In 1989, de Lubac saw an analogous error at work in those who interpreted the “spirit” of the Second Vatican Council contrary to its letter, in the name of some future Magisterium they were certain was to come: “I consider Joachimism to be a still-present and even pressing danger. 267 to him, de Lubac argued strenuously that Origen’s views about “the Eternal Gospel” were

diametrically opposed to those like Joachim. According to de Lubac, one need look no further

than Origen’s controversy with the chiliasts, who awaited the pre-tribulation millennial reign of

Christ on earth before the eschaton. For both the Joachimists and the chiliasts, the “Eternal

Gospel” pointed to a coming age of the Church on earth; for Origen, on the contrary, the Eternal

Gospel referred to an eschatological reality.443

4.1.6. De Lubac’s Preliminary “Philosophy of History” in Histoire

In Histoire (HS, 311-323), de Lubac made a preliminary sketch of what he mentioned in

Catholicisme: “a philosophy of history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time” which could serve as the foundation for a modern re-appropriation of Patristic exegesis.444 Unfortunately, his

train of thought is somewhat scattered, being drawn in three directions: first, he was appraising

Origen’s understanding of the anagogical sense of the New Testament; second, he was

juxtaposing Origen’s understanding of history with that of Philo; third, he was describing the

nature of history as such and the function of history with respect to the human spirit—views

which he saw as implicit within Origen’s approach to history. In this section of Histoire, de

Lubac critiqued Origen’s understanding of history that underpinned his exegesis. De Lubac

judged Origen to be frequently deficient in his attention to the historical sense of Scripture, yet,

I recognize it in the process of secularization, which, betraying the Gospel, transforms the search for the kingdom of God into social utopias. I see it at work in what was so justly called the ‘self- destruction of the Church.’ I believe that it can only increase the suffering and bring about the degradation of our humanity … that servile adaptation to the world and its changing idols, sometimes presented as the necessary route of progress” (At the Service of the Church, 156-157).

443 HS, 252.

444 Catholicism, 308. 268 ironically, de Lubac believed that this deficiency was the obverse side of Origen’s profound commitment to the role of history in Christian salvation, a commitment which distinguished

Origen from other contemporary schools of allegorical interpretation: Platonic and Philonic. De

Lubac believed that Origen’s understanding of history and spirit should be profitably recovered by contemporary exegetes and purified of its deficiencies.

The doubly eponymous section of Histoire et Esprit which broached this theme—a section, “From History to Spirit,” within a chapter, “History and Spirit”—indicates the centrality of this topic in de Lubac’s estimation. He opened the section with a statement about the difficulty of consciously reflecting on history:

This is what we perceive poorly today, since this category of history has acquired so great, so unquestionable of value for us—even while it poses us so many questions; and since we are also so little accustomed to reflecting about it. We imagine it to be spontaneously connatural to the human consciousness, and we willingly believe, without further examination, that it justifies itself …. That is why we are so insensitive to the conditions that secure the instinctive possession of it.445

Turning to Origen’s view of history, de Lubac found very little of the contemporary historical critic’s mindset—an unambiguous detriment in de Lubac’s appraisal:

[Origen] did not have the historical sense in the purely human, modern, and scientific understanding of the term. In that respect, there is nothing to distinguish him from his contemporaries. Once the events are passed, he, too, does not dream of devoting a retrospective interest to them: “And of what importance is it to know that the King of Ai was hanged?” These kinds of remarks, which are so frequent with him, are more than the remarks of a preacher or moralist concerned particularly with immediate practice.… They … betray a fundamental lack of curiosity that situates their author very far from us. By that very fact, Origen shows himself to be incapable of the imaginative effort that would be necessary to make the events live again more or less in their concrete reality, in their “color.” Neither does he have the sense of history in the way a post-Hegelian can have it.446

445 HS, 317.

446 HS, 319-320. 269

As previously mentioned, de Lubac believed that the method of intentional sympathy was essential to a good historian’s method. Despite this shortcoming, de Lubac believed that Origen managed to distance himself from the wholly negative approach to history that characterized

Greek allegorists and Philo, “in whose eyes history was devoid of meaning and who actually did not have the concept of it. Once again … [a contrast] of the two Alexandrians is imperative.”447

In Philo’s case, “it assuredly does not enter into his mind to deny [the reality of biblical events], but he does not attribute to them any deep significance. At the most they provide him with a few great memories and examples, pretexts to philosophize.”448 He most often “sees in the Pentateuch only a gallery of images juxtaposed in space, a collection of ideas and precious models for the wise.”449 De Lubac indicated two reasons for Philo’s minimal conception of history: first, his Platonism; second, his static conception of the covenant. Philo did not have a dynamic conception of covenant history—a progression of covenants from Abraham, to Moses, to David, and leading to a future new covenant foretold by the prophets (e.g., Hos. 2:18-19, Is.

55:3 or Jer. 31:31-34)—rather, Philo’s theological focus was on the covenant with Moses as the everlasting covenant, the permanent normative state of affairs of Judaism. For de Lubac, following Lagrange,

This is because he [Philo] makes no room for messianism. Consequently, having no finality, no direction for him, history no longer has any meaning for him. Since the time of Moses, it unfolds without leading anywhere. Purely empirical, it plays no role in his thought. Nothing about it, therefore, interests him. His allegorical system’s “principal misinterpretation,” consequently, is to have given precedence “to the cosmic or moral order over the historical economy” and,

447 HS, 318-319.

448 HS, 319.

449 Ibid. 270 thereby, to have “changed the character of Scripture. Now, from any point of view, we could not say the same of Origen.”450

Origen managed to make significant progress in his view of history in spite of sharing a common

milieu with Philo:

[Origen’s milieu did] not prevent him from really possessing and bringing out that sense of history which is one of the essential traits of Christian thought (and for which those who wish to retain it by rejecting the faith that serves as its foundation can find no other basis except a mythical substitute for that faith). This fact is especially remarkable since the very effort of speculation … had inevitably to rest on a still completely pagan ground.451

Thus Origen’s view of history surpassed that of Philo in two essential traits: first, Origen

possessed a teleological conception of history; second, he was committed to salvation accomplished in time, through historical events, rather than through contemplation of an

ahistorical metaphysical or moral order, to which the phenomena of history might point as signs,

as they did in a Platonic doctrine of recollection.

Nonetheless, de Lubac found Origen’s appreciation of the historical sense of Scripture

comparatively shallow. Origen “did not have the historical sense in the purely human, modern, and scientific understanding of the term.” For example, Origen did not use extra-biblical history to obtain a fuller perspective on the original event, as an historical-critical interpreter would. He did not seek to corroborate the details of an event’s transmission to the biblical author as a source-critical interpreter would. He did not seek “to make the events live again more or less in

their concrete reality, in their ‘color,’” as historicist scholarship might. More generally, Origen passed too quickly from consideration of the historical events in themselves to their value or

450 HS, 319, quoting Lagrange, Le Judaïsme avant Jésus Christ (Paris: J. Gabalda et fils, 1931), 554.

451 HS, 319-320. 271 deeper significance once he believed he had discerned a connection to the role they played later in salvation history. In a word, Origen passed too quickly from the narrative aspect of the literal sense to its spiritual sense.

Yet within this critique, de Lubac found a positive rationale explaining why Origen passed so quickly to spiritual sense interpretation. Origen’s comparatively shallow appreciation of the historical sense rested upon what de Lubac believed was an essential insight into the

nature of history—what can be called the transient character of the historical event.452 In de

Lubac’s appraisal, Origen’s intuition of the transient character of historical events distinguished

him as a Christian exegete from his contemporaries. The only problem was that Origen took this

principle to the extreme and drifted toward an unbalanced position which needlessly deprecated

the consideration of the intrinsic worth of the historical sense. De Lubac found the principle of

the transient character of historical events to be sound. In two passages in this section of

Histoire, de Lubac explained his view; first,

After Christ, the old Scripture in a way lost its literal meaning. Once very real, henceforth, as we have seen, it is outdated. That is literally true for the legal prescriptions, which no longer correspond to the will of God for us. But what we must now understand is that it is also true in a certain way for the accounts themselves. For history is essentially something that passes. The events recounted in the Bible thus, so to speak, exhausted their historical role as they were unfolding, in order to live on only as signs in view of our edification. “The old things have passed away: behold, they have become new.” 453

The second passage was phrased similarly, but contained a few elaborations which relate directly

to the individual spiritual senses and to de Lubac’s notion of spirit in history:

452 Here the term “transient” should be taken in the full sense of its Latin root, transire— “to go over into another place” or “to cross over”—not merely in its more common connotation today: “having a brief existence.”

453 HS, 311-312; emphasis added. 272 Origen’s doctrine, however, includes a second aspect, inseparable from the first.… [H]istory, if it is in fact mediatory, must not hold us indiscriminately. Its whole role, on the contrary, is to pass on.… History … is essentially what passes on. Thus the events recounted in the Bible, whatever they might be, as they were unfolding, all exhausted, so to speak, their historical role at the same time as their factual reality, so as no longer to survive today except as signs and mysteries. In this new mode, they remain for the purpose of our “edification,” which is to say, first of all, for the purpose of our spiritual re-creation in Christ, then for the purpose of our moral instruction as Christians. Thus, in its entirety, up to its final events, history is a preparation for something else. To deny that is to deny it. The truth to which it introduces us is no longer the order of history. It goes hand in hand with spirit. And this spirit that is to be attained with the aid of history is revealed fully only in a higher realm. “In following the trail of truth in the letter of Scripture,” we “will thus be served by history as a ladder.” in that way, we will reach that “elevated place” which God proposes as our heritage.454

In these two passages, de Lubac provided a rudimentary phenomenology of the human subject in time. These brief statements were more suggestive than discursive, nonetheless, they merit explication.

First, de Lubac observed: ontologically, past events are no longer actual. The nature of an event, in itself, is rather fleeting. The people and things that compose events are usually of slightly longer duration, but are contingencies in time: all eventually pass away. But the event— a constellation of certain agents, objects and activities in time—was de Lubac’s focus in this passage. Past events continue to exist in two ways. First, by their effects, insofar as they are the cause of later events which are actual because of the former ones. Second, in their meaning, when we consider the domain of conscious, rational, intentional agents with memories. This second manner of existence is the specifically human mode in which past events continue to exist. Human beings appraise the meaning of events as they unfold and meditate on them and in so doing, craft their future course of deliberative actions. This second manner of existence is the

454 HS, 322-323, quoting Origen’s commentary on John, book 20. 273 “new mode” in which past events exist “for our edification.”455 This thematization of events into

an historical narrative may involve the consideration of many other events—establishing

relationships between them and forming interpretive contexts both short-term and long-term—

but ultimately all events are transient and the enduring character of historical experience lies in

human understanding of it. For de Lubac, past events “no longer … survive today except as

signs and mysteries” and “live on only as signs in view of our edification.”

Events from the distant past, outside of living memory could not “live on … in view of

our edification” without a community to transmit them and some measure of shared values

among members of the community which preserves the memory of an event. Thus, the

communal handing-down of historical memory springs from shared values and it cultivates

shared values in the recipients. The transmission of historical memory aims at a communion of

spirit between tradents and recipients:

455 The same point can be made using an analogy with epistemology. When a person experiences sensory phenomena, the mind rises from sense perception to understanding, which is the final and more enduring form in which the sense perception exists: as an understood memory of a sense perception. So too in the experience of events for de Lubac: the mind retains them not in their brute empirical facticity, but rather, the mind seeks to thematize them, to seek after their meaning. Part of establishing the meaning of events involves relating them to the human subject: seeing events in relation to what de Lubac called “spirit”: human actions, human values, and pursuit of human finality. The fact that a person’s philosophical anthropology exercises a determinative function in how history is understood underlies de Lubac’s remark that those who did not have a Christian anthropology were compelled to find a functional replacement for it (“a mythical substitute for that faith”) if they wanted to adopt the works of Christian thinkers like Origen, in whose works a Christian understanding of people and history played so central a role. Lewis Ayres has noted that “Catholic and Protestant theologians seeking a new integration of biblical studies and theology” who turn to “de Lubac’s work on multi-sense scriptural reading” have often overlooked the fact that his “account of scriptural interpretation involves a robust notion of the soul and its transformation in the Christian life … [therefore] defending a notion of soul is important for those seeking to appropriate pre-modern exegesis” (Lewis Ayres, “The Soul and the Reading of Scripture: A Note on Henri de Lubac,” Scottish Journal of Theology 61.2 [2008]: 173-190). Ayres endorsed a notion of the soul “that finds its mission and true end as imago Dei within the body of Christ … through a credally normed meditation on the text of Scripture within the church” (189). 274 We could not fail then to be struck by this extraordinary aptitude, much more evangelical than Alexandrian, to spiritualize everything.… We will be carried by this “sweet and urgent rhythm” that proceeds … directly from the soul.… Origen will then become our friend. Through him, with him, will be realized once again the miracle of the Christian tradition, which is not only the transmission and reception of a letter but communion in a spirit—in the Spirit.456

Next, de Lubac developed this “general phenomenology” by combining it with the specifically Christian understanding of anthropology and the teleology of history operative in

Origen’s exegetical approach. Origen implicitly grasped the transient character of historical

events and perceived how their final, enduring value rested in the spirit alone; however, Origen

often passed too swiftly from considering Old Testament history to elaborating its spiritual sense

as soon as he discerned a connection to the spiritual realities of the New Covenant. He passed

quickly from history to allegory and tropology:

In the Old Testament, it is true … that Origen much more usually shows the prefigurations of Christ than the preparations for him—and this is one of the points where we differ most from him. But we should not conclude too quickly from this that he ignored the historical role. Rather, let us place ourselves … in his perspective. The preparation, by very definition, has passed: the prefiguration remains. The things that prepared for the Christian mystery are no longer, and nothing will make them live again as such; but they are still recorded in the Book in order to show it eternally prefigured.457

Origen found a basis for this practice in the manner in which the Old Testament was written,

since all the historical accounts were written for the edification of a later generation.458

456 HS, 158.

457 HS, 320. De Lubac then cited 1 Cor. 10:11, concerning Exodus’ record of the Golden Calf and the Bronze Serpent: “Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.”

458 “When Moses wrote that ‘Abraham believed in God, and that was imputed to him as justice,’ this was not done in order to be read by Abraham, who had been dead for a long time, but it was in order to encourage our progress in the faith” (HS, 320). 275 For de Lubac, the mind of the interpreter should constantly rise from the factual record of events to a narrative of their meaning and value. This distinction between the two aspects of history is captured in German, which distinguishes Historie from Geschichte459—a contrast which de Lubac adapted:

It is in no way to disregard the role of history—that of real history, in the first of the two meanings that this word “history” possesses in French—not to seek, once it has played its role, to be reintroduced into its course in order to relive it in thought. Such an enterprise is not to be condemned; it can even be profitable in other respects … that is a progress we could not renounce without a certain loss.… But the essential thing for the Christian who receives the Word of God will nonetheless still be to assimilate the spirit carried within the history and to be nourished by the fruit that it has ripened.460

In this passage, de Lubac re-iterated his point that recognizing the spiritual “terminus” of

historical experience in no way undercuts its genuinely historical character. He emphasized that

dealing with the factual details of historical records (as an historicist might do) is in no way

opposed to understanding them “in spirit”; neither is the objectivist enterprise of recovering not

only the details of the events but the lived experience of the original participants. Yet without

the final movement, all Historie would remain incomplete without Geschichte.

Since the highest part of man is spiritual and eternal, for Origen, everything temporal and physical finds its permanent value on a plane that is spiritual and eternal. While de Lubac

459 The terms Historie and Geschichte did not have this technical, theological distinction until the publication of Martin Kähler’s (1835-1912) Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus, Zweite Auflage (Leipzig: Georg Böhme, 1896). For a short history of this distinction as used by Kähler, Barth, Bultmann and others, see George E. Ladd, “Faith and History,” Bulletin of the Evanglical Theological Society 6 (1963): 86-91. On the prephilosophical usage of these terms, see Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, 21. Auflage (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975), s.v. “Geschichte.” De Lubac revisited the discussion in ME 1/2: 43-45, adding observations from Latin and Greek etymologies.

460 HS, 321-322. 276 believed this statement, he also believed that Origen’s commitment to it frequently occasioned

confusion among scholars, who believed this was the attitude of Platonic and Philonic allegory.

Did not Origen’s adoption of this principle that everything temporal and physical finds its

permanent value in the spiritual and eternal indicate that he shared these schools’ dismissive

attitude toward the importance of historical events and their literal sense? De Lubac repeatedly

insisted that Origen did not share the worldview of these non-Christian exegetes even if some of

his statements seem very similar. The apparent similarity is due to the fact that this idea of

history is now somewhat foreign to us in the modern period:

Seen from a distance, certain doctrinal groupings or certain patterns might seem closely related because they are equally distant from the observer and because a slight common atmosphere envelops them. There has been much confusion, there is still constantly confusion, between the spiritual exegesis of the Fathers of the Church and the allegorism of the Greek philosophers, of which it is the exact opposite. It is much less surprising that at times Origen’s exegesis is likened to that of Philo. The two do in fact have many elements in common—some of which are, in addition, common to rabbinical exegesis.461

While Origenian, Philonic and Platonic allegory share the idea that the permanent value of historical realities lies in a spiritual and eternal plane, their underlying attitude toward the role of

history in the human ascent to that plane is diametrically opposed; in addition, the nature of the eternal realities is different. For the pagan and Philonic allegorists, it is the ahistorical realm of ideas; for de Lubac and for Origen, spiritual ascent occurs in and through historical events. For

Origen, salvation is prepared in time through progressive revelation (a concept founded upon the historical evolution of mankind’s capacity to receive revelation), it is accomplished in time

(through Christ), and it is transmitted to others in history through incarnate means: the Church, the sacraments, the proclamation of the Word, etc. Unlike Philo, for whom spiritual ascent is

461 HS, 182; emphasis added. 277 occasioned by historical events, for Origen, spiritual ascent is accomplished through historical events. Thus, even through they share the conviction that eternal, spiritual realities provide the

ultimate meaning of historical events, they differ completely about the role of historical events in

the process of salvation.462 For Origen and de Lubac, the human spirit lives and moves through

history, but has an eschatological destination: the human spirit is viator, a pilgrim traveling through the present historical economy of sin and grace, destined for a homeland beyond it, in glory.

Accordingly, de Lubac frequently referred to the “rhythm” of Christian interpretation present in Origen, which engages the human spirit to consider history first, then to consider the dynamics of grace within history, and then to participate in that salvific economy with an eye toward achieving one’s heavenly destiny. History, mystery, morality, finality: the four senses of

Sequence Three are a four-step movement, ever to be repeated, as the soul reads the biblical

462 De Lubac later expressed this point: “If Christian allegory differs from pagan allegory by its foundation, it does not differ from it at all by its terminus” (ME 2:100; emphasis in original). By “its terminus” de Lubac meant eternal verities, although his statement here is imprecise, since he made it clear in both Histoire and Exégèse Médiévale that the ahistorical eternal verities of Platonism are not the same as the eschatological eternal realities of the Christian. 278 word in order to draw closer to the Divine Word incarnate within it.463 According to de Lubac,

the “urgency” of this rhythm led Origen to pass too quickly from history to mystery. Origen was

motivated powerfully by the salvific import of exegesis and, in an overly eager fashion, he sometimes moved too quickly from the first step of exegesis (historical interpretation) to the final

steps of the process. De Lubac faulted Origen’s haste, but not his motivation, which was

Christian enthusiasm for seeing in Scripture the saving work of God in history and in the Church

today—a salutary, contagious enthusiasm which de Lubac often noted in his contemporaries

when they first encountered Patristic exegesis and began to explore the spiritual senses.

463 Seven references to this rhythm metaphor appeared in Histoire. First was the “sweet and urgent rhythm” cited above (HS, 158). Second was a lengthy remark on the superiority of the second sequence of the spiritual senses: “But under the second of his forms, the most frequent, the most profound, the doctrine of the threefold senses stems above all from a reflection on Scripture itself as a Christian, in Origen’s opinion, must read it.… [I]t expresses the rhythm of the mystery that all of Scripture contains and reveals. It is basically a doctrine of wholly Christian inspiration” (HS, 182). Third was a statement on the use of the spiritual senses: “Christian existence is a deception if it does not reproduce, first of all in its inner rhythm, but also in the order of external moral activity and social relations, this Mystery of Christ that was prefigured in the law of Israel and in its history and which is reproduced sacramentally in the Church” (HS, 207-208). Fourth was the equation of spiritual understanding and the “breathing of Christian reflection [which] translates the rhythm of Christian life” (HS, 240). Fifth, de Lubac remarked: “Origen could say, as St. Augustine would say, ‘Nec ipse Dominus, in quantum via nostra esse dignatus est, tenere non voluit, sed transire’.… Is this not like the second beat of the sacramental rhythm?” (HS, 322). Sixth was his remark in the conclusion: “For us, who reflect on the already constituted New Testament, we must, through our historical exegesis, comment on this New Testament by the Old, then comment on the Old, in its turn, by the New … a rhythm … whose times … are distinguished only in reflection” (HS, 435 n. 12). Seventh was a brief reference to “the new rhythm [of] Christian thought” in reading the Old, with a cross-reference to de Lubac’s treatment of this theme in the sixth chapter of Catholicisme (HS, 495 n. 217). Likewise in “Sur un vieux distique,”: “The fulfillment … is not a mere reward; it is and always will be the reality of dogma, no longer simply interiorized and lived, but blossoming and triumphant. Allegory and tropology, after having deepened and extended history, are fulfilled when they unite in anagogy. Anagogy then conveys to us the final synthesis; it is the last phase of the unique rhythm whose [sic] tempo has been set by the first level of meaning, history” (118). 279 Thus the “rhythm of Christian interpretation” moves the use of the spiritual senses

according to Sequence Three, while Sequence One appears offbeat. Given de Lubac’s

phenomenology of historical experience and his view of the teleology of history, one can see

why, for de Lubac as for Origen, exegesis remains essentially incomplete if it does not lead to

the tropological and anagogical senses. For de Lubac, it was inherently contradictory to employ

rigorous historical exegesis of the Bible but not progress to doctrinal and moral exposition in an

ecclesial context. For all of their care for the history leading up to the time of the human author

of the sacred text, such exegetes did not see themselves as part of that same stream of salvation

history and so failed to make the essential passage through history to spirit.

For de Lubac, the transient character of the historical event, together with the central role

played by the spiritual nature of man in thematizing history indicated the need for historical

interpretation to advance to tropological interpretation, since the whole purpose of studying

history is to learn from it in order to advance it. If one joins to this perspective a Christian

anthropology and view of history, it makes even more sense to undertake tropological

interpretation by first contextualizing the text within that historical economy of salvation (using

the allegorical sense) and with a view toward the telos of man’s spirit (using the anagogical

sense). Reflection on how history is mediated by a community of shared values highlights the

role of the ecclesial community in traditioning the text and suggests that the values shared within the Christian community offer a privileged position for insightful exposition of the text. This ecclesial perspective need not be the exclusive perspective from which the text is approached, but it cannot be neglected without detriment and must be understood even by those interpreters who stand outside that community if they claim an authentic understanding of it. If one adds to 280 this a Catholic understanding of Sacred Tradition and Magisterium, one can further claim that

the ecclesial community can speak with definitive authority about the meaning of the text.

Accordingly, de Lubac attempted to lay a philosophical foundation for Origenian

exegesis. By reflecting on how history is understood in the activity of interpretation, de Lubac

outlined a natural basis for his theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses. Coupling this with his Christian anthropology, his view of salvation history, and the three-fold theistic

perspective described in Catholicisme, de Lubac began to systematize these insights into a theology of exegesis. However, de Lubac’s views on this subject, while provocative, are rather inchoate in Histoire.

As Chapter One of this dissertation observed, de Lubac was a very implicit thinker and his insights were often slowly elaborated, sometimes without his full awareness of where they would lead, especially in the earlier works. That is abundantly clear in the manner in which de

Lubac alluded to, hinted at, and fragmentarily developed his philosophy of history in Histoire, all

the while admitting that such a philosophy was central. If the concepts of history and spirit

represent the summit of de Lubac’s theological expedition in this volume, he did not give an

explicit and orderly statement of first principles and then proceed downward from there to

discuss its import for exegesis; rather he drew out the principles implicit in Origen’s exegetical

approach by ponderous consideration of copious examples, and then enunciated the more

fundamental presuppositions about Origen’s methods which had escaped many Origen scholars.

De Lubac began to synthesize these ideas, but the task proved larger than he expected. By the

end of the book, he had only partially accomplished his attempted recovery of that “whole world 281 view” once distinctive of early Christianity but now scarcely understood, of which Origen was

“less the author than the witness,” the summit of the quest he defined at the outset of Histoire.464

4.1.6.1. De Lubac’s Retrieval

Several times in Histoire, de Lubac expressed his concern that readers who retrieved

Patristic exegesis would do so in too conservative a fashion. Without naming anyone, he seems to have had in mind catena-style anthologies of the Fathers as well as continuous commentaries which included modern advances in interpreting the literal sense but adopted the spiritual senses directly from the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, without alteration.

De Lubac did not find this approach useful. Such commentaries, offered in the name of

“traditional exegesis,” risked mischaracterizing the essential dynamic of Patristic interpretation in two ways. First, they often treated the spiritual senses separately, developing only one sense, or engaging in a “parallel” reading of multiple senses; frequently, they stopped at allegory, thereby truncating the ideal progression of Sequence Three. Exegetes who fashioned their recovery of Patristic exegesis chiefly by studying the allegorical connections of the Fathers risked overlooking the entire spiritual point of allegory—the tropological and anagogical senses.

De Lubac likened this approach to a kind of spiritual Pharisaism—an obsession with the letter of the Fathers’ interpretations but not their spirit:

Otherwise, even if we had succeeded in forging between the two parts of Scripture the most complete and the most harmonious systems of correspondences, it would still be as if we remained at a literal level. We would still be keeping it from its salutary role. We would thus still be only a scribe or a Pharisee. For, taken in its complete nature, the spiritual sense could not itself be literal. The spirit is not a second letter.465

464 HS, 11.

465 HS, 323-324. 282

Such an approach to allegory, as simply tracing a series of correspondences in history, risks

being a “second letter” that remains a purely retrospective, impersonal mode of interpretation; it

analyzes history, but through the additional level of prefiguration and fulfillment. It does not rise

to what makes spiritual interpretation precisely spiritual: the interpreter’s own spiritual ascent,

which is his growth in understanding and holiness; it lacks “sweet and urgent rhythm”; it fails to

grasp the transient character of historical experience and to find a home for it in oneself:

“[T]here are certainly better things to be done today,” de Lubac wrote in the conclusion of

Histoire, than to “make a card file of the spiritual meanings of the Fathers so as to give to the

public a modern historical commentary after the fashion of Cornelius à Lapide.”467

A second jeopardy comes with the level of authority such commentaries seemed to

accord to various readings from the Fathers. For de Lubac, some aspects of spiritual

interpretation can never be systematized, for they are part of the “breathing of Christian

466 HS, 323.

467 HS, 489. Cornelius Cornelii à Lapide (1567-1637) was a Flemish Jesuit and exegete; the work to which de Lubac refers is Lapide, Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram, 11 vols. (Lyon: Tournes, 1732). In regard to the allegorical and anagogical senses, Lapide confined himself to those meanings that he found in the Fathers and Medieval Doctors of the Church; however, he had a lively use of the communal tropological sense, albeit largely in the polemical service of the counter-Reformation. The same may be said of The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: With a Comprehensive Catholic Commentary, compiled by George Leo Haydock (New York, E. Dunigan, 1852-54; reprint, Moravia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991). A contemporary publication that exemplifies de Lubac’s concern is Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Thomas C. Oden, general editor (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001- ). 283 reflection,” i.e., part of the personal spiritual development that is intrinsic to the activity of spiritual reading. To treat these readings in a depersonalized fashion indicates a misunderstanding of them. To suggest a kind of canonical status for some of these allegories is to overstate their worth, since they were often born out of the pastoral and homiletic needs of the

Fathers and stamped by the particularity of their culture and audience:

To wish, therefore to judge it from a purely objective point of view or to reduce it to some scientific discipline is to condemn ourselves to not understanding it. An enterprise in which a certain number of its supporters as well as its adversaries are joined. From the moment it is no longer borne by the movement that gave birth to it, the practice of spiritual understanding soon becomes nothing but an empty fantasy, little respectful of the divine Word—unless in its desire for perfect objectivity it restricts itself to recording a series of symbols, rating their respective value according to the twofold criteria of how strong the resemblance is to the objects signified and of how many attestations they have traditionally received. A good lexicon would suffice once and for all. And if such an interest is legitimate, it is also limited.468

Commentaries limited to only those spiritual interpretations that the Fathers made are therefore too conservative. Their attempt at a certain material continuity with the exegesis of the Fathers is not, by that fact, a formal continuity, and quite possibly, comes at its expense. By their reserve in making new spiritual interpretations, by their reticence to integrate modern techniques of interpretation, and by their failure to engage directly contemporary pastoral, apologetical or homiletic applications, such commentaries showed that they did not share in the spirit of the

Fathers, who were far from archivists and cataloguers:

If in fact the detail of their explanations, and so many instances, seems so fanciful, it is because that was not for them the essential thing. They spread out comfortably “in the vast field of divine Scriptures.” They had no scruples about exercising their fertile imaginations thereby freely using the “analogy of faith.”

468 HS, 449-450. De Lubac noted: “One can observe, moreover, that the two criteria [the frequency of attestation, and the strength of the allegorical association] invoked are not of the same order and do not always overlap: some symbolisms, among the best attested the tradition, seem in themselves to be very artificial or very flimsy” (HS, 450). Cf. “Distich,” 122. 284 Their sense of tradition did not command them to gather only exegeses already received and catalogued in the Church, but rather it commanded them to enrich and renew this collection with the same fidelity to the view of faith that had constituted it.469

Such “conservative” commentaries do not succeed in establishing a communion of spirit with

Patristic exegesis. They only admire that spirit from afar, and in doing so—admiring, but not participating—they contribute to the rupture of tradition, rather than its recovery:

[I]f we aspire to find something of what was the spiritual interpretation of Scripture in the early centuries of the Church, it is important to look at things both in greater depth and with greater freedom. Without either a return to archaic forms or servile mimicry … it is a spiritual movement that we must reproduce above all.470

More pointedly, de Lubac indicated that this kind of ossification of allegory, far from preserving the tradition, was part of its downfall. Some seventeenth and eighteenth century commentaries preserved—without much critical judgment and as if theologically authoritative—the capricious allegories of the Fathers and severed them from dialogue with contemporary Catholic thought— an approach which fueled a backlash against allegorical interpretation as arbitrary:

[W]hat survived of the old exegesis seemed to be striving to authorize such judgments [of condemnation]. The last adherents of allegorism never ceased to exaggerate its faults. They grasped its inner spirit no better than its detractors.… [I]t is easier to take the part of the ancients than to rediscover their spirit. Narrowminded “figurists” believe themselves obliged to take literally certain expressions of the Fathers and want to find mysteries beneath every word of the Bible … failing to understand both history and spirit, they are precisely the opposite of Origen.471

On the opposite extreme were seventeenth and eighteenth century commentators who proposed new spiritual sense interpretations, but abused allegory with “undisciplined imaginations” and

469 HS, 374-375

470 HS, 450.

471 HS, 486; emphasis in original. 285 subordinated tropology to mercenary intent, “placing exegesis at the service of the passions of their sect.”472 Neither approach was informed by the principles which de Lubac identified at the foundation of the traditional practice of interpreting Scripture according to the fourfold sense.

4.1.7. Inspiration and Interpretation

The final chapters in Histoire concerned the divinely inspired character of the biblical text. De Lubac discussed five characteristics of the biblical text that are consequences of its divine inspiration. First, the spiritual senses within the text can only be created through divine inspiration. Second, divine inspiration entails the inerrancy of the text. Third, divine inspiration creates a certain sacramental efficacy of the text. Fourth, inspiration necessitates interpreting the text with the assistance of the Holy Spirit who inspired it. Fifth, inspiration requires personal conversion in the activity of interpretation. These latter two aspects were developed by de Lubac into a defense of why the biblical text must be interpreted from within an ecclesial context.

Attention to each of these implications is required for an interpreter to realize “the miracle of the

Christian tradition, which is not only the transmission and reception of a letter but communion in a spirit—in the Spirit.”473

For both Origen and de Lubac, the spiritual sense of Scripture is only possible because of divine inspiration. The spiritual senses are part of the intention of the divine author in inspiring

472 HS, 486. This liberal excess, which de Lubac later called “Joachimism” made specious typological associations between the biblical text and events in their own day, after the manner of futurist apocalypse commentaries. De Lubac traced the evolution of this perversion of the allegorical method in Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore.

473 HS, 158. 286 the human author to write the text.474 Only the divine author can possess the providential insight into the economy of salvation necessary to arrange a spiritual level of meaning within the text; the divine author is responsible for the salvific intention of Scripture:

To say that there is a spiritual sense in the Bible is therefore equivalent to saying that it is inspired; in other words, that it is the work of the Spirit and that it contains the spirit … it is to proclaim not only its divine truth but its efficacy: through it the Spirit pours forth. A sense willed by the Spirit, worthy of the Spirit, similar to the Spirit: this is what the spiritual sense is, all at the same time. Coming from the Spirit, it is itself spirit and life.475

According to de Lubac, Origen could not have conceived of a divinely inspired text that did not have this second level of “divine” meaning. De Lubac differed in his assessment:

On this subject it has recently been observed: “Origen confuses proof for the inspiration of the sacred books with proof for the divinity of their content.” The remark is accurate.476

For de Lubac, the spiritual senses are not possible without belief in the divine inspiration of the text, but the divinely inspired character of the text does not entail that there must be a spiritual sense within it. The existence of a spiritual sense within a text cannot be proved to the skeptical from the premise of divine inspiration alone—for example, to fundamentalists or historical

474 Origen was more interested in the inspired character of the text than in the process of inspiration and the psychology of the human author: “[T]he inspiration of the prophet or sacred writer is only a transitory event; it is enough to affirm it, which he does not fail to do clearly on each occasion. But that Scripture itself is inspired, this signifies something else again. It does not signify merely that its origin is supernatural, in the sense that its human authors did not write without a special grace … it signifies besides that … this Spirit dwells in it.… The total meaning that results from divine inspiration is a divine meaning, a wholly spiritual meaning” (HS, 343- 344).

475 HS, 338; emphasis added; this subject of “efficacy” will be treated later. De Lubac summarized Origen’s view which he rejected: “The spiritual sense is thus essential to Scripture: it is not possible to believe the latter without admitting the former. Those who hold onto the ‘mere letter’ cannot logically hold the dogma of inspiration” (HS, 338).

476 HS, 340, quoting DTC, vol. 7, col. 2267, s.v., “Inspiration.” 287 critics. Yet de Lubac considered it appropriate that God in fact did reveal a text with a deeper

meaning and efficacy.

A second consequence of divine authorship is inerrancy. Since God is truly author, He

cannot err. While de Lubac believed, with Origen, that Scripture is inerrant, he also believed that

modern exegetes were preoccupied with the doctrine of inerrancy and so failed to appreciate

other characteristics of the text which were also a product of divine inspiration:

Do we not presently, in practice, reduce divine inspiration to a guarantee of inerrancy by making the latter the sole important consequence, “the principle of fact,” of the former? A very narrow concept, which bears the mark of a rationalistic age.… [T]o push it to the extreme, it could just as well be applied to some treatise on chemistry or mathematics.… For Origen, the effect of divine inspiration could not have so negative a characteristic.… The truth of these Books cannot, therefore, simply be an absence of error. It is opposed to “vanity” and “vacuity” as it is to error.477

Another consequence of divine inspiration for both de Lubac and Origen is the need to read

Scripture as a whole, as the unified work of one divine author:

One single Word, one single Spirit, one single sense. Not a single line in the Bible is devoid of the wisdom of God; all is inspired, all, down to the least detail, to the least letter; but always in the Whole, since there is no spiritual sense of the Bible considered otherwise than as a whole. Whatever he might do in practice … Origen could not be reproached for making either inspiration or true exegesis an atomistic ideal.478

In a footnote, de Lubac commented: “It could, on the contrary, be said that the ‘unity of design’

of biblical revelation was ‘too often lost from view by the atomism of modern criticism.’”479

477 HS, 340-341.

478 HS, 345-346; emphasis in original.

479 HS, 346 n. 51, quoting Louis Bouyer, “Où en est la théologie du Corps mystique?” Revue des sciences religieuses 22 (1948): 332. 288 A third consequence of divine authorship was what de Lubac called the supernatural

efficacy of the text:

When he is addressing pagans, Origen also brings out another characteristic of the Scriptures that testifies to their divine origin. They are not, like the best writings of the Gentiles, more or less empty preaching, fine discourses that change nothing in the course of the world. Their teaching is efficacious.… By its efficacy as by its plenitude, Scripture participates in the truth of God.480

In Scripture, God communicates with man for the purpose of his salvation, and God does nothing

in vain. Since “Apologétique et Théologie,” for de Lubac evangelical effectiveness is the

hallmark of theological authenticity and so he was attuned to the supernatural efficacy of

Scripture when discussing the source of theology. While de Lubac often found deficient the

approach to revelation taught by the theology manuals of his day, he did endorse some of their

common arguments: the prodigious spread of the Gospel in the early Church despite vigorous

persecution and the simplicity of the Apostles as a miraculous proof of the Church’s divine

origin.481

Correlating to the salvific intent and efficacy of the text was the role of faith in its

interpretation. De Lubac explained that only superficial understanding is possible by natural

reason alone; profound comprehension requires faith and conversion of heart:

Man can indeed read this book, written, like all other books, in their human language; they can indeed be instructed, thanks to it, about the history of Israel and the life of Jesus; they can indeed find out about all sorts of points of moral and religious doctrine that are set forth in it: they do not, for all that, understand it. He alone understands it who, in the unity of its divine intention, carries out the

480 HS, 342.

481 Cf. Adolphe Tanquerey, “Legatio Divina Christi Constat ex Miraculosa Propagatione Primaevi Christianismi” and “Legatio Divina Christi ex Heroica Martyrum Constantia Probatur” in Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae, vol. 1, Synopsis Theologiae Dogmaticae Fundamentalis, 334-371. 289 movement of conversion to which God was inviting him through all these words.482

For de Lubac, the text invites the reader not only to read it, but to engage in a dialogue with God

through the intermediary of the text.

The consideration of the Book must be completed by that of its reader. Scripture is to be understood as a single whole: But who can understand it thus? Who can sift out its meaning by reconstituting its profound unity? If we want to grasp Origen’s thought correctly in this regard, we must abandon the point of view— which is too purely objective, too impersonal, and also too purely intellectual— that we have almost never ceased to maintain since the beginning of this study. Scripture is not a document handed over to the historian or the thinker, even to the believing historian or thinker. It is a word, which is to say, the start of the dialogue. It is addressed to someone from whom it awaits a response. More precisely, it is God who offers himself through it, and he awaits more than a response: a return movement.483

Here one may recognize a parallel with the Second Vatican Council’s teaching about divine revelation. Just as de Lubac framed his interpretation of revelation in terms of dialogue with

God, so too did Dei Verbum in its opening lines:

[T]his present council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation and how it is handed on, so that by hearing the message of salvation the whole world may believe, by believing it may hope, and by hoping it may love.… Through this revelation, therefore, the invisible God out of the abundance of His love speaks to men as friends and lives among them, so that He may invite and take them into fellowship with Himself.484

De Lubac’s dialogical understanding of exegesis is an application of his general theory of

interpretation as mentioned above.485 There de Lubac described the method of intentional

sympathy as an essential step in genuine interpretation; here, he applied this concept to

482 HS, 347.

483 HS, 346-347; the last phrase is: “un mouvement de retour” (HE, 303).

484 Dei Verbum, 1-2. Vatican translation; interlinear Scriptural references omitted.

485 See the analysis in section 4.1.1. 290 the reader of Scripture. There de Lubac viewed reading any text as dialogical: involving

existential engagement, a process which simultaneously elucidated more clearly a text’s

meaning and a reader’s own intellectual position as a consequence of reading it.486 Here, several consequences arise when a reader dialogically engages with the Divine Word in the Scripture, rather than a merely human word.

First, while interpretation still remains a dialogue, the emphasis falls more heavily on conversion rather than conversation. Seen from the perspective of faith—a perspective which even the literal sense of the text calls a reader to have in approaching it—the author with whom one engages in dialogue is God and so the moral sense of the text is inerrant and the call to conversion is total. Differences between the worldview of

the Author and the reader are charged with a dynamic that does not come into play when

a reader is on an intellectual par with a fallible human author.

Second, since the divine author of the sacred text is also the author of human

nature and salvation history, the depth of self-insight is more profound than with any

other text. A reader should come to a greater self-awareness as a creature, as a spiritual being with a supernatural vocation to God, as fallen and as redeemed, not only in an individual perspective, but in communal perspective as well.487

486 De Lubac consistently maintained this position from his earliest works; he first stated in AT that “dogma reveals us to ourselves” and then developed this point briefly in connection with exegesis in Catholicisme.

487 This was de Lubac’s development of the three-fold theistic perspective in Catholicisme.

291 This leads to a third point, new to Histoire. In order for a reader to carry out such

a profound act of self-interpretation in the process of interpreting the text, the assistance

of the Holy Spirit is required:

The man who reads the Bible does not have a human book before him: there are no human processes that can open the understanding of it to him. The Spirit who inspired it at the time of its writing is also the one who now makes it understood. Or rather, there is as if a twofold inspiration; the first, for its human authors; the second, analogous one, for its readers and interpreters … “the same power is necessary for the prophets and for those who listen to them”.… thus Scripture cannot be explained “otherwise than in the same spirit who was its author in the beginning.” He alone, in the final analysis, the Paraclete, “is the true exegete.”488

Only the Holy Spirit comprehends the full meaning of the text. A human reader needs grace for several reasons: the message exceeds what reason alone can know; the dynamics of sin may make readers either blind or opposed to certain aspects of the text;489 and the act of conversion

entailed by personal tropological and anagogical interpretation are spiritual dynamics, requiring

grace:

Each of us is naturally blind: our eyes must be opened. If the action of Christ was necessary to give the Old Testament its complete meaning, conversion to Christ is no less indispensable for making us discover it.… [W]e have seen this in principle; … we must now … cash in this assertion and see what it involves in practice in the regular course of the Church’s life.490

488 HS, 361-362. The first quotation is from Gregory Thaumaturgus, Oration and Panegyric Addressed to Origen, 15 (PL 10:1094-1095). The latter two are from Origen, Homélies sur l'Exode (Paris : Cerf, 1947), 63.

489 On the ascetical dimension of the exegetical act, de Lubac wrote: “We will not forget, therefore, that understanding is not a mere matter of cleverness of mind, even a mind illuminated by God, but of purity of heart, of uprightness, and the simplicity, together with a certain ‘lightness’: a heart weighed down by love of material goods is incapable of discerning in Scripture the mystery of its salvation. It will thus be necessary to mortify its taste for worldly activities and its attraction for sensible things; it will be necessary to distance itself from ‘the life according to flesh and blood, so as to become worthy of receiving the spiritual secrets’” (HS, 366, quoting Origen, Homélies sur l'Exode, 63). This point was amplified in Exégèse médiévale.

490 HS, 362. 292

Since dialogical engagement with a divinely inspired text means raising a reader up to God, de

Lubac sought to avoid the exegetical Pelagianism of those who believed they could fully interpret the text by reason alone:

[Origen] always understood his work in moral teaching or preaching only as a function of the Church and as an activity subject to the Spirit. The “ecclesiastical soul,” in fact, always believes that the understanding of Scriptures is a gift that it must prepare itself to receive. It knows that this understanding is absolutely impossible without illumination: Asphragistos gar kai akubernētos tas theias graphas epignōnai ou dunatai. (For one who has not been sealed and is without a guide cannot understand the divine Scriptures.) We will therefore employ “all the resources of our mind” in the explanation of the texts, but at the same time we will ask God to “make understood what corresponds to the intentions of the Scriptures.” After having examined the letter to the best of our ability, we will implore “the grace of the Spirit” to penetrate the mystery of it. Raising both “the hands of the body and the hands of the soul,” we will pray to “the Father of the Logos” that he might grant something of that “sense of Christ” which was granted so eminently to the Apostle. We will beg Jesus himself to come and appear in some way in the midst of the assembly in order to teach his faithful and to open to them the meaning of the passages that concern him. Only this “epiphany of the power of Jesus” will be able to enlighten us because by it alone will our hearts first be changed.491

De Lubac presented the final cause of exegesis as the salvation of the interpreter and the glorification of God. To alter a phrase from Pickstock, this is the doxological consummation of exegesis.492 This perspective permitted de Lubac to say, even more forcefully, that only those who had achieved a state of grace through conversion could understand Scripture in its profounder senses:

491 HS, 364-365; emphasis added. See de Lubac’s reading of the Road to Emmaus story, HS, 365.

492 Catherine Pickstock, After Writing: On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 39-40. 293 The Church alone understands Scripture, the Church, that is to say, that portion of mankind that is converted to the Lord: “Ecclesiae ad Deum conversae ablatum est velamen.”493

Accordingly, there is a communal dimension to the “subjective conditions of understanding

Scripture.”

4.1.7.1. The Ecclesial Context of Interpretation

Every reader’s apprehension of the biblical text is limited. Perfect conversion and union with God are only an eschatological reality for anyone other than Christ. Yet for de Lubac, a fuller comprehension of Scripture is possible for the Church as a collective reader:

Since exegesis of necessity is concerned with particular texts, and since it is also of necessity the work of particular individuals, of members of the Church among many others, it is impossible to affirm that it uncovers, in its authenticity and particularly in its fullness, the divine Meaning. For this Meaning—infinitely mysterious and profound, since in the final analysis it is none other than “Christ himself”—is concerned … with the whole of Scripture, and, on the other hand, the Spirit does not communicate it to any particular individual but to the whole assembly of the faithful.494

Thus, reading a text not only reveals the mind of the divine author, but also reveals the reader to himself. When the Church reads Scripture, it becomes more aware of the manner in which the

Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Each and every member of the Church who reads the spiritual sense of Scripture is then more closely integrated into that Body:

[Scripture] remains impenetrable to all those who have not been “renewed in the Spirit.” From which derives the continued work of the Spirit in the Church, from generation to generation and across each generation in the history of each soul.… The “anima in Ecclesia” … benefits from his light; whether she herself is striving to decipher something of the “mystical dispensations” or whether she is simply receiving the proclamation of it.… She brings a more or less personal part to their

493 HS, 347, quoting Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, chapter 3.

494 HS, 371-372. 294 reading, according to the talents that have been confided to her. But in any case, this reading is not at all individualistic, guided as it always is by “the analogy of faith,” which is itself based … on the living rule “that the heavenly Church holds from Jesus Christ through the tradition of the Apostles.”495

The analogia fidei, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium are then important rules guiding this

exegesis of the Church. Yet de Lubac did not want to discuss the role of Tradition in Histoire;496 neither did he discuss further the role of the Magisterium, although he considered it an essential guide to correct interpretation: “the essential and final criterion ever remaining the analogy of faith, which, as we will never forget, is an ecclesial criterion.”497

The final chapter of Histoire—“Incorporations of the Logos”—outlined the synergies between Scripture and other embodiments of the divine Word. One embodiment is in the

Sacrament of the Eucharist, another is in the cosmos, and a third is in the soul of the believer by sanctifying grace. Each embodiment of the Word helps reveal the others: “Now there are not two Words any more than there are two Spirits.”498 Deeper participation in one embodiment

facilitates deeper understanding of the others by a kind of connatural knowledge. In all cases,

the Word is embodied to make Himself more apprehensible:

In this way, Scripture seems like a first incarnation of the Logos. He who is by nature invisible can be seen and touched in it, as if in the flesh that he was then to assume; and reciprocally, the flesh is a letter that makes him readable to us.… Origen, however, often goes farther. He does so, for example, by using the word “logos” with a deliberate vagueness. These “mysteries of the Logos” with which Scripture is full are those of Jesus Christ.… This nourishment for our souls that is

495 HS, 363, quoting Peri Archōn, 4.2.2.

496 HS, 432 n. 5: “Thus we will not consider explicitly the relationship between a spiritual understanding and the idea of tradition, which is nevertheless one of the main aspects of the problem.”

497 HS, 493.

498 HS, 385. 295 the Word of God is assuredly Whole Scripture, but it is also and at the same time Jesus himself, “living bread come down from heaven.”499

Origen believed that the four senses could be used to read these other incarnations of the

Word as well:

Origen’s doctrine of the spiritual sense is not restricted to the Whole Book. It extends to all other manifestations of the Logos and to all forms of his action with regard to men. Let us make a distinction here between two subsets: on the one hand, the relation of Scripture to the human soul and to the whole universe; on the other hand its relation to the Church and to the Eucharist.500

The synergy between Scripture and the Eucharist is new to Histoire. Reception of one assists the reception of the other. Scripture and the Eucharist are intimately linked and so constitute the heart of the Church’s liturgy, the two-fold liturgy of the Word and liturgy of the Eucharist at

Mass. Weaving his own words together with those of Origen, de Lubac stated:

The life of the Church has its source in Scripture. It has it no less in the Eucharist. Scripture and Eucharist, moreover, appear closely associated in everything, since it is in the midst of the same assembly, in the course of the same liturgy, that the Bread of the Word is broken and the Body of Christ is distributed. Both are the object of the same veneration. “You know,” says Origen, in a famous text, “you who are used to assisting at the divine mysteries with such religious care, when you receive the Body of the Lord, you take care lest the least morsel fall from it.… You would think yourselves blameworthy, and so you would truly be, if that were to happen through your negligence.… Now … how could it be less serious to neglect the Word of God than his Body?” It is not possible for Scripture and the Eucharist not to be made, so to speak, from the same material, and not to constitute at bottom the same Mystery, since in both of them, it is the same Logos of God who comes to us and lifts us up to him.501

499 HS, 387.

500 HS, 396. De Lubac dedicated several pages to a discussion of the embodiment of the Word in the cosmos in Histoire, but his treatment here did not go beyond the principles already discussed in Catholicisme concerning how natural science and exegesis mutually enrich each other.

501 HS, 407. De Lubac provided a brief excursus to rebut those who claimed that Origen did not believe in the Real Presence because he attributed a “spiritual sense” to the Eucharist. Just as Origen’s belief in a spiritual sense of the biblical narrative in no way opposed its 296

In a reprise of this phrase that would become famous, de Lubac stated: “Scripture and the

Eucharist … never cease to ‘build up’ the Church.”502 This expression, new to Histoire,

conveyed better the dynamics of grace in the Church and also has more apologetical vigor since

it incorporates the place of Scripture within the Church. Yet the popular summary of de Lubac’s

doctrine—“The Church makes the Eucharist and the Eucharist makes the Church”—still captures

the more prominent aspect of his thought:

But the comparison ends as a hierarchy. Therein lies the Origenian paradox. Is it not obvious for us that in the Eucharist we have the Lord himself, while in the Scripture we still have only his Word?503

In his typical fashion, however, de Lubac proceeded to escalate the paradox by developing the

image of Scripture as a book to be consumed (Ezek. 3:1) and to emphasize that the mastication

of the Eucharist consists in spiritually assimilating it as the epitome of Christ’s doctrine. Origen

recognized this intimate nexus of mysteries at the heart of the Church, but the theological

balance remained to be struck by him:

Scripture, Church, Eucharist: if he did not always succeed in elucidating perfectly the relation of these three terms, Origen at least saw that they were related. Situating himself at the center of the faith, he made an effort to understand them by means of each other.504

historicity, so too, when Origen spoke of a higher, spiritual significance to the Eucharist, this in no way derogated his belief in the real presence of the Body of Christ in the sacrament. De Lubac observed that those who accuse Origen of an allegorization that dissolves biblical history into unreal symbolism likewise accuse him of spiritualizing the Eucharist at the expense of belief in the Real Presence.

502 HS, 418.

503 HS, 418.

504 HS, 421. 297 De Lubac believed that a recovery of this Eucharistic and ecclesial perspective via interpreting

Scripture had enormous potential for the Church. He suggested that the liturgy might be a

privileged place for the interpretation of Scripture, but he did not pursue the point in Histoire but

did reflect on it more in Exégèse médiévale—a work which he hoped would be a catalyst for

liturgical-exegetical integration, but as he stated: “My timid hope was disappointed”505

Nonetheless, one can note a synthesis between the perspective of Histoire and Exégèse

médiévale and some contemporaneous works of the liturgical movement; for example, a

chapter—“The Liturgical Year: History or Mystery?”—in Volume One of Pius Parsch’s The

Church’s Year of Grace, where Parsch observed that the interpretation of liturgy can be initially

confusing to some because of the multiple senses that seem to be involved in a liturgical text:

Sometimes the texts reflect the purely historical, yet so vividly as to make the events seem current. At times the entire action pertains to the present, as grace is petitioned and proclaimed. Or our sights are lifted high, to the parousia, to heaven and judgment, with the future clearly scored. In doing so the liturgical texts leap directly from one area of reference to another, even within the same sentence. Often it is doubtful which area is intended; or perhaps it is left undecided. We may wonder how we are to absorb and profitably employ this lively variation in perspective. What does the liturgy expect of us? Does it wish to recall the story of salvation? It is offering us grace in the present? Or is it perhaps seeking to prepare us for the life to come?506

Parsch’s answer affirmed all three purposes of the liturgy and proposed a three-fold interpretation of liturgical texts, which he called: the “historical plane” which “represents events from history so vividly as to make them appear as happening before us today”; the “plane of grace” which “proclaims or produces God’s life in our souls”; and the “eschatological plane,”

505 At the Service of the Church, 85.

506 Pius Parsch, The Church’s Year of Grace, vol. 1, Advent to Candlemas, transl. William G. Heidt (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1962), 3 (originally published as Das Jahr des Heiles [Klosterneuberg: Volksliturgische Apostolat, 1947]). 298 which treats “of the end of time, of the parousia, of the next life, of heaven and hell.” Like de

Lubac’s descriptions of the historical, tropological and anagogical senses, Parsch’s three planes

are sequenced and each depends on the previous: the historical plane “serves as a framework for

the plane of grace. And the plane of grace is the pledge of future glory; it is eschatologically

prognostic.” The eschatological plane “is the consummation of the other two planes of liturgical activity, the end for which they exist and were providentially planned.”507 Here one can see a

parallel between de Lubac’s exegetical theology and Parsch’s liturgical theology—fulfilling de

Lubac’s hope that a recovery of Patristic exegesis could have an invigorating effect on the

understanding of the liturgy.

After setting his theology of biblical interpretation within this ecclesial perspective, de

Lubac reprised yet again his treatment of the individual interpreter of Scripture under the heading

of the synergy between Scripture and the soul. Accordingly, he highlighted the mystical reading

of Scripture that is most individual and most intimate, but only after establishing this mysticism

in the metaphysical order of creation, in the order of grace and salvation history, and in its

ecclesial context as the meditations of anima in ecclesia. In recovering this aspect of Origen’s

thought, de Lubac made it very clear that this “mystical insight” into Scripture would serve as a

building block of that “integrated humanism” of which Catholicisme spoke and which he found

exemplified in such thinkers as John Henry Newman. De Lubac observed how Scripture and the

soul are both embodiments of the Word:

There is, first of all, a connaturality between Scripture and the soul. Both are a temple in which the Lord resides, a paradise in which he can stroll … the faithful soul, sensitive to this relationship, loves Scripture instinctively … the soul and Scripture, symbolizing each other, thus inform each other. It would be harmful to

507 Parsch, 3-4. 299 neglect the study of either one. There are two books that must be read together and must comment on each other.508

De Lubac then discussed how Origen understood the synergy between mystical

contemplation and exegesis:

If I need Scripture in order to understand myself, I also understand Scripture when I read it within myself. One should not object to Origen that such a method is very subjective. It does not intend to cover the inventions of the literal sense. It presupposes that “the Word of God is sunk into the depths of man” and that the truth received is interiorized. But is it not natural and legitimate that I find within myself, under the action of the Word, the meaning of that Word that explains me to myself? Is that, too, not a sign of the unity that marks all the works of the one God? What I draw from myself with respect to the Bible, provided that it is really, in fact, from the depths of myself, I draw from the Bible also; since Scripture and the soul have the same … “inspiration”; since one and the same divine breath gives birth to them and never ceases to animate them.… [T]o the degree that I penetrate its meaning, Scripture makes me penetrate the inmost depths of my being; it is thus the sign that normally reveals my soul to me; but the converse also has its truth. The one serves the other reactively.509

4. 2. Conclusion: De Lubac’s Hermeneutics

Histoire et Esprit and its related essays were the mature expression of de Lubac’s

hermeneutics. The Introduction and some remarks in Chapters Six through Eight of Histoire

provide a brief statement of de Lubac’s general hermeneutics for reading any ancient text, as

well as his theological hermeneutics for reading Scripture. In the Introduction, he posited as a

basic principle—understanding the text “accurately within the framework of problems

contemporaneous [to the author and] … understanding his doctrine according to the questions to

508 HS, 398.

509 HS, 398. In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac treated the role of spiritual discipline, contemplation and individual interpretation in more detail.

300 which it was actually responding.”510 To achieve this aim, he praised the methods of empiricist historicism as an initial step in the act of interpretation, but denied that the full meaning of a text can be ascertained simply by analyzing it within its original milieu. He critiqued empirical historicism’s methodological detachment from its subject matter and its tendency to relativize the meaning of the text by bracketing its truth value and its relationship to the milieu of the contemporary reader. It is not sufficient to read an ancient text merely to adduce “wie es eigentlich gewesen,” according to Ranke’s dictum.

For de Lubac, “bringing out the essence” of a text requires tempering the detailed recovery of its historical background with the principle of “intentional sympathy” or “intentional alignment” with the text—a principle which de Lubac appropriated from objectivist hermeneutics. A text ought not to be approached in a “disinterested” way. Rather, a full reading can and should engage the intellectual commitments of its interpreter. Only a false notion of objectivity fails to inquire into the truth value of the text itself and its implicit foundations. On the other hand, “intentional sympathy” does not mean an eisegesis according to the interpreter’s own intellectual perspective. The eisegetical tendency of “intentional sympathy” must be checked and balanced by “methodological docility”: letting the text speak and then evaluating it.511 Such a reading “cannot be done without [a] risk”512 of existential engagement with the text and requires that an interpreter foreground his own commitments when entering into the dialogical process of interpreting ideas that are different from his own. Neither the text nor the interpreter enjoys presumptive infallibility. Interpreters must recognize their own historically-

510 HS, 12.

511 HS, 13-14.

512 HS, 12. 301 conditioned finitude of perspective and proneness to error. Meaningful interpretation results from the intersection of the worldview of the interpreter and the worldview of the text—with an attitude of dialectical humility, a hermeneutic which Gadamer would later describe as “the fusion of horizons.”

For de Lubac, the passage of time provides not only a challenge to an interpreter

(signified by the need for historical recovery) but also a benefit. Each age has its own vantage point on an ancient text which “illuminates one aspect” of a work while “leaving others in shadow.” Yet later generations can still perceive, at least obliquely, the perspectives of earlier generations. Reading a text together with its tradition of reception assists an interpreter in foregrounding his own interpretive presuppositions and raising questions he would not otherwise think to ask. Considering what a text meant to its original audience is an essential first step in the interpretive process, but it does not disclose a text’s total meaning. Studying a text through the lens of its historical reception can reveal further aspects of its meaning beyond what its original audience perceived. Indeed, later readers might perceive some aspects of the text which did not even enter into the conscious reflection of the original author. Tradition then has the potential to serve as a focusing lens to later interpreters, yet the lens offered by tradition could also be distorted by misreading and error. Indeed, de Lubac’s reading of Origen was, for the most part, a critique of long-standing misreading of Origen in the scholarly tradition: a work’s tradition of reception must be approached critically. The judgments of previous interpreters must be, like the text itself, contextualized and evaluated. The perspective of tradition is not irrefragable—indeed, de Lubac never failed to condemn this type of “traditionalism” as an untenable extreme; simultaneously, he condemned the opposite extreme which brackets the subsequent reception of the text in assessing its meaning. Such would be a willful blindness to 302 the insights of tradition. Although the perspective of tradition is not perfect, it is a

methodological failure to neglect it. De Lubac then endorsed the constructive role of tradition in

interpretation when “the work fits into a tradition that touches ourselves.”513 A shared or

“living” tradition between the text and interpreter increases his intentional alignment with the

text and assists, consciously or not, with the “methodological docility” necessary for correct

interpretation, since some of the background commitments of the text are shared by the

interpreter.

Another aspect of de Lubac’s general hermeneutics that informed his concept of tradition

was “the transient character of the historical event,” which underlies all acts of verbal and written

communication.514 For de Lubac as for Origen, all history must ultimately pass over to spirit,

which is to say, the fleeting factual occurrences of the past “live on only as signs in view of our

edification.” History is the result of human interpretive activity which thematizes facts in order

to understand their meaning and value and so pass them down to others. Accordingly, all historical writing rises to the level of Geschichte, and in the case of Scripture to Heilsgeschichte.

De Lubac’s general hermeneutics were objectivist in a deeper sense. He insisted that the

ultimate goal of interpretation is to “penetrate beneath the particularities of time and place to

what is eternal.”515 The meaning of a text which makes truth claims cannot be considered apart

from its truth value. Historicality cannot be transcended or ignored; while the claim of “direct”

access to a text is naïve, when it comes to a final evaluation of a text’s meaning, “all [readers]

have to resolve it in the same light”: the light of what is true, or as de Lubac said, “eternal.” He

513 HS, 13.

514 See section 4.1.6.

515 HS, 13. 303 denied that “human behavior should be judged only according to the value systems operative at

the time”;516 thus, philosophical commitments are ineradicable from hermeneutics.

Metaphysical, epistemological and ethical commitments are constitutive of the act of interpretation and cannot be bracketed. General hermeneutics is not an adequate substitute for a

realist metaphysics. Differences of interpretation which stem from differences of worldview can only be resolved by philosophical dialectic. While insisting on a dialogical character of

interpretation, de Lubac denied the post-foundationalist notion that truth is merely dialogue and

the arrival at mutual understanding. Exegesis ought to arrive at discourse about being. In regard

to the theological hermeneutics for reading Scripture, de Lubac insisted on two critical linkages

which must not be severed: first, exegesis of the literal sense must make full use of modern

criticism and take into consideration the fruits of historical and scientific investigation; second,

the spiritual senses of Scripture constitute an intrinsic part of the meaning of the text and are not

opposed to a sound literal sense interpretation.

4.2.1. De Lubac’s Theological Hermeneutics

In regard to interpretating the literal sense, de Lubac articulated the following principles

drawn from his appraisal of Origenian exegesis. First, the literal sense is the foundation of all

sound exegesis. As with any ancient text, the reading of the literal sense of Scripture must be

guided by general hermeneutical norms—which include archeology, comparative Near Eastern

studies, ancient history and other tools routinely used by historical-critical exegesis. De Lubac

also endorsed the practices of literary and form criticism of the biblical text, particularly the

analysis of ancient genres of writing, the modes of the literal sense, and the norms for the

516 Bulhof, 18-19. 304 symbolic language of prophecy. He eschewed fundamentalist literalism in interpreting Genesis

and Revelation, while insisting that they had a genuine historical sense. He endorsed the

necessity of textual criticism and the need for exegetes to achieve the best “consensus” reading

of a text where manuscripts varied between the Septuagintal and Masoretic traditions (as Origen

did in his Hexapla) or within manuscript families within those traditions (as textual critics do

today). Since part of an interpreter’s task is to evaluate a text’s truth claims and existential

relevance, an interpreter’s exposition of the literal sense should rise to the level of a biblical

theology of faith and morals. In formulating the doctrinal import of the literal sense, an exegete

should consider the context of the entire canonical Scripture—an approach today called

canonical criticism.

De Lubac indicated further principles for interpreting the literal sense by critiquing

deficits in Origenian exegesis. First, an exegete should not pass too quickly from the literal to

the spiritual sense. Textual obscurities must not be used as a pretext to allegorize, but as an

impetus for closer historical investigation. Too often, the Fathers stumbled over the literal sense

of texts due to “ignorance of literary genres, differences of style, language” and the “rabbinic”

tendency to presume that because there is no superfluous word in Scripture, repetitions,

parallelisms, etc. indicate a subtle two-fold meaning and not simply literary emphasis.517 These deficits should be corrected by modern criticism. Thematic analyses should be tempered by a recognition of the human authorship of the biblical books. Lexical analyses should be attentive to the development of biblical languages and sensitive to the usages of the different human authors.

517 HS, 115, 349. 305 De Lubac offered an incarnational and condescensionist view of the progress of biblical

revelation. Regarding the former, he stated that “the historical meaning and the spiritual

meaning are, between them, like the flesh and divinity of the Logos.”518 Full appreciation of the incarnate dimension of the Word, including the human instrumentality of the inspired authors, should make every exegete attentive to the fact that scriptural messages are expressed in a vocabulary and with concepts that are different, and sometimes more primitive, than our own.

Unlike Origen, exegetes should recognize that “in distant ages a profound religious sentiment and even a faith of great worth could have coexisted with a rudimentary metaphysics and representations that were still childish.”519 Part of God’s condescension to the human condition

consists in a progressive revelation which began with more elementary instruction and

culminates in the revelation of Jesus Christ. In broadest perspective, exegetes should seek to

“understand spiritual things historically” by attention to the stages, limits and goal of this

progressive revelation. De Lubac had an explicitly Christological understanding of the trajectory

of biblical revelation, which he believed was an intrinsic product of the canonical approach to

Scripture.

De Lubac stated that Patristic exegesis suffered from a lack of conscious reflection on method, from a limited development of the natural sciences, and from a lack of “a philosophy of

history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time.”520 He believed that modern advances in the fields of hermeneutics, science and philosophy respectively could supply those material deficits which Patristic exegesis lacked, but would have welcomed. He situated the interpretation of the

518 HS, 105.

519 HS, 282.

520 Catholicism, 308. 306 literal sense within the broader epistemological context of faith and reason. As he had done

since “Apologétique et Théologie,” he argued that unity of truth requires that the exegesis of

Scripture should inform, and be informed by, the findings of science as well as the Rule of Faith,

which situates literal-sense exegesis within a credally-normed context, guided by Sacred

Tradition and Magisterium.

De Lubac’s theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses is rooted in the literal sense,

inspired by biblical example, and supported by a Christian view of history. He carefully

indicated how spiritual exegesis remains distinct from the literal sense, yet founded upon it, due

to the two levels of signification involved in the semantics of the spiritual senses. In the literal

sense, a word indicates a reality; in a spiritual sense, that reality itself signifies another reality.

Thus there can be no spiritual sense without a literal foundation. While interpreters should be open to the possibility of a spiritual sense in any given passage, a particular passage need not have a spiritual sense; quoting Augustine, de Lubac stated: “Even though everything about the lyre is designed for producing sound, not everything resonates.”521

Furthermore, the meaning of the spiritual senses of Scripture is governed by the Rule of

Faith and informed by a canonical perspective of Scripture; thus, the scope of allowable

meanings of the spiritual senses is governed by what is contained in the literal sense. Spiritual

sense interpretation should never come at the expense of the literal sense, either doctrinally (by

teaching something contrary) or practically (by using spiritual exegesis as a way to bypass

difficulties of the literal sense), no more than a building may stand by neglecting its foundation.

De Lubac argued, accordingly, for a thorough-going compatibility between the literal and

spiritual senses.

521 “Distich,” 120-121. 307 De Lubac defended the legitimacy of spiritual sense interpretation by appealing, first and

foremost, to the New Testament examples of Jesus Christ and St. Paul and supplemented these

with examples from the prophetical and sapiential literature. These divinely inspired examples

of spiritual sense interpretation, while limited in number, indicate in genere the biblical warrant

for the use of the spiritual senses in the very literal sense of the Bible. To this, de Lubac added a

sustained historical argument from Christian tradition and asserted that spiritual sense exegesis,

properly understood and disentangled from misuse, epitomizes the Christian exegetical tradition:

“In misjudging this, “we risk misjudging the originality of Christianity itself.”522

Against critics of allegorical interpretation, de Lubac launched a two-fold response,

founded upon the notion that allegory, properly understood, only occurs when one biblical reality

prefigures a later one for which it prepares. This conception of allegory, not often explicitly

stated amongst the Fathers and Medievals, contrasts with those who asserted that allegory is merely literary word-play with the letter of Sacred Scripture, i.e., an eisegetical product of the creativity of the interpreter; this conception of allegory is also against those who asserted that allegory represents the subordination of the biblical text to a foreign intellectual system, typically a dominant school of philosophy, such as occurs in pagan and Philonic allegory. Proper

Christian allegory is strictly historical: allegoria facti et dicti, not merely allegoria dicti, as is literary device. Unlike literary allegory, biblical allegory is not the creation of an interpreter; rather, it is God’s creation. Allegorical senses within Scripture are a product of God’s providential disposition of history, in which specific events are related to others such that one reality can signify another for which it prepares. Through de Lubac’s discussion of the hermeneutical progression from understanding “spiritual things historically” to understanding

522 HS, 187-188. 308 “historical things spiritually,” the allegorical sense can be understood as a “prolongation” of the

literal sense of the text,523 or even “the last stage in the historical reception of the literal meaning

of the text.”524

The presence of an allegorical sense in the biblical text is principally due to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, who, together with the inspired human author, is a genuine author

of the Biblical text. An allegorical sense may then be present in a text whether or not the

inspired human author was aware of it at the time he wrote. Allegories are discerned when

exegetes see an earlier event in spiritual connection with a later one by virtue of the fuller

perspective accorded to one who recognizes both the prefiguration and its fulfillment.

De Lubac’s retrieval of the distinctively Christian form of allegorical interpretation rests

on a teleological conception of history as fulfilled in Christ, a perspective which requires faith,

which rests on what is conveyed by the literal sense of Scripture, particularly in the Gospels and

the writings of St. Paul. This perspective also rests on a Christian understanding of tradition, in

which the meaning of the biblical text and the saving work announced in it, are carried forward

by the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church—a perspective which de Lubac defended on the

basis of the literal sense of the biblical text and on the constant witness of the Fathers of the

Church. This tradition unites exegetes and texts in a way that creates the hermeneutical potential

523 For a defense of how de Lubac’s statements in Histoire accord with Humani Generis § 23, published the same year, see Dom Ralph Russell, “ ‘Humani Generis’ and the ‘Spiritual’ Sense of Scripture,” Downside Review 69 (1951): 1-15. Reviewing de Lubac’s Histoire and Daniélou’s Sacramentum Futuri, Russell stated that in his opinion, “Patristic exegesis is a prolongation of the messianic typology of the prophets” (14).

524 This formulation is indebted to Robert D. Miller, II, “Many Roads Lead Eastward: Overtures to Catholic Biblical Theology” (Paper presented at the conference, “Historical Critical Method and Scripture, the Soul of Theology,” at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD, June 23, 2006). 309 for spiritual sense interpretation by establishing a communion of spirit between the authors of the text and its interpreters. This theological hermeneutic of communion, in turn, finds its anthropological basis in de Lubac’s general hermeneutic of interpretation, of which it is a special case, informed by the capacity of human interpreters to have faith. Tradition, community, and faith, then, stand at the heart of de Lubac’s theology of the spiritual senses.

Without this constellation of tradition, community, and faith, it is not possible to interpret

Scripture in the full and genuine sense intended by its divine author. Conversely, exegetical methods which deny or bracket these dynamics of tradition, community and faith, either distort the meaning of the text or miss its full meaning.

Just as de Lubac’s general hermeneutics indicate the need for an existentially-engaged reading of any text, so too, his theological hermeneutics of Scripture extend the exploration of the spiritual sense of allegory into consideration of the tropological and anagogical senses. The literal sense of the Biblical text concerns salvation: whether in its preparation in the Old

Testament, its announcement in the Gospels, or in the meditations of the epistles. The tropological sense of Scripture, which applies this literal sense to the existential circumstance of the reader, is not merely “appropriation” of the meaning of the text by its reader; it is an intrinsic part of the meaning of the text, because it is intended by the divine author in the conveying of biblical revelation. The spiritual sense of the biblical text concerns God’s plan for salvation: this includes how He saves me—the reader of the text. Past events “no longer survive today except as signs and mysteries” which “live on only as signs in view of our edification.”525

Resting on de Lubac’s theological vision of Heilsgeschichte, salvation is never individual, but, rather, always communal in nature, whether implicitly, because of the solidarity

525 HS, 311-312. 310 of all members of the human family established in Creation, or explicitly, in the communion of all member of the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church. From this springs the two-fold nature of the tropological sense, concerning either anima in ecclesia, or the Totus Christus, the Church.

Just as tropology can be two-fold, both personal and communal, so too anagogy can be two-fold, concerning itself either with an individual and his progress toward the Last Things (death, judgment, hell, heaven), or concerning the Church and the consummation of human history at the end of time—both of which rest on a biblical vision of man conveyed in the literal sense of

Scripture.

This distinctively Christian approach to interpreting Scripture moves from history, to mystery, to morality, to finality. This approach requires interpreters to see themselves as part of the unfolding of salvation history that is prepared by the Old Testament, announced by the New, carried out by the Church, and aimed at heavenly beatitude. Prepared in history, realized in the

Church, transmitted by the Church to individual souls, and passed down through history to the present-day interpreter, this spiritual tradition aims at uniting all people in eternal beatitude in

Christ. At once informative and transformative, moral and sacramental, individual and communal, the “spiritual meaning” of Scripture for de Lubac is nothing other than the historical realization of God’s salvation of His spiritual creatures.

De Lubac’s theological hermeneutics are thoroughly Christocentric: “Jesus Christ is the living and concrete exegesis of Scripture.” Each spiritual sense finds its fulfillment in Christ:

Christ is the key to the allegorical sense, for all things are recapitulated in Christ; the tropological sense finds its paradigmatic expression in the life of Christ, the Way, which is supremely imitable; the anagogical sense presents our hope for beatific union with Christ as the goal of the spiritual life. Yet, as the title of Histoire conveys, de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics are 311 equally Pneumatological: “the miracle of the Christian tradition, which is not only the

transmission and reception of a letter but communion in a spirit—in the Spirit.”526 Instead of

using the cumbersome formulation of “Christological-Pneumatological,” which some

contemporary commentators use to describe this mode of “participatory exegesis,”527 one might

better say that de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics are Trinitarian. The two missions of the

Trinity, Word and Spirit, operate in the exegete as he is drawn through these Two Persons to the

Father. Against any “Joachimist” division of the activities of the Word and Spirit in the

unfolding of salvation history, de Lubac’s hermeneutics insisted on the equal operation of the

Three Persons of the Trinity in Unity.

Within this context, one can understand de Lubac’s situation of the activity of the exegete within an organic relationship to other dynamics of grace, including liturgy, sacrament, prayer, meditation and the conduct of the moral life, which is described in the later chapters of Histoire.

Each of these activities may foster greater intentional sympathy between the exegete and the text, since these practices of the Christian life are part of the same tradition of the New Covenant recorded in the biblical text.528 Because any act of interpretation is simultaneously an act of self-

understanding, rational progress in the order of nature can assist the activity of scriptural

interpretation, by illuminating the human recipient who is frequently the subject of the inspired

526 HS, 158.

527 Matthew Levering, Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 8-16.

528 Exégèse médiévale detailed de Lubac’s understanding of the disciplina required of the exegete. In a broader but more limited way, one can understand de Lubac’s optimism about the mutually enlightening dynamics between biblical exegesis and the progress of human sciences which he discussed in Catholicisme and Histoire, and which he illustrated by several “Teilhardian” analogies, as noted in the analysis of Histoire above. 312 text, as well as its designer. This synergy between scientific reason and exegesis is necessary in

order to join theology to the integrated humanism which de Lubac proposed in Catholicisme as

the ultimate framework for exegesis.

5. Exégèse médiévale (1959-1963)

Working in theological exile after being relieved of his teaching responsibilities, de

Lubac completed Exégèse médiévale in the wake of the Surnaturel controversy and the publication of Humani Generis in 1950. Exégèse médiévale was the continuation of his work in

Histoire et Esprit; as he recounted in his memoirs:

In order to write the conclusion of … [Histoire et Esprit], I had amassed a number of texts from every era, many of which I had not used. The idea came to me, during these years when all properly doctrinal work seemed to me for the time, and perhaps forever, a dead end, to enlarge this conclusion, to correct hasty insights, to bring out the dogmatic backbone of it. There was material in it for a new book that would retrace per summa capita the history of spiritual exegesis in the course of the Christian centuries.… At first seen in modest dimensions, the book swelled beyond measure.529

There is substantial thematic continuity between Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale in spite of the much larger size of the latter. The fundaments of de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics, established in Catholicisme and Histoire, remain unchanged in

Exégèse médiévale. However, de Lubac introduced and developed a few new hermeneutical principles in Exégèse médiévale, which represents an unsurpassed historical investigation into the use of the four senses of Scripture in the millennium of biblical interpretation from the fifth

to the fifteenth century. The magnitude and complexity of this work can be explained by four

purposes which animate the whole work.

529 At the Service of the Church, 83. 313 First, de Lubac sought to defend his assertion that the hermeneutics of the four senses of

Scripture was the definitive tradition of Catholic exegesis, in spite of variations and abuses throughout the ages.530 Second, he believed that his fundamental hermeneutical synthesis in

Histoire was correct and that he could follow the main lines of this traditional hermeneutic

through the entirety of the Latin Middle Ages:

My focal point is no longer, as it was with Origen [in Histoire], the great patristic period. Instead my focus has shifted to the Latin Middle Ages. Whereas I was earlier concerned with a privileged moment in time that was characterized by a blossoming forth of genius, my considerations now lie more particularly with the typical representatives of a tradition that has already been established.531

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac chronicled the variations in theory and practice of the

theology of the four senses of Scripture throughout the centuries by providing many examples of

their better and worse employment of the tradition.532 In several authors, he found “purely”

Christian allegory blended with classical pagan allegory from antiquity and literary allegory from

the late Middle Ages, which he considered a bastardization of the tradition that fueled later

scholars’ negative assessments of the allegorical method. A careful scholar, by the 1950s de

Lubac was perhaps also somewhat skittish after his conflict with Neo-Thomists over

Surnaturel—a conflict which concerned not only doctrine, but also a dispute about whether de

530 He wrote: “I was happy working to do justice in that way to one of the central elements of the Catholic tradition, so grossly underappreciated in modern times and nevertheless still the bearer of promises for renewal” (At the Service of the Church, 83).

531 ME 1/1:xiii.

532 Reflecting on his method of writing Exégèse Médiévale, de Lubac stated: “It is no less important to recall that a doctrine does not exist only where it is laid out in didactic and scholarly fashion: it is also present in actu where it inspires thought; it can be there in a much more organic and much more powerful way than in some formula whose verbal balance and clarity leaves nothing to be desired” (ME 1/2:210). For de Lubac a detailed historical study is a prerequisite to any attempt at doctrinal synthesis. 314 Lubac had properly interpreted the history of Thomistic theology between Cajetan and the twentieth century. In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac fingered an even more important vein of theology: the interpretation of Scripture in general—a study, to which he was “led … back, by a thousand avenues, to this central subject” since his earliest days teaching fundamental theology at Lyon.533

Third, de Lubac desired to trace the decline of traditional exegesis to account for its derelict condition in recent centuries: the gradual subsidence of the traditional means of biblical interpretation after the twelfth century, together with both theological advances and aberrations in biblical hermeneutics. He sought to trace the origins of these developments, along with the advent of modern methods of interpretation, in order to show how to integrate the areas of progress in modern theology with the recovery of the traditional hermeneutic, and also how to critique the theological errors which have affected the Western theological world since the

Reformation.

Fourth, de Lubac wished to show how the traditional hermeneutic had developed organically with the arts and sciences in various epochs of Christendom, such as the Carolingian renaissance of the eighth century and, to a less successful degree, the Italian renaissance of the sixteenth. He tried then to outline how this central principle of Catholic theology might function within the “integrated humanism” of the future.

Exégèse médiévale is a four-volume work divided into two parts—each containing two volumes. Part One treats many of the themes previously discussed in Histoire. De Lubac outlined the genesis of the theology of the four senses, explained the differences between the two

533 At the Service of the Church, 83. In asserting that he had correctly identified “the dogmatic backbone” of Catholic exegesis, de Lubac implicitly defended himself from critique. 315 classic sequences of the senses, and discussed the relationship of the senses, including the two-

fold nature of the tropological and anagogical senses. After considering whether several major

fifth century figures were the progenitors of this tradition (e.g., Sts. Augustine, Cassian, Gregory

the Great, et al.), de Lubac argued that this tradition was ultimately due to Origen:

We have proceeded up till now as if the doctrine of the four-fold or the threefold sense, once constituted, formed a whole which never underwent any notable evolution for the whole length of the Middle Ages.… Accordingly we have quite neglected the fine points, and perhaps have even suppressed certain points of opposition. We seem to have presented a sort of mosaic of doubtful objectivity and, at any event, of drifting chronology. If there is any offense against method in all this, the offense was premeditated.534

Part One is then principally concerned with presenting the doctrine of the four senses and Part

Two is principally concerned with history: substantiating the breadth and depth of this tradition

and assessing its variations, evolutions and mutations throughout the centuries.

Unfortunately, the structure was not well-organized. One sympathetic reviewer wrote

that a reader of Exégèse médiévale may feel “that he or she is trapped in the catalogue of Church

history. Indeed, so dense is the work that it is hard to resist the temptation to set it aside. And

yet, resistance is rewarded.”535 Another reviewer called de Lubac’s corpus “extensive, varied

and notoriously forbidding. So many different themes are considered and intertwined in his

writings.”536 Yet another reviewer remarked:

534 ME 2/1:208. In the footnote to the last sentence, he added: “We are no less aware of the limitation that it entails and that require complementary studies conducted according to other methods. Our third and fourth volumes, however, will fill this gap to some extent” (ME 2/1:422 n. 1.)

535 T. S. Perry, review of Medieval Exegesis, Volume 1 by Henri de Lubac, Didaskalia 10, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 103.

536 Marcellino D’Ambrosio, review of Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac, by Susan K. Wood, Pro Ecclesia 10, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 110. 316 There is much virtue in abundance of matter, but it also has its perils: the central theme may be well obscured by the mass of detail. P. de Lubac has not entirely escaped this danger: there are moments when the present volume seems less like an integrated work than like a series of monographs. And the connexion between the monographs and the four senses of Scripture is sometimes a very tenuous one. But this is not to say that the monographs in themselves are not worth reading.537

The two-part division of Exégèse médiévale was de Lubac’s attempt at clarification. Just as he

had sought to clarify and expand his 1946 work Surnaturel into Le mystère du surnaturel (which contained his chief doctrinal points) and Augustinisme et théologie moderne (which contained more historical analysis), so too he attempted to expand the one-volume Histoire into the four- volume Exégèse médiévale. Although the merits of the expanded historical research are indubitable, it is arguable whether any clarity was achieved in either work by dividing the mass of historical references into “doctrinal” and “historical” halves. Part Two of Exégèse médiévale

(like its analog, Augustinisme) made important theological assertions and was not as simply

“supporting historical data” for Part One; nonetheless, that is how de Lubac framed his work.

5.1. Exégèse médiévale, Part One

In his preface, de Lubac announced his intention to bring readers “into the presence of a great, overflowing fountainhead of thought” that comprises the intellectual tradition of reading

Scripture according to the four senses. The hermeneutical nomenclature hardly gives modern readers a sense of how central and vital this tradition of thought was for over a millennium of

Christian reflection.538 Even many sympathetic historians of the topic scarcely understood its

537 Henry Hyslop, review of Exégèse Médiévale: les Quatre Sens de l’Ecriture, Part II, Volume II by Henri de Lubac, The Downside Review 83, no. 270 (1965): 78.

538 ME 1/1:xiii. 317 scope and principles, not to mention the many modern biblical critics who, through perpetuated

misunderstanding, intentional ignorance, or even malice, severely criticised a form of thought

they had scarcely investigated, much less understood; they denounced allegory as “the killer

fungus of exegesis,” the old “monastic routine,” and as only useful in sustaining pious meditation

on Scripture until modern criticism could embark on the direct examination of texts. De Lubac

retorted:

This is how staunch Marxists do justice to someone like Saint Thomas Aquinas. This is how, in the last century, socialism gladly praised primitive Christianity for having in some way prefigured it.539

De Lubac concluded by asserting that his task should be understood in neither a traditionalist or

progressivist mold:

If, then, I am loath to treat any of the twenty centuries of Christianity as a “prehistoric universe,” I am no more inclined to envision any of them as a “paradise lost.” I am full of admiration for the prodigious efforts at exegesis that are unfolding in the Church today, and I am most hopeful that these efforts will continue unabated.540

De Lubac hoped he would succeed “in conveying a part of this heritage to the present generation,

commending it to its understanding, to its esteem … without hiding from it the weakness and

decrepit elements that mark it.”541

In his introduction to the doctrine of the four senses, de Lubac commented on the famous

distich used to teach them and sketched the breadth of their use in the Medieval tradition. The

distich reads:

539 ME 1/1:xv. This misunderstanding of the four senses—and the sad intellectual history that supported it—prompted a brief historiographical reflection, which will be analyzed below.

540 ME 1/1:xxi.

541 ME 1/1:xxi. 318 Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, Moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia.542

Far from being a curiosity of Medieval method, “the doctrine of the senses of Scripture and the

doctrine of the relationship between the two Testaments are in essence one and the same

thing.”543 It constituted “the very teaching of the Church.” Although Luther, and many

Reformers discarded this teaching as “impious verses,” others, such as the sixteenth-century

Roman theologian Cardinal Tolet, asserted that “the doctrine of the four senses should be

construed as being an article of faith.”544 In fact, each sense came to be associated with a Father

who used it: Jerome the literal; Ambrose the allegorical; Gregory the moral; and Augustine the

anagogical. These four doctors were also associated with particular virtues which helped them

excel in their interpretations: Jerome, strictness; Ambrose, gentleness; Gregory, patience; and

Augustine, humility. Other exegetes were praised for their subtlety, the weight of their

conclusions, their capacity for speculation, their accuracy, their upright character, their charm, or

their eloquence. De Lubac, after reviewing the varying assessments of modern scholars

concerning scriptural interpretation via the four senses, concluded: “For a long time, it was at the

basis of all sacred science … it constituted sacred science in its entirety—in principle at least.”545

De Lubac then began the first chapter with a section on disciplina: not only the rules, but more broadly the mindset which must accompany spiritual sense interpretation, including the spiritual and moral formation of the interpreter. He observed that the different senses were

542 ME 1/1:1. For the origins of the distich, see “Distich,” 109-113.

543 ME 1/1:8.

544 ME 1/1:9.

545 ME 1/1:13. 319 governed by different norms: the literal sense is governed by leges; anagogy has rationes,

explanations; allegoria has consequentia, patterns; tropology is the most free, “circumscribed only by piety and coherence,” although both here and in Histoire, de Lubac assumed under

“piety” the Rules of Faith and Charity, and under “coherence” the broad parameters of Christian

anthropology. Part of the disciplina of the exegete included a preparatory course of study in the

arts and philosophy, without which, interpretations tended to be ill-formed. He explored the parallels between the Medieval notion of exegetical disciplina and the Greek concept of paideia as well as the contemporary concept of becoming “cultured.” He also noted the resonances with training (as in “military discipline”) and the ascetical preparation for exegesis.

In a section—“Scripture and Revelation”—de Lubac discussed the ecclesial context of interpretation, sola scriptura, and Scripture as the one source of theology in contrast to post-

Tridentine theologies of revelation which posited “two sources” (Scripture and Tradition), as if they were separate. He highlighted how the interpretation of Scripture was synonymous with theology during the Middle Ages. If this synonymy today seems excessively narrow, it is not due to the simplistic scope of Medieval theology, but to our modern unfamiliarity with how broad and versatile a framework was provided by the doctrine of the four-fold sense. While there have been advances within theology—such as scholasticism and apologetics—these advances need not be viewed as triumphs over traditional exegetical theology, but as specialized pursuits within it. More broadly, de Lubac broached the question of how the doctrine of the four senses related to the Medieval integration of the arts and sciences and the role of theology as

“Queen of the Sciences.”

De Lubac next traced tensions that began to emerge within High Medieval theology between monastic and scholastic theology. The pre-eminent role of Lectio divina in the monastic 320 milieu was displaced by the disputatio, which eventually became a model for training all

theology students in the post-Reformation age. Was this purely an advance, or did it portend the

separation of exegesis from liturgy, sacrament, the spiritual life and individual devotion? Since

the early Medievals saw training in the liberal arts as an important preparation for the study of

Scripture, how did the study of Scripture come to be separated from these fields? And why did some Medievals see the study of Scripture as a replacement for these fields of learning, especially when they were “tainted” by pagan erudition—similar to Tertullian’s mindset in the

Patristic era or to the fundamentalists of the twentieth century? De Lubac sought to appraise this

question more fully in the second part of Exégèse médiévale.

In his second chapter, de Lubac began his retrieval of the Medieval notion of the

“marvelous depths” of Sacred Scripture. The text was “a deep forest, with innumerable

branches,” an “ocean of mystery,” a “treasure of the Holy Spirit, whose riches are as infinite as

himself,” “a table arranged by Wisdom, laden with food, where the unfathomable divinity of the

Savior is itself offered as nourishment to all.”546 Scripture is infinite. In fact, for some authors,

such as John Scotus Eriugena, a person is illuminated by a two-fold light, to perceive the two-

fold “books” of revelation: Creation and Scripture. These two are also conceived as a two-fold

garment which covers the Logos. The Book of Scripture is necessitated by sin and so is better at

showing God’s mercy than the Book of Creation.547

Next de Lubac considered the multiple senses of Scripture. After noting various

schematizations (seven senses, five senses, etc.), he focused on the three-fold and four-fold

546 ME 1/1:75.

547 This view indicates the compatibility of faith and reason during the Medieval period and a corresponding view of human anthropology that is distant from the “separated,” if not secular, anthropologies that dominated the twentieth century.

321 senses of Scripture that were previously treated in Histoire. He discussed the significance of

whether allegory precedes tropology, or vice versa, and provided numerous citations of

authorities who opt for either one sequence or the other.548 These “competing lists” express

underlying methodological differences between their advocates. Yet de Lubac believed that the

sequence of history, allegory, tropology, and anagogy “expresses authentic doctrine in both its

fullness and its purity. It alone gives an adequate rendition of the Christian mystery.”549

In the third chapter, de Lubac traced the origins of the methodological differences of each sequence; as indicated in Histoire, the common source for both sequences was Origen. De

Lubac did not alter that opinion, but he did review various competing hypotheses concerning whether the doctrine of the senses had originated in other Fathers such as Clement of Alexandria,

Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, Cassian or Eucher. De Lubac intermittently discussed the risks of the first sequence (history, tropology, allegory): when tropology precedes allegory, an exegete was prone to treat the soul according to extra-biblical theories drawn from

Aristotelian, Stoic or Philonic philosophy, rather than according to the themes of salvation history, established in the earlier allegorical stage of interpretation. At other times, use of the first sequence was motivated by a comparison with the Greek progression from natural, to moral, to contemplative science. Sometimes this approach was harmless. Yet why did some Christian exegetes employ it? De Lubac believed that some, like Eucher, saw themselves as heirs to classical learning, which they wanted to preserve while showing how Christianity had subsumed it. Thus this adaptation—successful or not—of the pagan Greek three-fold ascent from natural,

548 ME 1/1:94-104.

549 ME 1/1:115. 322 to moral, to contemplative knowledge was a part of the early Medieval desire to integrate ancient philosophy with Christian revelation.

De Lubac believed the first sequence was prone to error. For example, some well- meaning exegetes who employed the first sequence seemed motivated by a comparison between the tripartite division of Scriptural senses (historical, moral, allegorical) and the Pauline tripartite division of man into soma, psyche and pneuma. The historical sense was the “body” of

Scripture, relating deeds accomplished; the moral sense was concerned with the soul; and the

allegorical or mystical sense was concerned with objects of contemplation. This artificial

alignment of two tripartite divisions could engender confusion. Not only was the soul

understood at times without reference to its supernatural destiny and beatitude, but some

exegetes described the mind’s exploration of the “spiritual” level of Scripture in the manner of a

Plotinian nous seeking the highest noemata that abstract philosophical contemplation could offer,

rather than as a Christian pneuma seeking the Holy Spirit; thus they failed “utterly to respond to

the intentions of the Spirit, even in the cases where its content would yield up nothing that is not

orthodox and reasonable … [It is] the exegetically arbitrary fruit of reflection or contemplation

of a philosophical nature.”550 Origen’s hermeneutics was partly responsible for these tendencies

in Medieval exegesis, and also the best remedy for them:

Together with Saint Augustine, he [Origen] was destined to be “the doctor of the spiritual sense of history.” More than any other figure in the fields of hermeneutics, exegesis, and spirituality, he would be the grand master.551

550 ME 1/1:140.

551 ME 1/1:159. Chapter Four—“The Latin Origen”—provided a lengthy study of Origen’s influence in the Medieval Latin West.

323 The fifth chapter focused on the transition from letter to spirit—the two fundamental ways to approach Scripture. The passage from one to the other, which can only be mediated by the Christian mystery, “is a theory that, even in its very form, owes everything to this Christian faith, and that, in its content, seeks to give it full expression.”552 For de Lubac, the passage from

letter to spirit is the same as the passage from the Old Testament to the New.

Superficially, there may appear to be an opposition between the two Testaments, “[b]ut there is

nonetheless a unity” between them:

The second rises from the first and does not repudiate it. The second does not destroy the first. In fulfilling it, it gives it new life and renews it. It transfigures it. It subsumes it into itself. In a word, it changes its letter into spirit. To understand the Bible “spiritually” or to understand it “in an evangelical, Gospel sense” is all one and the same thing.553

The transformation between the Old and New Testaments is not a gradual change, but an

abrupt and final transition, a “wholesale transfer,” a “change of register, by which everything

takes on another meaning.”554 The change from Old to New should not be understood as a

progressive deepening of the spiritual self-awareness of Israel; rather, the coming of the Gospel

was radically unlike previous shifts in Israel’s history. The transition from Law to Gospel was

not an incremental deepening and re-application of tropes in Israel’s earlier religious history

(such as when the exilic community applied Exodus language to itself); neither was it the

consequence of the continual application of intelligence to human culture, on analogy to

scientific progress. The prophetical tradition and Wisdom literature were impressive advances

from the Pentateuch, but the Gospel was an entirely different kind of transformation. The

552 ME 1/1:225.

553 ME 1/1:228.

554 ME 1/1:228. 324 coming of Christ represented a unique and unsurpassable moment of transfiguration of the

meaning of the entire Old Testament. So too, one should understand the transition from letter to

spirit, which can only be accomplished in light of the Christian mystery. The radical newness of the New Testament, and also the uniquely Christian view of spiritual sense interpretation, can

only be seen with the eyes of faith.555

Echoing his statement in Histoire that “Christ is the Living and Concrete Exegesis of

Scripture,” de Lubac depicted Christ as both the Exegete and Exegesis of Scripture.556 The

Cross is the only key which unlocks the mystery of the Two Testaments. The Lion of the Tribe

of Judah is the only one who can open the scroll written within and without (Rev 5:5). Recalling

the synergy between exegesis and Eucharist at the end of Histoire, de Lubac wrote:

The Action of Christ in fulfilling the Scriptures and conferring on them, at the same time, the fullness of their meaning, is still compared by Christian tradition to the act of eucharistic consecration. For, in truth, Scripture is bread, but for the Christian this bread does not became the living food that it ought to be until it has been consecrated by Jesus.557

De Lubac next provided a brief study of the Medieval themes in art and in liturgy that expressed

the harmony of the Old Testament with the New.558 He then maintained that just as the Church

has always resisted the Marcionites who wanted to reject the Old Testament in favor of the New

and the Ebionites, who wanted to subordinate the New to the Old, so too, the Church has opposed, in all centuries but the twentieth, any attack on the doctrine of the spiritual

555 ME 1/1:235.

556 ME 1/1:237-239.

557 ME 1/1:241.

558 ME 1/1:243-258. 325 interpretation of Scripture. For de Lubac, to reject the four senses was to reject the very

Newness of the New Testament, Christ Himself.

De Lubac then considered those who were interested in a tepid recovery of biblical

“typology” rather than full doctrine of the spiritual senses.559 He pointed out several problems of

a merely “typological” approach to spiritual interpretation, which was based on finding certain

patterns between the covenants. First, most typological approaches lacked a theoretical

foundation which guided these patterns and kept their use coherent; in addition, such a system of

correspondences does not do justice to the tension between the two Testaments:

Not only does typology, such as it is ordinarily defined, not have its own intrinsic foundations, it says nothing intrinsically about the dialectical opposition between the Two Testaments or about the conditions of their unity. Therefore it is quite inadequate to show, in all its power, the work accomplished by Jesus Christ. It provides no thoroughgoing explanation of the New Testament’s rootedness in the Old, and furthermore, it does not explain the emergence of New Testament and its spirit of sovereign freedom. Giving itself the task of establishing “a correspondence between historical realities at different moments of sacred history,” it does not in itself have the wherewithal to show that the New Testament is something other than a second Old Testament.560

In a footnote, de Lubac rejected the definition of typology offered by a contemporary:

Typology considered as a method of exegesis, may be defined as the establishment of historical connections between certain events, persons or things in the Old Testament and similar events, persons or things in the New Testament.561

559 Later in Exégèse médiévale and La Postérité spirituelle, de Lubac examined the origins of “typological” exegesis as a partial attempt to salvage allegory during the Reformation, an attempt which did not understand the theology of the spiritual senses deeply at all.

560 ME 1/1:259.

561 K. J. Woollcombe, Essays on Typology (Naperville, IL: A. R. Allenson, 1956), 39. 326 Not only was this definition weaker than de Lubac’s understanding of allegory (something which

prefigures that for which it prepares), it also failed to employ a sense of salvation history that

includes the reader in the saving dynamics he observes:

It does not express the link that spiritual understanding has with the personal conversion and life of the Christian, the relationship between the “New Testament” and the “New Man,” between newness of understanding and spiritual newness.… It arrests the spiritual impulse halfway.562

Due to their lack of theological foundations, modern attempts at restoring a limited biblical

typology lacked both the historical exactitude of Medieval allegory as well as the spiritual

fecundity of tropology and anagogy.563

Lastly, de Lubac highlighted the retrieval efforts which he considered promising, because

they accurately captured the theology that underlies the four senses of Scripture.564 He also

noted with concern two further parameters for the salutary recovery of the traditional

hermeneutic: one spiritual, the other scientific. The first was the tendency of modern scholars to

want to expound all aspects of the traditional hermeneutic in terms of rule-based norms for the interpreter:

[S]piritual understanding … cannot be a matter of pure technique or pure intellectuality. Whatever supple intellectual factors are brought to bear in determining it … the Spirit of God cannot be eliminated from it. The spiritual understanding is a gift of this Spirit. “Whoever thinks that he can unlock the mysteries of the Scriptures without the Spirit of God is clearly like someone

562 ME 1/1:259. By “halfway” de Lubac meant before the “rhythm” of spiritual sense interpretation turned to the tropological and anagogical senses.

563 In this chapter, de Lubac contrasted his project and those of some contemporaries who were interested in “biblical typology”; later in Exégèse médiévale and La Postérité spirituelle, he critiqued the origins and aims of some of these movements.

564 De Lubac cited the work of L. Bouyer, La Bible et l’Evangile; C. Charlier, La lecture chrétienne de la Bible; J. Levie, La Bible, parole humaine et message de Dieu; and R. Guardini, Liberté, grâce et destinée. 327 without light who feels his way in a daze along walls that are strange to him.” This is how the spiritual understanding has always been understood in the Church. This spiritual understanding does not impede the scientific work of the exegete any more than scientific work can replace the spiritual understanding.565

Second, both the more spiritual and the more scientific exegetes must respect each other’s area of competence and integrate their findings by an awareness of the scope and purpose of their different exegetical methods. Scientific prowess in interpreting the literal sense is just as necessary as spiritual profundity in understanding it:

[I]t is not divinely decreed that the most learned should necessarily be the most believing or the most spiritual. Nor is it divinely decreed that the century that would see the greatest progress in scientific exegesis would, by virtue of that very fact, be the century that would best understand Holy Scripture. Thus we need both the learned, in order to help us read Scripture historically, and the spiritual men (who ought to be “men of the Church”) in order to help us arrive at a deeper spiritual understanding of it.566

With these concerns, familiar from “Apologétique et Théologie,” Catholicisme, and Histoire, de

Lubac concluded volume one of Part One of Exégèse médiévale.

The second volume two of Part One began with Chapter Six, which discussed the varying terminology employed by different writers to discuss the spiritual senses. De Lubac contrasted the Christian style of allegory, coming from Christ and Paul, with pagan allegory, as he previously had done in “Typologie et Allégorisme.” He observed that a number of historians and theologians (some Catholic, many Protestant) have lumped these two different sorts of allegory together, including some modern critics who were needlessly hostile to the spiritual senses of

Scripture. Ironically, while some historical critics had charged that Medieval allegory mythologizes Scripture and does violence to the historical meaning of the text, in fact, they have

565 ME 1/1:264, citing Guibert de Nogent (PL 156:402c).

566 ME 1/1:266-267. 328 done more violence to the historical meaning of the text than any Medieval allegorist would have

dared.567 “If anyone wants to find anything like the veritable imitators of the ancient

mythologists, the Cornutuses and Hericlituses, the Sallusts and Julians,” these are they, not

Origen, Gregory, Augustine or Bede.568

De Lubac then continued with an etymological review of the various terms employed in the Medieval tradition, noting sacramental and Eucharistic connections along the way. He discussed the “pedagogical” reasons for treating the tropological sense before allegory by some

authors. As noted in Histoire, sometimes the preacher could not expound the mysteries of

allegory without preliminary instruction in faith and morals; thus Sequence 1 “offered a great

pedagogical advantage, felt by preachers.”569 De Lubac concluded chapter six by summarizing

his discussion of the two sequences before plunging into a lengthier examination of the

individual senses.

Chapter Seven was dedicated to the literal sense. De Lubac wondered why “littera gesta

docet” had become the classical formulation of the role of the literal sense, rather than “historia

567 Some vanguard modern higher critics have “briskly turned into myths not only the narratives of Genesis but also those of the book of Judges and Kings, and sometimes those of the Gospels. Such imitators included G. L. Bauer (1802), Lebrecht de Wette (1807), H. Ewald (1843), Th. Nöldeke (1868), Ed. Schrader (1869), J. Wellhausen (1878), E. Stücken (1896), H. Winckler (1902) … such an imitator was [also] D. F. Strauss (1835-36). For Bauer, for example, the majority of the alleged facts of the Bible had their parallels in Greek or Roman fables; for de Wette, the key of myth naturally explained all the alleged miracles of the Bible; for Stücken, the Patriarchs were merely the stars, etc.” (ME 1/2:18).

568 ME 1/2:18.

569 ME 1/2:28-31. As de Lubac noted in Part Two, this focus on immediate doctrinal instruction eventually fostered the broader adaptation of the first sequence (tropology first) by theologians and apologists and the allegory-first sequences by monastics and spirituals writers, although this was never a hard-and-fast rule, merely an observance of tendencies.

329 gesta docet.” As he had done with Origen, he admonished those who might be scandalized by

Medieval descriptions of the literal sense as “tough,” “cheap,” or “humble” compared to the

spiritual senses. Sometimes these expressions represented the doctrinal poverty of the literal sense when not seen in the fuller light of salvation history; at other times, the literal sense

recounted facts whose narration was scandalous (e.g., David and Bathsheba) or brutal (e.g., the

Rape at Gibeah), or unsuitable for sustained meditation (e.g., the eroticism of the Song of

Songs).

De Lubac then considered more difficult cases, where the use of allegory was

nonstandard or excessive. One way of interpreting the David and Bathsheba story did not deny

the negative moral implications of David’s historical misdeeds, but allegorized them in a positive

fashion, as the Christ (David) snatching his bride, the Church (Bathsheba) away from the devil

(Uriah).570 Other “metaphors without likeness” wherein a literal-sense reality indicates its

opposite in the spiritual sense and, after an attempt at sympathetic understanding (under the

rubrics of the Neoplatonic practice of meditating on the coincidentia oppositorum and the

rhetorical device of antiphrasis), de Lubac concluded:

We shall not fail to [say] … that the Latin Middle Ages have, like the age before it, and even more than it, made an often intemperate use of allegorism, for which they have brought into play some quite questionable methods.571

De Lubac concluded the seventh chapter by discussing the Medieval conception of history.

570 ME 1/2:66-67. Two problems surround such an interpretation: first, there is no movement from prefiguration to preparation; David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah do not prepare for the separation of Church from the world. Second, what is a negative action between the literal elements (David’s behavior toward Bathsheba) becomes a positive action on the allegorical level.

571 ME 1/1:56. 330 De Lubac dedicated Chapter Eight to the allegorical sense. Allegory, which is different

from symbolism, is a relationship not between words, but between deeds in history: allegoria

facti et dicti. He then contrasted the classical meaning of allegory with its current literary usage

of an extended metaphor; he also differentiated between allegory and prophecy.572 He then

returned to the theme of “the Christian novelty” and contrasted again Christian and pagan

allegory with special focus on the Christian “despoiling” of some classical allegorical

techniques. Subsequently, he discussed the “reciprocal causality” between faith and allegory.

De Lubac’s ninth chapter on the moral sense began by examining the influence of

Gregory the Great—renowned as the doctor of the moral sense—on the Latin Middle Ages. As in Histoire, he distinguished a two-fold tropology, one personal or “mystical,” the other communal or ecclesial. He traced the etymology of the term, its originally rather ambiguous usage in the Patristic era, and its classical expression in the Victorines.573 He amplified his

previous discussion of how tropological exposition was sometimes placed before the allegorical

sense. Sometimes, this was merely an issue of nomenclature: the classical distich moralis quid

agas was broad enough to countenance the moral implications of the literal sense (e.g., divine commandments, the morality of the New Testament) as well as things signified spiritually by tropology. As in Histoire, he preserved a place for “natural” tropology—moral insights

delivered via philosophy rather than allegory. The “natural” tropology of the first sequence

“moralizes the biblical datum in the same way that any datum of literature, man, and the universe

can be ‘moralized’” which genuinely enriches the soul, and helps it to perform a “good work” on

572 ME 1/2:92. De Lubac enlarged his treatment of this topic not merely to “multiply citations” but rather to “observe certain peculiarities of language so as to avoid false trails.”

573 “‘Allegory’ [is] when through one deed another deed is understood.… It is ‘tropology’ when through one deed another thing to be done is pointed out” (ME 1/2:130). 331 the natural level. The distinctively Christian tropology of the third sequence unites one to Christ

by divine charity. Its fruit is always supernatural and so it is to be preferred.574

De Lubac next raised a series of questions which he examined at length in Part Two: did

the extensive monastic development of the tropological sense—which was exemplified in the

writings of Bernard of Clairvaux—constitute a distortion of the tropological sense? Did it open

the door to the excesses of private interpretation, so frequently employed in Protestantism? Did

it foist devotional fancy upon the text, giving rise to the wholesale abandonment of the spiritual

senses in a later, more literalist age? Was it the distant ancestor of the cryptic interpretations of

Romantic illuminationists and quasi-biblical mystics? Was André Malraux correct in his

assessment that such interpretations were merely “mystical embroidery” of the Bible, expressing

nothing more than a “sacred secret” known only within the cloister? De Lubac viewed High

Medieval monastic exegesis as, “a late fruit … and tastiest of all, but one which would no longer

hold any promise.”575

The tenth chapter treated anagogy and the eschatological dimension of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. As in Histoire, de Lubac examined its usage in the Medieval period and reviewed the legitimate but perilous concept of the “Eternal Gospel” in the later Middle

Ages. New to Exégèse médiévale, he noted the gradual extinction of the eschatological dimension of biblical interpretation and, in particular, the abandonment of the personal anagogical sense; this “represents the most crucial defect arising from scholasticism” which

574 ME 1/2:132.

575 ME 1/2:150. De Lubac explained this more fully in Part Two. 332 although “neither constant nor irremediable – comes about precisely from the fact that theology

then no longer has the form of exegesis.”576

Part One of Exégèse médiévale concluded with de Lubac’s reflection on his historical

method. He asked himself whether he had oversimplified matters in this original (nine-hundred

page) expression of his thought and stated that this “premeditated offense” would be partially

remedied in Part Two. He reflected on the challenges of recovering a set of principles that many

Medievals held implicitly and in bringing such principles into synthesis with contemporary

biblical exegesis. He considered the role of tradition in propagating the hermeneutical norms

used during the Middle Ages. He concluded by addressing the fact that if Medieval authors

rarely allegorized the writings of St. Paul, it was not because of disinterest in the spiritual senses,

but because St. Paul already provided a spiritual interpretation of the Gospel.

5.2. Exégèse médiévale, Part Two

Part Two began by considering the false accusations that Medieval authors disregarded

the literal sense; for example, de Lubac considered the oft-repeated statement of Berno of

Reichenau that the interpreter should not substitute his own sentiment for the meaning of the

sacred text. Several nineteenth and twentieth century historians of exegesis had read into

Berno’s statement their own belief that spiritual interpretation is merely eisegesis and that a good

exegete should confine himself only to the literal sense. In fact, Berno was criticizing liturgists

who were altering the grammar and order of the biblical text in order to make more pleasing

576 ME 1/2:195. In Part Two, de Lubac elaborated how the personal anagogical sense was partially a casualty of the rise of the doctrinally-focused scholastic theology, later Medieval interest in end-times eschatology, and the apologetical focus of the Reformation era—all of which tended to harden doctrine and leave little room for mystical exegesis. 333 compositions for the liturgy. Likewise, de Lubac analyzed a similarly-misused remark of

Gregory the Great concerning attention to grammar and the letter of the text.

Chapter Two—“Subjectivism and Spiritual Understanding”—was a sustained rejoinder to the allegation that allegory is subjective, by considering how the Medievals viewed an exclusively literal exegesis as the true subjectivism. Expanding on his assertion in Histoire that

allegory is the properly doctrinal sense (because it considers the entire Scripture in the light of

Christ), de Lubac considered first how heretics were often reprimanded for failing to consider the spiritual sense of Scripture, even though they were attentive to the letter.577 The next two

sections treated the relationship between Christian and Jewish exegesis during the Medieval

period, in order to demonstrate another way in which literalism was failed in the Medieval

period: not by defection into heresy, but by failing to ascend to faith.578

Chapter Three also took aim at the assertion that a “lineage” of literal-sense exegesis

extended from St. Jerome to the modern era through Paschasius Radbertus, Christian of Stavelot,

Bruno of Segni or Rupert of Deutz. In each case, de Lubac did not find an attitude that was

critical of allegory in favor of an almost-modern approach to the literal sense. He concluded the

chapter with an examination of some of the Medieval developments in textual criticism

involving consideration of the Septuagint and Masoretic texts, the renewed study of biblical

languages, and the beginnings of modern manuscript criticism.

Chapter Four studied Hugh of Saint Victor, who provided no Medieval basis for the

modern revolution against allegory. In Hugh may be seen an advance in a self-conscious

577 ME 2/1:81.

578 ME 2/1:112-146. De Lubac excused this brief treatment: “To discuss these ‘traces’ [of Jewish influence on Medieval exegesis] would take us outside the scope of our study” (ME 2/1:112). 334 methodical application of the four senses, which betokens the growing hermeneutical self-

reflection more typical of later ages. In Hugh there was also a concern for “precipitancy and

excess in allegorical explanations” which were on the rise during his day.579 The antidote was

not an indictment of allegory, but a repeated admonition to begin with the foundational literal

sense and to proceed methodically to the higher senses only after respecting the integrity of the

literal word and sound doctrine.

In Chapter Five, de Lubac examined carefully the teaching of the Victorine school, which

represented the zenith of the Medieval tradition. Not only was its influence broad, but it

represented the first flowering of extended, explicit reflection on hermeneutical method since

Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana. In addition, Victorine exegesis provided insight into the

relationship between exegesis and the emergent scholastic theology.

In Chapter Six was an investigation of the twelfth-century abbot, Joachim of Flora, in

whom de Lubac located an exegetical virulence which metastasized in the following centuries

and severely compromised the heritage of Medieval exegesis and generated a number of aberrant

exegetical approaches to Scripture.580

Chapter Seven—the first chapter in the Second Part—discussed the role of numerical

symbols in medieval exegesis. While modern readers may find the Patristic and Medieval

interest in the symbolic meaning of numbers rather foreign, de Lubac insisted that the

phenomenon ought not to be passed over as irrelevant. He endorsed Augustine’s sentiment,

579 ME 2/1:222.

580 As indicated in Catholicisme and Histoire, de Lubac had been concerned about the influence of “Joachimist” hermeneutics since the 1930s; Exégèse médiévale was the first lengthy description of his concerns.

335 Ratio numeri contemnenda non est, adding a thought from Didymus the Blind which captures the

whole Medieval mindset:

“Nul n’est assez sot ni assez inepte, pensaient-ils tous, pour oser soutenir que les nombres qui figurent dans les Livres saints y soient mentionnés en vain et sans raisons mystiques”; nul homme sage n’oserait aller ainsi contre la raison, nul chrétien contre l’Écriture, nul esprit pacifique contre le sentiment de l’Église.581

De Lubac did not consider the Medieval fascination with numerical symbolism as primitive, but

as connected with the essential role of number in the order of nature. Numerical symbolism

reflected the Medieval conviction that the spiritual meaning of Scripture harmonized with

creation: with the cycles of astronomy, with the proportions of geometry, with the structure of

the human body, and with all the ratios and balances essential for the good of the natural world.

Chapter Seven seems to reflect de Lubac’s concern to show that the traditional hermeneutic was

open to a scientific worldview—even if, in practice, the integration was rather limited and the

science was inchoate. He sought to recast Medieval numerology as a dawning fascination with

the geometrical and mathematical function of the world, rather than as superstition and esoteric

mysticism. In a similar way, he analyzed architecture in Medieval spiritual sense interpretation

by focusing on the use of architectural symbols in the tropological sense’s work of transforming

the soul of the reader into a temple of the Holy Spirit and with building up the edifice of the

Church. For de Lubac, even the mechanistic spirit of the modern age could find a resonance in

the piety of the Carolingian renaissance.582

581 EM 2/2:10, citing book three of Didymus’ In Zechariam. No English translation has yet appeared for the fourth volume of Exégèse Médiévale.

582 “Comme l’univers, la croix du Christ est une machina, que le Christ lui-même a voulu construire afin d’y restaurer et d’y rassembler toutes choses: Raban Maur a recueilli cette expression déjà ancienne, où se traduit l’esprit cosmique de son grand poeme De laudibus sanctae crucis” (EM 2/2:45). 336 In the third part of Chapter Seven—“Omnia in figura”—de Lubac discussed the

flowering of High Medieval figurative exegesis. Describing both allegory and symbol as

“figurative,” he attempted to discern the conditions which permitted this maximal engagement of

figurative exegesis to remain relatively focused and sober, compared to later ages, which either

engaged in highly individualistic, arcane and fanciful symbolism, or severely limited all use of

figurative exegesis because it was deemed “arbitrary.” In his appraisal, the rationalist discarding

of all figurative exegesis and its arbitrary, esoteric mutation were flip sides of the same coin:

both resulted from an abandonment of a traditional set of norms for symbolic exegesis—more implicitly than explicitly—over the course of a millennium. When figurative exegesis was guided by doctrine, informed by philosophy, performed within an ecclesial context, and, most of all, oriented toward the Gospel, it remained, for the most part, a recognizable, coherent and objective mode of interpretation. When these supports, for various historical reasons, eroded,

figurative exegesis was unmoored from its anchoring, which ultimately led to its virtual demise

in the post-Enlightenment Western world. The remainder of this chapter provided historical

examples to support this point, which would be copiously expanded in La Postérité spirituelle.

In Chapter Eight, de Lubac brought the traditional concept of allegory into play with the full range of surrounding figurative and symbolic phenomena: literary allegory, metaphor, prophetical symbolism, etc. In section four—“Interférences et christianisations”—he discussed the cross-pollination of these symbolical hermeneutics in the High Medieval period. He concluded with an analysis of the Medieval phenomenon of baptizing pagan sources, such as seeing a precursor to Christian revelation in the oracles of the Sybil or seeing a prophetical

character to Virgil’s poetry. His purpose was not to justify such practices, but to see them in

connection with the Medieval use of symbolic exegesis. 337 In Chapter Nine concerning the rise of scholasticism, de Lubac studied the changes which

occurred in Medieval interpretation with the rise of scholastic thought and its varying theological

forms as practiced by “Les deux grands maîtres,” Saint Thomas and Saint Bonaventure. He then

expanded his consideration of the tensions, contrasts and similarities between the “Theologians”

and the “Spirituals” in High Medieval thought before returning to “La succession joachimite” as

the beginning of the decline of Medieval exegesis.

In Chapter Ten, de Lubac, extending his vista into the post-Medieval period, considered

biblical interpretation during the Counter-Reformation, the advent of “mystical humanism,” the

influential work of Erasmus, and the Christian humanist movement. Chapter Ten introduced

many of the topics that de Lubac surveyed at much greater length nearly twenty years later in La

Postérité spirituelle.583

5.3. Thematic Analysis

Because of the size and somewhat disorganized manner of Exégèse médiévale, the

analysis in this section will proceed thematically; this approach hopes to facilitate the

examination of the new ideas that de Lubac introduced into his theological hermeneutics in

Exégèse médiévale, while passing over ideas which remain the same as in his earlier works.

One conceptual advance in Exégèse médiévale is de Lubac’s reflection on the difficult process of

explicitly formulating the norms of the traditional exegesis that had been practiced for more than

a millennium. This theme spanned all four volumes of Exégèse médiévale, but was not treated

systematically in any one section. Rather, like a golden thread woven throughout the work, de

583 Chapters Nine and Ten of Exégèse médiévale overlap in part with the first four chapters of volume one of La Postérité spirituelle.

338 Lubac noted in the course of his other assessments, the slow progress of Medieval awareness of the norms for proper exegesis of the four senses.

During its Medieval flourishing and during the subsequent crises of the Reformation and

Enlightenment, the development of exegetical norms was often confused or stymied by controversies within Christianity. Indeed, the incomplete methodology of the traditional hermeneutic constituted the main impetus for de Lubac to write Exégèse médiévale. He desired to gather the essential principles of spiritual interpretation and to provide an impetus for their further development. For de Lubac, many critics of traditional exegesis did not understand it sufficiently because they misappraised its methods. Likewise many “traditionalists” and

“archaizers” and “romantics” wished to return to the practice of traditional interpretation, but did not understand its spirit: they aped something they did not understand and often misappropriated isolated aspects of the Medieval hermeneutic in the name of “tradition.”

Much of the historical controversy surrounding the use of the spiritual senses in the

Reformation and Enlightenment periods stemmed from two factors. First, the late Medieval period saw a growing misuse of traditional methods, which was a sign of the rupture of hermeneutical tradition, which in turn occasioned bourgeoning dissatisfaction with the spiritual senses of Scripture on the part of those more inclined to literal interpretations. Second, and more importantly, when such dissatisfied scholars criticized the spiritual senses, the inability of its practitioners to articulate what constituted appropriate norms of spiritual-sense interpretation fueled the fire of controversy.

A similar dynamic occurred, during the great theological development in the Medieval period. When Medieval theology developed new modes of expression (e.g., scholastic disputations and summae), exegesis of Scripture according to the four senses was pushed to the 339 sidelines of theology. This marginalization often occurred because the newer genres of

theological writing had clearer methodologies compared to the rich but more implicit practices of

traditional exegesis. Similarly, the great advances of historical-criticism in the nineteenth and

twentieth centuries likewise marginalized traditional exegesis, which still could not formulate its

own norms. Traditional modes of exegesis were then labeled as pre-critical, non-scientific or

arbitrary. Thus the struggle to articulate a methodology for exegesis of the four senses of

Scripture constitutes a central theme for those seeking to understand its growth, mutation,

abeyance and retrieval across the centuries.

Methodological self-reflection is an inherently difficult process. To think is one thing; to

think about thinking is quite another. Likewise, to think correctly is one thing; to think about

what is involved in thinking correctly is another; and to check one’s theory about the norms of correct thought is a third, requiring one to judge whether one has understood the process of correct thinking.584 For de Lubac, the process of objectifying the norms of exegetical method

may rightly be called “agonic,” in the classical Greek sense of agōnia: an arduous undertaking in

pursuit of a prize. The metaphor is appropriate in light of the fact that advances in methodology

often occurred during times of crises about the interpretation of Scripture. As he stated in

“Apologétique et Théologie,” “Across the centuries, it has very often been the necessities

coming from the outside that have forced theology to be more precise, to develop, to criticize and to purify itself.”585

De Lubac’s narration of the history of the spiritual senses follows this pattern. He often

noted how the theory and practice of spiritual sense interpretation became subconscious during

584 Lonergan, Method in Theology, 11-13.

585 AT, 92. 340 periods of extended unchallenged use (such as the later centuries of monastic exegesis), only to be either strengthened or beaten back, during times of doctrinal upheaval. In “Apologétique et

Théologie,” he stated that theologians ought

to listen constantly to the succeeding generations and to their aspirations so as to be able to respond to them, to understand and assimilate their thoughts. Only at this price can theology remain honest and alive. It cannot remain unchanging or ossified because it is meant to bring light, successively, to various aspects of the truth; neither the thought of any one man nor of one generation is capable of equally encompassing all of its aspects.586

Although de Lubac never said so explicitly, Exégèse médiévale was his chronicle of the attempts of the traditional hermeneutic to remain “honest and alive” into the modern period. His reflections on the process of methodological self-reflection in Medieval exegesis can be traced in three stages: the initial struggle to formalize hermeneutical norms from largely implicit practices

(the agony); the benefits accrued by successes during the Medieval period (the triumph); and the hermeneutical liabilities incurred when these gains were taken for more than they were worth and developed improperly (the hubris).

How does one know when one is interpreting Scripture correctly? In Catholicisme, de

Lubac described the act of interpretation in terms of a triad: the text, the subject matter, and the interpreter. For de Lubac, for interpretation to be complete it must discern the meaning of the text, evaluate the truth of its subject matter, and reveal the reader more fully to himself.

Conversely, interpretation can fall short in three ways. First, an interpreter can fail to discern the complete meaning of a text; second, an interpreter can misunderstand, or only partially penetrate, a text’s subject matter; third, an interpreter can fail to interiorize the meaning of a text in his life and worldview. De Lubac expressed the last point in different ways: exegesis can fail

586 AT, 97. 341 to “bear fruit” in an interpreter and remains “sterile” or “extrinsic.” In other words, exegesis

may fail to reveal a reader to himself when the text’s meaning remains irrelevant or confusing.

As he mentioned in Catholicisme, failure to achieve this third stage of interpretation is a failure

on the level of existential engagement of a reader with a text.

The process of refining a formalized hermeneutics begins with reflection on what is

intially a merely intuitive perception of what constitutes a “correct” reading of a text. No one

learns to read books by being taught a course in general hermeneutics, just as no child learns his

native language by being taught a grammar. Often the process of hermeneutical self-reflection works backwards, from practical principles of interpretation to theoretical foundations:

From the fact that the Fathers have not always enunciated, as any good manual would have done, “the rules of a sacred hermeneutic,” would it be immediately necessary to conclude, as some have in fact, that they “simply accommodated themselves to the exegesis in use at the time?” As if the rules were not first immanent in the practice and mingled with the doctrine before being extracted from them so as to be codified in manuals!587

Accordingly, de Lubac proceeded from describing traditional hermeneutics in Histoire et Esprit

to formalizing a broader set of norms for correct interpretation of Scripture in Exégèse

médiévale.

5.3.1. The Medieval Refinement of Christian Allegorical Method

As in all his earlier works, de Lubac in Exégèse médiévale asserted that the distinctively

Christian notion of the allegorical sense is born from the faith perspective of the New Testament

as a “prodigious newness” of perspective which is a means of affirming the unity of the Two

Testaments: “It is, to summarize everything in a single expression, one of the forms under which

587 ME 1/2:16-17. 342 the Christian Newness appears for us.”588 This statement affirms the unity of God’s salvific intent throughout the stages of historical revelation from creation to the apocalypse. As in

Catholicisme and Histoire, the basic method of Christian allegory is the recognition that earlier historical events prefigure later ones for which they prepared. In Exégèse médiévale, he observed that this perspective is rooted in Christ’s words in the Gospels and in the writings of St.

Paul. The New Testament provides a limited number of examples of its use, together with indications that Christ endowed apostolic tradition with further concrete examples (e.g., Luke

24:27).

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac paid more attention to the fact that this distinctively

Christian use of allegory was born into a world which already possessed a lively employment of symbolism and two distinct methods of reading also called allegory: one from Hellenistic

Judaism and the other from the Greek pagan tradition. In the Patristic era, these essentially different methodologies were sometimes grouped together indiscriminately under the heading of

“allegory.” As de Lubac took pains to show, the distinctively Christian sense of allegory was practiced continuously throughout the history of Christian interpretation, yet even Christian authors freely borrowed and adapted the other forms of symbolic or allegorical interpretation because these methods proved useful in teaching and preaching. Because the Medieval manner of exegetical training largely imitated the models given by the Fathers of the Church, diverse modes of biblical interpretation were practiced and preserved under the equivocal term

“allegorical exegesis.” Sometimes conflicts within different schools of orthodox Christian thought precipitated methodological speculation on the nature and limits of allegory, such as the conflict between Antiochene and Alexandrian exegesis. At other times, engagement with heresy

588 ME 1/2:103; emphasis in original. 343 (e.g., Gnosticism) contributed to the more careful specification of legitimate exegetical

procedure.

In de Lubac’s appraisal, this agonic phase of defining the allegorical sense began during

Patristic times and stretched well into the Medieval period. The need to formulate rigorous

norms for the proper usage of allegory was postponed by several factors. First, the early Church

tolerated a wide spectrum of attitudes regarding the employment of allegory—from interpreters

who made limited use of spiritual sense exegesis (such as the Antiochenes and Jerome)589 to those who made extensive use of it, such as Origen. The diversity and latitude of allegory’s use translated into a similar diversity and latitude of theoretical articulations. Second, the Medieval period enjoyed the uncontested presence of some guiding convictions which kept allegorical exegesis sound, such as the rule of faith, the principle of Christocentric exegesis, and a teleological conception of salvation history. In the later Medieval period, however, several historical events created the need for clearer norms for allegorical exegesis: the rise of scholasticism with its different theological method; concern about arbitrariness in monastic exegesis; the crisis of Joachimism; and the larger crisis of the Reformation and its Scriptural hermeneutics. Even by the fifteenth century, a complete theology of the allegorical sense had not yet been achieved in spite of three centuries of increasing concern among theologians about proper use of the allegorical method. A limited triumph, however, may be found in the thirteenth century.

In St. Thomas’ succinct treatment of the four senses of Scripture (ST I, q. 1, a. 10), de

Lubac saw the Medieval codification of the four senses. The literal sense is a first level of

589 De Lubac repeatedly noted that these exegetes’ cautious use of allegory was not, as sometimes alleged, a rejection of allegory as a legitimate means of interpreting Scripture or a suspicion of its basic principles. 344 signification; the spiritual senses, a second level. On the literal level, the words of a text refer to historical realities. An additional perspective, garnered in retrospect from subsequent stages of salvation history, permits readers to discern that the realities described by the literal sense signify the later realities for which they prepared. Thus a biblical text has two levels of signification and each level its own referent.590 This treatment guaranteed that the spiritual senses are in no way

considered extrinsic to the biblical text and so avoided semantic confusion in the process of

multi-sense interpretation.591 Although the spiritual senses are the discovery of a human

interpreter, they are the intended meaning of the divine Author, who has arranged historical

events so that some key events are symbolic of others yet to come. This treatment of the four

senses safeguards the objectivity of the spiritual senses and keeps them separate from homiletic

and didactic devices such as the figurative “application” of a text to ad hoc circumstances.592

590 While de Lubac proposed the same semantic theory in Histoire, he observed that it was not articulated as such by Origen, but rather “the formulas of Saint Thomas successfully epitomized and filtered the tradition” of the Middle Ages (HS, 481).

591 Such is the concern of ST I, q.1, a.10, ad 1, which remains pertinent for the successful integration of traditional exegesis with historical criticism; as the 1993 statement of the Pontifical Biblical Commission stated: “In reaction to this multiplicity of senses, historical- critical exegesis adopted, more or less overtly, the thesis of the one single meaning: A text cannot have at the same time more than one meaning. All the effort of historical-critical exegesis goes into defining ‘the’ precise sense of this or that biblical text seen within the circumstances in which it was produced. But this thesis has now run aground on the conclusions of theories of language and of philosophical hermeneutics, both of which affirm that written texts are open to a plurality of meaning” (Interpretation of the Bible in the Church [Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1993], section II.B).

592 The continuing relevance of this distinction was addressed by Pope Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu, § 27 (30 September 1943): “Let Catholic exegetes then disclose and expound this spiritual significance, intended and ordained by God, with that care which the dignity of the divine word demands; but let them scrupulously refrain from proposing as the genuine meaning of Sacred Scripture other figurative senses. It may indeed be useful, especially in preaching, to illustrate, and present the matters of faith and morals by a broader use of the Sacred Text in the figurative sense, provided this be done with moderation and restraint; it should, however, never be forgotten that this use of the Sacred Scripture is, as it were, extrinsic to it and accidental, and 345 On this semantic basis, allegory also may be distinguished from the literal-sense devices

of analogy and metaphor. De Lubac traced the distinction between these devices and the

Christian concept of allegory as far back as the writing of the ninth-century Irish theologian,

John Scotus Eriugena:

Biblical allegory is therefore essentially allegoria facti. More precisely, it is allegoria facti et dicti. It is, in the Christian sense of the word, mysterium.593

Quoting Eriugena, de Lubac continued:

The other form, which properly [received] … the name “symbol,” is called allegory of word but not of deed, since it is constituted only in the utterances of spiritual doctrine but not of sensible facts. So mysteries are what have been both historically done and literally narrated in both Testaments, whereas symbols are what are said, not done—or, to put it another way, done only by teaching.594

Concerning metaphor, de Lubac then wrote: “The Middle Ages would never stop reading the

definition coming from Quintilian: ‘which points to something in words but something else in

sense.’”595 In both cases, symbol and metaphor involve a kind of relationship between subject

and predicate which remains entirely within the literal sense, not a second level of intentionality

and signification beyond it, as with allegory.596

that, especially in these days, it is not free from danger, since the faithful, in particular those who are well-informed in the sciences sacred and profane, wish to know what God has told us in the Sacred Letters rather than what an ingenious orator or writer may suggest by a clever use of the words of Scripture” (AAS 35 [1943]: 297-325).

593 ME 1/2:88-89.

594 ME 1/2:89, quoting John Scotus Eriugena, Commentarium In Joannem, PL 122:344- 345.

595 ME 1/2:89-90.

596 To take the earlier example discussed in the analysis of Histoire, when John the Baptist rebuked the Pharisees as a “brood of vipers,” the concept of viper is employed only to focus the attention of the reader on a certain aspect of the Pharisees, such as their cunning, or 346 De Lubac also noted how the Medievals distinguished biblical allegory from the artistic and literary device which bears the same name: “In popular current usage, as in its original signification, it [literary allegory] designates only a ‘continued metaphor,’ making one thing be understood by means of another.”597 Thus the poet, author, or artist can create continued

metaphors within the fabric of the created world of his composition. God alone, however, can

create continued metaphors within the events of world history. All artists can “allegorize” in

their creations; the divine Artist can allegorize in the field of world events. These allegories constitute the object of the distinctively Christian spiritual sense of allegory.598

De Lubac then examined how the distinctively Christian usage of allegory took its place

beside other methods of figurative reading also called “allegory” in the first century—Philonic

allegory and pagan Greek allegory. Refining his work in Histoire and “Typologie et

Allégorisme,” he observed that all three methods of allegory shared the common feature of

approaching the literal sense of the text as allos agoreuō, “making one thing understood by means of another”599 in a way which involves two levels of signification. In all three forms of

their danger to those present. Symbol and metaphor are literal-sense conventions of sense and reference, indicating selective focus on just one aspect of the predicate (the cunning of the viper) as the sense under which the referent (Pharisees) should be viewed. In symbolism and metaphor, the symbolic or metaphorical signifier need only be conceptual, not real, unlike the signifier of a Christian biblical allegory. No historical viper need be present as the basis for John’s remark; his audience’s concept of the nature of the animal suffices for the association. In allegory, both the signifier (the literal sense of the text) and the signified (the allegorical sense) must be real events, persons, etc. in history, not merely concepts.

597 ME 1/2:90.

598 Since the extended metaphor and parable often occur in Scripture (e.g., the Parable of the Vineyard in Isaiah 5), a clear understanding of the semantic difference between these literal- sense devices and spiritual-sense allegory is necessary to avoid confusion.

599 ME 1/2:89. 347 allegory, as Augustine described them, “The actions [themselves] speak.… The deeds, if you

understand them, are words.”600 Yet the relationship between the referent of a text’s literal sense

and the referent of its allegorical sense differs in each case.

In distinctively Christian allegory, the literal sense of a text refers to an historical event

which is also the sign of a later event of God’s dispensation of grace in history for which it

prepares. Philonic allegory affirmed that the referent of the literal sense of the text is a truly

historical reality, but saw in historical events signs of the ahistorical eternal realities of middle

Platonism, rather than future historical realities. Thus in Philonic allegory, the referent of the literal sense is historical, while the referent of the allegorical sense is not. Pagan Greek allegory represented a third permutation. This style of allegory sprang from the Greek enlightenment which re-interpreted its traditional religious texts as fables. It viewed the literal sense of the text

(e.g., a theogony of Ouranos and Gaia) as a didactic myth, a narrative which has a literal sense which intelligent readers understand to be fictitious but naïve readers may take to be historical.

The referent of the literal sense thus has a quasi-historical character; otherwise, one would have unalloyed metaphor or parable. A naïve reader only grasps the literal sense and would affirm the

historical character of the text, while a pagan allegorist denies it and instead maintains that the

literal sense of the text serves only to point to some abstract truth (e.g., the origin of the world

from the elements of air and earth). Thus, in pagan Greek allegory the referent of the literal

sense is an ahistorical fiction and the referent of the allegorical sense is an ahistorical verity— some moral or metaphysical truth.601 These distinctions are summarized below:

600 ME 1/2:86, quoting Augustine, Sermon 95, PL 38:582.

601 Insofar as the referent of the literal sense of the text is non-existent in reality, i.e., merely a conceptual device, pagan Greek allegory came to regard what is signified by the literal sense as a mere symbol. Yet pagan allegorical interpretation remained distinct from the 348 Table 1. Types of Allegory in the First Century A.D. according to de Lubac

Species of Allegory Referent of the Referent of the Literal Sense of the Text Allegorical Sense of the Text Christian Historical event Historical event Philonic Historical event Ahistorical eternal reality

Pagan Greek Fictional Event Ahistorical reality

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac stated for the first time the link between the theoretical

basis of allegorical interpretation and his earlier meditations on historiography. Because an

essential operation in Christian allegory is the reconsideration of earlier events retrospectively

from the subsequent stages of salvation history, the success or failure of allegorical interpretation

rests on a correct sense of history. For de Lubac, the continuous practice of distinctively

Christian allegory was based on an equally enduring historiographical presumption on the part of

the Medievals: the recognition of Christ as the center of all human history. Christian allegory is

Christocentric: there is only one mystery which provides the basis for the second stage of

signification: the Mystery of Christ, whether considered as Head of all creation and Redeemer of

the human race or considered in His Mystical Body the Church.602

Reflecting on the Medieval notion of history as compared to the modern, de Lubac noted

some shortcomings of the Medieval approach to the text,603 but found one superiority:

symbolism or metaphor in the literal sense in two respects: first, the literal-sense devices of symbol, metaphor, and literary allegory are the intention of the author; in the pagan allegorists, what is symbolized is in no way foreseen by the original author of the text. Second, the literary devices need not have the quasi-historical narrative character that is the essential vehicle for Greek myth.

602 ME 1/2:92.

603 “[T]hey took the text naïvely, without at almost any time suspecting anything about its prehistory. For them, literary history was, if not nonexistent, at least still circumscribed within quite strictly defined limits, and their idea of the divinity of the Scriptures, not too deep but too 349 It is a theological sense of history, consubstantial with Christian thought, which it would be unfair to deny them. They doubtless had it more than we do. In often quite commonplace settings, they express it stoutly. But all sense of history supposes precisely that one does not stay at the level of its mere historia, i.e. … the pure and simple report of the facts. It supposes that one places oneself, at least at a second time, in another point of view than that of a simple narrator. To explicate the facts … one thus applies a principle of discernment.… One has recourse to the final causes that the facts would be unable to furnish and which give a retrospective clarification to the whole unfolding of these facts. This is why, if any not merely partial and relative, but total, comprehensive, and absolutely valid explication of history is truly possible, this explication can only be theological. Only faith anticipates the future with security. Only an explication founded upon faith can invoke a definitive principle and appeal to ultimate causes. At the same time, it is clear that the word “explication” no longer has the same sense as when it is a question of scientific explications.604

Several conclusions follow for allegory: first, purely secular philosophies of history are

incapable of supporting allegory. Second, alternative thematizations of the course of history

distort allegory; in other words, orthodox eschatology is a necessary precondition for allegorical

interpretation to be successful. Third, insufficient Christology and ecclesiology imperil allegory

insofar as Christ is the mystery upon which allegory is founded. For the Medievals, the doctrines on which allegory depended were items of public revelation, safeguarded by the Church as part of Apostolic Tradition and defined by the Magisterium. By indicating the explicit reliance of allegory on Catholic doctrine and the implicit reliance of Medieval exegetes on a Catholic understanding of revelation and Magisterium, de Lubac foreshadowed the profound alterations of spiritual interpretation which would occur after the Medieval period, when both the doctrines themselves and the authorities who taught them became objects of sectarian controversy.

strict and too one-sided, did not at all provoke them to look for the trace of the human deficiencies to which our attention is drawn today” ME 1/2:73.

604 ME 1/2:71; emphasis added; the italicized statement contains de Lubac’s mature and unambiguous statement of the role of faith in the interpretation of history. 350 De Lubac then addressed some particular norms for the objective conduct of allegory, but his remarks were rather fragmentary. He addressed a concern which had been latent since his work on Origen: the extent to which the Scripture could be allegorized. Medieval authors, like their Patristic counterparts, varied in their enthusiasm for widespread use of allegory. In

Histoire, de Lubac had stated that while every passage of Scripture should be examined to see if it contained a spiritual sense, not every passage of Scripture necessarily has one. Yet Origen’s evident predilection was to discover allegories everywhere.605

One measure of the objectivity of allegory is the level of detail of its prefiguration.

Allegories based on a fleeting similarity or two between a figure and a future reality are less reliable than those where there is an extended comparison. Another measure of the objectivity of allegory is the depth of the preparation; the more a figure plays an instrumental role in preparing for its referent, the more an allegory may be considered objective. A third measure of the objectivity of allegory is the depth of its relationship to various aspects of the Christian mystery—Christ and His Church. The more the allegorical sense turns on a conceptual linkage which is steeped in Christian doctrine—that is, steeped in matters plainly revealed in the literal sense of Scripture606 and in Sacred Tradition—the more the allegorical association is reliable.

Since de Lubac did not provide practical examples, one may propose two cases of allegorical interpretation, where there is a likeness between an earlier historical reality and a later

605 Accordingly, one is left with questions about when allegorization is objective and when it is excessive and fanciful.

606 Aquinas highlighted this aspect in ST I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 1: “nothing necessary to faith is contained under the spiritual sense which is not elsewhere put forward by the Scripture in its literal sense.” 351 one, understood according the Christian mystery; yet the level of preparation, level of

prefiguration, and level of involvement of doctrine varies between the two.

First, in Origen’s exposition of Isaac’s meeting of Rebekah at the well in Genesis 24 in

his Homilies on Genesis, the event allegorically signifies the fact that the Church (signified by the house of Abraham) joins to itself only the pure soul (signified by virginal Rebekah) through the waters of baptism (signified by the well) and then adorns the soul with virtues (signified by the jewelry) which only faith, not secular philosophy (signified by the house of her father

Bethuel), can give.607 In this case, the allegorical interpretation is weak: (a) the event of Isaac

betrothing Rebekah at the well is an historical preparation for the incorporation of the Gentiles

into the Church in only a very general and distant way; (b) while some elements of figuration are

well-grounded in both Scriptural usage and tradition (e.g., Israel, the people of God descended

from Abraham, as a figure for the Church), other elements are rather tenuous, such as the

association of a well with baptism, or jewelry with virtues, or Bethuel with philosophy. In this

case, Origen’s commentary should be considered as figurative homiletic appropriation of the

text, rather than as allegorical exegesis.

Second, in the allegorical interpretation of the sacrifice of Melchizedek (Gen 14:18-20)

as a prefiguration of the Eucharistic sacrifice offered by Christ, there are several elements of

historical preparation underlying the prefiguration. The agent, the location, the ritual elements,

and the purpose of the two sacrifices may all be compared. Jewish tradition before Christ

understood the priest-king Melchizedek as a figure of the Messiah, who is both king and priest

(Ps 110:4). The location of the sacrifice in Jerusalem forms the earliest part of an Old Testament

607 See Origen, Homilies on Genesis, 10.4, cited in Mark Sheridan, editor, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Old Testament 2, Genesis 12-50 (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 124. 352 sacrificial tradition, developed by the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22 and the construction of

Solomon’s temple on the same site (2 Chron 3:1). This association sets the stage for the New

Testament summit of that tradition to take place in Jerusalem at the end of Christ’s public ministry. The ritual elements of bread and wine, indicative of a todah sacrifice (cf. Lev. 7:11-

21), are also the distinctive species of the Eucharist of the New Testament. Analysis of the Sitz

im Leben of a todah sacrifice (deliverance from mortal peril), and its purpose (not a sin-offering,

but rather a thanksgiving for accomplished redemption—in Koine, a eucharistia), suggest further

parallels with the ritual significance of the Eucharist.608 Doctrinal association of these two

sacrifices is further supported by explicit statements of the New Testament, such as Hebrews 7.

As such, the associations are strong, and the allegory may be considered an intrinsic meaning of the text with much greater confidence than the previous case.

After clarifying the hermeneutics of symbol, metaphor, and the three species of allegory,

de Lubac analyzed another practice of Medieval exegesis which also bore the name “allegory.”

Since he did not give this practice a distinct name, it may well be called “speculative

allegory.”609 Desiring to be attentive to the full complexity of allegorical exegesis in the

Medieval tradition, he considered this form of allegory as a Christian adaptation of pagan Greek

allegorization: a hybrid type of allegory which was the product of them both. These allegories

608 For more detail on these associations, see Hartmut Gese, Essays on Biblical Theology, translated by Keith Crim (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981), 130-140; and Joseph Ratzinger, Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy, translated by Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 54-60.

609 Given the number of de Lubac’s distinctions in Exégèse Médiévale, it is regrettable that he did not fulfill his desire expressed in “Typologie et Allégorisme”: “Christian writers never succeeded in any rigorous way in reserving ‘allegory’ for its Pauline significance alone. And this is the primary reason that makes one feel that we need a new vocabulary for modern times” (TA-Eng, 152). 353 relate two deeds in salvation history, but there is no relationship of historical preparation

between them.610 He regarded speculative allegory as a precarious practice for the same reasons

that he regarded the tropology-first sequence of the spiritual senses precarious in Histoire: the

tendency to arbitrariness, rationalism and the risk of concepts of secular philosophy informing

the allegorical association rather than revelation.

In speculative allegory, an historical reality of the biblical text is considered in a metaphysical or abstract perspective, and related to another historical reality, likewise considered in an ahistorical mode. The essential feature of proper Christian allegory, one historical reality preparing for another, is lacking. One example is the interpretation of some dynamic of the body as an “allegory” for a dynamic of the soul, for example, when a biblical text speaks of God giving light to the eyes of men (e.g., Ps 36:9) or Christ healing the blind (John 9), and the text is

understood to refer to both physical sight and sight is taken as an “allegory” for revelation. The

example is based on realities that exist in history and is informed by the Christian mysteries of

creation and redemption. The example enjoys a long biblical pedigree of employment, but it

does not have the historical dimension of proper allegory, because the historical realities

(physical sight, revelation) are not considered in any real historical dimension, and there is no

historical preparation between them.611

Because the factor of historical preparation is either slight or altogether absent, such

“speculative allegory” should not be equated with Christian allegory proper. De Lubac asserted that two kinds of exegetes typically practiced it. The first were Patristic apologists, such as

610 ME 1/2:99.

611 Speculative allegory differs from Philonic allegory insofar as the referent of speculative allegory refers to events in salvation history as opposed to ahistorical “eternal truths.”

354 Clement of Alexandria, who “baptized” this method in order to lead pagans accustomed to its use

to Christ: “a tactic common to the apologists of all times.”612 The second were Medievals with a

humanist inclination, who desired to show how even pagan erudition contained a partial insight

into Christian truth. Yet a perceptive author such as Hugh of Saint Victor precluded “the

temptation of a sort of timeless Christianity which might turn toward abstraction or gnosis”613 and treated the practice with caution. In de Lubac’s judgment, this kind of allegory was unacceptable in the modern period: at its basis lay “an elementary naturalism or a transcendent spirituality, in either case, it would be merely a question of theories,” insofar as the historical dimension is eviscerated, this method remains “the exact antithesis of Christian allegory.”614

When such a practice was informed by Christian revelation, the risks could be minimized, but its

successes were often accidental. Such a method of interpretation was often simply symbolism,

occasioned by an image in the biblical text, but driven by an analogia fidei or analogia entis, not

by the mysteries of Christian history, and so not properly allegory.

The hubris of allegorical interpretation in the Middle Ages was due in part to the lack of

methodological clarity of some of its practitioners in spite of the hermeneutical advances of the

twelfth century. Because allegory remained, for the most part, a pre-critical method of

interpretation, the distinctively Christian spiritual sense of allegory was not methodically

distinguished from symbolism, metaphor, parable, literary allegory, “speculative” allegory,

pagan Greek allegory, Philonic allegory, and figurative homiletic appropriation of the biblical

612 ME 1/2:103.

613 ME 2/1:256.

614 ME 1/2:100-101. 355 text. The exuberant, disorganized mélange of readings presented in the Glossa Ordinaria might serve as an example of this lack of hermeneutical clarity.

Yet this lack of methodological control was only one factor that fueled excesses in allegorical interpretation. The unchecked enthusiasm of some authors for finding allegories in the biblical text—compounded with a lack of hermeneutical clarity—led to many tenuous—if not untenable—assertions, which gave the impression that traditional Christian allegory was a product of the pious, imaginative creativity of the author, which in turn led to the downfall of allegory after the Medieval period. De Lubac frankly admitted that sound norms governing the use of allegory were sometimes lacking during the Middle Ages:

Each generation, each individual genius or each family of minds almost undetectably changes the accent of the doctrine. To be sure, it experiences dormant periods, mechanical repetitions, subsidences, unhealthy overgrowths, and its life is sometimes almost smothered under the mass of devices that were intended to assist it.615

He also bluntly assessed the value of Medieval spiritual interpretation:

For it is about a collection of conceptions that are straining to express that mystery. They deal with its substance and rhythm, although in their letter they evidently contain a number of transitory elements, today obsolescent; well, let’s admit it: a lot of junk [beaucoup de fatras]. To have disregarded it, so to speak, from the opening move, means that more than one historian, more than one scholar, has totally missed the range of this doctrine of the four senses. A certain historical positivism leads one methodically to kill the object of one’s study, with one’s eyes closed.616

Thus the essential step in ressourcement involves perceiving the correct methodology at

work in the “honest and alive” development of allegory in the Medieval period beneath all the

overgrowth. The traditional method of teaching allegory was its greatest liability in the late

615 ME 1/2:208.

616 ME 1/2:211. 356 Medieval period, since it did not distinguish between objective allegorical exegesis, other forms

of legitimate figurative exposition, and pseudo-allegorical accretions which should have been

immediately rejected as eisegesis. De Lubac argued that part of what sustained such

“overgrowth” in the Middle Ages was the fact that the motivation for amassing such readings

was often benign, albeit benighted. Much pseudo-allegorical exegesis sprang from Medieval

enthusiasm for the analogia fidei ac entis and the belief in the recapitulation of all things in

Christ. This Medieval enthusiasm was often expressed inappropriately in the otherwise valid method of allegory, which relies on an analogy between the signifier and signified, as well as the spiritual convergence of all things in Christ.

In de Lubac’s appraisal, the Medievals had, to their credit, a profound understanding of a reader’s engagement with Sacred Scripture and what constituted exegetical “success.” In de

Lubac’s formulation of the Medieval mindset, the activity of interpretation discerns the meaning of a text, understands that text’s subject matter, and reveals the reader more fully to himself in relation to creation, society and God.617 In de Lubac’s appraisal, the best of these pseudo-

allegorical byproducts of Medieval exegesis might have seemed like exegetical success because

they shared all but one key feature of the complete act of interpretation. A good pseudo-

allegorical interpretation could meditate on some of the same truths expressed by the literal sense

of a biblical text. It could be guided by doctrine and shaped by Catholic traditions of prayer,

liturgy and contemplation. It could deepen the theological edification of a reader and assist his

pursuit of union with God. With a diversity of figurative literary devices, with frequent use of

617 “[Medieval exegesis] was not yet a specialized exegesis; it was at once less and much more: it was a total exegesis; it was not an auxiliary science of theology: it was theology itself— and even more than theology, if the signification of the word is extended as far as spirituality” (ME 1/2:77). 357 multi-sense spiritual interpretation, and with a lack of explicit hermeneutical norms, such a pious

interpretation could seem like exegetical success. Yet the first step of the activity of

interpretation is foundational to all the rest: ascertaining the meaning of the text itself. Without

sound norms for reading the literal sense of the text and without a clear understanding of the relationship between the literal and allegorical senses, Medieval exegesis was constantly at risk of producing subjective readings merely occasioned by the biblical text and accidental to the genuine meaning of the passage.

Yet even within the hubris of Medieval allegory, de Lubac saw hope for the contemporary Church: the proper balance between literal and allegorical exegesis had never been struck. The modern period excelled over the Medieval period in its ability to discern the literal meaning of the biblical text. Yet the Medieval period preserved, at least implicitly, a functional understanding of the relationship between the literal and allegorical sense and a suitable theological anthropology for interpretation—both of which had been impoverished in the modern period. In spite of their deficiencies in the literal sense and their lack of formalized hermeneutics, the Medievals retained a firm sense of the goal of exegesis, which has been lacking in modern exegesis:

At least this lack of curiosity … protected them against all our profane and sometimes perhaps profaning taste for religious history and religious psychology. They knew that “all these things have been written so that they might believe that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God.”618

In this regard, their strengths are complementary to those of modern exegesis, which excels in its

scientific character, but at the expense of a detached attitude, adopted in the name of objectivity, which severs the exegete from an existential engagement with the text:

618 ME 1/2:81. 358 Many modern commentators consider the Bible “as a book that interests them, but which does not concern them.” Our Medievals would not have been able to comprehend this attitude which has become so general. Historians by temperament or not, they could not, in the presence of the Bible, decide to “play the spectator.”619

A fusion of the best aspects of the two methods is then both promising and necessary:

“everyone can today without contradiction combine the spirit of Christian allegorism with the

taste for the religious past of Israel taken in its most concrete particularity.”620 As de Lubac wrote:

To sum up, science and spirituality are in no wise incompatible. In the normal course of things, they should help and support one another, and it is obviously desirable for them to be joined together in the confines of the same subject area. But it is not divinely decreed that the most learned should necessarily be the most believing or the most spiritual. Nor is it divinely decreed that the century that would see the greatest progress in scientific exegesis would, by virtue of that very fact, be the century that would best understand Holy Scripture. Thus we need both the learned, in order to help us read Scripture historically, and the spiritual men (who ought to be “men of the Church”) in order to help us arrive at deeper spiritual understanding of it. If the former deliver us from our ignorance, the latter alone have the gift of discernment, which preserves us from interpretations that are dangerous to the faith.621

By distinguishing between the different exegetical techniques called “figurative” or “allegorical”

interpretation, de Lubac hoped to clarify the norms for a sound use of allegory in the modern

period and to separate legitimate allegory from those practices often criticized as arbitrary by

contemporary scholarship.

619 ME 1/2:81-82.

620 ME 1/2:71.

621 ME 1/1:267. 359 5.3.2. The Object of Tropology

De Lubac’s treatment of the spiritual sense of tropology in Exégèse médiévale contained

important refinements to the basic description he presented in Histoire.622 As he did in Histoire,

he argued for the unity of the four senses and the ideal sequence of interpreting the tropological

sense in light of the allegorical sense and then proceeding to anagogy (Sequence 3). Sound

instruction in doctrine, a clear sense of the history of the people God as found in Scripture, and a reconsideration of this history in the light of the Christian mystery are all necessary for the proper foundation of the tropological sense:

Rectitude of faith is the precondition for purity of mind, and to the extent that this faith is not firm and solid, it would be vain to wish immediately to pass on to morality. For one is not made to come to faith by the virtues, but rather one is brought to pursue the virtues by means of faith.… The fruits of tropology can only come after the flowers of allegory.623

As he explained in Histoire and “Distich,” tropology, properly understood, is the continuation of

the saving momentum which God began in the Old Testament, consummated in the New, and

now passes down, through the Church, to the reader:

[I]f it is true that nothing is superior to the Mystery of Christ, one ought not forget that this Mystery, which was prefigured in the Old Testament, is realized again, is being actualized, is being completed within the Christian soul. It is truly being fulfilled within us.624

The literal sense of Scripture reveals the moral imperative of continuing the act of interpretation

to the level of the tropological sense. De Lubac quoted a saying of Origen which resounded

622 Most of these refinements have subsequent historical controversies in mind, which only emerged within Protestantism after the time of the Reformation.

623 ME 1/2:128.

624 ME 1/2:134; emphasis in original. 360 through the Medieval period and into the seventeenth century: “What good does it do me for the

Logos to have come into the world if I myself do not have him?”625

Conversely, de Lubac considered unacceptable any hermeneutic which insisted, in the name of

“rational objectivity,” that an exegete must maintain a detached, scientific mindset that keeps him in a purely historical mode so that he is unable to engage the moral dimension of the text in his own life as part of exegesis:

To stop at the objective datum of the mystery would be to mutilate it, to betray it. “The mind understands God’s words more truly when it searches for itself within them.”626

De Lubac also rejected the modern hermeneutical tendency to separate moral considerations from the activity of exegesis. Assessing the moral imperative of Scripture for the reader is not a derivative task of “practical application” of Scripture to life; rather, the Medievals saw the moral sense as an integral part of interpreting the genuine meaning of the text.

Similarly, de Lubac criticized the tendency of post-Reformation Catholic “figurists” to stop spiritual interpretation at the level of allegory. He argued that the Medieval period was greatly influenced by the “two great masters of the tropological sense”: Origen and Pope St. Gregory the

Great. “Following their teaching, which was spread everywhere,” Medieval exegetes believed that “everything in Scripture that is susceptible of being allegorized also can and ought to be moralized.”627

Regarding the frequent use of the tropological sense, de Lubac had previously stated in

Exégèse médiévale that any passage in Scripture could potentially bear a spiritual sense. The

625 ME 1/2:140, quoting Origen, In Jeremiam, homily 6, PL 25:632c.

626 ME 1/2:134, quoting Gregory, Moralia in Job, book 28, chapter 8, PL 76:459c.

627 ME 1/2:134. 361 Fathers and Medievals differed on the frequency with which particular allegories could be drawn

from the text, but with the tropological sense there was greater uniformity of opinion, owing to

the impact of Paul’s instruction to Timothy (2 Tim. 3:16-17) on the exegetical tradition: “All

scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for

training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good

work.”628 Accordingly, every passage of Scripture ought to be interpreted morally, whether

through the literal sense (insofar as it contains commandments, precepts, etc.) or through the

tropological sense.629 Such was the common mindset of Medieval interpreters, and of de Lubac

628 Other passages often cited in this connection are Romans 15:4 (“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope”) and 1 Cor 10:6, 11 (“Now these things are warnings for us, not to desire evil as they did.… Now these things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come.”) ME 1/2:133.

629 A terminological inconsistency appears in Chapter Nine (“Mystical Tropology”) of Exégèse médiévale, when after detailing the nature of the allegorical sense in the previous chapters, de Lubac asserted that in every case, “We pass from history to tropology through allegory” (ME 1/2:134). From the foregoing examination, it is clear that the spectrum of Patristic and Medieval opinion about the frequency of individual allegories varies greatly—a fact that seems difficult to reconcile with de Lubac’s assertion that the universal imperative to proceed to the moral sense be achieved in every passage through the intermediate stage of allegory, rather than sometimes directly from the literal sense without it. De Lubac admitted that sometimes this passage can happen briefly or “the intermediate step is not always explicitly traversed; the [allegorical] mystery, taken in itself, is not expressed; it is nonetheless always presupposed” (ibid.). Here and elsewhere de Lubac equivocated between allegory and its basis, which is the mystery of Christ. Sometimes de Lubac expressed this equivocal sense more clearly as the relationship between the many individual allegoriae and the one central allegoria of Christ. However, de Lubac’s language here seems misleading. For de Lubac, allegory was the doctrinal sense of the Middle Ages because it expressed most often how individual passages of Scripture ought to be understood in light of Christ. As a result, de Lubac sometimes employed the term “allegory” as shorthand for understanding the whole of Scripture in light of the mystery of Christ (basically, shorthand for a Christocentric canonical approach), regardless of whether any figurative preparation was involved. De Lubac’s statement that every passage be interpreted morally and that all moral interpretation must proceed through allegory, might seem to use the moral sense as a springboard for the wholesale rejuvenation of unlimited Origenian enthusiasm for allegory; such was never de Lubac’s intent. Rather, what he meant here is that any 362 himself: “Everything is consummated in the inner man.”630 Using an analogy of how good

works follow sanctifying grace, de Lubac, following Honorius of Autun, commented that

allegory “joins the soul with the Spirit, so that from their union the ‘good work’ [of tropology]

results.”631 Insofar as the Truth of Christ is the chief aspect in allegory, divine Love is the chief aspect of tropology: “It is in charity that tropology shows itself to allegory in interior perfection.”632 As he had done in Catholicisme and Histoire, de Lubac discussed in Exégèse

médiévale the two-fold nature of the tropological sense, both individual and communal. On the

one hand, tropology concerns what the entire community of the Church, as the Mystical Body of

Christ, ought to do; on the other, tropology concerns what an individual as a member of that

community ought to do in his own life.

De Lubac’s refinements of tropology in Exégèse médiévale concerned the object of the

tropological sense. In every spiritual sense, there are two levels of signification. In the second

level, where the reality signified by the letter signifies something else, what is signified by the

tropological sense: deeds or moral principles? The famous distich stated: “moralis quid agas.”

tropological consideration must take into account the fullness of public revelation possessed by the Church—a consideration that is particularly important when dealing with the moral sense of the Old Testament, a point which de Lubac addressed with care in Histoire; accordingly, for example, in considering a passage concerning retribution, the exegete must situate the passage in its full doctrinal context from the Mosaic lex talionis in Exod 21:22-23 to the Gospel precept to “turn the other cheek” in Mt 5:38-42, but there need not be any preparatory prefigurations involved in such a consideration. De Lubac would consider the exegete’s brief mental review of all salvation history in light of Christ’s teaching on mercy and His supreme example on the Cross as “quickly traversing allegory,” by which de Lubac simply meant, “by considering the same mystery which is the basis for all allegory, namely Christ.”

630 ME 1/2:138.

631 ME 1/2:132.

632 ME 1/2:141. 363 Some Medieval formulations described tropology as proceeding from the deeds of history to the

deeds that God allots a reader to accomplish: from the res gesta of history to the res gerenda of

tropology. Other formulations emphasized the passage from history through allegory to

tropology—describing the process of tropological interpretation as moving from facta mystica to

facienda mystica.633 In these formulations, the object of the tropological sense seems to be the

particular acts to be carried out by the exegete.634 On the other hand, the object of the tropological sense was sometimes understood abstractly: “one could make it equivalent to a manner of being or of acting, habit, mores.”635 With the rise of Scholasticism, the tropological

sense was frequently considered in connection to the development of moral science and so its

object was viewed as moral principles, rather than as the actions to be performed by a

contemplative reader—a focus retained more often by monastics engaged in lectio divina. While

the dichotomy—deeds or principles?—may seem to split hairs, de Lubac saw in this unresolved

Medieval conceptualization of the tropological sense a fault line for several major exegetical

problems after the Reformation. 636

633 ME 1/2:132-133.

634 Such was the emphasis of the definition of tropology which de Lubac cited from the Speculum of the School of Saint Victor: “‘Allegory’ [is] when through one deed another deed is understood.… It is ‘tropology’ when through one deed another thing to be done is pointed out.” ME 1/2:130.

635 ME 1/2:130.

636 While the bulk of de Lubac’s historical review of tropology is found in Exégèse médiévale, the scope of his concerns is only apparent after reading Exégèse médiévale in light of La Postérité spirituelle. The Medieval period saw the struggle and triumphant phase of the refinement of the tropological sense; its hubris and dissolution happened later; the dissolution will be briefly discussed here in order to clarify what de Lubac believed was at stake in the struggle to define properly the object of the tropological sense.

364 Does the tropological sense indicate a moral deed that an exegete will perform or a moral

principle for him to apply to himself and follow? Each answer has its merits; each also poses

certain risks for hermeneutics. In regard to the first option, if the tropological sense indicates a

deed—a future event in its concrete historical particularity—this view seems to accord with the

historical character of all the spiritual senses. Just as the referent of the allegorical sense is an

event in history and the referent of the anagogical sense is an eschatological event in history, it

seems appropriate that the tropological sense also refer to the individual historical events carried

out by the faithful, rather than to abstract moral principles. Thus, tropology refers, like the other three senses, to a particular moment of God’s dispensation of grace in human history—the moment of the exegete in the present day. This view emphasizes the dynamic character of the

Word of God, “living and active,” today, since the very referent of the spiritual sense of tropology is the life of the exegete, rather than abstract, universal principles of morality which

may or may not be enacted.

However, the distinctive characters of each of the four senses arise not from their

chronological range, but from the way they relate the exegete to the subject matter of the biblical

text. Tropology is not a “second” allegory merely occurring at a subsequent stage in time, any

more than allegory can be described as a subsequent chronological stage of history. Both the

literal and allegorical senses refer to events which span the timeline of biblical history. An

attempt to schematize the relationship of letter, allegory, and tropology as a chronological

movement from Old to New to the present fails; the development from one sense to the next

involves a conceptual shift, from history to mystery to morality.

Another of de Lubac’s concerns was forward-looking. If the object of the tropological

sense is an action carried out by an individual, de Lubac worried that this view set the stage for 365 two trends that emerged after the Reformation. First, there is what he called “mystical immanentism,” an excessive belief in the role played by interior spiritual experiences in shaping doctrine. One subspecies of this problem can be seen in the Protestant doctrine of private interpretation: the belief that the Holy Spirit would guide an exegete to all he needs to know for his perfection and salvation. De Lubac believed that this view of exegesis arose from two major alterations of Medieval Catholic exegetical principles. First, the Reformers denied the

Magisterial role of the Church in defining the doctrines contained in the literal sense of Scripture.

Second they exalted the individual tropological sense to fill entirely the space once occupied by

Tradition and Magisterium in shaping faith and morals. The Reformer’s confidence that the individual tropological sense could shoulder such a burden rested in part on its widespread

Medieval usage. Medieval piety had long recognized the individual tropological sense as closely tied to the salvation of the reader as the “most free” mode of interpretation “circumscribed only by piety and coherence.”637 Within this mode of interpretation, the Holy Spirit’s illumination of the heart of an exegete to discern what he ought to do was regarded as a legitimate form of interpretation. Insofar as this sense functioned within Magisterial confines, an individual reader’s judgments were accorded a kind of rightful autonomy, as might similarly be accorded to his style of prayer, devotions, penances, etc. While the Reformers rejected Tradition and

Magisterium, and many of them rejected allegory as well, they retained the individual tropological sense, untied it from its dogmatic moorings, and confidently asserted that the salvific intent of Scripture could be realized solely through what the Holy Spirit privately reveals to the reader—a far greater role and autonomy than Medieval exegetes ever accorded to the tropological sense—but nonetheless derived from it. In light of this historical development, one

637 ME 1/1:15-16. 366 might judge that the individual tropological sense signifies moral principles, rather than an

individual’s privately-discerned gerenda, in order to safeguard the doctrinal integrity of the

tropological sense from private interpretation.

Second, de Lubac was concerned about the origins of what he called “biblical

concordism”—the idea that the literal sense of a biblical text bears within it a hidden meaning

which symbolically points to shortly-forthcoming historical events.

An exegete who understands the hidden symbolism can interpret “prophetically” the divinely-

ordained significance of these events of his day. While tracing the origins of this exegetical

maneuver to the thirteenth-century apocalyptic commentaries of Joachim of Fiore, de Lubac was

concerned about its much broader legacy in later Christian tradition. He saw this exegetical

approach at work in the formation of a number of millenarian or utopian sects whose core

doctrine involved making such associations:

Two deviations threaten spiritual understanding at its peak. Spiritual understanding can forget that Christianity is eschatological and, effectively, suppress hope—at least the specifically Christian hope. On the other hand, by an inverse dissociation of the invisibilia and the futura, it can also conceive an eschatology upon earth and thereby transform hope … into utopia.638

While millenarian sects—past and present—might not garner much credibility, de Lubac was concerned about the broader use of this exegetical approach among some mainstream groups of

Protestant Christians, such as evangelicals.639 In addition is the danger that Medieval usage

638 ME 2/1:327. De Lubac’s first point (on the loss of the eschatology sense and the loss of Christian hope) will be discussed in the next section on anagogy.

639 Evangelical futurists frequently employ such an approach to Scripture in interpreting end-times prophecies in relationship to current events. Belief in “Bible codes” and the alleged foretelling of contemporary non-apocalyptic events in texts of the Bible (which de Lubac called “typological literalism”) are also related exegetical aberrations. With regard to “Bible codes,” see, for example, Michael Drosnin, The Bible Code (New York: Touchstone, 1997). Jewish interpreters are also involved with this movement, since it 367 could later be seen as providing support for a spectrum of concordist practices, since both this

view of tropology and concordism affirm that the biblical text itself refers to coming events in

the life of the exegete. If moral principles, rather than deeds, are the object of the tropological

sense, the threat is avoided.640

Historically, de Lubac saw the origin of biblical concordism in the corruption and

conflation of allegory with tropology. Joachim’s style of futurist “typic” association

is of a different nature than history, morality, and allegory. It is not, let us say it again, a “spiritual” understanding. It is essentially the perception of a relation between two literal levels … more precisely, between two histories: the history of ancient Israel and the history of the Church. It does not make us pass “from the visible to the invisible” as did the moral understanding and … allegorical … understanding … but from one end to the other … it keeps us within exterior facts.641 resonates with the Jewish technique of interpreting by gematria, a practice that has existed in Jewish tradition from Talmudic times. See Doron Witztum, Eliyahu Rips, Yoav Rosenberg, “Equidistant letter sequences in the Book of Genesis,” Statistical Science 9, no. 3 (1994): 429– 438; and Robert Haralick, Eliyahu Rips, and Matityahu Glazerson, Torah Codes: A Glimpse into the Infinite (New York: Mazal & Bracha, 2005). De Lubac was aware of the cross-pollination between Joachimist exegesis and Jewish Kabbalist use of gematria through his study of Pico della Mirandola, who examined the use of gematria in Kabbalism. With regard to “typological futurism,” see Joe Kovacs, “Is oil catastrophe fulfillment of Genesis prophecy? Video suggests biblical tie with U.S. treatment of Israel, rig explosion” World Net Daily News, June 23, 2010 (available at: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=170373); or David Brennan, The Israel Omen: The Ancient Warning of Catastrophies [sic] Has Begun (n.p.: Teknon Publishing, 2009), which alleged that a series of global catastrophes has occurred as divine punishment for actions taken by first-world nations against Israel, according to the prophecies in Zechariah.

640 De Lubac noted the description of the twelfth-century abbot, Philip of Harvengt, who described tropology as a kind of prophecy: “While he enjoined them to do deeds in the flesh, he foretold those that were to be fulfilled spiritually in us, and the real history of that time has been made into our prophecy [et illius temporis realis historia, nostra facta est prophetia]” (PL 203:675a). ME 1/2:141.

641 ME 2/1:332. Hans Frei, who approached the same phenomenon from within an historical study which started in the present and worked backward toward the Reformation era, provided a similar definition: “This kind of prophecy, rather than an anachronism, was the sign of new cultural development, for its emphasis was on the events, on their likely course and on the hidden signs and references to this ‘real’ world of past and future history, spread through the Bible. The mysterious signs and number schemes to be worked out from the biblical verbal 368

Considering the object of the tropological sense a moral principle instead of a deed avoids

facilitating mystical immanentism and typological futurism, but this position has its own

liabilities. First, it seems to run counter to de Lubac’s emphasis on the historical character of the

spiritual senses and enters the realm which he considered Philonic, rather than Christian,

exegesis: “For the sense of Scripture is not just any thought; it is not an impersonal truth: it is He.

The secret and hidden sense of Christ itself.”642 Second, universal principles only relate

generically to the individual actions of an exegete. When an individual discerns “quid agas,”

this discernment should be understood as the application of the fruits of exegesis to life—a

second and consequent step to the activity of exegesis. Individual tropology can no longer be

considered exegesis proper, contrary to de Lubac’s assertion that all four spiritual senses are

genuinely exegetical. In contrast, when Medievals interpreted Scripture with respect to quid

agas, they considered their activity “exegesis proper,” rather than a “practical application” of an

exegesis which only reveals generic moral principles.643

configurations represent a kind of proleptic verification of the shape of events not yet come to pass. Ironically … it was a kind of detachment of the ‘real’ historical world from its biblical description” (The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 4). For Frei, such typological futurism often came at the expense of properly understanding the literal sense of the text and the biblical history it narrates.

642 ME 1/2:159; emphasis in original.

643 As a way to bridge the dichotomy, one might consider an individual’s moral actions as “participating” in abstract moral principles in the same manner as a substance participates in its essential form so that the abstract referent of the tropological sense could be deeds. In his critique of Origen in Histoire, however, de Lubac rejected this potential compromise between the two views. Even if such a perspective were adopted, the object of the individual tropological sense would still not be a concrete historical deed, but only a quality of the historical deed. Individual tropology would then still be application, not exegesis. Thus, such an attempt to reconcile the two options of the dichotomy would have been unacceptable to de Lubac. 369 De Lubac’s solution to the dilemma lies in his understanding of the two-fold nature of the tropological sense, which considers first and foremost the totus Christus, the entire ecclesia, and only derivatively the individual member as anima in ecclesia. The communal tropological sense comes first conceptually, then the individual tropological sense. As such, the object of the tropological sense is what is to be done by the Church: an historical deed, but one performed by the corporate subject which is the Mystical Body of Christ. An individual subject comes into play only as part of this corporate subject. De Lubac’s approach has several advantages: first, it retains the historical character of the spiritual senses; these deeds will be done by individuals (at some point in time, whenever the Mystical Body does them), yet traditional tropology does not attach any predictive value to the events of the literal sense, as concordism does. Traditional tropology makes no one-to-one comparison between the sequence of events of biblical history and the sequence of events of an exegete’s life, nor that of the Church as a whole.644

644 To take an example from Origen’s commentaries on Joshua, when a Medieval exegete understood Israel’s historical battles with its Canaanite adversaries as an allegory of the Church’s spiritual warfare with pagan vices in society, traditional tropology does not expect either the corporate subject or individual subject to follow a sequence of events closely paralleling the sequence of Israel’s battles. At one moment, an interpreter may be engaged in a spiritual battle—which is to be expected insofar as the Church has done so in every age—but in the next hour, temptation having abated, a passage from Psalm 23 describing spiritual rest and security may be the next appropriate tropological interpretation to make. Traditional tropological interpretation is not driven by the need to map sequences of the literal sense unto the history of the spiritual life; rather, it is an ongoing discernment of how the spiritual life of an individual enters the various spiritual dynamics described in the biblical text. Just as a person’s daily moral life may be more actively shaped by one biblical principle or another, so too, an exegete’s individual tropological interpretation of a biblical text may resonate with now one passage, now another. Nonetheless, when an individual exegete understands his Christian behavior through the perspective provided by the tropological sense, he can truly say that the meaning of the text extends to his deeds. In this way, tropology does not become typological futurism. While the Divine Author foreknows and intends the individual tropological sense of the text, the inspired human author does not know it, nor does a human interpreter know it until he fulfills the text in his own moral conduct. Since the spiritual character of any act is only known with certitude by its agent, this view greatly limits predictive speculation about the moral behavior of others, 370

A second merit of de Lubac’s theory of tropology is its ecclesially-centered morality: the

individual moral subject must always be understood as vir ecclesiasticus, never considered

merely in his natural moral endowment, but always within the context of divine revelation and

his supernatural destiny, thus avoiding the Philonism that plagued the tropology-first sequence of

the spiritual senses in Origen. A close connection must be maintained between Catholic

doctrine, Catholic anthropology, and the moral discernment of the individual, in order to avoid

the hubris of the individual tropological sense.

Third, de Lubac’s view of tropology highlights the strongly communal dimension of the

moral life of the individual, which is understood as part of the life of the community, which

provides its inception (by the proclamation of the Gospel and Baptism), sustenance (through the

sacraments and communal life of the Church), and finality (from the Church glorified, the New

Jerusalem). The mystery of Christ is realized historically in the individual through the magnum

which is presumptuous without the charism of prophecy. The reprehensible feature of typological futurism is not an interpreter’s assertion that God is unfolding a plan in history through the behavior and misbehavior of people and nations (which is a perfectly legitimate Deuteronomistic principle), but the implicit assertion that an exegete can really discern the spiritual character of such behavior and its connections to the biblical text and to God’s “signs of the times” with prophetic certitude. Thus in a broad, but real sense, the individual tropological sense is genuinely a part of exegesis, not merely an application of it, insofar as an individual is a genuine part of the communal subject of the Body of Christ, and not somehow generically related to it “by participation” as matter is related to form, and this Body of Christ, in many and various ways daily acts in accordance with the mysteries of the spiritual life revealed in the literal and allegorical senses of the text. De Lubac’s mature presentation of the tropological sense in Exégèse médiévale represents a qualification of his statement in Catholicisme that “Mystical ontogenesis is only a reflection of phylogenesis” (Catholicism, 210). While the broad pattern of the spiritual life might follow that of the whole Church (natura, lex, gratia, patria), later attempts to take this correspondence too far constitute the hubris of this exegetical principle.

371 mysterium of the Church and its graces. The community of the Church is thus the historical instrument whereby the tropological sense is carried out in the life of the individual.

The two-fold nature of the tropological sense also permits the rigorous development of moral science—which de Lubac saw as the triumph of Scholasticism—while still allowing a robust place for the role of the Holy Spirit in an individual’s mystical life and a personal

application of the text to himself—which de Lubac saw as the triumph of monastic exegesis.

The communal tropological sense studies the norms of Christian morality in general and understands in the aggregate the moral conduct of the People of God through history. Within these boundaries of moral doctrine and Catholic tradition, an individual locates his own existential situation by following the interior promptings of the Holy Spirit in his reading of the

Scripture.

For de Lubac, it was essential that the development of moral science not “stifle the Spirit” nor come at the expense of the mystical life of the individual. De Lubac also emphasized how this individual discernment—while intimate and unique (“private” in one sense)—was never a channel for “private” revelation in the sense of privately-revealed doctrine. In its authentic form, the light of grace which guides an interpreter to discern the individual tropological sense assists his faculty of judgment in locating his own interior ascent to God within the dynamics of the

Church; it does not provide new doctrinal content. Thus the individual tropological sense reveals what the text means for the soul of a reader, but only insofar as he is anima in ecclesia and what is revealed is nothing other than the moral life taught by the letter of the text and epitomized by

Christ, the Mystery contemplated by allegory:

So, far from being in its own starting point a “creation of the individual mind,” tropology thus understood has its own indispensable place in the concatenation of the scriptural senses. Far from being exterior and inferior to the “deeper 372 sense” of allegory … it even marks, in a certain sense, a deepening of it, or even its summit: “We are nourished on history and parables; we grow by means of allegory; we are brought to perfection by morality.” Far from constituting a negligible appendix, its procedure is essential to the full understanding of Scripture. After the “transposition of the fundamental data of the Word of God with reference to Christ” ought to come the “assimilation of these data to ourselves through his mediation.”645

De Lubac believed that High Medieval monastic tropology became excessively specialized and fanciful, but he offered only one principle for its correction, when he commented

on the decadent transformation of the tropological sense:

Medieval society is no longer ancient society. Christianity no longer knew exactly the same problems as did the age of the Fathers. He who wishes to follow the Gospel is no longer in the same situation in relation to the world as the Christian of the first centuries. This evolution results more from a change of perspective in an exegesis whose principles remain unchanged but which does not cease to search the Scriptures for the light for the present life. A breach is being produced, enlarging tropology in relation to allegory, and tropology itself takes on certain new aspects.646

In Patristic times, “conversion” often meant leaving a non-Christian way of life to live as a

Christian in the midst of a pagan society. In the High Medieval period, however, “conversion” was more commonly understood (at least by monastics) as turning away from a Christian life in a professedly Christian civil society to enter cloistered religious life. What was once the telos of

“conversion” was then understood as only the beginning of “conversion” in the Medieval sense.

645 ME 1/2:133, quoting first “Hugo of Rouen” (also known as Hugh of Amiens), a twelfth century Benedictine abbot and bishop, in PL 192:1243c; and then Louis Bouyer, L’initiation chrétienne (Paris: Plon, 1958), 113-114.

646 ME 1/2:143. De Lubac offered a further critique of the development of the tropological sense in monastic exegesis as part of Chapter Nine of Part One of Exégèse médiévale. 373 Thus, the concepts once used to describe non-Christian life were transferred to describing the life of Christian laity.647 For example:

The saying of the Lord, “Unless ye be converted, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of the heaven,” is cited to prove that there is no entry, or at least no sure entry to life outside the monastic state … to renounce one’s rule, to leave the monastery, is “to apostasize”.… [M]onastic perfection is the perfection of baptism, it is a second baptism, a second regeneration which remits all sins.… Finally, the traditional axiom: “there is no salvation outside the Church” becomes for certain people quite naturally “outside the cloister there is no salvation.”648

A similar shift occurred in tropology. For example, the tropological interpretation of the

“Paradise” of Eden, “which was formerly the Church, is now the cloister.”649 Likewise in the

Song of Songs, instead of interpreting the union of the Bride and Bridegroom in the King’s chamber as the soul’s mystical ascent within the Church, Medieval monastic exegeses related each aspect of the Song of Songs to the monastic cell, its joys, and its challenges. For de Lubac,

Bernard of Clairvaux was the exemplar of this new monastic trend in tropology with his interpretations that were quite intimate and tailored to the needs of his monastic community.

Bernard tended to replace traditional tropological readings which had a universal application, with readings that were at once more refined, more subtle, and more narrow. “Let us take only two examples,” de Lubac wrote:

While with Rabanus Maurus the four sides of the cross provided matter for a large cosmic symbolism, Saint Bernard … sees in it “continence, patience, prudence, and humility.” While a long, firm tradition explained the six urns of Cana as the six periods that divide the history of revelation, for Bernard

647 The present-day two-fold meaning of “secular” (irreligious on the one hand; non- monastic clergy on the other) might serve as an example of this Medieval conceptual shift.

648 ME 1/2:146, 148.

649 ME 1/2:146. 374 … these urns do not contain anything more than water necessary for the “six purgations of the soul”: they are “silence, psalmody, vigils, fasting, manual labor, chastity.”650

Bernard’s highly specialized style of tropological exegesis was censured by opponents as

sheer “novelty.”651 Was it excessive? De Lubac’s citations can be outlined as follows. First, he

admitted that “[a]ll these transfers are, in general, justified by the ‘liberty of tropology,’ which, under the safeguard of the analogy of faith, permits Scripture to apply to all sorts of new situations. Nothing is simpler or more legitimate” than this monastic zeal to interpret the individual tropological sense as part of their reading of Scripture.652 In de Lubac’s judgment: “In

the novelty of its themes, is the exegesis of Bernard still traditional? In the freedom of its style, is this tropology still, in the old sense of the word, mystical? Yes, certainly.”653

De Lubac’s main critique identified one troublesome notion underlying the novelty of

Medieval monastic tropology: its exclusivity. It “sees in monastic (or canonic) life not only the

perfection of Christian life, but the only true Christian life.”654 For de Lubac, tropology must be

communally-oriented to the whole Church. This was the Medieval hubris of tropology: monastic

exegesis failed to return to the broader communio which engendered it. A hothouse flower too

650 ME 1/2:152.

651 The words of an opponent: “What is this new law? This new doctrine? Whence does it arise? Whence comes this new and unheard of presumption?” ME 1/2:151.

652 ME 1/2:148.

653 ME 1/2:153. De Lubac earlier stated: “To whatever family they belong, the elite of these monks is always bathing in the great current of the tradition. They particularize it much less than they prolong it. They always bear in mind the doctrinal foundations that sustain their edifice. The greatest among them have a very lively awareness of the Christian mystery” (ME 1/2:151).

654 ME 1/2:148. 375 frail to bear fruit outside the cloister, de Lubac treated it with suspicion, because he always considered evangelical effectiveness a litmus test of exegetical authenticity. The particularity and intimacy of Medieval monastic exegesis was not its downfall per se. All tropology has a personal character. Rather, medieval monastic exegesis failed to speak compellingly to those outside the cloister and was based on a methodological hostility to the “world,” even though this world encompassed the majority of Christ’s Body.

De Lubac also critiqued the gradual drifting away of the tropological sense from its allegorical foundation. In Bernard’s work, de Lubac found the traditional progression of the four senses active, albeit sometimes neglected or grossly distended. De Lubac wanted to moderate

Medieval monastic tropology by closer adherence to the norms for sober allegory. As a result, many of the foundations of Medieval monastic tropology should not be characterized as allegory, but rather as homiletic application and thus what follows from the tropology is no longer exegesis:

He [Bernard] uses it [tropology] so freely, remarks Godfrey of Auxerre, “that he seems rather to precede it than to follow it, to lead it where he wanted, himself following the Spirit who is its author.” Of him more than any other it therefore seems true to say that he does not properly speaking explicate the Scripture: he applies it; he does not clarify it: he clarifies everything by means of it, and the human heart to start with.655

In this critique, de Lubac merely reiterated the principles he had already laid down. The new principle he introduced in Exégèse médiévale was the need for the individual tropological sense to have as its ultimate frame of reference the life of the whole Church, rather than a specialized portion of it. Attrition of the communal tropological sense led to myopia and self-absorption in

655 ME 1/2:152. 376 the individual tropological sense; such was the hubris of the elaborate Medieval monastic

tropological exegesis.

5.3.3. The Eclipse of Anagogy

De Lubac introduced his treatment of anagogy and eschatology with a meditation on the

“three advents of Christ”:

The first advent, “humble and hidden,” on our earth, performs the work of redemption, which is pursued in the Church and her sacraments; this is the object of allegory in the proper sense of the word. The second advent, entirely interior, takes place within the soul of each of the faithful, and is unfolded by tropology. The third and last advent is saved up for the “end of the age,” when Christ will appear in his glory and will come to look for his own to take them away with him: such is the object of anagogy.656

Anagogy concerns the ultimate end of the spiritual life. In keeping with his emphasis on the

historical character of the spiritual senses, de Lubac stated that one finds oneself in the presence of an anagogic sense “when through understanding one deed there is another, which is to be desired, namely, the eternal felicity of the blessed.”657 For the Medievals, anagogy was

“pursu[ing] the peaks of spiritual understanding,”658 the final stage in the process of spiritual

interpretation.

In Catholicisme and Histoire, de Lubac described anagogy has having a two-fold nature

in exactly the same way as tropology: both communal and individual. In those earlier works, de

Lubac tended to describe communal anagogy as the fulfillment of communal tropology and

individual anagogy as the fulfillment of individual tropology. Communal anagogy describes

656 ME 1/2:179.

657 ME 1/2:181.

658 ME 1/2:179. 377 how the Church militant becomes the Church glorified at the general judgment and so is

concerned with general eschatology. Individual anagogy seeks to realize the salvation of its

interpreter. While possessed of an essential doctrinal character (e.g., the four last things and the

means to salvation), its focus is decidedly personal, relating to the progress of an interpreter’s

spiritual ascent to God.

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac retained the concept of a two-fold anagogy, but he changed the essential distinction and introduced subdivisions. His initial definition of the anagogical sense began—somewhat misleadingly—by drawing a parallel between two-fold tropology and two-fold anagogy in the same manner as his earlier works, which obscured the fact

that he had changed the essential distinction between the two anagogies presented in

Catholicisme and Histoire. The chief dichotomy is no longer between the community and the

individual, but between objective doctrinal interpretation and subjective progress in the mystical

life:

[J]ust as there were two tropologies, there are also two anagogies.… The standpoint of the first anagogy is objective and doctrinal; that of the second pertains to subjective realization; in other words, the one is defined by its object, and the other by the manner of apprehending it.659

De Lubac then pointed out that the first (doctrinal) anagogy is subdivided into individual and

communal species:

Let us say that the first of the two anagogies teaches that part of Christian dogmatics called “eschatology”—which itself is further subdivided into two parts, according as the ultimate end of each person or that of the universe as a whole is concerned.… As to the second anagogy, it introduces us here and now into the mystic life; at the terminus of its movement, it fulfills that “theology” which is made etymologically the equivalent of “theoria” and which is the

659 ME 1/2:181. 378 contemplation of God. In modern terms, the one is speculative; the other, contemplative.660

Since the second anagogy is not subdivided in Exégèse médiévale, the divisions of de Lubac’s

mature theory of the anagogical sense may be presented as follows:

Table 2. Subdivisions of the Anagogical Sense in Exégèse médiévale

Anagogy Objective, Doctrinal Subjective, Mystical Communal Individual Individual

Since de Lubac did not explain his rationale for changing his division of the anagogical sense, one may conjecture that he could have easily retained it by maintaining the parallel with the two-fold nature of the tropological sense and subdivided individual anagogy into doctrinal

and mystical aspects:661

660 ME 1/2:181-182.

661 One hypothesis for de Lubac’s revised schematization comes in light of La Postérité spirituelle, where he traced the proliferation of numerous social movements of the modern period which offered rival communities to the Catholic Church for the realization of collective human beatitude, ranging from Christian and quasi-Christian sects to atheistic Communism. Many of these movements were based either on claims of private revelation or the inspirations of philosophical genius. Table 3 leaves room for the suggestion that both the communal and individual anagogical senses can each be subdivided into doctrinal and mystical species. If so, there could be a mystical component which could serve as the basis for private revelations of how collective human beatitude can be obtained by means other than what is taught by the Church. Thus, by placing communal anagogy under the heading of “doctrinal anagogy” as in Table 2, perhaps de Lubac sought to defend against this implication. By denying a place for mystical communal anagogy, de Lubac could affirm that while the interior promptings of the Spirit are vital to an individual’s salvation, they ought not be sought for the re-envisioning of how the human race as a whole pursues its divine end, which is a matter of established doctrine found in public revelation alone.

379

Table 3. Alternative Division Not Employed by de Lubac

Anagogy Communal Individual Doctrinal ?? Doctrinal Mystical

In Exégèse médiévale’s historical survey of the development of the anagogical sense, de

Lubac presented no new themes in his description of the agonic phase of the anagogical sense’s

development. From the Patristic period into the early Middle Ages, the anagogical sense

struggled to define itself against the opposed errors of millenarianism—which sought to

immanentize the eschaton—and Platonizing errors, which threatened to conflate an historical

view of the last things with contemplation of ahistorical eternal realities. The latter temptation

was renewed in the Medieval period by the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, which employed the

term “anagogy” to describe metaphysical contemplation. Similar to his rejection of Philonism, de Lubac described the influence of Dionysian mysticism on Medieval exegesis:

[I]t subsequently ended with a certain concordance being established between the Dionysian explanations of anagōgē and the definition of the fourth sense of the Bible.… [I]t was sham concordism, for “the anagogy of Dionysius develops in a metaphysical order and within a play of symbols, where history, including sacred history, is completely eliminated and scorned.”662

De Lubac concluded that “it is quite right to speak … for the whole of Christian thought, of an

‘ascending dialectic’” revealed by the anagogical sense, but only under two conditions:

The first condition is to understand that this dialectic does not at all substitute for the investigation of a “temporal development,” but it follows on it and gives it its meaning: for a temporal development is not self-sufficient; it must indeed finally lead to results if it truly advances, and time must ultimately lead to what

662 ME 1/2:180, quoting M.-D. Chenu, La Théologie au Douzième Siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1957), 133. 380 no longer belongs to time. The history of salvation draws our attention, but it cannot arrest it: it carries on to salvation itself. In other words, one ought to avoid confusing the passage of time to eternity, which is always at the horizon of Christian thought, with escape into atemporal.663

Here one finds another expression of the transient character of the historical event, which was part of de Lubac’s attempt to articulate a philosophy of humanity in time. The second condition requires that the object of Christian contemplation remain the Biblical one. Whether the temptation arises from Platonism in the ancient world or Hegel in the modern world, the ascending dialectic of Christian anagogy and its eternal Idea and motivating Spirit must not be conflated with some other Idea or Spirit drawn from secular philosophy.

New to Exégèse médiévale was de Lubac’s analysis of the eclipse of the individual, mystical aspect of the anagogical sense in Catholic exegesis after the Scholastic period. In his appraisal, the triumph of the doctrinal aspect of the anagogical sense came at the expense of its mystical aspect. Thus a second hypothesis for why de Lubac revised his schematization of the anagogical sense in Exégèse médiévale might have been to highlight this trade-off dynamic. For de Lubac, the new methods of Scholastic theology excelled at systematically formulating the doctrines of eschatology, but the doctrinal precision which the Scholastic method brought came at the expense of separating eschatology from its usual setting of spiritual exegesis:

the “lack of the eschatological sense … represents the most crucial defect arising from scholasticism.” We can add that this defect—which is otherwise neither constant nor irremediable—comes about precisely from the fact that theology then no longer has the form of exegesis.664

Because anagogy was no longer approached through tropology, the performative character essential to the individual mystical anagogical sense was neglected. The “rhythm” of spiritual

663 ME 1/2:186.

664 ME 1/2:195. 381 understanding, which de Lubac highlighted in Histoire, was interrupted: “It is one thing to

theorize about final ends, and quite another to be carried off in ecstasy.”665

The practical effect was to dissociate eschatological doctrines from the daily practice of

the spiritual life. The perspective of “inaugurated eschatology”—which de Lubac saw as the

triumph of monastic exegesis—was gradually lost from Catholic spirituality. As a result of this

impoverishment, de Lubac saw a hunger for individual, mystical anagogy express itself in

several post-Medieval heterodox movements which attempted to fill this void. Just as de Lubac

had argued in Catholicisme that a loss of the communal sense in the spiritual life created an

opportunity for ersatz communitarian philosophies and theologies outside the Church, so too in

Exégèse médiévale he saw the roots of a variety of false mysticisms in post-Medieval eras as a

backlash to the loss of the individual anagogical sense within Catholicism. The unbalanced

prominence of doctrinal anagogy continued unabated from the sixteenth to the nineteenth

century, because Catholic dogmatics faced successive errors concerning both individual and

communal eschatology: first those of Protestantism (e.g., Purgatory, justification, etc.); then

Rationalism (which denied communal eschatology and posited a natural end for man); and lastly

Romanticism (with its false notions of mysticism, latitudinarianism, and various concepts of the

afterlife).666 De Lubac later catalogued some of these aberrations in La Postérité spirituelle,

665 ME 1/2:188.

666 Concerning this critical time for the Church, de Lubac wrote: “Without a doubt, there was an absolute duty to maintain the dogmatic teaching authorized by the councils. But beginning at the end of the seventeenth century, roughly speaking, the two mysticisms, that of exegesis and that of spirituality, which in other respects had long constituted only one mysticism, became an object of censure and disgrace. This disgrace was often shared by scholasticism. Since that time, scholasticism has waxed in strength” (ME 1/1:xvi). Spirituality, especially in connection to exegesis, has fared less well in de Lubac’s opinion. 382 which included a broad range of movements that emphasized the human spirit yearning for

personal mystical union with God.667

5.3.4. The Exegete’s Essential Discipline

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac began his treatment of the Medieval concept of the

“discipline” of exegesis by observing: “As the twelfth century was ushered in, it had been

acknowledged for some time that there were traditional rules which were absolutely essential for anybody who set himself the task of interpreting Scripture.”668 His study indicated that the word

disciplina signified a broad range of activities surrounding the activity of interpretation, far more

than a mere set of “rules” (such as the Seven Rules of Tyconius, or the Rules of Faith and

Charity). Reflecting on the whole formative culture that surrounded the Medieval activity of interpretation,669 de Lubac wanted to identify not only norms appropriate for exegesis, but also

the preconditions necessary to undertake exegesis fruitfully. De Lubac’s thoughts on disciplina,

which are scattered throughout Exégèse médiévale, will be discussed below from the most

explicit and intellectual factors of discipline, to the more implicit and broadly spiritual factors.

667 These movements, which came in the wake of the spiritual aridity of post-Tridentine exegesis ranged from Christian Kabbalism, to German Pietism, to the followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg and Jacob Boehme, to the occult practices of hermetic magic. 668 ME 1/1:15-16.

669 De Lubac likened disciplina to the Greek concept of paideia (“which is close to our notion of ‘culture’”) but found the Medieval usage colored by a more biblical sense stemming from the Wisdom literature. Cf. ME 1/1: 17. 383 The hermeneutical implications of each factor of disciplina will then be developed and related to

other aspects of de Lubac’s exegetical theory.670

The term disciplina could refer to things as diverse as curricular prerequisites to the study

of Scripture, the (usually monastic) regimen of spiritual and moral formation of the exegete, the

basic personal presuppositions of the exegete in approaching Scripture, the scope of an exegete’s

questions and methods, and even the “tougher” and more mundane aspects of scholarly

“discipline,” such as maintaining a rigorous schedule and undertaking regular times of ascetical

practice.671 Fundamentally, de Lubac was interested in recovering a rule of life that informed the

Medieval activity of exegesis.672 While useful for all exegesis, disciplina was particularly necessary to keep the spiritual senses coherent and objective because these senses allowed a

“freer aspect” than the literal.673

What was at first a kind of apprenticeship—following the model of the Fathers of the

Church—gradually developed into a broader and more detailed program for training successful

exegetes:

What was at stake was more than mere respect for a tradition. If students of Scripture were not allowed to betray spiritual understanding to imaginary fallacies, and if they were not allowed, moreover, to make spiritual understanding a rhetorical or improvisational enterprise whose timeliness was fleeting and ephemeral, this was because spiritual understanding had its own

670 In this examination, the focus will be on those highpoints of Medieval exegetical disciplina which de Lubac believed were illustrative of good practice, rather than on their historical development and variation, since our purpose here is systematic not historical.

671 ME 1/1:16-24.

672 De Lubac began Exégèse with a section on disciplina and returned to the theme a few times throughout the book, in order to emphasize that successful exegesis included factors other than those that came under the rubric of the four senses.

673 ME 1/1:15. 384 objective structure … and as a result, there was a systematic order that needed to be observed in the examination of mysteries.674

The idea of curricular prerequisites for the study of Scripture is perhaps the most familiar aspect of Medieval disciplina to modern interpreters. With the development of cathedral and chapter schools, came the development of curricula for theological formation. For de Lubac, the program of Hugh of Saint Victor, reflected in his works, Didascalicon and De Sacramentis, reflected the zenith of Medieval tradition. Formation first in the liberal arts, then in philosophy, then in basic dogmatics, was necessary before undertaking the study of Scripture.675 De Lubac’s

endorsement of this approach resonated with his earlier conviction that not only is knowledge of

languages and history necessary for exegetes, but also of dogmatics, natural science and

metaphysics, in order to form an appropriate intellectual context for the activity of interpretation.

In this regard, de Lubac identified as periods of struggle those ages in which the Church

had to keep pace with the advances of secular learning. Early triumphs were seen in the writings

of the apologists (e.g., Justin, Irenaeus), Patristic triumphs in Fathers such as Clement of

Alexandria or Augustine, and Medieval triumphs in the Victorines and Thomas Aquinas. Hubris

loomed whenever the conviction that the fullness of truth is found in divine revelation threatened

to make the other arts and sciences useless or entirely derivative from theology. The triumph of

theology as “Queen of the Sciences” sometimes led to its downfall if the independent worth and

absolute necessity of the subordinated sciences were forgotten. Thus, de Lubac praised the

Medieval idea that “everything meet[s] in Scripture, in order to unify and sublimate everything

in Christ,” and that “each of the profane or ‘liberal’ disciplines serve[s] to elaborate the ‘spiritual

674 ME 1/1:16.

675 “As the arts are to philosophy, and as philosophy is to divine knowledge, divine knowledge is to Scripture” (ME 1/1:17). 385 disciplines,’ which is to say, more than anything else, the interpretation of Scripture.” Yet he

condemned the position that “in Scripture, [one finds] the source and summit of all knowledge, profane as well as Sacred” or that theology contains “the preliminary principles, at least, of all human knowledge.”676

Medieval exegetes often quoted Sirach 1:1, “All wisdom comes from the Lord,” but one

could take this maxim in two senses:

For some [exegetes] this gift is the light of the Word that illuminates all men. For others, it is the light that is historically diffused by the Holy Books. Of these two obviously contrasting views, the first provided a stimulant to both sacred and profane studies. The enigmas of Scripture instigated research. Faith tended toward understanding.… The second idea, contrariwise, ran the risk of becoming an excuse for laziness.… [It] threatened to impede the soaring flight of scientific knowledge and carried within itself the seeds of serious strife. It was destined to get a fresh lease on life and become hardened in its attitudes in the traditionalism of modern times: “Genesis suffices for a knowledge of how the world began.”677

While the idea that profane and liberal studies enriched and complemented the study of Scripture

could become hubristic by “foster[ing] illusions of concordance,”678 the second was more often

the problem, leading to outbreaks of biblical fundamentalism in the Patristic (e.g. Tertullian),

Medieval (e.g., Christian of Stavelot) and modern ages. As a remedy, de Lubac proposed the

perspective of Rupert of Deutz: profane learning leads to a better understanding of Scripture,

which in turn shows how deeply the arts and sciences are embedded in divine revelation.

676 ME 1/1:41-2.

677 ME 1/1:43.

678 ME 1/1:43. Cf. de Lubac’s remark about exegetical concordism in AT, 92. 386 Accordingly, de Lubac maintained that the appropriate intellectual context of the activity of

interpretation must include the arts and sciences, especially natural science and philosophy.679

A second feature of the disciplina of Medieval exegetes which de Lubac studied was the manner in which they were trained to raise and consider questions. Since all human pursuit of knowledge is undertaken with respect to some end, either ultimate or instrumental, de Lubac began to sketch the importance of a “disciplined purpose” in exegesis:

[T]he theorist of Saint Victor … knows that the knowledge of Scripture is not ordered to some higher knowledge, but that, even so, it is not an end in itself either. He does not forget that Scripture is given to us with a view to “education in morals” [institutio morum].680

While the knowledge offered by Scripture is an end in itself, people may pursue knowledge of

Scripture for a variety of reasons, some not as worthy as others. Novice students of Scripture are

thus formed in a certain manner of reading and re-reading its text. Since the ordering of texts in

the Bible is neither strictly historical nor thematic, Medievals experimented with various ways of bringing students into contact with the depths of the text. Sometimes this involved reading the narrative sense first (historia), followed by a secunda eruditio of doctrine and allegory. In

Victorine pedagogy, only after these initial two stages of reflection and analysis were the

tropological sense and anagogical sense considered in their double aspects. Here de Lubac’s

concerns seem to focus on training exegetes to approach biblical texts with an orderly series of

679 This idea echoes de Lubac’s earlier conviction expressed in Catholicisme that interpreters should function in the three-fold theistic perspective The idea of curricular prerequisites for exegetes is then not novel in Exégèse, but de Lubac complemented this notion with a subtler point about the subjective intellectual context of interpreters in the activity of interpretation.

680 ME 1/1:17; emphasis added. 387 questions and expectations in approaching the dense riches of Scripture.681 This “disciplined

introduction” to the Scripture was born from the collective experience of earlier exegetes in

discovering what riches the Biblical text offered them for reflection. Exegetes entering the

“thickest forest” of Scriptural interpretation could benefit from the knowledge of an experienced

guide.682

Even mature exegetes required discipline to regulate their speculations about Scripture.

De Lubac examined the conflict between monastic and scholastic schools of exegesis as an

instance of conflict over the use and purpose of biblical study in the life of exegetes and in the

Church as a whole. In monastic schools (e.g., Clairvaux; Bernard is often de Lubac’s example),

the study of Scripture remained closely tied to the life of prayer, work, liturgy and the moral life

of the cloister. While not without the risks recounted above, this monastic discipline constantly

tied the act of interpretation to the ultimate ends of the glorification of God and the salvation of

the interpreter and his community. The constant application of Scripture to the daily life of its

interpreter provided rich insights into its depths.683 Scripture opened its interpreters to new

681 “After Cassian, there was a tendency to be censorious toward the reader who, without study, without method, and without consistency, jumped from one text to another in his search for some spiritually uplifting thought, and who, ‘was pulled this way and that, as he wandered with erratic instability through all the pages of Scripture’” (ME 1/1:16). De Lubac did not give the source of this quotation, but it seems to be from Cassian’s Conferences.

682 De Lubac related the following metaphor from Rupert of Deutz, a Benedictine abbot of the early twelfth century: “[When we] inquire into and investigate the sense, the true sense, of the Scriptures, we recall hunting trips in the woods, in the use of which are approved certain dogs that are truly hunters. If we are the dogs of the Lord, our hunt is for the sense of the truth in the thickest forest of holy Scriptures. We run so as to catch; and we are joyful and exalt before it whenever, perserveringly intent amidst all the difficulties of the text, we bring back a good and useful sense that edifies the reader” (ME 1/2:384 n. 81).

683 “Quotidie,” Section Two of ME 1/2, provided many such observations; for example: “[I]n this Christian soul, it is each day, it is today, that the mystery, by being interiorized, is 388 insights into the spiritual life (achieved through charity, prayer, contemplation, the liturgy, etc.)

which could enrich their study of the spiritual meaning of Scripture. While not a “method,”

regulating the subjective context of the interpretive activity had its advantages and was rooted in

the fact that the purpose of divine revelation was the salvation of the reader through the Mystical

Body of Christ. Monastic exegesis, typically conducted within the context of lectio divina or

collationes (conferences), had the advantage of being holistic: “It shows itself capable of uniting

a vigorous enterprise of synthesis to a broad and powerful spirit of receptiveness.”684

De Lubac believed that monastic discipline was better in maintaining a spirit of humility in approaching the Scripture: “It was recognized that, above all, a pious humility had to correspond to such fervor of study.”685 If monastic exegesis caused it to be prone to intellectual

narrowness and excessive tailoring of its inquiries to personal piety, it was not due to an intrinsic

inability to be probing, but a failure to engage in wider inquiry. Even when monastic vistas

needed to be widened, de Lubac detected a distinct and advantageous attitude, informed by

humility and patience, and aimed at spiritual joy:

Meditative reflection was stimulated by these kinds of “delightful questions,” and when one of them showed itself to be “too difficult,” the Holy Spirit was invoked. That a complete answer had not been obtained was an outcome that was peacefully accepted, for it was a pleasant enough thing to seek, to knock at the door, and to make the rounds of the secret City. In the final analysis the Bible was less proficient in raising questions than it was in providing answers to the questions of each day, to the questions that arose out of the recesses of the human heart. And all the questions culled from every quarter were recapitulated into a single, ceaselessly posed question, the principle of a constant interior

accomplished. It existed historically then, today it exists spiritually. Moraliter, intrinsecus and quotidie are three adverbs that go together” (ME 1/2:138).

684 ME 1/1:47.

685 ME 1/1:48. 389 progress, which consisted of “seeking self in God and God in self.” Thus the research itself took on a contemplative aspect.686

In de Lubac’s view, although monastic exegesis resulted in a less thorough analysis of

history and a less systematic presentation of doctrine and allegory than scholastic exegesis, it had

the advantage of not losing sight of the purpose of Scriptural reading; its constant focus was on

the individual anagogical ascent of the reader:

Now everything that came about for the first time in history had no other end than that. All that is accomplished in the Church herself had no other end. Everything is consummated in the inner man. This ought to be said of all the external facts related in the books of the two Testaments.687

De Lubac identified the mainspring of this monastic exegetical discipline as “inaugurated

eschatology”—a kind of Medieval perfection of the communal anagogical sense:

This new turn, an effect of a profound and victorious view of faith, owed nothing to the illusions of the first period [of Christianity] concerning an immediate return of Christ in glory. Right now, on earth, with her discipline and her rule of faith, with her Magisterium and her apostolic succession, in her precarious and militant condition, the Church of Christ was already “the heavenly Church.” Her members, though still living in the flesh, were already citizens of heaven. They were “the new people in the new Jerusalem.”688

Awareness of the eschatological horizon of the activity of interpretation fostered an attitude of humility in the pursuit of deeper spiritual knowledge, since exegetes remained ever aware of not

yet being able to see God “face to face.”689

686 ME 1/1:61.

687 ME 1/2:138.

688 ME 1/2:184.

689 ME 1/2:182. 390 De Lubac criticized some aspects of monastic exegesis as “unhealthy overgrowth.”690 In spite of its intensely communal focus within the walls of the cloister, he faulted monastic exegesis for being insufficiently communal with respect to the entire ecclesia:

The monks who read Scripture in this new context evidently differed a good deal from the Fathers who, in the course of the first centuries, have constituted the canon of spiritual understanding. They “do not have the same function in the Church, and a new sensibility inspires them.” In their hands, it would sometimes seem as though the traditional doctrine [sc. of the four senses] is excessively specialized, that it is thinned down, so as to put itself at the service of an ever richer and subtler inner experience, but one which is no longer, one which can no longer be, simply that of the Church herself, that of the whole community of the faithful. A spiritual hothouse culture…an aristocratic exercise, [a] suspension of time within an oasis, while outside—life, the life of the world, the true life of men pursues its course, little by little engendering a new form of exegesis, simpler, more objective, more robust. A late season fruit, one can believe, and tastiest of all, but one which would no longer hold any promise.691

In contrast, scholastic exegesis brought unequivocal advances, yet was prone to its own species

of risks. In studying the development in the twelfth century of scholastic theology with its own

exegetical discipline, de Lubac noted a shift in the speculative intent of exegetes in approaching

Scripture, as indicated by their descriptions about the role of the question in exegetical

investigation:

In this renewal of intellectual activity, “questions” begin to proliferate at an unprecedented rate.… Often the questions become imperative, insistent: “the question must be asked”.… But there is an even greater sea-change to be considered: under the influence of diverse causes that we cannot analyze here, the questions are about to assume a more accentuated mark of scientific curiosity.692

690 ME 1/2:208.

691 ME 1/2:150.

692 ME 1/1:60-61. 391 In de Lubac’s appraisal, scholastic exegesis kept pace better with the advances in knowledge that occurred during the twelfth century renaissance—in particular, with the intellectual currents stimulated by the reintroduction of the Aristotelian corpus of writing and the challenges of responding to the Arabic commentary tradition imported with it: “The unity of theoretical knowledge and Scriptural explication was never more literally and technically true” than during this era which saw renewed connections “between the diverse scientific disciplines and the diverse senses of Scripture.”693 Scholastic readings of Scripture, which began to multiply

during the twelfth century, are even more different from a primitive reading [of the Fathers]. As a matter of fact, they are another thing entirely. A dissociation has taken place, a situation involving a certain kind of progress.694

Simultaneously, scholastic exegesis expressed itself in new genres: quaestiones, disputationes, sententiae.695 “From these beginnings, little by little, a well-defined genre would be formed, which would itself be divided into several kinds, until their systematic grouping in turn begot the great Summas.”696 In broad and general terms, the monastic discipline placed greater emphasis on allegory, tropology and individual anagogy, while the scholastic discipline emphasized the literal, communal tropological and communal anagogical senses.697

693 ME 1/1:48.

694 ME 1/1:49.

695 De Lubac sketched their gradual departure from the monastic lectio and collatio in ME 1/1:49-54.

696 ME 1/1:56.

697 De Lubac admitted that the emphasis differed from author to author and school to school; he did not devote much time to the development of the advent of the critical literal sense “on the way to [its] modern science—these are subjects that go outside our scope in more than one respect … for the study of such issues we can only refer to works like those of Miss Beryl 392 Another factor influencing the formation of scholastic exegesis stemmed from the

schools founded at Paris and Rheims in the eleventh century. Where previously “the schoolmen

in the cities remained by and large absorbed by the teaching of the liberal arts … concerned with

the preparation of their students for the study of Holy Scripture,” now “an extraordinary

flowering of studies” led to the rise of masters who taught the liberal arts for their own sake,

“rather than with the direct application of the arts to its [Scripture’s] study.”698 Such

specialization sought “to embrace a broader horizon” of inquiry than was common in the

monastic milieu and it made “use of more scholarly procedures.”

Coordinating the diversifying branches of art and science with exegesis in the twelfth

century led scholastic exegetes to methodological reflection more than was the case with their

monastic counterparts:

In his moderation, Hugh of Saint Victor dreads … both precipitancy and excess in allegorical explications. On both these points, more than one author has echoed him.699

Smalley, Father C. Spicq, Father A. Vaccari, Berhard Bischoff, Mr. L. W. Laistner, Father Robert E. McNally, etc.” (ME 1/2:212).

698 ME 1/1:55.

699 ME 2/1:222. De Lubac constantly reminded readers of Exégèse to avoid the “scholarly myth” inspired by “an evolutionist and finalistic, even a bit Manichean, conception rather than the patient examination of texts” which asserts that such methodological advances were ultimately oriented toward “the clarification of the literal sense … finally stripped of the swaddling-clothes of allegorism, from that allegorism which, some think, could only be a solution of last resort” (ME 2/1:147). Even Bernard of Clairvaux warned against intemperate allegorism, especially to more novice exegetes (ME 2/1:228); indeed, de Lubac lauded the rise of the Victorine school as the most explicit and sustained reflection on hermeneutical method since Augustine’s De Doctrina Christiana.

393 De Lubac also assessed the shortcomings in emergent scholastic exegesis through the critical statements of their monastic rivals; the subjective context of the exegesis “tends to become desacralized” as a result of greater distance from a liturgical and spiritual discipline of life.700

[The scholastic exegetes] do manage to accumulate more scientific knowledge, [but] they are also prone to a greater spirit of disquiet.… It is the rising tide of “science” in the almost modern sense of the word that pushes aside humble spiritual commentary as belonging to inferior stages of growth.701

De Lubac enumerated several tensions in the emergent scholastic discipline. First,

advances in technical precision and close reading sometimes came at the expense of a sense of the whole.702 Second, the scholastics were more subject to a misalignment between their own

intentions in reading the Scripture and that of the divine Author in writing it. While monastic

discipline held a place for both dialectic and the probing questioning of Scripture, it accused

scholastic exegesis of raising an abundance of “idle questions,” the product of “undisciplined

minds,” and even queries which were not only unuseful, but even immoral. Such an

investigative approach to Scripture,

endanger[ed], unnecessarily, the simplicity or the firmness of the faith. In their temerity, moreover, what these questions were doing in fact was turning away the intellect from its divine object.703

700 ME 1/1:49.

701 ME 1/1:49.

702 ME 1/1:48-49. To substantiate his point, de Lubac provided two pages of word-study arguing that the monastic cursus emphasized reading sacrae paginae (plural), indicating a concern for a more unified and canonical approach to interpretation, while the scholastics increasingly favored the term sacra pagina (singular), indicating a narrower and more technical intent.

703 ME 1/1:62. Much later, de Lubac gave as examples of “idle” questions the nature of the fiery chariot which transported Elijah or the theophany of the living creatures received by Ezekiel (ME 2/1:233-234). In Histoire, de Lubac noted Origen’s patient explanations about the logistics of how the animals were accommodated on Noah’s ark. 394

De Lubac never articulated his own opinion about whether and when investigative

exegetical questions were unuseful or immoral,704 but his critique of monastic exegesis suggests that appropriate exegesis occurs when there is a sympathetic alignment between the interpreter and the text. The broader governing norm for useful and moral inquiry seems to be the Rule of

Charity: an exegetical intent to return, by one turn or other, to the communal tropological sense.

As he remarked in Histoire:

[Origen] wanted Scripture to be studied with care, not negligently or as if incidentally, just as much as he rejected critical attitudes and excessively human curiosities in this regard.… He said to his disciples: “Apply yourselves above all to read the Holy Scriptures with the principles of the faith and with the intention to please God; what is most necessary for understanding is prayer.” “Let us beware,” he also said, “that, through a reckless presumption, the knowledge we seek to draw from the Scriptures be not transformed into sin.”705

In a chapter devoted to Hugh of Saint Victor in Part Two of Exégèse médiévale, de

Lubac, in a section entitled, “The Over-Squeezed Udders,” reviewed the Medieval use of this

metaphor from Gregory the Great’s Moralia to Hugh’s own writings, as an expression for those who sought in vain for the wrong kind of intellectual nourishment from Scripture.706 Heretics

and vain dialecticians sought from the “thin milk” of the literal sense a doctrine it would not give

no matter how long Scripture was “milked,” while fervent allegorists squeezed Scripture too hard

in pursuit of the “cream” of the spiritual sense. Both approaches do violence to the Scripture by

drawing “blood not milk” through their mistreatment of Scripture.

704 A hint of de Lubac’s opinion might be found in ME 1/1:57, where he enumerated as “troublesome” questions which rise up from the depths of a tempted or heretical soul, which, while legitimate, might constitute, by their presumptions and antagonistic framing, a “scandal to the faith,” or questions arising from disputes within the Church which are “a scandal to charity.”

705 HS, 85.

706 ME 2/1:222-236. 395 In the rising tide of the dialectical examination of Scripture (e.g., Abelard), de Lubac

registered the monastic concern about those “who raised these questions … [with] no fear of

applying the norms of reason to faith.” By subordinating faith to reason, they sought “to enclose

within the limits of their dialectic the One who puts boundaries on everything.”707 Such exegetes

raised “contentious questions,” which must be resolved by exegetes of faith. While dialectic was

an excellent weapon against heresy, it could be used with “hubris.”708 The chief error came from

those exegetes whose speculations sought “to penetrate into the abyss.… In wishing to categorize and submit to a framework of understanding that which belongs to another order of things, one has merely given rise to inconceivable subtleties.”709 In addition to his concern about the failure

of exegetes to respect the nature of theological mystery and their insufficient grasp of the

apophatic dimension of theology, de Lubac was concerned with exegetes who

by the very circumstances of their formulation … were sacrilegious, for they imposed on theology words, concepts and arguments not fitted to it. They imported into the divine science the opinions and methods of the “natural faculties”.… They called upon the mystery “to be reduced, to be dissipated, to be directed, so to speak, into categories that had already been constituted in their entirety.”710

De Lubac’s third and final concern centered around the careerism of professional

exegetes. Monastics were concerned about scholastics who taught Scripture in order to amass

honors or who “are in the habit of going about and visiting the cities of the world” but who have

707 ME 1/1:63.

708 ME 1/1:62.

709 ME 1/1:63.

710 ME 1/1:63, quoting Louis Bouyer, Du protestantisme à l’Église, Unam Sanctam 27 (Paris: Cerf, 1954), 175. 396 not entered into the “school of heavenly disciplines”711 or who sought to “pluck the fruits of the

sacred page by an utterly profane effort, as if this were a matter of some sort of liberal or

mechanical art.”712 In the rise of disputationes over lectio divina, there was an increased risk of theological “clashes without winners” for the sake of mere popularity or controversialism.

5.3.4.1. The Moral Discipline of Exegetes

Another way in which Medieval disciplina shaped the presuppositions and methods of interpreters was their moral formation: the formative effect that moral erudition has on the life of the intellect and the activity of interpretation. In Histoire, de Lubac emphasized that exegetes were afforded a kind of connatural knowledge of Christ through Scripture by virtue of prayer, liturgy and sacrament: mystical intuition can help deepen exegesis and exegesis should deepen an exegete’s spirituality through the individual anagogical ascent. Of Bernard of Clairvaux, de

Lubac wrote that “he first let himself be formed by the Word of God in secret, with the result that there is an intimate bond between his own mind and the spirit of the Scriptures.”713 Conversely, immoral and worldly attachments can cloud an exegete’s vision and distract him from higher inquiry. Because the existential context for the activity of interpretation involves an interpreter’s

spiritual life, his moral habits are an important aspect of his formation. In this dynamic, both

faith and grace are necessary for perfection:

What is very much needed in the long run is that the eyes of the interior man should be opened, for they are susceptible to a light that is different.… When

711 ME 1/1:50.

712 ME 1/1:66.

713 ME 1/2:152. 397 things are revealed by an anointing of the Spirit, the mind undergoes an expansion, which enables it to understand Scripture.714

The moral discipline of exegetes is then a program for “opening the eyes of the interior man.”

Although he had discussed the ecclesial and Magisterial norms governing exegetical conclusions in his other works, in Exégèse médiévale de Lubac paid more attention to the practical role of community in shaping the operative instincts of exegetes. In his appraisal of

Medieval exegesis, the whole gamut of norms and values informing Medieval exegesis was at first largely implicit and never fully thematized even in the modern period. The broader sense of disciplina is akin to the modern term “becoming cultured.”715 The social aspect of moral discipline involves the passing-on of shared values, approaches and insights in a way that is normative yet implicit, largely through the use of exemplars, practical application and mutual encouragement. On this level, disciplina shapes the presumptions, expectations and practical skills of the exegete.

A simple example of the communal-shaping of an exegete may be found in the positive regard for the exegesis of the Fathers, which was proposed as an examplar to be imitated.

Medieval exegetes were surrounded by abundant examples of what exegetical success “looked like.” Throughout Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac resisted the reductionist notion that this kind of implicit pedagogy could be completely replaced by fully explicit methodological instruction and eschewed the opinions of those historians who “persist in portraying this tradition as a remote

714 ME 1/1:266.

715 ME 1/1:17. 398 series of preparations or provisional substitutions for the scientific knowledge of our present

time.”716 He wrote:

But it is no more possible to attain this spiritual sense in its entirety by a scientific knowledge that is purely human, by definite methods, the methods of religious history, which are suitable when it is a matter of establishing proofs. Let us not be seduced by scientism, in order to escape illuminism.717

The moral discipline of exegetes was then a via media between self-conscious methodological

instruction and private illumination. While implicit, and so prone to subjective influence (for

good or ill), it was still communally shaped by ecclesiastical spirituality and tradition.

De Lubac indicated a more complex phenomenon at work in the Medievals’ praise of

Patristic exegetes for their exemplary virtues:

[T]here had always been a tendency to distinguish each one of them [the leading Fathers] by a particular attribute, by a competence, by a virtue, or by an appropriate characteristic. Jerome, for example, was exemplary for his strictness, Augustine for his modesty … Gregory for his patience.… There was [also] a concern to note, with some degree of precision, the distinctive area of strength of each … in terms of one of the four senses.718

In this fashion, exegetes were being primed for the tropological and anagogical goals of

interpretation, by noting these qualities in the exegetes who exemplified them. One virtue of the

formational environment of the cloister was the abundance of opportunities to develop exegetical

discipline in connection with the lived experience of the tropological sense within a religious

community. The struggles of moral perfection existed in close contact with exegesis, which

routinely became doxological in the liturgy of the hours and the Eucharist. For de Lubac,

disciplina could be synonymous with “taking upon oneself the yoke of the Lord,” i.e., living the

716 ME 1/1:xiv.

717 ME 1/1:266.

718 ME 1/1:7. 399 Christian life in accordance with the commandments of the Gospel; but by the high Middle Ages,

“this single word ‘disciplina’ was enough to evoke the notion of good morals and a whole

panoply of solid virtues”719 and in monastic circles, the disciplina of an exegete was sometimes

synonymous with the monastic rule itself.

This disciplinary culture was not immune from criticism:

sometimes ironic, at other times violent, and yet other times poignant. Spiritual clearsightedness and pusillanimity, a traditional sense and spiritual laziness, respect for transcendence and a want of intellectual imagination—all these factors are mingled together in very different proportions. At times, the manner in which they are expressed achieves a classical grandeur; the circumstances that give rise to them thus communicate to the Christian consciousness a warning that holds good for all the ages.720

While de Lubac did not opine whether monastic discipline could have provided its own inbuilt

correctives against such defects, he considered them as the potential liability of the cloister’s

isolation from the secular church. What began in laudable admiration of the profound insights of the spiritual giants amongst the Fathers did not always end in achieving a similar degree of sanctification and insight in monastic interpreters; rather, it sometimes degenerated into repeating the Fathers’ opinions while failing to share their perspicacity, subtlety and evangelical power. If the scholastics were guilty of hubris due to uncritical excessiveness in their new methods, the monastics were guilty of the opposite vice: the hubris of becoming too comfortable in their tradition.

719 ME 1/1:19.

720 ME 1/1:63-64. 400 5.4. Conclusion

Exégèse médiévale was the zenith of de Lubac’s writings on exegesis: it consolidated the theoretical findings of Catholicisme and Histoire while significantly extending the scope of his historical analysis and advancing his theological hermeneutics. In his earlier works, he had asserted the theoretical possibility of integrating traditional spiritual sense interpretation with modern critical methods of interpreting Scripture; in Exégèse médiévale, he formalized the theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses, by describing hermeneutical errors and exegetical excesses in Medieval practice and by charting those principles which would become heterodox exegetical theories after the Medieval period. He also provided a detailed description of allegorical exegesis and distinguished the legitimate use of the allegorical sense from the literal-sense devices of symbolism, metaphor, parable, and literary allegory (extended metaphor).

He iterated his earlier rejection of Philonic and pagan Greek allegory, while adding a critique of the often-benign but hermeneutically ill-founded technique of “speculative allegory,” which constitutes a hybrid of Christian allegory with Philonic-Dionysian symbolic interpretation. By clearly distinguishing the literal sense devices from allegory proper and by critiquing all other forms of allegory as eisegesis, de Lubac provided an important set of methodological criteria for evaluating the great body of Patristic and Medieval figurative interpretation.

In his theological hermeneutics of the tropological sense, de Lubac iterated the importance of existential engagement with the biblical text as part of the reception of its meaning. By examining Medieval opinions about the object of the tropological sense, he sought to avoid several errors of the late Medieval period: first, the intellectualist error of interpreting 401 moral principles without reference to personal spiritual advancement.721 Second, he described the Protestant error of private interpretation as originating in a decline of the Medieval individual tropological sense, which became disconnected from its doctrinal and ecclesial moorings. Third, de Lubac sought to guard the retrieval of tropology from conflation with evangelical typological futurism and other efforts based on biblical symbolism to predict the future conduct of

Christians. While these modern simulacra and authentic tropology both concern gerenda, de

Lubac pointed out that authentic tropology must first be approached from within the unified hermeneutic of the spiritual senses, which understands the ascent from letter, to allegory, to tropology to anagogy as a series of conceptual shifts made by the interpreters, each of which reframes the context of the passage.

Tropology then is not a one-to-one comparison of two sequences of historical events, two litterae. Moreover, the object of the tropological sense is first the Church itself and only secondarily the individual—and the individual only when, and insofar as, he performs actions proper to the Body of Christ. As such, individual tropology situates the doctrinal reading of

Scripture, and the mysteries discerned by allegory into an interpretive context where a reader evaluates his past and future actions using an understanding acquired from the literal and allegorical reading of a text and a faculty of judgment guided by the Holy Spirit to assess how his own conduct accords with Christ. While de Lubac accorded a role to interior illumination, his theological hermeneutics constrained this illumination to the judgments of the interpreter, rather than making it a channel for additional “private” doctrine as in post-Tridentine illuminism.

721 This doctrinally precise but spiritually detached manner of studying the Bible became a professional hazard after the rise of Scholasticism. To counter this tendency, de Lubac emphasized rectitude of life as a prerequisite to exegesis and the need to orient one’s exegetical activity to the moral advancement of the ecclesial community. Both norms prevent exegesis from becoming spiritually sterile or misdirected. 402 In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac modified his theory of anagogy from previous works.

He still understood anagogy as the final stage of interpretation and, as before, its communal and individual modes as the fulfillment of communal and individual tropology respectively. Yet in

Exégèse, he divided the anagogical sense first into doctrinal and mystical modes of application and denied the legitimacy of a communal, mystical sense, in order to safeguard against secular

and religious teleologies of history—a constant concern for him. The communal anagogical

sense is nothing other than the Catholic doctrines of eschatology, brought to bear on a text by the

anagogical sense as the ultimate theological context of its interpretation. The individual

anagogical sense, however, admits of both doctrinal and mystical modes. The doctrinal mode of individual anagogy is founded on the literal sense of the text as clarified by the Rule of Faith and safeguarded by the Magisterium of the Church. The individual mystical mode of anagogy, however, concerns the ascetical and mystical life of the interpreter. Through it, an interpreter realizes his reditus in Deum. As indicated in Catholicisme, everything that rises through the four senses must converge in the individual mystical anagogical sense:

Concrete (or as one would say today: existential) anagogy is therefore the point of junction … at the summit of a pyramid: fusion between the understanding of Scripture and mystical contemplation. The movement of unification interior to each is also the movement that unifies them among themselves.… It is Christian ecstasy at the end of a process whose starting point was the letter of the holy books.722

Accordingly, de Lubac believed that the recovery of a lively and frequent use of this sense was

critical after its eclipse which began during the late Medieval period. Mystical anagogy provides

for a doxological consummation of exegesis and forms the conceptual linkage for re-integrating

prayer life, contemplation, and liturgy more deeply with exegesis.

722 ME 1/2:190-191. 403 Completely new to Exégèse médiévale was de Lubac’s extensive discussion of the discipline of Medieval exegetes and the difficulties of recovering the whole culture of Medieval exegesis which informed the exegetical presuppositions, both explicit and implicit, of interpreters. He began to appraise these presuppositions as either hermeneutically productive or unproductive, in the midst of his historical analysis. On the explicit level, exegetes were shaped by curricular prerequisites and the rules of exegesis which the Medieval period had formalized and conveyed to students as traditional. On the implicit level, tradition and community played a role in shaping the speculative intent of interpreters, how their spiritual life was formed for the

activity of interpretation and the reciprocal relationship between exegetes and the spiritual life of

their community. While de Lubac’s work in this area remained inchoate, he was more attentive

to the subtle role played by tradition and community in interpretation than he had been in his

earlier works.

6. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (1978-1981)

La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, the last monograph de Lubac published,

represented the final stage of his survey of the Christian concept of history. In this two-volume

work, de Lubac discussed hundreds of figures from the late Medieval period to the twentieth

century with reference to their concept of history. While its initial chapters focused on the

history of exegesis of the Apocalypse of St. John, La Postérité was not a work of exegetical

history like Histoire or Exégèse médiévale; its focus was broader.723 De Lubac studied

723 The initial chapters of La Postérité focused on interpretations of the Apocalypse because of Joachim’s influential commentary on it, Expositio in Apocalypsim, which, together with his Liber de concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti and Psalterium decem chordarum, forms a trilogy of books which Joachim began in the 1180s and revised continually until his death in 404 theologians, philosophers, poets, historians, mystics and literary figures, in addition to exegetes.

A monument to his historical erudition, La Postérité is perhaps the most daunting of de Lubac’s corpus because of the numerous and sometimes arcane figures he studied.724

De Lubac began the first volume of La Postérité by referring to his treatment of Joachim of Fiore in Exégèse médiévale: “La postérité de Joachim de Flore (v. 1130-1202) fut double.”725

On the one hand, there is the lineage of exegetes, “qui … ont interprété «historiquement» les prophéties de l’Écriture et plus spécialement de l’Apocalypse.” Spanning six centuries and flourishing at the end of the Middle Ages, these authors included both Catholics and Protestants, and gave rise to “une immense littérature délirante.”726 While some scholars called this

movement “post-Tridentine illuminism,” de Lubac found the term historically inexact,727 and

preferred to call them “typological literalists” or “historical-typological literalists” (a slight shift

from the terminology of Exégèse médiévale), due to their interpretation of biblical statements as

1202. When de Lubac wrote La Postérité, no critical editions of these manuscripts had appeared since the sixteenth century.

724 Because the scope of the work is so broad, it will only be briefly summarized here, since many of the literati whom de Lubac studied do not directly concern this dissertation. In each chapter but the first, de Lubac typically examined a few major figures, while noting several minor ones connected to the key themes of that chapter.

725 Henri de Lubac, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (Paris: Lethielleux, 1978), 1:13; hereafter cited as PS. He referred back to his treatment of Joachim in EM 2/1:437- 559 and “La succession joachimite” in EM 2/2:325-368.

726 PS 1:13.

727 “L’expression ne se justifie guère, car on ne voit ni pourquoi cette exégèse mériterait spécialement le nom d’illuminisme, ni ce qu’elle aurait à voir avec le concile de Trente, ni comment elle caractériserait en opposition aux siècles antérieurs l’époque qui suivit” (PS 1:13). The term “typological futurism” seems most exact and will be employed below. De Lubac himself did not employ this term. 405 cryptic symbols of forthcoming historical events, often with the help of private revelation. The

second lineage, which de Lubac called the “spiritual” posterity, was:

la postérité constituée par les théologiens, «spirituels», prophètes, philosophes, réformateurs, révolutionnaires, aventuriers de toute espèce, qui d’une manière ou d’une autre recueillirent l’idée fondamentale que Joachim avait dégagée de son exégèse: celle d’un «troisième état» à venir, dans le temps et sur cette terre, qui serait l’âge de l’Esprit.728

De Lubac found the first lineage, which he called “un rameau desséché” of Joachim’s

family tree, intellectually sterile, producing all kinds of exegetical literature which quickly

became dated due to its arbitrary flights into apocalypticism. By contrast, “La seconde est une

forêt touffue.”729 La Postérité studied only this second posterity:

Depuis le treizième siècle, elle s’est constamment métamorphosée, et non seulement à l’intérieur ou en marge des Églises, mais jusque dans la pensée laïcisée des temps modernes. Plus exactement, l’idée joachimite n’a cessé d’agir comme un ferment. Dans la variété des formes qu’elle a revêtues, savantes ou populaires, elle a constitué l’un des principaux relais sur la voie conduisant à la sécularisation, c’est-à-dire à la dénaturation de la foi, de la pensée et de l’action chrétienne. Elle a servi aussi de supplément ou de substitut «mystique» à des processus de rationalisation qui ne pouvaient par eux-mêmes soulever l’enthousiasme nécessaire à leur accomplissement. Elle connaît aujourd’hui un étonnant regain de vie.730

William Kluback, who reviewed La Postérité in 1984, positively assessed de Lubac’s choice of themes and figures: “They reflect historical problems and attitudes which play havoc with tradition, time and truth.”731 In this regard, La Postérité is closely connected with the principles

which de Lubac struggled to articulate in Histoire and Exégèse médiévale. James Pambrun, who

728 PS 1:14.

729 PS 1:14.

730 PS 1:14-15.

731 William Kluback, review of La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore [2 vols], International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15/3 (1984): 192. 406 wrote his dissertation on de Lubac’s apologetics, noted in his 1985 review the connection to de

Lubac’s writings about modern atheism:

The two volumes which make up La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore represent another step in Henri de Lubac’s fundamental theology which has taken the shape of an “affrontement mystique” with the major spiritual currents of our age. Those familiar with his earlier debates with atheism, or as he referred to it, anti-theism, will recall his efforts to clarify the real roots and intentions of modern movements [by] identifying the spiritual patriarchs at their origin. While respecting the individual characteristics and qualities of these thinkers de Lubac subsumed their modern significance and influence within a hermeneutical principle which, he claimed, had become an implicit carrier of modern consciousness, namely the belief that religion, including Christianity, is a necessary though relative movement in the full self-realization of human freedom.732

In Chapter One, “L’Innovation de Joachim,” de Lubac identified what constituted

“Joachimism.” Joachimism was not simply the belief that there were three ages of history,

aligned respectively with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; several such schemata had

been proposed in Medieval interpretation.733 Nor did such an alignment require any Trinitarian

heresy; like his predecessors, Joachim believed that all acts of God in time are operations of the

entire Trinity; he only attributed each age to one Person by the theological device of

appropriation.734 De Lubac also rejected the view of some scholars, who faulted the allegorical

732 James Pambrun, review of Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, t. I: De Joachim à Schelling, Église et Théologie 16 (1985): 256. Pambrun saw the fundamental insight for La Postérité already at work in Athéisme et sens de l’homme, where de Lubac wrote: “Depuis le temps de Feuerbach et de Marx, à travers bien des vicissitudes, bien des variétés de doctrine ou de méthode, et dans la multiplicité de ses applications, le schème général s’est maintenu” (Athéisme et sens de l’homme [Paris: Cerf, 1968], 28).

733 Commonly, the age of the Father, the Creator, was associated with the days of creation; the age of the Son, the Redeemer, with the time from the Protoevangelium until Pentecost; and the age of the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, with the Age of the Church, from Pentecost until the Second Coming.

734 PS 1:20. Cf. ME 2/1:339: “It can assuredly only be a question of ‘attributions’ [for Joachim], since the three Persons of the Trinity do not act separately.” However, de Lubac 407 method itself and saw in Joachim only “excessive allegorism.” Rather, the “radical

transformation” of Joachimism was to be found in his particular narration of history and its

exegetical consequences for the New Testament. Joachim taught that the Age of the Church

would be radically surpassed by a coming Age of the Spirit: just as the Law of Moses, the

Temple and its priesthood were replaced by the Gospel, the Church and its hierarchy, similarly

this Second Age would be replaced by a new, more enlightened doctrine for the People of God, a new community and the abolition of ecclesiastical hierarchy. Joachim interpreted the opening verse of Revelation 21 (“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away”) as indicating symbolically an event to come in 1260, when the transition to the Third Age would begin.

From an exegetical perspective, Joachim effected a wholesale transfer of the categories of letter and spirit. He believed that exegetes should distinguish between “tempus sub littera evangelii” and “tempus sub spirituali intellectu”: the entire dispensation of the New Testament was to be seen as a shadow or figure of a third age to come, the Kingdom of the Holy Spirit, with its own temporal order and spiritual life. While Joachimism certainly mingled “courants variés de l’eschatologie médiévale,” its essential novelty was its new view of salvation history and its correspondingly altered exegetical method which radically changed both the literal and spiritual sense of the New Testament.735 For de Lubac, it was particularly significant that Joachim

stated that Joachim’s spiritual posterity “dislocated” the unity of operation of the Trinity by treating the divine Persons as if they had separate wills, even though Joachim himself did not do so. Regarding the Holy Spirit, de Lubac stated that for Joachim’s spiritual posterity: “Pas plus que celui du Christ, il n’est l’Esprit du Père. La Trinité est disloquée” (PS 2:439).

735 PS 1:21-22. 408 confessed that this idea came to him as a sudden interior revelation—a claim that was also made by other spiritual Joachimists.

Chapter One then reviewed other scholars’ claims that perhaps Joachim’s distinctive novelty had antecedents in earlier Medieval figures. Using the distillation of Joachim’s essential doctrine and the criteria for traditional exegesis which de Lubac had developed in Exégèse médiévale, he reviewed a number of putative predecessors of Joachim (e.g., Rupert of Deutz,

Anselm of Havelberg, John Scotus Eriugena), and dismissed them all. After finding a distant forerunner of Joachim in Tertullian’s Montanist writings, de Lubac concluded with a review of

Joachim’s major written works.

Chapter Two traced the reception of Joachim’s work in the High Medieval period, with special focus on the Spiritual Franciscans and the crisis of the year 1260, which Joachim, by then deceased, had predicted as the inaugural year of the reign of the Holy Spirit. De Lubac noted the tendency of spiritual Joachimists to cause social and ecclesiastical upheaval. In Chapter Three, de Lubac discussed the critical reactions of St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas to the theories of Joachim. De Lubac surveyed St. Thomas’ opinion in detail, from his inaugural lecture (De commendatione et partitione sacrae Scripturae) to the Summa Theologiae. This chapter also discussed Dante’s favorable reception of Joachim, since Dante placed Joachim in his

Paradiso.

In Chapter Four, de Lubac examined the influence of Joachimism on the Reformation.

He focused on the adoption of Joachim-inspired antinomianism amongst the Anabaptists, the politically revolutionary theology of Thomas Müntzer, and the negative reactions of Luther and

Calvin to Müntzer’s Joachimism. This chapter also traced the rise of “mystiques protestants” and “kabbalistes chrétiens,” and concluded with “le courant de la Kabbale chrétienne, plus 409 érudite, plus politique, plus ésotérique, souvent moins orthodoxe, mais à vrai dire en bien des cas

aussi pratiquement inoffensif que chimérique,” which de Lubac included because “L’élément

joachimite n’y était point étranger.”736

The fifth chapter discussed the ascendant popularity of “Bienheureux Joachim” in

seventeenth century hagiography, in which Joachim was regarded as having predicted the

foundation of the Franciscan and Dominican Orders, and the future course of the papacy. De

Lubac noted with disappointment that even the Bollandists were enthralled by Joachim and did

not separate legend from fact in their disquisitio about him. De Lubac wrote that although Fr.

Papebroch, the head of the Bollandist commission, had a reputation for upsetting popular

sentiment with his critical editions of the lives of the saints, “d’un bout à l’autre, sa Disquisitio

est une apologie sans faille: devant le grand prophète, le grand Papebroch est tout admiration.

Son esprit critique s’est évanoui.”737 The chapter concluded with consideration of Joachim’s

influence on later people: the Catholic Dominican theologian and astrologer, Tommaso

Campanella; the Protestant mystic, Jacob Boehme; and the Catholic mystic, Madame Guyon, and her defender, the Sulpician priest, François Fénelon. In the second part of Chapter Five, de

Lubac discussed the Rosacrucian movement, the German pietist theologian Friedrich Christoph

Oetinger (1702-1782), who had decisive influence on Hegel, and the secular adaptation of

Christianity by the Benedictine Abbot, Dom Deschamps.738

736 PS 1:198.

737 PS 1:211.

738 The four pages devoted to Oetinger contain the sole reference to Gadamer this author has found in de Lubac’s works. Unfortunately, the reference is only incidental. De Lubac quoted from Oetinger’s 1753 work, Inquisitio in sensum communem et rationem, using a recently prepared facsimile edition which had an introduction by Gadamer: Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Inquisitio in sensum communem et rationem, mit einer Einleitung von Hans-Georg Gadamer 410 In Chapter Six, de Lubac discussed the Swedish mystic, Emmanuel Swedenborg and then

began tracing the influence of Joachimism in German philosophy, beginning with the Romantic

thinkers, Lessing and Herder. De Lubac continued this thread into Chapter Eight with an

analysis of the thought of Schleiermacher, Fichte and Hölderlin, along with tangential

observations concerning Fichte and Schlegel. De Lubac’s trajectory of philosophical analysis of

German thought culminated in Chapter Nine, with his discussion of Hegel, whose writings were

depicted as the zenith of philosophical adaptation of Joachimism and pivotal in Joachimism’s

secularization.

The second volume of La Postérité spirituelle continued de Lubac’s analysis into the

nineteenth century. By this stage in the evolution of spiritual Joachimism, most of the authors

surveyed did not concern themselves with exegesis. Rather, as philosophers or political

visionaries or mystics, they transformed the concept of Christianity, or, as historians, they

reinterpreted its significance for the modern age. Other figures were analyzed only insofar as

they represented mutations of the symbolic heritage of Christianity; de Lubac traced this theme

far afield—even into the literature of hermetic magic and the works of the French occultist,

Eliphas Lévi.

(Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1964). De Lubac only referenced Oetinger’s writing, not Gadamer’s introduction. The text of Gadamer’s introduction has been republished as “Oetinger as Philosoph” in GW 4:306-317. Gadamer’s introduction situates Oetinger’s Inquisitio within the context of eighteenth-century thought on matters of philosophy, theology and natural science. He argues that Oetinger deserves to be remembered as a significant philosophical figure who engaged with the rationalism of Leibniz and Wolff before the time of Kant (306). If one is familiar with Wahrheit und Methode, one can see how several major interests of Gadamer inform his approach to Oetinger in the introduction (e.g., the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences). Whether de Lubac read Gadamer’s introduction—and if he did, whether he was influenced by it—remains unknown. Without any evidence that de Lubac had read other works of Gadamer, it seems improbable that the 12-page introduction by Gadamer exercised any significant influence on de Lubac’s thought. 411 Chapter Ten began with an examination of early movements of Christian socialism, inspired by Hegel, such as the political egalitarianism that Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) propounded as the essence of Christianity. De Lubac noted the counter-reactions of the

Catholics Chateaubriand and Lamennais (who became the focus of Chapter Eleven). Chapter

Twelve returned to a consideration of the theme of revolutionary Christian socialism with a lengthy examination of Philippe Buchez (1796-1865)—ultimately judged not to be Joachimist— and some of his disciples in the Saint-Simon Society. This study continued into Chapter

Thirteen with an examination of the works of the humanitarian, Pierre Leroux (1797-1871), and his companion, the poetess George Sand (1804-1876). Leroux’s involvement in the philosophical controversy between Schelling and the Young Hegelians formed the basis for another thread of German philosophical analysis in a later chapter devoted to Marx. Chapter

Fourteen surveyed the works of the liberal historians Jules Michelet (1798-1876) and Edgar

Quinet (1803-1875). Chapter Fifteen was devoted to the Polish Romantic poet and patriot,

Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855), whom de Lubac acquitted of Joachimism, and traced the poet’s influence on many figures, including Pope John Paul II.739

Chapter Sixteen, “Chrétiens et Marginaux,” began with the statement, “Tout le dix- neuvième siècle est traversé par un fleuve ‘joachimite’ aux cents bras divers.”740 Accordingly, de Lubac traced Joachimist themes in several dozen nineteenth-century figures, before focusing on the Young Hegelian movement and the emergence of Marx and Hitler in Chapter Seventeen.

In Chapter Eighteen, de Lubac turned his attention to slavic movements of thought, focusing on the Polish philosopher and activist August Cieszkowski (1814-1894), and his fusion of Left

739 PS 2:281-282.

740 PS 2:283. 412 Hegelian theory with his own adaptation of Joachim’s three ages of history, which, unlike most

German Left Hegelians, left a place for belief in a personal, monotheistic God. After examining several other Polish and Russian figures—especially Fyodor Dostoyevski, Vladimir Soloviev, and Nikolai Berdyaev—this chapter concluded with a brief examination of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s Emperor and Galilean and a book on “Christian Hermeticism” by an anonymous author (now known to be Valentin Tomberg) entitled, Méditations sur les 22 arcanes majeurs du Tarot, which was published in the previous year in France with a foreword and afterword by Hans Urs von Balthasar.

De Lubac concluded La Postérité spirituelle with a short chapter reflecting on the threat of Joachimism to the life of the Church today. De Lubac considered his concluding chapter to be a hasty summary to an imperfectly conducted historical investigation:

C’est pour nous un devoir de reconnaître devant le lecteur que notre enquête a été insuffisante, en particulier à travers plusieurs littératures étrangères. Défaut plus grave: l’ouvrage manque d’une conclusion véritable. Nous avons cependant cédé aux instances de ceux qui désiraient voir paraître, tel quel, ce second volume.741

Already in his eighty-fifth year, de Lubac did not publish a coda to the series of works comprising Histoire, Exégèse médiévale and La Postérité spirituelle. Yet the conclusion of La

Postérité spirituelle as it stands contained a clear and forceful indication of de Lubac’s historical argument, his critique of the fate of the Christian concept of history in the modern period, and his appraisal of the challenges facing biblical interpretation in the postconciliar Church.

Scholarly reception of La Postérité spirituelle was mixed. The vast majority of reviews, both positive and negative, expressed unalloyed praise for the erudition that de Lubac displayed

741 PS 2:480 n. 1. 413 in mustering such a detailed survey of so many diverse thinkers. As the Leuven University theologian, Joseph Coppens, commented:

L’ouvrage du Père de Lubac représente une somme considérable de lectures et de réflexions. On y passe de surprise en surprise touchant l’érudition de l’auteur et les découvertes qu’il a faites au cours de ses explorations dans l’immense famille joachimite.742

The Jesuit Scripture scholar, Paul-Émile Langevin, emphasized that de Lubac’s work was largely historical—implying that systematic theologians could benefit from a deeper theological development of de Lubac’s rich historical analysis:

Nous avons rappelé les grandes étapes de l’histoire du joachimisme, que le P. de Lubac connaît admirablement et qu’il fait revivre avec un art exquis. Il s’agit bien d’un livre d’histoire spirituelle ou théologie, dirions-nous, plutôt que d’un ouvrage qui s’attacherait à discuter spéculativement de thèses de théologiens. Plus que des textes, ce sont d’abord des faits qui sont rapportés, pris en sa doctrine essentielle: la venu d’un âge de l’Esprit qui transformera l’Église présente. Que de telles vues de Joachim hantent encore bien des chrétiens, dans l’Église et dans «les marges de l’Église», le fait est assez patent. De prétendus «spiritualismes» modernes se retrouveront dans les écrits de Joachim. Aussi l’ouvrage du P. de Lubac présente-t-il une actualité certaine.743

One might reply that a more speculative synthesis was not de Lubac’s intent in writing La

Postérité spirituelle. When one views his life’s work on the history of exegesis, one recognizes that he sought first to conduct a thorough historical investigation of the complex and often misunderstood dynamics of Christian exegesis over the course of its entire history. This task occupied de Lubac’s scholarly life. After completing this historical examination in 1982, he did

742 Joseph Coppens, review of Henri de Lubac, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, I, De Joachim à Schelling, Ephemerides Theologicae Louvanienses 56 no. 1 (April 1980): 189. Kluback similarly remarked: “The reader faced with two volumes of historical, philosophical and theological reflections is given a considerable challenge to his intellect and patience.… [R]ewards depend upon the comprehension and experience that is brought to them. They are demanding but yield rich consequences” (Kluback, 195).

743 Paul-Émile Langevin, review of Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, Tome I: de Joachim à Schelling, Science and Spirit, 34 no. 2 (1982): 238. 414 not compose what could have been a theological coda to his work. One wonders whether de

Lubac himself felt sufficiently equipped for such a task, which would have involved generalizing and systematizing a theology from all the historical particularity and nuances which he intentionally tried to preserve in his studies. Given the historical cast of his mind, he may have been content to leave the work of systematization to others. In any case, he believed that historical study must precede systematization; La Postérité spirituelle was the final installment of his lifelong project to provide such a history.

Some scholars received La Postérité spirituelle negatively—seeing in it a sweeping reactionary polemic against the main theological currents of the contemporary church. The sociologist of religion, Jean Séguy, sardonically remarked:

[N]ous nous demandions quelle finalité il se proposait: l’intention de l’auteur apparaît ici clairement, dans le chapitre conclusif et dans une annexe finale (p. 468-80). Le Conclusion, consacrée aux «neo-joachimismes contemporaine» dénonce le «cancer» du joachimisme et ses avatars que seraient les théologies de la libération, de l’espérance, de la révolution.… Pour l’A., ces théologies modernes qu’il dénonce mènent leurs tenants hors du régime de l’Incarnation, central et essential au christianisme. L’Esprit dès lors—comme dans le joachimisme—peut mener n’importe où, vers tous les «rêves éveillés». Fallait- il, pour clouer au pilori d’une orthodoxie particulière, des théologies contemporaines diverses, faire un détour par les huit siècles d’histoire qu’enjambent les deux volumes de ce travail?744

744 Jean Séguy, review of La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, T. 2, De Saint- Simon à nos jours, Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions 53 no. 2 (1982): 325. Séguy failed to mention that the term “cancer” (PS 2:534) was not de Lubac’s, but came from a quotation of the first canon of the provincial council of Arles of 1262 (“Ne ergo error peccans ulterius serpat ut cancer.”) which de Lubac cited to show how concerned church authorities were about the spread of Joachim’s doctrines. Séguy seemed unfair both in portraying de Lubac’s tone as shrill and reactionary and by decribing de Lubac as “nailing to the pillory” many contemporary theologies. 415 As his memoirs indicate, de Lubac was amply prepared for negative reactions to his rejection of those political and theological movements which were reaching their apex of popularity during the decade in which La Postérité spirituelle was published.745

A more common critique of de Lubac’s work faulted him for drawing tenuous connections to Joachimism, whether in the thought of a particular author, or in the issues at stake in a controversy. For example, Coppens remarked: “A la p. 195, H. de Lubac signale même une accointance joachimite au Concile de Trente, mais, à mon avis, le texte cité n’est guère valable.”746 The internationally-renowned Joachim scholar, Marjorie Reeves of Oxford, gave a probing and generally favorable review of the first volume of La Postérité spirituelle; yet she questioned the objectivity of de Lubac’s appraisals of Joachimism. She asked whether de Lubac saw too readily only those connections to Joachim he wished to see and, conversely, whether he denied connections to orthodox figures whom de Lubac would have preferred to be untarnished by Joachimism:

Certain questions arise, however, concerning the criterion adopted and how it is applied. The criterion of a new age to come as the test of Joachimist influence is very wide.… Again, exactly how is the word “posterity” to be taken? It should imply some direct relationship, whether legitimate or “bastard.” In

745 In 1975, de Lubac wrote: “A few months ago, the editor of an Italian journal observed, seeming to reproach me, that my reservations concerning a certain ‘postconciliar theology’ had become more pronounced. The observation was accurate, but the cause escaped him: it is because this ‘theology’ is moving farther and farther away from the norms of the Catholic faith and from the very teachings of Vatican II. It is not, thank God, the whole of postconciliar theology, but if it is not the most living part of it, it is the noisiest … I deplore their apparent euphoria. Some have been led to believe that I am exaggerating and that I am ‘closing my mind’ in getting old. I reply to them in substance that formerly, in quite different circumstances, I refused to bend the knee before those successive Baals that had the name of Maurrasism, Hitlerism, integrism; I now see other Baals, having invaded the sanctuary, demand the same adoration … I do not accept the practice of covering the worst enterprises with the magic words of progress, forward movement, opening or renewal” (At the Service of the Church, 148-149).

746 Coppens, 89. 416 intellectual terms ought not “posterity” to mean some recognizable debt to Joachimist works or distinctive ideas? This reviewer has found Père de Lubac’s judgements on what can be regarded as Joachim’s posterity, and what not, somewhat puzzling. For instance, with the great Franciscan Olivi, “nous sommes loin de Joachim”.… Similarly, while saying much about Bonaventure which is illuminating, his final judgement—“Rien en tout cela qui soit vraiment joachimite”—seems strange in view of Bonaventure’s acknowledged expectation of a new era in the Church. It seems that in these cases Père du [sic] Lubac is not applying his wide criterion but a much narrower one of a Joachimism which denies the centrality of Christ and substitutes the “Eternal Evangel” of the Spirit for the two Testaments. Of course neither Olivi nor Bonaventure subscribed to these views: but did Joachim either?747

By implication, Reeves questioned whether de Lubac had let the more radical subsequent adaptation of Joachim’s ideas mislead his appraisal of what Joachim had actually thought.

Reeves similarly questioned whether de Lubac concluded too hastily that the German Christian mystic, Jakob Boehme (1575-1642), ought to be reckoned among the posterity of Joachim, since

Boehme provided de Lubac with “a channel through which in adulterated form the Joachimist vision penetrated among seventeenth-century English prophets and many others.”748

Nonetheless, Reeves concurred with de Lubac’s ultimate aims in the field of intellectual

history, by stating that his work was highly valuable in showing “how widespread the Joachimist

type of vision was rather than how numerous was his posterity.”749 One might note that Reeves insisted more than de Lubac on a literary connection to Joachim’s thought. De Lubac, in contrast, was more concerned with Joachimism as a movement, which did not always require

747 Marjorie Reeves, joint review of La manifestation de l’Esprit selon Joachim de Fiore by Henry Mottu and La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. Tome I: de Joachim à Schelling by Henri de Lubac, Journal of Theological Studies, new series 32, no. 1 (1981): 291- 292. De Lubac referred to Mottu’s work more than twenty times in La Postérité spirituelle.

748 Reeves, 292.

749 Reeves, 294. 417 that a thinker be consciously indebted to the thought or writings of Joachim.750 More people are

Marxist, for example, than have personally studied Marx’s writings, and the history of Marxism

in modern culture should include those who are influenced by Marxist concepts, not merely

those who have read Marxist texts.751 In any case, Reeves’ concern about the objectivity and

consistency of de Lubac’s criteria for identifying “posterity” represent a legitimate concern by a

scholarly authority on Joachim.

6.1. Analysis

La Postérité spirituelle contains an abundance of historical and literary investigation,

only some of which falls within the scope of this dissertation. This analysis of La Postérité

spirituelle will highlight three aspects of the work: it will establish connections to key themes of

de Lubac’s earlier writings that have been analyzed earlier in this chapter; it will examine de

Lubac’s treatment of tradition, community and faith, noting further developments on these

topics; and it will argue that, when La Postérité spirituelle is read in light of de Lubac’s

extensive development of the theology of the four-fold sense in his earlier works, one can

750 Her emphasis on a textual connection can be seen in the conclusion to her review: “To establish posterity, we may repeat, there must be some clear and probable source of Joachimist inspiration. It is comparatively simple to establish, or at least to postulate, this in medieval cases … or those of the Renaissance Savonarola or the Protestant Brocard (who cites Joachim’s works extensively), but the further on in time one goes, the more heavily the onus of proof rests on anyone trying to establish a Joachimist stock. With the nineteenth century, however, the problem takes a new turn. In what forms was a knowledge of Joachim being recovered and how was it used? This is a fascinating subject on which Père de Lubac’s second volume, will, no doubt, add much more” (294).

751 In this regard, de Lubac wrote in his conclusion: “Les différences manifestes que l’on peut relever en chaque cas entre la pensée de Joachim de Flore et celle de ses héritiers, n’infirment pas la vue d’ensemble aujourd’hui partagée par le plus grand nombre des historiens” (PS 2:436). 418 understand the historical study in La Postérité spirituelle as a survey of the progressive

disintegration of this doctrine into the modern period. De Lubac believed that the doctrine of the

four-fold sense contained “a whole world view.… A whole interpretation of Christianity.”752 In

Exégèse médiévale, he sought to “retrace per summa capita the history of spiritual exegesis,”753 and he developed in detail how this doctrine related to the Catholic theology of history, spirituality, and ecclesiology that was synthesized in the Middle Ages. The preceding analysis of

Exégèse médiévale has noted several places in which de Lubac described how elements of this medieval synthesis degenerated in later centuries. Significant portions of La Postérité spirituelle can be understood as de Lubac’s final study of this theme. He charted the deleterious effects of the dissolution of the medieval synthesis, beginning with his analysis of Joachim’s departure from the traditional hermeneutic of the four-fold sense and the view of salvation history which undergirds it. Even though the latter chapters of La Postérité no longer concern the work of exegetes, this analysis will observe how de Lubac’s analysis relates back to his view of the centrality of the traditional hermeneutic in Christian theology.

As already seen, Pambrun described La Postérité spirituelle as the last installment of de

Lubac’s affrontement mystique with the spiritual currents of (continental) modernity.754 La

Postérité also provided an affrontement exégétique to the post-Medieval hermeneutical theories

which supported a number of these spiritual currents. Yet de Lubac’s tone in La Postérité was

not primarily one of “confrontation.” The work’s introduction and conclusion certainly indicate

752 HS, 11. When he examined the doctrine of the four-fold sense, “it was Christianity itself that appeared to me, as if acquiring a reflective self-awareness” (ibid.).

753 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 83.

754 Pambrun, review of Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Postérité spirituelle, 256. 419 de Lubac’s apologetical concern; yet the intervening chapters have the equanimity typical of de

Lubac’s earlier historical studies. The roots of his interests in writing La Postérité extend back

to his earliest works, such as “Apologétique et Théologie” and his mid-century works on atheism: Le Drame de l’humanisme athée and Athéisme et sens de l’homme, which sometimes state more succinctly the errors he sought to correct in La Postérité.755

From his earliest writings in the 1930s, de Lubac sought to describe the secularization of modern natural sciences, the humanities, philosophical anthropology, and political theory, in order to re-integrate all of these fields with theology—a unity which has not obtained in Western civilization since the Reformation. In Catholicisme, de Lubac proposed such a reintegration in

terms of an “integral humanism” of the future. La Postérité takes a different approach: it

provided a tragic history of the “la dénaturation de la foi, de la pensée et de l’action chrétienne”

precisely in order to reverse it.756 At every turn, de Lubac showed how the distinctive elements of the thought of Joachim’s spiritual heirs fostered the disintegration and secularization of

concepts which formerly lived within the integrated worldview of pre-modern Catholicism:

Elle a servi aussi de supplément ou de substitut «mystique» à des processus de rationalisation qui ne pouvaient par eux-mêmes soulever l’enthousiasme nécessaire à leur accomplissement. Elle connaît aujourd’hui un étonnant regain de vie.757

755 Le Drame de l’humanisme athée, 3rd edition, (Paris: Spes, 1945) was translated as The Drama of Atheist Humanism, transl. Edith M. Riley (New York: World, 1963). Athéisme et sens de l’homme: Une double requête de “Gaudium et Spes,” Foi Vivante 67, (Paris: Cerf, 1968) has not appeared in English, but some sections were translated by D. C. Schindler in “The Total Meaning of Man in the World,” Communio 35 (Winter 2008): 613-641.

756 PS 1:14.

757 PS 1:14-15. 420 For de Lubac, these “substitute mysticisms” were grotesques of originally Catholic

principles. In La Postérité, he undertook the ressourcement of error, rather than the truth, in

order to perform not aggiornamento but rettifica. By observing these grotesques within Western

culture, he sought to show that the same desires which gave rise to the Catholic archetype still

animate its modern simulacra. The recurrent need for such simulacra in the process of secular rationalization accords with de Lubac’s view that natural intellectual desires remain in man which only his supernatural end can satisfy. As noted in Catholicisme, the Fathers’ exegesis

“sees on all sides the human race in its relation to the Savior.”758 For de Lubac, ressourcement

provided the remedy for false mysticisms, utopianisms, and collectivist philosophies that plagued

contemporary Catholic spiritual life. By showing the origins of modern theological errors in the

degeneration of the traditional hermeneutic, it seems that de Lubac thought that a modern

retrieval of this hermeneutic could provide Catholic theology with a biblical and theological

response to these problems.

The secularization of the philosophy of history is a leitmotif of La Postérité. From his

first published work to his last, de Lubac remained emphatic about the decisiveness of Christian

anthropology for fundamental theology and, consequently, for all his thought on issues of faith,

reason and action. The question of whether man has a divine end in God, and whether God had

revealed Himself as the end of history in Jesus Christ, could neither be bracketed nor

satisfactorily answered in the negative for de Lubac.

Earlier sections of this dissertation have demonstrated that a critical part of de Lubac’s

philosophy of history describes how ideas are conceived and passed down through time. De

Lubac’s thought on this subject is explicitly theocentric. On the natural level, de Lubac believed

758 De Lubac, Catholicism, 206. 421 that the process of fully understanding an idea required understanding both its genesis and its subsequent reception in time. On the supernatural level, the process of understanding divine revelation required the same approach. Starting in Catholicisme, de Lubac frequently emphasized the historical fabric of human consciousness with reference not only to the diachronic development of ideas in history but also to their diachronic reception; all revelation serves the end of unity, to establish communio amongst the human family, particularly through the Church. Taken in its fullest perspective, de Lubac’s philosophy of history described these processes of both natural and supernatural understanding as part of humanity’s spiritual participation in the exitus from and reditus to God.

In La Postérité, de Lubac reprised his earlier discussions of the Christian philosophy of history in a more explicitly Trinitarian fashion, in order to respond to Joachimism’s tendency to oppose dialectically the ages of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. De Lubac used the same principles that he had already developed in Catholicisme, Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale, but he now placed greater emphasis on two central doctrines of the Christian faith: the unity of the Trinity and Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God. Throughout La

Postérité, one can observe a parallel that de Lubac makes between proper thought about: (a)

God, (b) divine revelation, and (c) the hermeneutic used to interpret revelation. There is an isomorphism in his thought between the Revealer, the revelation, and the means of interpreting the revelation. To conceive properly of each, one must affirm both an essential unity and a multiplicity of operations, rather than denying a proper view of one for the sake of affirming the other. For example, such a dual view is necessary to affirm the doctrine of the Trinity as defined by the Councils of Nicaea, Constantinople and Chalcedon. One must keep in mind both the unity of God and the distinctinction of Persons, without compromising the reality of one for the 422 sake of the other—a both-and approach, rather than an either-or approach. The same may be

said for Chalcedonian christology: one must affirm that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully

man in one divine Person.

As noted in the analysis of Histoire, de Lubac first developed this approach in his

treatment of the question of the development of doctrine. Just as God remains one, yet He acts in

multiple ways throughout history, so too, the deposit of faith completed in Christ remains one,

yet it is the source of multiple theological developments over the course of its reception.759 Thus de Lubac affirmed both the simultaneous existence of the original historical revelation of Jesus

Christ, passed down through Apostolic Tradition, and the temporal growth of ecclesiastical tradition. This growth of tradition is each generation’s appropriation of the once-and-for-all historical revelation of Christ. The ever-deepening appropriation occurs by means of ongoing reflection on the mystery at work in salvation history (the work of allegory), ongoing application of the mystery to contemporary life (the work of tropology), and ongoing expectation of the life of the world to come (the work of anagogy). As de Lubac had argued in Histore and Exégèse médiévale, the four senses employed in this hermeneutic should be understood ultimately as only one sense: the four-fold sense, a unity of meaning understood under a multiplicity of aspects.

By contrast, de Lubac noted in La Postérité that for Joachimism, new historical developments come at the expense of the old: “on observe toujours à la base une même conception toute linéaire du temps, qui croit ne rien pouvoir accueillir de neuf que par le rejet de l’ancien.”760 Unfortunately, de Lubac did not provide a more detailed definition of what

759 For example, de Lubac stated that “the historical meaning and the spiritual meaning are, between them, like the flesh and the divinity of the Logos” (HS, 105).

760 PS 2:438. 423 constitutes this “entirely linear conception of time” in La Postérité spirituelle. He only specified it by means of two comparisons.

In the first comparison, de Lubac contrasted Joachimism’s exegetical method to the traditional understanding of the allegorical sense, a contrast he had begun to make in Exégèse médiévale. In the chapter devoted to Joachim himself, de Lubac wrote: “Joachim’s

‘unprecedented method’ was fatally to divert him from traditional approaches in the explanation

of the Apocalypse as well as elsewhere.”761 De Lubac described this fatal diversion as coming

from the idea of “a certain literal concord between the two Testaments, i.e., a parallelism more or

less between the history of Israel and that of the Church,” which Joachim would then extend to a

parallelism between the history of the Church and the events of the coming age of the Holy

Spirit.762 De Lubac stated that although Joachim appealed to the Fathers and Doctors of the

Church to defend his method of interpretation, “he follows his own ideas above all, and what always interests him is to explain or to foresee the sequence of events.”763 In the chapter devoted

to “La succession Joachimite,” de Lubac wrote similarily:

C’était le fruit d’un principe d’herméneutique appliqué méthodiquement, le principe de «l’intelligence typique», soigneusement distinguée par lui … de la vieille intelligence spirituelle. Ce principe nouveau lui permettait de dégager, pour l’avenir aussi bien que pour le passé, la «concorde» des deux histoires.764

761 ME 2/1:376.

762 ME 2/1:383.

763 ME 2/1:380.

764 EM 2/2:326. 424 De Lubac did not summarize in La Postérité the theology of allegory that he developed in

Exégèse médiévale; he referred the reader to his earlier work.765 In the second comparison, de

Lubac made a parallel between Joachimism’s subordination of the age of Christ to the age of the

Holy Spirit and what he believed to be an implicit subordination of divine Persons underlying

this view.766 Each comparison will now be examined in more detail.

De Lubac referred to Joachim’s exegetical practice as “spiritual typology” or “typological

literalism,” rather than allegory.767 De Lubac had already formed his judgment in Exégèse

médiévale that Joachim’s typology “is of a different nature than history, morality, and allegory.

It is not, let us say it again, a ‘spiritual understanding.’”768 Joachim’s typology shares a common

feature with traditional allegory insofar as it observes similitudes between one historical event

and another later in time. Traditional allegory, as de Lubac had described it in his earlier studies,

sees an allegorical relationship when one historical event prefigures another for which it

prepares: there is not merely a prefiguration, but also a fulfillment. Allegorical understanding

occurs when one perceives in retrospect the establishment of a divine plan which was set in

motion and foreshadowed earlier in time. Allegorical understanding acknowledges the novelty

765 He did so both in the Introduction (PS 1:8, 1:13) and by means of footnote references to Exégèse médiévale throughout La Postérité.

766 De Lubac stated at the beginning and end of La Postérité that, even if Joachim would have rejected subordinationism as a doctrine, it was nonetheless a tendency of his thought (PS 1:16-18). De Lubac did not believe that Joachim would have endorsed the views of his more radical spiritual posterity (PS 2:435-436); however, “L’oeuvre de Joachim de Flore n’est donc pas «innocent» des traductions successives qui en seront faites” (PS 1:18, quoting Henri Mottu, La manifestation de l’Esprit selon Joachim de Flore [Neuchâtel: Delachaux & Niestlé, 1977], 264).

767 PS 1:13, 1:47-48, 1:53. Joachim himself used the terms “spiritual understanding,” “concordia,” and “consonantia” (PS 1:43-44).

768 EM 2/1:332. 425 of the fulfillment, yet it defends the unity of the divine plan. It operates ultimately within one

“timeline,” which is the whole course of salvation history from Genesis to the Second Coming,

the summit of which is the Incarnation of Christ, who is the divine author of this history. As a consequence, one may observe allegorical relationships between two events of any time within salvation history, whether between the Old Testament and the New Testament (e.g., Melchizedek foreshadowing Christ), between two events in the time of the Church (e.g., the Last Supper and the Eucharist today), or between an event in the New Testament and an event in the age to come

(e.g., the Last Supper prefiguring the heavenly banquet). The reason for this lies in the fact that allegory is merely an understanding of “the letter of history” from the viewpoint of the mystery of salvation accomplished by Christ, which continues to work out its effects until the Second

Coming.

Joachimist typology, by contrast, lacks this emphasis on the unity of the divine plan. In de Lubac’s analysis, the single “timeline” of salvation history becomes for Joachim a series of time segments—different ages whose endpoints are marked by an event of significant discontinuity (e.g., the fall of man, the calling of Abraham, the birth of Christ). Joachimist typology observes correspondences, but only between an event of one age and an event of another age. De Lubac described it as “a correspondence of two external histories, one old and the other new … the new answering the old point for point.”769 Unlike allegory which proceeded

from history to mystery, Joachimist typology “is essentially the perception of a relation between

two literal levels, … or more precisely, between two histories.”770 Instead of viewing all ages of

769 ME 2/1:336.

770 ME 2/1:332. 426 history as one dynamic of salvation history in which the interpreter himself was engaged, de

Lubac stated that:

[Joachim] semble ne plus voir dans le Nouveau Testament, charte de l’Église actuelle au sein de laquelle il a pris naissance, qu’une second lettre, en concorde avec la première.771

De Lubac believed that Joachimism’s emphasis on discrete epochs came from a failure to

appreciate the Patristic understanding of the unity of the two Testaments.772 He explained:

Les écrits néo-testamentaires … «n’opposent ni ne juxtaposent une nouvelle Écriture à l’ancienne; mais à l’unique Écriture … conception fondamentale, qui caractérise également la forme des confessions de foi les plus anciennes.… Le formule “Jésus est le Christ” ne signifie en effect rien d’autre que ceci: dans le Jésus historique se réalise pleinement l’announce du Christ contenue dans l’Ancien Testament; il est possible et de savoir, à partir de l’Ancien Testament, qui est Jésus, et de voir ce que veut dire cet Ancien Testament à la lumière de l’événement christique.»773

De Lubac believed that Joachimist exegesis did not grasp this unity of history amidst the

multiplicity of ages, and as a result, it saw a succession of ages. Consequently: “Il en résulte inévitablement qu’on ne peut pas plus que le premier tenir le second pour définitif.”774 Thus

when Joachim heralded the coming of a new age of the Holy Spirit based on his reading of the

Apocalypse, the stage was set for a novel kind of supersessionism. In interpreting Christ’s

promise of the Holy Spirit in his discourse at the Last Supper,

771 PS 1:45.

772 In Histoire, de Lubac developed at length his view that the allegorical sense received a new level of development in Origen precisely to respond to both Judaizing and Marcionite movements in the early Church (HS, 52-54, 284). Its genius was to affirm both the newness of Christ and the unity of the Testaments. De Lubac also stated that “[i]t was through Origen that millenarianism was fatally wounded” (HS, 41).

773 PS 1:45, quoting Joseph Ratzinger, Révélation et Tradition (Paris: Desclée du Brouwer, 1972), 57.

774 PS 1:45. 427 [Joachim] conclut qu’un temps va venir où le Christ s’effacera devant la révélation de l’Esprit. Pour lui, dit tres bien M. Henry Mottu, «tout l’Évangile tend … à devenir quelque chose comme un Protévangile de l’Évangile de l’Esprit».775

De Lubac then elaborated the consequences for christology:

Jésus, en effet, … n’apparaît plus dans cette exégèse comme «la Personne autour de laquelle tout s’organise, il devient … le symbole, le chiffre de l’action d’un autre sujet»; si son oeuvre est nouvelle par rapport au passé d’Israël, elle n’est plus qu’ancienne par rapport à notre avenir, puisqu’elle ne fait que signifier et préparer de loin, «comme un simple maillon de la chaîne du second âge, le plénitude spirituelle du troisième.»776

Finally, the insertion of a penultimate age of salvation history—after the age of Christ yet prior

to the Apocalypse—led to a “transformed eschatology” in which many elements of traditional

Christian hope for a life of blessedness in the world to come were gradually applied not to the

age of eternal life, but to the third age on earth, the age of the Holy Spirit.777 In Exégèse

médiévale, de Lubac had described the medieval spirituality of “inaugurated eschatology,” by

which one proleptically participated in the world to come by prayer, liturgy and contemplation,

for which the traditional anagogical sense of Scripture served as a guide. With Joachimism,

however, this concept of inaugurated eschatology slowly changed (and later secularized) into a utopian and progressivist attitude in which the “spiritually enlightened” helped to inaugurate the new age of the Spirit on earth—in part, by helping to usher out the “old” order of the Church,

775 PS 1:65, quoting Henri Mottu, La manifestation de l’Esprit selon Joachim de Flore, 53.

776 PS 1:65, quoting Henri Mottu, La manifestation, 53.

777 “Le joachimisme ne consiste donc pas précisément à pousser le schéma trinitaire de l’histoire «jusqu’à ses conséquences les plus logiques», ce qui suffirait à comprendre que «l’eschatologie s’en trouve transformée». En réalité, il possède «une force autonome et organique qu’on pourrait difficilement rattacher à des pensées ou à des modèles antérieurs” (PS 1:29, quoting Jacques Paul, Histoire intellectuelle de l’Occident médiévale [Paris: Collin, 1973], 226). 428 either by transforming it or (later) by eliminating it.778 This hermeneutical method and its results are thus quite different from the medieval synthesis of the doctrine of the four-fold sense and its underlying view of history which de Lubac had studied in Exégèse médiévale.

To summarize the first contrast which de Lubac made between the traditional hermeneutic and its Joachimist variant, it seems that by the phrase “entirely linear conception of time,” de Lubac sought to highlight the following differences. Joachimism views history as a series of discrete and discontinuous dispensations of God, whereas the traditional hermeneutic understands the multiple ages of salvation history in unitary perspective. Joachimist exegesis, likewise, has a “linear” approach of making correspondences between events of a prior age and a later age, as opposed to the traditional hermeneutic’s ability to employ multiple senses simultaneously in interpreting any historical event. The phrase “entirely linear concept of time” was perhaps poorly chosen. De Lubac’s critical emphasis fell more on the serial and supersessionist nature of Joachimism’s view of doctrinal development: one doctrinal development comes to be at the expense of another becoming obsolete, in contrast to the parallel presence of multiple meanings of the same event understood acccording to the multi-sense approach of the traditional hermeneutics.

The second way de Lubac specified the error of Joachimism follows from the supersessionist character identified above. De Lubac believed that the Joachimist view of history was not compatible with an orthodox view of the unity of operations of the divine Persons. He stated at the end of La Postérité:

Il n’est plus question d’approfondir un même et constant mystère, entré dans l’histoire une fois pour toutes et perpétuellement agissant pour éclairer à mesure des situations toujours changeantes: on n’y veut plus reconnaître qu’une série

778 PS 2:436-447. 429 discontinue de croyances et d’attitudes, d’institutions et de théories, qui ont pu contribuer à préparer l’illumination dernière, mais qui étaient destinées à disparaître devant elle. Détaché du Christ, l’Esprit peut devenir n’importe quoi.779

The implication is that the Person of the Son and the Person of the Holy Spirit have separate wills, characterized by their respective ages. De Lubac saw a marked similarity between the

Joachimist spirit and the writings of Tertullian during his Montanist period.780 In both

Montanism and Joachimism, de Lubac seemed to see a connection between historical supersessionism and deficient trinitarian theology:

Nonobstant le Filioque … l’Esprit n’est-il pas dangereusement détaché du Christ, même s’il est toujours envoyé par lui? Sans doute Joachim ne réduit-il ainsi l’importance que du Christ considéré en tant qu’homme et dans un moment de l’histoire. Mais n’y a-t-il pas là précisément «une dangereuse atténuation de son importance historique»?… On peut se demander, croyons-nous, en fin de compte si l’erreur première et foncière de l’abbé de Flore ne serait pas christologique plutôt que trinitaire.781

Whether the fault lies with Joachimism’s conception of the Son or the Holy Spirit, either way the

result is the same: “La Trinité est disloquée.”782

As de Lubac described in his earlier works, the role of Christian allegory is precisely to

unfold the significance of history in light of Christ. If the age of Christ is subordinate to

anything, it is only the “super-temporal” order of eternal life, not some future age in world

779 PS 2:438-439.

780 PS 1:38-39.

781 PS 1:66, quoting Henri Mottu, La manifestation, 321. Concerning Tertullian, de Lubac speculated: “Peut-être y était-it déjà porté par sa doctrine trinitaire, dans laquelle le term de persona restait encore lié à l’«économie»” (PS 1:39).

782 PS 2:439. 430 history.783 The work of tropology serves to configure to Christ both the individual faithful and

the Christian community in the midst of the ever-changing challenges of each age, but constantly

with reference to “the same and constant mystery” revealed in history and understood by

allegory. The role of anagogy can be seen in de Lubac’s contrasting observation of the

“discontinuous series of beliefs … destined to disappear” before the final stage of enlightenment

in the Third Age, together with his statements about how the nature of the coming Third Age is

often vaguely defined. Compared to orthodox theologies of history which focus on the

restoration of all things in Christ, Joachimism lacks a consistent teleology.784 In the traditional

hermeneutic, discerning the teleology of revelation is the work of the anagogical sense in its

doctrinal mode. Thus it seems that when La Postérité is read in light of de Lubac’s earlier

works, the theology of the four senses of scripture which he developed from Catholicisme to

Exégèse médiévale remains the normative background against which the deviations of

Joachimism may be measured, even if they are not often mentioned explicitly throughout the

work.785

De Lubac made a few statements in La Postérité about the role of ecclesiastical tradition

in response to Joachimism’s rejection or alteration of it. Tradition, for de Lubac, is a dialogical

783 PS 1:63. De Lubac developed this idea more fully, and with reference to Joachim, in his discussion of the “Eternal Gospel” in Origen’s writings in HS, 247-259. Already in Catholicisme, de Lubac had stated “the Spirit of Christ cannot lead further than Christ. The New Testament will never date; it is of its very nature … the last testament, novissimum Testamentum” (De Lubac, Catholicism, 171).

784 PS 2:447-449.

785 De Lubac’s unwavering principle of analysis throughtout La Postérité is whether an author believed in three ages of history, with the final age surpassing the age of the Church. He often discussed an author’s underlying philosophy of history, but he far less frequently related these points to exegesis. 431 process whereby the events of salvation history are passed down from one generation to

another.786 Tradition maintains an essential continuity of meaning from generation to generation,

but the depth of the past event is further revealed by the manner in which it finds renewed life in

the present day. He described “living tradition” as “une force de promotion et … un principe de

renouvellement.”787 Just as the tropological sense prolongs the allegorical mystery into the

present by shaping the existential convictions of the exegete, so too, living tradition prolongs the

life of the original event into the present by shaping the existential convictions of the tradent.

According to de Lubac, the Christian notion of the progress of tradition was corrupted by

Joachimism into a concept of progress as a series of revolutions.788 Joachim’s novelty consisted

in retaining the developmental sense of the course of history, while denying the finality of

revelation in Christ—substituting a serial understanding of progress for a deeper reception of the

original mystery over time:

Pour la tradition chrétienne, l’histoire est ambivalente. Il n’est pas question de nier que des progrès de tout ordre puissent être réalisés dans son cours (non plus, d’ailleurs, que des régressions), et à cet égard nos conceptions ne peuvent plus être les mêmes que celles de l’antiquité, païenne ou même chrétienne. Mais en toute situation historique l’homme est placé devant l’alternative de sa destinée. L’histoire est un drame, dont la Révélation du Christ n’a fait qu’accentuer le caractère. Elle le restera jusqu’à la fin de ce monde.… Or, avec son annonce d’un « âge de l’Esprit », Joachim de Flore faisait pénétrer dans les esprits l’idée d’un progrès subit, fatal, irréversible, dû au passage d’une ère à

786 By contrast, Joachimism tended toward a dialectical view, as later epitomized in the philosophy of Hegel.

787 PS 2:438. De Lubac stated that for the Joachimists, “Il n’est plus question de tradition vivante … la tradition n’est plus qu’un poids dont il faut se débarrasser” (ibid.).

788 Joachimism inscribed itself “en profondeur et d’une manière tout à fait revolutionnaire, dans la conscience historique” (PS 1:18). Commenting on later Joachimist movements, de Lubac remarked, “Il fallait mentionner cet aspect furtif de la pensée joachimite, qui pourra paraître autoriser certaines théories de violence révolutionnaire” (PS 1:51-52). Joachim inaugurated “l’âge théologique de la révolution” (PS 2:438). 432 l’autre à l’intérieur même du temps, — c’est-à-dire l’équivalent de ce que serait, au sens moderne du mot, «la révolution».789

In light of some scholars’ criticisms of de Lubac’s work as “reactionary,” it is useful to recall that already in Catholicisme, de Lubac had stated that tradition does not monotonically progress towards its end; so too in La Postérité, he noted that tradition is a product of human freedom and thus has moments of both progress and regression. He still eschewed triumphalism. As in

Catholicisme and Histoire, de Lubac was concerned that tradition must be received critically, with attention to a continuity of meaning over time.

In La Postérité, de Lubac described tradition as a process of receiving “the inexhaustible gift of God” that is the revelation of Jesus Christ.790 No subsequent public revelation is possible or necessary, because mankind will never be able to receive all that is offered in the revelation of

Christ. For de Lubac, traditionalists who viewed the Church merely as something to be conserved, rather than as something which enjoys an ongoing life, were guilty of the same error as progressives who viewed the Church as something which must be “reinvented” to live in the modern age, as if its patrimony was long ago exhausted. Both overlook the Living Word which continues to animate His Body, the Church. Quoting the French lay theologian Claude Bruaire, de Lubac wrote:

Impossible de recueillir, dans la foi et l’espérance, la venue de Dieu dans notre histoire, sans retenir, en mémoire indissociable, que l’infini inépuisable nous est donné.… Comme toujours, à force de nous substituer au don de Dieu avec la passion des idolâtres, nous séparons, nous divisons là où l’unité pure de l’acte divin doit récuser toute partition. Tantôt nous retenons que Dieu s’est donné au temps de sa venue, mais nous pensons que le don, le message et la vie du Christ sont épuisés. Ainsi, il n’y aurait plus d’avenir, plus de novation, plus de vie dans une Église figée, sclérosée, réduite au passé mort d’une époque, celle qu’il plaît

789 PS 2:437.

790 PS 2:450. 433 à nos sentiments de retenir. Tantôt, en sens inverse, nous oublions que Dieu s’est donné en personne, absolument, pour croire que tout est à inventer, que l’Église n’a pas d’héritage.791

Just as the Holy Spirit is eternally united to the Father and the Son, proceeding from them

and returning to them in perichoresis, so too, in the work of the economic Trinity, the work of

the Holy Spirit serves not to replace the work of Christ, but to draw all men to Christ, and

through Him, to the Father.792 One sees again de Lubac’s emphasis on the unity of God, the

unity of divine revelation, and the unity provided by a theological hermeneutic of continuity.

For de Lubac, there is not an either-or relationship between maintaining an original inheritance and its traditionary development over time; rather, it is a both-and relationship. Since Histoire, de Lubac had described tradition as a dialogical process of reception that maintains an original inheritance, while paying a dividend in time. In the case of divine revelation (i.e., sacred tradition), the dividend (i.e., ecclesiastical tradition) is inexhaustible. Regardless of the century in which the faithful live, or the varying conditions of those who draw upon it daily for their most important needs, the gift is inexhaustible. In this way, de Lubac reprised his concept of tradition in La Postérité, adding an explicitly Trinitarian focus in order to counter Joachimism’s supersessionism.

791 PS 2:450, quoting Claude Bruaire, “Le Dieu de l’histoire,” Communio 4 (Nov.-Dec. 1979): 7. Bruaire had helped to found the French edition of Communio with de Lubac in 1970.

792 “La même puissance unitive de l’Esprit qui garde le Fils en l’Origine paternelle, qui garde le Christ au sein du Père, lie les témoignages continués des hommes à la Parole vivante où s’exprime absolument, se donne infiniment la divinité de Dieu” (PS 2:449). 434 6.2. The Spiritual Senses vs. the Spiritual Posterity

Following the previous section’s description of de Lubac’s response to Joachimism in general, this section will analyze his treatment of particular subjects in La Postérité with reference to his theological hermeneutics. With regard to each subject, de Lubac showed in La

Postérité the distortion of the hermeneutical principles he had described in Exégèse médiévale.

Typological interpretation figures prominently in the first four chapters of La Postérité.

Typological interpretation was not exclusively a Joachimist practice. Many Reformers employed it, following the examples of Luther and Melanchthon, who sought to avoid the extravagance of

Medieval allegorization in order to emphasize the literal sense of Scripture.793 Even when typology was practiced by non-Joachimists, de Lubac found it to be a deficient alternative to traditional allegory.794 De Lubac articulated three concerns about the practice of typology in La

Postérité. The first concerned the need for exegetical self-restraint, lest the method become capricious. The second concerned supersessionism. The third concerned the growing tendency to use typological interpretation to predict the future.

To summarize briefly the analysis he had already given in Histoire and Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac considered that the weakness of typology in comparison to allegory is that typological associations are established only on the basis of some likeness between the type and its antitype. Typology is little more than a metaphor between two elements of the literal sense;

793 “Transmitted indefinitely without serious control, such an idea had begun to be put into circulation by certain Protestant writers, who were reacting, without making the necessary distinction, against the more or less delayed [sic] deviations of medieval exegesis and against certain of the fundamental principles of the traditional interpretation of the Church” (ME 1/2:10). The word translated above as “delayed” incorrectly renders the French, which reads “late deviations” in the original: “les déviations plus ou moins tardives” (EM 1/2:385).

794 As noted earlier in Chapter 2, section 4, de Lubac began to develop the contrasts between the two practices in his 1947 essay, “Typologie et Allégorisme,” as well as in Histoire. 435 compared to allegory, the historical dimension of preparation is absent and the Christocentric

concept of mystery is diminished. As such the practice could easily be misused—and was—in

different ways depending on historical circumstances. The pagan Greek philosophers used it to

retain a place for the traditional religious poetry of Homer and Hesiod while denying the

historical reality of the events narrated.795 Philo, the Alexandrian Jew, did not deny the historical

reality of the Old Testament, but interpreted its events as types of the eternal realities revealed by

contemplation.796 Christian typology merely establishes correspondences between two biblical events. Allegory observes the fulfillment of one event in the other, emphasizing an historical continuity between the two events. In retrospect, the former event is then seen as the beginning of an activity of God in history which has been more fully realized in the latter event. Typology observes relationships between two “figures,” but the first is called a “prefigurement” only because it happens to come earlier. In traditional allegory, the unity of the divine plan is more prominent; an allegory occurs when one event prefigures another for which it prepares. To say it another way, typology has greater potential for misuse because it does not specify any principle for relating type and antitype beyond having a likeness of figure. As a component of biblical exposition, typological associations are not usually made for the sake of idle amusement; observing a typological relationship serves some further purpose: a resemblance of figure is deemed a significant fact—but significant of what, and why? Other principles of the interpreter determine the answers to these questions, and thus these principles determine the character of the resultant exegesis. If one examines how de Lubac appraised the use of typological interpretation in La Postérité, one can see how its value depended greatly on the underlying hermeneutical

795 See “Typologie et Allégorisme,” 182-185, and ME 1/2:1-3.

796 See HS, 185-190, 317-319; ME 1/2:3-4, and section 4.1.6 above. 436 convictions of those who practiced it, and de Lubac explained the standard by which he

appraised those convictions in Histoire and Exégèse médiévale.

De Lubac’s first concern was for self-restraint in the use of typological interpretation.

From the fifth chapter of Part Two of Exégèse médiévale, he had already begun to chart the rise

of “typology” as an alternative to allegory, starting with Joachim and continuing to the present day.797 In La Postérité, he contrasted the typological interpretations of Joachim and Luther. The

former he judged to be excessive and dangerous; the latter, far less so. Because the sayings of

Jesus and the writings of St. Paul contain observations of types and foreshadowings, figurative

interpretation was not simply abandoned by Reformers who found medieval allegory to be

excessive or arbitrary. A distinguishing feature of Reformation typology was, therefore, its conscientious “restraint,” which remains a feature of it today.798

797 Before Joachim made his distinctive typology commonplace, de Lubac observed only “sporadic interpretations” of this sort in the twelfth century, “especially perhaps in certain sermons to the laity,” in which vivid, concrete associations between a biblical event and a present-day event would have been useful as a homiletic device (ME 2/1:383).

798 The caricatures of allegory which de Lubac tried to correct in 1963 were still operative two decades later. For example, see Hans Frei’s remark in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 30- 32, about how John Calvin “was never tempted into allegorizing” because “his application of figural interpretation never lost its connection with literal reading of individual texts.” In light of Exégèse médiévale, such a distinction seems simplistic. Similarly, in an otherwise fine essay (“Typological Interpretation of the Old Testament,” in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, 44), Gerhard von Rad wrote: “typological interpretation has to do only with a witness to the divine event … it must hold itself to the kerygma that is intended, and not fix upon the narrative details with … which the kerygma is set forth. It is precisely at this point that, as it is used in the church, it frequently runs wild and becomes an overly subtle exhibition of cleverness.” William Sanford Lasor (“The Sensus Plenior and Biblical Interpretation,” in A Guide to Contemporary Hermeneutics, 58) distinguished allegory from typology by two characteristics—“fanciful explanations” and more numerous details—in a definition that would not be received by any Christian practitioner of allegory: “This use of the word type is clearly to be distinguished from allegory. An allegorical interpretation of the tabernacle goes into fanciful explanations of every color, every type of material, every piece of furniture, and sometimes results in a portrayal of Jesus Christ in such detail that the incarnation would seem to be unnecessary.” 437 De Lubac had already admitted in Exégèse médiévale that some varieties of late medieval allegory had become excessive.799 The allegorical method, like other doctrines, sometimes

experienced “unhealthy overgrowths, and its life is sometimes almost smothered under the mass

of devices that were intended to assist it.”800 In this regard, it was understandable that Luther

would protest against the products of human cleverness masquerading as the genuine meaning of

the biblical text. De Lubac observed that Luther was not untouched by Joachimism: “Luther a

bien pu subir profondément l’influence de la littérature apocalyptique populaire, alors si

florissante, comme il appliquait à la papauté la description de l’Antichrist.”801 De Lubac also

saw the influence of Joachimism in the radical nature of the Reformation’s break from the

medieval Church.802 Yet in de Lubac’s examination of their respective typological exegeses, the

contrast could not have been starker. In Joachim, de Lubac saw “la profusion de symbolisme …

le déchiffrement minutieux d’une longue énigme.”803 Joachim heralded the coming age of the

Holy Spirit by making use of biblical images “tout en les emboîtant grâce à un jeu de figures.”804

Regarding Joachim’s judgments about the situation of the twelfth-century Church, de Lubac stated:

799 The product of a “spiritual hothouse culture,” such allegorization was a “late season fruit … and tastiest of all, but one which could no longer hold any promise” (ME 1/2:150).

800 ME 1/2:208.

801 PS 1:176.

802 “Certes encore, en fait, les principaux réformateurs furent de formidable novateurs” (PS 1:175).

803 PS 1:44.

804 PS 1:29. 438 Fondé sur un symbolisme biblique et géographique d’une extrême ingéniosité, son jugement est, sinon toujours énigmatique, du moins ambivalent et complexe.805

Yet Luther, like Calvin, eschewed these currents of Joachimist typology as “un innovation aussi grave, voire plus grave que celle qu’ils reprochaient à Rome d’avoir introduite.”806 De Lubac further observed Luther’s reserve in interpreting the Apocalpyse in contrast to Joachim:

Luther aussi bien que Calvin, Zwingle aussi bien que Carlstadt, faisaient peu de cas de l’Apocalypse,—en cela pareils à un Érasme et à un Cajetan; ils ne pouvaient donc encourager les spéculations hasardeuses qui, à la suite de Joachim de Flore, en étaient tirées.807

How did de Lubac explain their rather different approaches to typology? The difference did not

lie solely in the temperaments of Joachim and Luther.808 The essential difference consisted in

their view of salvation history:

En réalité, le mouvement de la Réforme protestante ne doit rien, dans son principe, au joachimisme.… It s’agit bien plutôt de deux mouvements de sens inverse: tandis que Joachim se tendait vers un dépassement dans l’avenir, les Réformateurs veulent un retour aux origines.809

Thus Luther retained some convictions which were already well-established in the medieval hermeneutic, owing to their origins in early Christianity: a Christocentric view of history and the

805 PS 1:38.

806 PS 1:174.

807 PS 1:176.

808 “Luther, qui était d’un tempérament conservateur et pessimiste, était hostile aux aventures et n’entretenait aucun rêve de «dépassement»” (PS 1:175-176).

809 PS 1:175. 439 primacy of the literal sense as a basis for all spiritual interpretation.810 Joachim did not. His

“novel hermeneutic”811 therefore led him to make typological associations which were not so

much expositions of the biblical text as patterns which he saw in consequence of his underlying

theology of history and his unique ideas concerning where he believed “the Spirit was leading”

in his time:

La «géniale extravagance» de Joachim n’est pas seulement une «imagination déréglée»; la construction de son «échafaudage» obéit à une sorte de logique. Cette pensée aberrante engendre incessamment pour s’en nourrir des symboles et des «types» qui s’emboîtent, s’entrecroisent et s’harmonisent entre eux, et dont la longue série, dans la complexité extrême, alliée au jeu des nombres, est toujours clairement ordonnée à sa fin … car sous toutes ses formes et à travers toutes ses combinaisons elle tend toujours à montrer «quo tendit sanctus Spiritus» et par conséquent à dégager dans la succession des oeuvres divines «un certain ordre vivant».812

In de Lubac’s appraisal, such typology was pure eisegesis, whether Joachim was aware of it or

not. His convictions determined the biblical associations he made, rather than vice versa.813

Typology was prone to misuse, and the theology of the traditional hermeneutic, which de Lubac articulated in Exégèse médiévale, was the basis for his assessment in La Postérité of whether typology was conducted excessively.

De Lubac’s second concern about typology focused on exegetical supersessionism: the idea that typological interpretation implies a denial of the enduring worth of Old Testament

810 Of course, he lacked others, such as the rule of faith. Section 5.3.4 above summarizes de Lubac’s view of the complete “discipline” of the medieval exegete, as well as his account of how excessive medieval allegory fell short of the traditional hermeneutic in its own way.

811 PS 1:45.

812 PS 1:47, quoting M.-D. Chenu’s preface to Mottu, La manifestation, 7-8.

813 De Lubac found it significant that Joachim claimed his key insight was given to him in a moment of private revelation. Cf. PS 1:22 and ME 2/1:359. 440 revelation and so disdains the Jewish people. A heavy emphasis on typology as going “from shadow to reality,” combined with a Joachimist serial view of the ages of salvation history, can easily give rise to supersessionism. This concern can be seen in the later writings of Hans Frei, who discussed two “enormous problems” which occurred when the allegorical method of interpretation of the early Church underwent progressive transformation following the

Reformation and its emphasis on the literal sense. The first:

how is one to acknowledge the autonomy of the Jewish scriptural tradition without a collapse of Christian interpretation?… Christians could neither do without Jewish Scripture nor accord it that autonomous status that a modern understanding of religions calls for.814

Frei observed that when the relationship of the Old Testament to the New is understood as one of passing from shadow to reality, without the dimensions of promise and fulfillment, the risk arises acutely that the practice of Christian allegory comes at the expense of denying the enduring worth of Jewish history. This observation concurs with de Lubac’s analysis: the essential factor which safeguards allegorical interpretation from supersessionism is the underlying theology of history of the exegete. Supersessionist interpretations rest on what has been described above as an either-or, serial-historical attitude, in contrast to de Lubac’s understanding of Old Testament

814 Hans Frei, “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does It Stretch or Will It Break?” in The Bible and Narrative Tradition, ed. Frank McConnell (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 36-77. The other “enormous problem” Frei identified was what de Lubac had called “Joachimism”—the idea that New Testament revelation is merely the shadow of some future coming order. Each of the “future orders” that Frei noted can be found in de Lubac’s survey of Joachimist authors in La Postérité: Islam (PS 2:437), the post- symbolical rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment (PS 1:327-332), or Hegel’s absolute Idea (PS 1:359-367). 441 history and the Christian mystery co-existing in complementary fashion in the traditional hermeneutic.815

De Lubac’s third concern focused solely on Joachimist typological interpretation.

Throughout La Postérité, de Lubac noted that with Joachim there began the growing tendency to see contemporary events as being depicted cryptically in the literal sense of the Bible, and with it, the corresponding desire to mine these “symbolic” passages to interpret present-day events and to predict future ones. In Joachim’s novel typological approach to interpreting the

Apocalypse, de Lubac saw the origin of “[les] innombrables millénarismes enfantés par l’espoir ou par la terreur … [et les] innombrables calculs concernant la division des périodes de l’histoire et les dates de l’ère nouvelle ou de la fin.”816 The problem had existed both in the early Church and at times in the medieval period, but it was largely confined to the interpretation of prophetic and apocalyptic literature.817 With Joachimism, the problem became systemic: any passage could bear typological significance for the future.818 Already in Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac had identified one factor which led to the genesis of this novel approach to biblical interpretation: a misdirected desire for the goods which the traditional hermeneutic had provided by allegory and tropology.819 The role of these senses was to describe how the salvific import of

815 De Lubac noted, however, that with Joachimism, both Judaism and Christianity ultimately suffer the same fate of being superseded by the age of the Holy Spirit: “our exegete has judaized the Christianity of history—by making of the New Testament a letter analogous to the letter of the Old” (ME 2/1:381).

816 PS 1:15.

817 Cf. ME 2/1:381-382.

818 PS 1:44.

819 ME 2/1:385. 442 past events of salvation history is carried forward into the present by means of figuration.820 In the fourth chapter of the first part of La Postérité, de Lubac observed how, with the abandonment of the traditional hermeneutic by the chief architects of the Reformation, there arose a variety of

“mystiques protestants” and “kabbalistes chrétiens.” His chronicle began with Sebastian Frank

(1499-1545), for whom “tout dans le christianisme n’est que symbole.… Son exégèse spirituelle

… veut remédier à une lacune de Luther.”821 The lacuna, it seems, is the absence of the spiritual

senses. The tropological and anagogical senses, as de Lubac described them in Exégèse médiévale, would serve precisely to show a reader who was inclined to mysticism that the circumstances of his own life were imbued with the invisible dynamics of God’s grace, united to the angels and saints through the Mystical Body, all part of a cosmic drama leading to union with

the divine.

Exégèse médiévale provided further insight into the causes of Joachimist typological

futurism. De Lubac stated that the problem lies not in the common medieval conviction that “we

820 Frei concurred independently with de Lubac’s analysis. Frei described how, in the early and medieval Church, tropological interpretation “made sense of the general extra-biblical structure of human experience, and of one’s own experience, as well as of general concepts of good and evil drawn from experience. The point is that such experiences, events, [and] concepts were all ranged figurally into the smaller as well as the overarching [biblical] story” (Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative, 3). In Frei’s assessment, this mode of interpretation continued to function adequately until “the coming of modernity,” and by the eighteenth century, “this mode of interpretation and the outlook it represented broke down with increasing rapidity” (ibid., 4). Already in the seventeenth century, Frei observed signs “though obviously not notable to devout minds at the time, of the breakup of the cohesion between the literal meaning of the biblical narrative and their reference to actual events” (ibid.). One result of this breakup was the hermeneutical priority of forthcoming times over ancient, biblical ones and the rise of typological futurism: “This kind of prophecy … was a sign of a new cultural development, for its emphasis was on the events [to come] … on their likely course and on the hidden signs and references to this ‘real’ world of past and future history, spread through the Bible” (ibid.). In this analysis, one sees a serial conception of history replacing allegorical fulfillment with types of future realities which are more important revelations than the past events which portend them.

821 PS 1:183. 443 have in Scripture, at least under the form of a general schemata, the answer to all the problems

that our soul can put to itself, in whatever situation it finds itself,” whether as individuals or

collectively in the life of the Church.822 The traditional conception of allegory, as has already

been shown, certainly believed it possible to associate a recent event with one from biblical history. De Lubac stated that the essential distinction between the medieval hermeneutic and

Joachimist typological futurism lies in the fact that, for the former, the particular data of biblical

revelation were understood to prefigure, under the aspect of a general principle of the moral life,

“a whole possible series of analogous situations” rather than having a unique correspondence to a

singular forthcoming event.823 Christians were free to identify events in their own lives with the

pattern provided by tropology, by means of applicatio “circumscribed by piety and

coherence,”824 but in the absence of any further information, it was impossible to derive from the

general indications provided by the tropological sense an exclusive association with one

particular present or future event. Thus no one claimed that his unique historical situation was the secret hidden meaning of the word of God. The biblical prophets may have had such

additional information necessary to interpret the signs of the times with precision by virtue of

their special charism of divine inspiration, but other readers of Scripture did not. Such a view

sufficed to overcome the perennial temptation of “popular curiosity … guided by fear or by

desire”825 to garner this kind of knowledge from Scripture.

822 ME 2/1:385. This belief is nothing more than a definition of the traditional tropological sense in its individual and communal aspects. De Lubac judged this notion to be widespread in medieval interpretation since the time of Pope St. Gregory the Great.

823 ME 2/1:385.

824 ME 1/1:15-16.

825 ME 2/1:381 444 In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac observed that a critical shift took place around the time

of Joachim, due to the fact that “the two concepts of revelation and of the aid of the Holy Spirit

within the Church were often not well distinguished from each other, at least verbally.”826

Joachim claimed to have received the additional knowledge required to make his typological associations by a special revelation of the Holy Spirit. By the time of the Reformation, the doctrine of sola scriptura made the conflation widespread: the doctrine of private interpretation maintained that every Christian could possess the interior illumination of the Holy Spirit necessary to perceive the correct meaning of Sacred Scripture, which may not be immediately apparent to others.827 It was a small step, after that, for individuals to maintain that they had

perceived the hidden meaning of the text, with the certainty of faith, by means of the interior

illumination of the Holy Spirit.

In La Postérité, de Lubac noted that some later Joachimists would repeat the claim of a

special divine revelation.828 During the Enlightenment and Romantic periods, de Lubac

observed that other Joachimists found the necessary additional information to discern the secrets

of Scripture in other sources, such as natural philosophy or esotericism. In the case of the

826 ME 2/1:412. Rene Latourelle described the conflation more precisely. “Divine inspiration” can refer to the activity of the Holy Spirt in giving the data of public revelation, or to the assistance of the Holy Spirit in helping the reader to accept the data of revelation in faith. “To reveal means to lift the veil which hides an object from view; but the veil can cover the object or the faculty of vision” (Rene Latourelle, The Theology of Revelation, 185).

827 This notion stands in contrast to the Catholic position that the interior assistance of the Holy Spirit assists the reader to accept as true what is written in Scripture and to pursue the teaching of the Church when its meaning is unclear—the rule of faith.

828 De Lubac observed in the case of Thomas Müntzer (1483-1525) “La voix du Saint- Esprit, dit Münzer, est en moi, comme le terrible bruissement de cours d’eau innombrables; … j’en sais plus que si j’avais avalé cent mille Bibles” (PS 1:177). 445 polymath and millenarian, Guillaume Postel (1510-1581), it was the Kabbalah;829 for Emanuel

Swedenborg (1688-1772), it was a series of visions.830 By the time of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

(1729-1781), de Lubac noted that the Enlightenment spirit of reason had replaced the role of the

Holy Spirit in divulging the true inner meaning of Christian revelation. For Lessing,

deux sortes d’exposés sont possibles du christianisme, l’un exotérique et l’autre ésotérique. Au sens exotérique, «l’éducation du genre humain» est l’oeuvre de la «Providence éternelle», qui procède par révélations successives; au sens ésotérique, elle est l’oeuvre immanente de la Nature qui, lentement, se développe.831

By this stage in de Lubac’s history of Joachimism, the interpretation of the letter of Scripture as symbolic had entirely departed from its Christian origin; it now corresponded exactly to the pagan allegory which de Lubac had contrasted to Christian allegory in Histoire and its associated essays: the letter was merely a didactic symbol for the common man of the truths revealed directly to the enlightened by philosophy. Mutatis mutandis, this manner of interpreting the text continued into the Romantic period with Schleiermacher, for whom the theory of religious sentiment replaced the Enlightenment’s spirit of reason in understanding the true meaning of the

Scripture.832

De Lubac dedicated several sections of La Postérité to social movements. These too can be correlated with his earlier statements about the roles of the tropological and anagogical

829 PS 1:199-202. De Lubac also noted the growing trend to include a sort of mystical contemplation of nature fueled by Renaissance natural philosophy: “la prophétie d’une ère rationaliste, mais aussi, sous ce rationalisme de surface, la profondeur d’un mysticisme qui n’évacue pas moins la réalité historique du mystère chrétien” (PS 1:202). In Postel, this resulted in a vision of a future age characterized by religious universalism (PS 1:201).

830 PS 1:258-263.

831 PS 1:269-270.

832 PS 1:328-332. 446 senses. In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac noted both the misuse and the “cloistering”833 of the tropological sense; he reacted against the privatization of the spiritual life and the loss of the

communal dimension of Christian doctrine, as he had first done in Catholicisme. In La Postérité,

de Lubac noted the rise of social utopian movements, such as the Saint-Simonists834 and Charles

Fourier, for whom the Gospel was the “révélation allégorique du destin sociétaire.”835 Given de

Lubac’s statements about the impoverishment of the tropological sense in its communal mode, it

seems reasonable to claim that he saw in these movements’ appeals to Scripture a frustrated

desire that the Gospel would address the social needs of contemporary society, as it did formerly

when the communal mode of the tropological sense was robustly employed. As de Lubac

continued to trace the posterity of Joachim into secular social movements, such as the Young

Hegelians and early Marxism,836 one can perceive the same sentiment that he articulated in

Catholicisme years earlier:

Perhaps Marxism and Leninism would not have arisen and been propagated with such terrible results if the place that belongs to the collectivity in the natural as well as supernatural order had always been given to it.837

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac asserted that the loss of the anagogical sense was the

most critical defect arising from the dominance of Scholasticism in post-Tridentine Catholicism,

and he attributed this defect to the fact that “theology then no longer has the form of exegesis.”838

833 ME 1/2:150.

834 PS 2:16-27.

835 PS 2:11,

836 PS 2:337-384.

837 De Lubac, Catholicism, 309.

838 ME 1/2:195. 447 Thus it seems that La Postérité can be understood as de Lubac’s chronicle of both Christian and

secular reactions to the loss of the anagogical sense. In the conclusion to La Postérité, de Lubac

affirmed Walter Kasper’s position about the loss of the prophetic function in the Church:

Pour Walter Kasper, catholiques et protestants, ayant par malheur «largement laissé échapper la dimension de l’avenir et la fonction prophétique», ont abandonné l’évangile de l’espérance, sous une forme sécularisée, aux philosophies modernes de l’histoire, à Schelling, à Hegel, à Marx, et à ces idéologies d’un «troisième Reich» qui n’ont cessé de surgir depuis Joachim de Flore.839

By its focus on the end of man, both individually and communally, the role of the anagogical

sense is to foster hope. While post-Tridentine Catholic theology retained the doctrinal aspect of

anagogy in the communal mode (general eschatology) and individual mode (ascetical and

mystical theology), it had largely lost the living sense of “inaugurated eschatology” which was

typical of the Fathers and Monastic exegetes.840 As a result, secular philosophies of history and human anthropology took the place of what was once provided by the traditional hermeneutic: a religious concern for righteousness in this world, together with a living sense of humanity’s otherworldly destiny. In Catholicisme, de Lubac provided a theological anthropology which

addressed the perennial human desire to unite together through common participation in

something greater than oneself, a community which shapes one’s destiny and informs one’s

hope. He then related the spiritual senses of Scripture to the fulfillment of this desire in building

up the Church. The sections of La Postérité which address statist and collectivist philosophies

839 PS 2:436, quoting Walter Kasper, Dogme et Évangile, transl. by Franz van Groenendael (Paris et Tournai: Casterman, 1967), 88.

840 For a summary of de Lubac’s theology of the anagogical sense in Exégèse médiévale, and his subdivision of anagogy into communal and individual modes, and doctrinal and mystical aspects, see section 5.3.3 above. 448 such as Nazism and Marxism can thus be seen, under de Lubac’s paradigm of “Joachimism,” as filling the void created by the absence of these modes of biblical interpretation.

6.3. Conclusion

In La Postérité, de Lubac surveyed the widespread consequences of the theological error

he called “Joachimism.” Only a small portion of La Postérité noted the response of Magisterial

teaching or of other theologians to Joachimism.841 De Lubac did not develop, alongside his

treatment of the Joachimist error, a narrative of the responses that he considered to provide the

best remedy to it. Moreover, he stated that his work lacked a true conclusion, which he

considered a serious defect, but he had yielded to the desire of those who wished to see the

historical survey in print as it stood.842 De Lubac did not live to provide such a conclusion in any

subsequent work. As such, one should exercise caution in constructing a set of positive

exegetical principles by means of negating the errors that de Lubac identified in La Postérité,

beyond what he himself indicated. Nonetheless, it has been suggested here that de Lubac’s prior

works on the history of exegesis can provide some valuable further insight in this area.

In La Postérité, tradition played an important role in de Lubac’s trinitarian theology of

history. He located tradition within a theological anthropology which views the end of mankind

as union with the Trinity, which is the supernatural end of both individuals and human society as

whole. Within this framework, tradition is the passing down of beliefs, attitudes and habits of

841 Most of these responses are to Joachim himself, rather than his “posterity.” De Lubac noted the response of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) and the provincial synod of Arles (1262) in PS 1:69-84; he devoted the third chapter of Part One to the responses of Bonaventure and Aquinas (PS 1:123-169).

842 PS 2:480 n. 1. 449 action informed by the reception of divine revelation in history. The original revelation, itself

progressive and consummated in the revelation of Jesus Christ, fructifies through dialogical

reception in subsequent ages and so displays both its inexhaustible depth and its ability to meet

the changing spiritual needs of different ages and difficult cultures. De Lubac contrasted this view of tradition to two opposed errors: a static view of tradition as preserving unaltered the

ideas of the past, and the idea of revolutionary progress as found in Joachimism. De Lubac’s

concept of “living tradition” as a force of renewal for successive generations can be seen as a

mean between these two extremes.

This chapter has shown how the notion of community informed de Lubac’s theological

hermeneutics. A large part of La Postérité studied how Joachimism shaped its practitioners’

notions of community, such as their ideas about the collective destiny of the human race, ecclesiology, the social dimension of the Gospel, and the relationship between ages in salvation history. De Lubac typically described their notions of community as the erroneous effect of a

(sometimes implicit) erroneous hermeneutic. Caution must be exercised, therefore, in using these statements for the purposes of the present investigation for two reasons. First, de Lubac focused exclusively on developing a portrait of Joachimism, rather than stating his own views.

Clearly de Lubac believed Joachimism to be a grave error which in turn gave rise to other grave errors in history; his own views therefore must stand in constrast. Yet it would be presumptious to claim to discern from his remarks what de Lubac would have thought to be the best theological responses to the numerous problems he surveys in the course of eight centuries of

Western thought, when he himself did not state them. They cannot be reversed engineered in detail by negation. He clearly defends the superiority of the traditional hermeneutic and its associated worldview, so the best one can do is to consult his treatment of the topic of 450 community in his earlier works as a guide. Second, since, in his portrait of Joachimism, erroneous notions of community are the result of an erroneous hermeneutic, the hermeneutic is the cause, and the notion of community is the effect. The purpose of the present investigation is to determine the inverse relationship: how de Lubac’s concept of community exercises a determining effect on his theological hermeneutics. Nevertheless, La Postérité still evidences important aspects of de Lubac’s thought on the role of community in exegesis.

La Postérité traces how rival communities to the Church arise in connection with novel theologies or philosophies of history. De Lubac observed how these views of history were often animated by underlying assumptions of theological or philosophical anthropology. What

Catholicisme only asserted, La Postérité seems to demonstrate historically: throughout Western history, the desire for human solidarity has been persistent, and the manner in which this solidarity has been envisioned is profoundly linked to how the Bible has been interpreted.

In Catholicisme, de Lubac provided his own description of how the doctrines of

Catholicism—properly understood in their full breadth and vigor—promote the solidarity of the human race in the orders of both nature and grace. The “integrated humanism” of Catholicisme articulated a vision of Christianity which embraced all genuine forms of human progress, whether they originated inside the Church or not, and de Lubac’s notion of ecclesial communion presented the Church as the supernatural means for the reuniting of the human family after the

Fall, by the grace of Christ the Redeemer. The central chapter of Catholicisme maintained that the doctrine of the four-fold sense of Scripture was ideally suited to sustain these social aspects of dogma in the life of the Church. Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse médiévale developed a portrait of the communal dimension of the spiritual senses in greater detail. From his early writings, de Lubac held that many errors in theology arise from the failure to affirm the fullness 451 of a theological mystery—privileging one aspect of it at the expense of another. This seems to

be the principle at work throughout La Postérité, which associated erroneous notions of human

community with Joachimist hermeneutics.

In the case of Joachim himself, his erroneous view of Church history and his

apocalypticism arose from his misuse of the allegorical and anagogical senses in his typological

futurism. In the radical Anabaptist, Thomas Müntzer, de Lubac noted interior illuminism and

Joachimist millenarianism, itself a consequence of misuse of the anagogical sense. De Lubac

maintained that the views of the “mystical Protestants and Kabbalist Christians,” which he

surveyed in Chapter Four,843 arose “to remedy a lacuna”844 left by the influence of Luther, which,

though not further specified, seems to correlate to the absence of the tropological and anagogical senses in their individual modes as de Lubac had described them in Exégèse médiévale. The manner in which the Saint-Simonists and Charles Fourier interpreted the Gospel to support their

social movements likewise seem to testify to an absence of what once was provided by the

tropological sense in its communal mode, and in Fourier’s utopianism, de Lubac noted the

secularization of Joachimism’s expectation of a better age to come in human history, which is to

say, a secularization of Joachim’s misuse of the anagogical sense. In the cases of Lessing and

Schleiermacher, de Lubac observed that they interpreted the literal sense of Scripture merely as a didactic narrative, suited to popular instruction, of truths which could be possessed more clearly and directly by philosophy—which was de Lubac’s own description of what constituted pagan rather than Christian allegory in his earlier writings. In the rise of Marxism out of Hegelianism, de Lubac noted the loss of the prophetic function of the Church in contemporary society, and of

843 PS 1:183-203.

844 PS 1:183. 452 its ability to proclaim effectively the Gospel of hope, which seems to correspond directly with an

absence of the tropological and anagogical senses and with de Lubac’s statements in Exégèse

médiévale about the loss of a sense of “inaugurated eschatology” in post-Tridentine Catholicism.

In each of the above cases, a rival community to the Church arose, proclaiming itself to be a

better vehicle for human hope and solidarity, and, in each case, de Lubac noted that the rise of

that community was supported by some variant of the Joachimist hermeneutic. In this way, he seems to indicate, by contrast, the vital importance of a theological anthropology which can

address the social character of man, and of a corresponding theological hermeneutic which can

effectively proclaim this doctrine from Sacred Scripture.

The role of faith appeared in several ways in La Postérité. First, and least novel, was de

Lubac’s insistence that faith was essential to formulate a complete anthropology that could

address the question of human beatitude either individually or socially. Here, de Lubac’s view

remained unchanged from his earliest writings. The new development provided by La Postérité

in this regard was his chronicle of how differing conceptions of the eschatological dimension of

faith influenced how Christianity was understood, either by those inside or outside the Church.

The Christian faith has an intrinsic orientation to the future: “Faith is the assurance of things

hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). If the revelation of Christ will not

be surpassed in human history, this “conviction of things not seen” firmly points to the afterlife.

La Postérité observed, by contrast, the various ways in which eschatology becomes mundanized

when the concept of faith includes a notion that what has been revealed in Christ will be

surpassed by a future age of the Spirit.

Pambrun summarized this idea well in describing the essence of Joachimism as the belief

that Christianity “is a necessary though relative movement in the full self-realization of human 453 freedom.”845 De Lubac charted how this supersessionist idea took many forms, depending on the underlying view of faith. For Joachim and his immediate successors, the era of Christ gave way to the era of the Holy Spirit in the same way that the Old Testament gave way to the new: a certain continuity of faith is still evident, but de Lubac believed this view rested on an implicit subordination of the mission of Christ to the mission of the Holy Spirit, which de Lubac noted as the beginning of a dangerous trend in Joachimism. For the Lutheran, Thomas Müntzer, the supersessionist character of his Joachimism was greatly muted because of Luther’s profoundly

Christocentric faith. De Lubac saw the influence of Joachim on Luther only in his interpretation of the medieval papacy as the Antichrist; indeed, de Lubac found the influence of Joachimism on the early Reformers to be largely incidental: “le mouvement de la Réforme protestante ne doit rien, dans son principe, au joachimisme.”846 By the time of the Renaissance, de Lubac observed in figures such as Postel the mingling of Christian faith with currents of esotericism and natural philosophy, which resulted in the expectation of an age of religious universalism.

By the time of the Enlightenment, the predominantly negative attitude of rationalism toward traditional Christian faith and a trinitarian view of God left a place only for the philosophical monotheism of natural philosophy. The Joachimist narrative of this time period likewise depicted a succession of ages in which religions that clung to the didactic myths of historical revelation would eventually give way to a single universal religious awareness within the boundaries of reason. The historical hermeneutic had become one of demythologization. For these Joachimists, faith can be seen as a relative moment in mankind’s rational quest for the absolute, to be replaced later by the more precise concepts of secular philosophy. In the last

845 James Pambrun, review of Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Postérité spirituelle, 256.

846 PS 1:175. 454 iterations of Joachimism, if the word faith can be employed at all, it is only a faith in the human

spirit, and the age to come is conceived in an entirely secular fashion as the overthrow of religion.

In this regard, La Postérité observes, albeit indirectly, the importance of the unity of faith

and reason. When theological hermeneutics allots insufficent importance to rational

investigation of the natural world, backlash movements arise which rightly assert the dignity of

the knowledge attainable by natural reason alone and its benefit for mankind. From his earliest

writings, de Lubac had emphasized the importance of maintaining a biblical hermeneutic which

can integrate the findings of modern science.847 Although this is not a primary theme in La

Postérité, the historical narrative of the triumph of science over religion can be observed in some of the spiritual posterity that de Lubac examines.

The traditional hermeneutic was a complex synthesis. It reflected “a whole world view.… A whole interpretation of Christianity”848 upon which it depended for its existence, and

which, in turn, it supported through its exposition of Scripture. La Postérité chronicles a whole

series of movements which arose over the course of the gradual disintegration of this synthesis,

leading ultimately “à la dénaturation de la foi, de la pensée et de l’action chrétienne.”849 De

Lubac concluded La Postérité with the observation:

847 “Thus we can be assured that fresh conclusions about our history and our empirical origins will help us, after their own fashion, to probe more deeply into the meaning of our Catholicism, in its concern for the whole history of man and its solicitude for each member of the human family” (Catholicism, 353). Cf. also AT, 98.

848 HS, 11.

849 PS 1:14-15. 455 La conversion nécessairement incessante au Dieu de l’Évangile est sans doute la volonté toujours dressée de retrouver sans trêve en l’Église la vérité impartageable du don de Dieu.850

Throughout the course of his life, de Lubac’s writings on exegesis illustrated how the hermeneutics of the four-fold sense of Scripture play an essential role in the Church’s ability to proclaim to every age the eternal value of the revelation of Jesus Christ. With regard to his advocacy of the four-fold sense, he recounted in his memoirs:

I was happy working to do justice in that way to one of the central elements of the Catholic tradition, so grossly underappreciated in modern times and nevertheless still the bearer of promises for renewal.851

850 PS 2:450.

851 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, 83. Chapter Three

Analysis of the Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer

This chapter analyzes Gadamer’s magnum opus, Wahrheit und Methode (1960), which presented the mature synthesis of his hermeneutical theory. Chapter One of this dissertation placed the major works of Gadamer in their biographical context; in this chapter, Wahrheit und

Methode will be analyzed section by section, with attention to the themes of tradition, community and faith. Due to the more theoretical mode of exposition that dominates Gadamer’s works, this chapter’s exposition will proceed more quickly than the historical examination of de

Lubac’s writings in Chapter Two. The present analysis of Gadamer will be supplemented by an examination of the reception of his work in contemporary scholarship.

1. Wahrheit und Methode (1960, Sixth revised edition, 1990)

Wahrheit und Methode gathered much of Gadamer’s thought on hermeneutics from the

1940s and 1950s into its first book-length expression. Originally published in 1960, the work received wide critical acclaim, and was republished five times.1 The second edition, issued in

1965, contained additions: a supplement entitled “Hermeneutics and Historicism;”2 another entitled “To What Extent Does Language Perform Thought?”; and an eleven-page Foreword to the Second Edition where Gadamer replied to some of his critics; these additions are included in many translations of the work. The third edition in 1972, contained a brief new Foreword, an

Afterword in which Gadamer again replied to his critics, and additional bibliographical

1 For the redaction history, see Makita, 50-51.

2 After the publication of Wahrheit und Methode, this supplement appeared as: “Hermeneutik und Historismus,” Philosophische Rundschau 9 no. 4 (1961): 241-276.

456 457 references. The fourth edition was unchanged from the third. The fifth edition was prepared as the first volume of Gadamer’s Gesammelte Werke; this edition retained the original Introduction, but neither the Forewords, Supplements nor Afterword were published with it; these were published separately in volume 2 of his Gesammelte Werke. Because of numerous typographical errors in the fifth edition, a sixth edition, a reprint of volume 1 of his Gesammelte Werke, was published to correct these mistakes but it contained no new content.

There are two English editions of Truth and Method: the first was based on the second

German edition and appeared in 1975. While the initial appearance of the work in English was welcomed, the translation of Gadamer’s heavy style and distinctive neologisms left room for improvement. One reviewer recounted the genesis of the second English edition: “Fortunately, the copyright holders gave permission to two teachers, who had both used the 1975 translation in their classrooms, to subject the English version to an exacting revision.”3 Joel Weinsheimer and

Donald Marshall produced the now-standard text in English, which is based on the fifth German edition.4

3 Jared Wicks, review of Truth and Method, second revised edition, by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Gregorianum 72, fasc. 1 (1991): 194.

4 In this dissertation, references in English are to this edition; references in German are to the sixth edition as found in the Gesammelte Werke.

458 2. Overview and Analysis

Gadamer’s Introduction to Wahrheit und Methode stated its purpose: a work of general hermeneutics, which he defined as the study of “the phenomenon of understanding and of the correct interpretation of what has been understood.”5 Hermeneutics “is not a problem specific to the methodology of the human sciences [Geisteswissenschaften] alone,”6 rather, it permeates all human effort to know. Man is a rational animal and this, ultimately, is the basis of the universal claim of hermeneutics. As Gadamer stated in the Foreword to the Second Edition, hermeneutics does not inquire

only of science and its modes of experience, but of all human experience of the world and human living. It asks (to put it in Kantian terms): how is understanding possible? This is a question which precedes any action of understanding on the part of subjectivity, including the methodical activity of the “interpretive sciences” and their norms and rules. Heidegger’s temporal analysis of Dasein has, I think, shown convincingly that understanding is not just one of the various possible behaviors of the subject but the mode of being of Dasein itself. It is in this sense that the term “hermeneutics” has been used here.7

Richard Palmer, whose seminal work Hermeneutics (1969) has been widely cited in secondary literature on Gadamer, sets Gadamer’s work in the historical context of the emergence of hermeneutics from a specialized discipline practiced in the fields of jurisprudence and biblical interpretation, to a universal discipline. Hermeneutics’ centrality to many fields of scholarly inquiry in the twentieth century was assisted in great measure by the work of Gadamer.8

5 TM, xxi.

6 TM, xxi.

7 TM, xxx.

8 Palmer identified six stages in the emergence of philosophical hermeneutics as a universal science of interpretation and six meanings of the term: (1) the theory of sound biblical exegesis; (2) a general philological methodology developed out of the former for application in 459 One American reviewer stated the goal of the book succinctly: “The central thought of

Hans-Georg Gadamer’s magnum opus, Truth and Method, is that truth only occurs once the full

ontological dimension of understanding is recognized.”9 One aim of Wahrheit und Methode is

then to broaden the concept of understanding from various post-Enlightenment constrictions,

particularly those resulting from the rise of scientific empiricism as an emblematic form of

knowledge. Another reviewer wrote: “Gadamer aims to understand understanding, and believes

that there is more to this than can be verified by modern scientific method.”10 Thus the work aimed to make a case for “rejecting the transference of the methodology of the natural sciences to the human sciences.”11 This transference was often driven, in Gadamer’s estimation, by the

mistaken equation of scientific modes of knowing with knowing in general. Gadamer sought to

correct this hasty and often damaging generalization by a fuller description of human

understanding that can be applied to all its modes, not merely the scientific mode of

understanding. In other words, Gadamer sought to generalize the features of human

other fields; (3) the science of all linguistic understanding, in connection with fields such as linguistics and semiotics; (4) the methodological foundation of the humanities, particularly in areas such as literature and history; (5) the phenomenology of existence and existential understanding, such as in the works of Heidegger; and (6) the systems of interpretation used to consider myths, symbols, events, and texts, such as in the writings of Gadamer, Ricoeur and Bultmann. Richard E. Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press: 1969), 33-45.

9 Ted Peters, review of Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Journal of Religion 57, no. 2 (April 1977): 197.

10 Robert Morgan, review of Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Journal of Theological Studies 28 (1977): 255.

11 John T. Ford, review of Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theological Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 1976): 490-492. 460 understanding in a more careful and inclusive way than those who adhered too closely to the

model of the empirical sciences for their approach to human understanding in general.

Taking inspiration from the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, Gadamer in

Wahrheit und Methode sought to provide a descriptive analysis of understanding, rather than a

prescriptive set of norms for any particular discipline. This point, misunderstood by some critics

of the first edition, prompted Gadamer to emphasize in the Foreword to the Second Edition:

[T]he purpose of my investigation is not to offer a general theory of interpretation and a differential account of its methods . . but to discover what is common to all modes of understanding and to show that understanding is never a subjective relation to a given “object” but to the history of its effect; in other words, understanding belongs to the being of that which is understood.12

Since Gadamer’s concern was, on the one hand, to provide a description of understanding

in general, prior to the individual methods of various disciplines, and, on the other hand, to reject

the hermeneutical intrusion of certain quasi-scientific methods into fields where they are not

appropriate, he spent considerable time critiquing the obscuring effect which certain methods have on their objects, however without providing any methodologies himself. Thus, Wahrheit und Methode has far more positive things to say about Wahrheit than Methode. This imbalance led Paul Ricoeur to ask whether the title of the book should have been Truth or Method.13 This

12 TM, xxxi. “[S]ondern das allen Verstehensweisen Gemeinsame aufzusuchen und zu zeigen, daß Verstehen niemals ein subjektives Verhalten zu einem gegebenen ‘Gegenstande’ ist, sondern zur Wirkungsgeschichte, und das heißt: zum Sein dessen gehört, was verstanden wird” (GW 2:441).

13 Initially in Paul Ricoeur, “La tâche de l’herméneutique” in Exegesis: Problèmes de méthode et exercices de lecture (Genesis 22 et Luc 15), ed. François Bovon and Grégoire Rouiller (Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1975), 197. 461 jocular remark has practically become a kōan for initiates to the book.14 Yet Gadamer never

sought to oppose the concept of truth and a methodical way of obtaining it; he sought to

counteract hubristic overconfidence in certain limited methods of obtaining knowledge.15 In

valid methods, appropriate to their objects and aware of their limitations, truth and method

should coexist without tension. Such is the achievement of genuine understanding through a

method of knowing. Gadamer’s ultimate concern was to establish the conditions for affirming

such a felicitous conjunction of truth and method.16 As Philippe Eberhard remarked:

Therefore it seems, against Ricoeur, that the title Truth and Method is justified after all. Precisely the conjunction rather than the alternative of truth and method suggests the mediality of understanding and the subject’s involvement in it.17

14 E.g. Chris Lawn wrote in his introduction to Gadamer: “The problem, as Gadamer states it, is that the true becomes entangled with philosophical theories of truth … and their aspirations for objectivity. One of Gadamer’s central claims is that method occludes truth, or rather that a basic and fundamental encounter with truth is lost once we resort to a dependence on method. Gadamer’s key work could just as easily have been Truth or Method as Truth and Method. There is an inexhaustible tension between the two if truth is taken to be the end product of method.” Chris Lawn, Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Continuum, 2006), 60. Lawn’s opposition of truth and method, however, is too stark. For a better presentation, see Lauren Swayne Barthold’s discussion of the false dichotomy of “truth or method” in Gadamer’s Dialectical Hermeneutics (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), 73-76.

15 Palmer noted: “Gadamer’s approach, then, is closer to the dialectic of Socrates than to modern manipulative and technological thinking.… [T]he dialectical approach to truth is … a means of overcoming the tendency of method to prestructure an individual’s way of seeing.… The discovery of method itself was not arrived at through method but dialectically, that is, through questioning responsiveness to the matter being encountered. In method the inquiring subject leads and controls and manipulates; in dialectic the matter encountered poses the question to which he responds” (Hermeneutics, 165).

16 The Foreword to the Second Edition stated: “The question I have asked seeks to discover and bring into consciousness something which the methodological dispute only tends to conceal and neglect, something that does not confine or limit modern science but precedes it and makes it possible” (TM, xxix).

17 Philippe Eberhard, The Middle Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Basic Interpretation with Some Theological Implications, Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 45 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), 39; emphasis in original. 462

The Foreword to the Second Edition stated Gadamer’s intentional limitation to the phenomenology of understanding, and gave an underlying explanation for his approach:

This fundamental methodical approach avoids implying any metaphysical conclusions. In subsequent publications … I have recorded my acceptance of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason: I regard statements that proceed by wholly dialectical means from the finite to the infinite, from human experience to what exists in itself, from the temporal to the eternal, as doing no more than setting limits, and am convinced that philosophy can derive no actual knowledge from them.… Hence the present investigations do not fulfill the demand for a reflexive self-grounding.… But is the dialogue with the whole of our philosophical tradition—a dialogue in which we stand and which as philosophers, we are—groundless? Does what has always supported us need to be grounded?18

Accordingly, Gadamer placed the work within the phenomenon of language, inspired in part by

Heidegger’s dictum that “language is the house of Being.”19 Gadamer’s approach had the advantage, on the one hand, of bracketing metaphysical controversies that underlie both classical and contemporary linguistics (e.g., the relationship of signs to concepts, and concepts to extra- mental objects-in-themselves); on the other hand, Gadamer’s phenomenology, like Husserl’s phenomenology, led some critics to ask whether he fell into subjectivism. An anticipation of

Gadamer’s response was already indicated in his remark: “Does what has always supported us need to be grounded?” On a practical level, language works, and there is much to be gained by an inspection of the phenomenon of linguistic understanding in itself.

18 TM, xxxvi-xxxvii.

19 Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” in Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), ed. David Farrell Krell (San Francisco: Harper, 1977), 193. 463 Gadamer divided Wahrheit und Methode into three parts: (1) the question of truth as it

emerges in the experience of art; (2) the extension of the question of truth to understanding in the

human sciences, and (3) the ontological shift of hermeneutics guided by language.

2.1. The Question of Truth in the Experience of Art

Initially it may seem strange that Gadamer began a work on general hermeneutics and its

use in the humanities with a lengthy meditation on aesthetic consciousness and the experience of

art, including “the ontological foundation of the occasional and the decorative.” However, as he

explained near the conclusion of Wahrheit und Methode, not only does starting with the experience of art broaden the scope of his hermeneutical considerations to include the polar opposite of scientific rationality, but meditation on the experience of a work of art helps better to surface to conscious reflection certain aspects of all understanding which are more easily passed over, without reflection, in acts of understanding literature. After identifying these aspects in artistic experience, Gadamer could then proceed to universalize their application to literature, history and other fields:

The being of the work of art is not a being-in-itself that is different from its reproduction or the contingency of its appearance. Only by a secondary thematization of the two things is it possible to make this kind of “aesthetic differentiation.” Similarly, whatever offers itself for our historical study from tradition or as a tradition—the significance of an event or the meaning of a text— is not a fixed object existing in itself, which we have simply to establish. In fact, historical consciousness too involves mediation between past and present. By seeing that language is the universal medium of this mediation, we were able to expand our inquiry from its starting point, the critiques of aesthetic and historical consciousness and the hermeneutics that would replace them, to universal dimensions.20

20 TM, 475. 464 For example, Gadamer highlighted the immersive character of artistic experience: an artwork

draws a person into an interpretive dialogue with the work itself. In contrast, a scientific

observer seeks to isolate himself from the object of observation in order to ascertain its truth, as

is the norm in scientific objectivity. The experience of art quickly surfaces the fact that meaning emerges only when an observer and the observed interact. In other words, while the object of art

exists in itself, we do not separate its “meaning” and its “being”: the artwork exists to

communicate. For Gadamer, artistic experience highlights the fallacy of thinking that the

meaning of an artwork is a discreet package of “cognitive content” existing somehow alongside

the aesthetic qualities of the work. Such “aesthetic differentiation,” the separating of “form”

from “content” or its empirical character from its communicative character, only happens in a

second, reflexive consideration. The experience of meaning is primary.

Artistic experience also highlights the fact that one brings an interpretive framework to

bear in discerning the meaning of a work of art. The role of artistic convention, the difference

between one’s own culture and that of the artist, the distinctive genius of the artist, and the

interplay between asking what the artwork is intended to mean and what it means to an observer,

are often more prominent in the experience of art than other modes of communication. Another

essential aspect of artistic experience is found in the fact that an observer ultimately comes to

some judgment about the artwork: its worth, and what it means to an observer’s own life.

Whether the artwork is banal or shocking, curious or profound, of national significance or of

personal value—all highlight the ultimate existential thrust of artistic communication. For

Gadamer, all of these aspects are present in all acts of understanding.

Gadamer also considered the role of taste in appraising art. The practical function of

taste in aesthetic appreciation highlights important dynamics of communal and traditional 465 formation of one’s personal judgment in ways which are not typically by explicit, conceptual

instruction: “Clearly the validity of an aesthetic judgment cannot be derived from a universal

principle.… No one supposes that questions of taste can be decided by argument and proof.”21

Yet good taste is neither subjective nor mere imitation. A person who possesses good taste has

acquired a particular mindset, like a habit, which allows him to make correct judgments, even if

this has not been conveyed through a series of conceptual norms. Taste functions “something

like a sense,” insofar as “in its operation it has no knowledge of reasons,”22 yet taste is not “a

question of a subjective reaction, as produced by what is pleasant to the senses. Taste is

‘reflective.’”23 Good taste is grounded in a certain communal sense and “creates community,” in

which those of good taste have, and propagate, their own “culture.”24 The dynamics of taste also

manifest how individual noteworthy works of art play an essential, productive role in shaping

and reshaping the faculty of judgment. Only the amateur turns artistic appreciation into an

aesthetic Pharisaism which rejects the advance of artistic genius because it departs in some

measure from previously established conventions. The norms of a genre help define a work of art, yet works of art also advance the development of their genres:

At issue is always something more than the correct application of general principles. Our knowledge of law and morality too is always supplemented by the individual case, even productively determined by it.… Like law, morality is constantly developed through the fecundity of the individual case.25

21 TM, 42.

22 TM, 36.

23 TM, 43.

24 TM, 43-44.

25 TM, 38. 466 Gadamer used these reflections later in Wahrheit und Methode as a bridge to the productive

function of tradition and community in shaping one’s worldview in ways that often exceed one’s

ability fully to quantify.

A final step in Gadamer’s preliminary meditation on artistic experience concerned the

nature of “lived experience [Erlebnis]”26—a technical term developed by Dilthey and developed

differently in Husserl, and still differently in Gadamer. Erlebnis emphasizes the existential

character of an occurrence in contrast to the mere facts of when and how something transpired:27

“An experience is no longer just something that flows past quickly in the stream of conscious life: it is meant as a unity and thus attains a new mode of being one.”28 One is truly living

(leben) when one has an Erlebnis, a meaningful experience, which may or may not be confined

to one moment in time; for example, one might have an Erlebnis of a Rembrandt painting that

contains several viewings.29 Erlebnis stresses both the subjective dynamics of experience and its holistic character, prior to its conceptualization or analysis.30 An Erlebnis is far more than an

26 The more common word for “experience” in German is Erfahrung.

27 A similar distinction underlies the concepts of kairos and chronos in New Testament Greek.

28 TM, 66.

29 In contrast, Erfahrung often emphasizes the objective character of what has transpired, as in the English phrase “he is a man of broad experience” for a person who has had many Erfahrungen of many different things.

30 A discussion of Gadamer’s reshaping of this term is found in TM, 64-70. See also Palmer, Hermeneutics, 106-110. A longer treatment was given by John Arthos, “‘To Be Alive When Something Happens’: Retrieving Dilthey’s Erlebnis,” Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts 3, no. 1 (Spring 2000); available at: http://www.janushead.org/3-1/jarthos.cfm (accessed August 28, 2011). 467 impression; it has a depth that can be revisited, and as such is greater than the conceptual

reflections that emerge from dwelling upon it:

Every experience is taken out of the continuity of life and at the same time related to the whole of one’s life. It is not simply that an experience remains vital as long as it has not been fully integrated into the context of one’s life consciousness, but the very way it is “preserved and dissolved” (aufgehoben) by being worked into the whole life consciousness goes far beyond any “significance” it might be thought to have. Because it is itself within the whole of life, the whole of life is present in it too.31

Gadamer claimed that there is a close affinity between the phenomenological structure of

Erlebnis and the mode of being of the aesthetic. Aesthetic experience is not just one kind of experience among others, but highlights the essence of experience per se.32

In Wahrheit und Methode, the section “Retrieving the Question of Artistic Truth,” posed

the questions: “Is there to be no knowledge in art? Does not the experience of art contain a claim

to truth which is certainly different from that of science, but just as certainly is not inferior to

it?”33 Gadamer then indicated the goal of the remainder of the work:

If we want to know what truth is in the field of the human sciences, we will have to ask the philosophical question of the whole procedure of the human sciences in the same way that Heidegger asked it of metaphysics and we have asked it of aesthetic consciousness. But we shall not be able simply to accept the human sciences’ own understanding of themselves, but must ask what their mode of understanding in truth is. The question of the truth of art in particular can prepare the way for this more wide-ranging question, because the experience of the work of art includes understanding, and thus itself represents a hermeneutical phenomenon— but not at all in the sense of a scientific method.34

31 TM, 69.

32 TM, 70.

33 TM, 97.

34 TM, 100. Thus by choosing two extremely different modes of understanding, Gadamer sought to broaden his investigation of the whole genus of acts of understanding.

468

The following section of Wahrheit und Methode, “The Ontology of the Work of Art and

Its Hermeneutic Significance,” contained Gadamer’s transition from his insights garnered from

his analysis of art to the broader phenomenon of understanding in the human sciences and the

discipline of hermeneutics. By “ontology” Gadamer did not mean a metaphysics of extra-mental

realities (which would be contrary to his stated intent in the second Foreword), but a description

of the constitutive elements of the phenomenon of understanding. He began this section with an

analysis of the concept of play [Spiel] as “the clue to ontological explanation,” from which he

later developed his notion of dialogue and its role in human understanding. This is not to say

that Gadamer viewed all discourse as merely an intellectual game, as some of his critics have

alleged.35 Rather he intentionally chose a remote approach, rooted in some of the simplest and

35 See for example Murray N. Rothbard, “The Hermeneutical Invasion of Philosophy and Economics,” The Review of Austrian Economics 3, no.1 (1989): 45-59: “The essential message of deconstructionism and hermeneutics can be variously summed up as nihilism, relativism, and solipsism. That is, there is no objective truth or, if there is, we can never discover it … there is no method of discovering objective truth.… Communication between writer and reader becomes hopeless” (46). As proponents of this idea, Rothbard lumped together Heidegger and his “murky doctrines,” Foucault, Ricoeur, Derrida, the “Department of English at Yale University,” and Gadamer upon whom, “with the death of Heidegger” the “apostolic succession of head of the hermeneutic movement fell” (45). Rothbard’s article concluded that if one is “unable to communicate, the least you can do is to shut up. That, alas, is something that [Richard] Ebeling and his hermeneutical colleagues have not yet learned to do” (58). An only slightly warmer reception came from Jonathan Barnes in “A Kind of Integrity,” Review of Philosophical Apprenticeships by Hans-Georg Gadamer, London Review of Books 8, no. 19 (Nov. 1986): 12- 13: “This ‘recognition of self’ [in Gadamer’s hermeneutics] is not, pace Gadamer, a feature of historical scholarship: it is a feature of unhistorical anti-scholarship. Hermeneutics is not, despite its claims, a historical science. Nor, despite its name, is it an interpretive science. Interpreters look at the sparkling surface of Plato’s text in the hope of gauging the depth and movement of the waters beneath. The hermeneutical philosopher looks at the surface in order to contemplate the reflection of his own more lovely features.” In such remarks, one sees amplified Johannes Gadamer’s bitter reproach that his son had joined the “Schwätzprofessoren,” not to mention the unfortunate divide between the contemporary schools of analytic and continental philosophy. 469 most universal forms of human activity, to analyze overlooked aspects of more sophisticated

modes of human interaction.

First Gadamer focused on the fact that “play” involves creating a context in which “all

the purposive relations that determine active and caring existence have not simply disappeared,

but are curiously suspended.”36 This permits a kind of intentional activity among the players

which gives them the freedom to construe mental constructs which govern the actual game. The

constructed environment of play permits a kind of detachment from the world “determined by

the seriousness of purposes,” yet play “contains its own, even sacred, seriousness.… Someone who doesn’t take the game seriously is a spoilsport.”37 A game has its own rules, which anyone

who enters the game is obliged to follow. Playing a game seriously is an essential component of

exploring the realm of potentials which make the game rewarding, which make it fun to play.

Earnest players give themselves over to the game: “the primacy of play over the consciousness

of the player.”38 Individual games involve the intentional activity and individuality of the

players, and the game itself is ultimately a product of human creativity, yet the game exerts its

own force over the players as they learn it, as if it were, in a sense, another, independent subject

in this relationship of persons.39

36 TM, 102.

37 TM, 102.

38 TM, 104.

39 Gadamer expressed this point by saying “the actual subject of play is obviously not the subjectivity of an individual … but the play itself” (TM, 104). For example, in the game of chess, there is a precinct (the board) wherein ordinary objects (the pieces) have special significance and are governed by the rules of chess. While the rules governing chess are easy to relate even to a child, the serious play of chess over the ages has revealed the game’s enormous depth and challenges. As one plays chess, one learns chess—specifically the latent principles 470 Gadamer then took the “clues” yielded by an analysis of play and applied them to the act

of understanding in general. He described the activity of theorizing in a way similar to the

“serious but detached” intellectual system of a game. To theorize, one first requires a certain

provisional detachment from the immediate world of aims and known facts. This permits the

“free play” of ideas. Just as the chess pieces are endowed with a certain provisional “as if”

quality in the game (they are treated “as if” they were something more than they are), so too the

ideas brought into play in theory—the hypotheses—are granted a certain provisional “as if”

quality: they are treated as if they were real statements of truth within the confines of the theory

in order to see what comes of them. As in the experience of a work of art, the hypothesis

prompts participants almost immediately to consider its meaning and to develop provisional and strategies that are hidden to the inexperienced player. In Gadamer’s language, one learns from chess by playing chess, as if the game itself were another subject with which one interacts, and from these interactions, one acquires deeper understanding. While the independent personalities of the players are expressed in each game, the game is far more than that. Earnest chess-players find themselves drawn into the “mystique” of the game and are formed by it. The chess master’s familiarity with the game permits him to master his opponents who have only a casual familiarity with it. While the chess master’s personal techniques and strategies ultimately have their basis in the elementary rules, which are explicit at the outset of the game, their implications are not easily foreseen by a novice. Mastery of chess is not an act of self-assertion in dominating the game; rather, the chess master has become a virtuoso at playing the game; he has been formed by the game of chess. As Gadamer noted, the game of chess refers no longer to an individual match, but to the ideal notion of the game—a notion that only comes to consciousness through playing the game. When one speaks of the nobility of “the game of chess,” the statement is largely intelligible only to those who have Erlebnis of it. As Gadamer observed about cases of law and questions of morality, so too in chess, the exercise of judgment in individual games advances the science of the game. Thus the long tradition of chess is not entirely static; rather, its progress is marked by both personal genius and the slow emergence of new conventions (such as castling). While many methods of chess instruction have been devised and used throughout the centuries, to greater or lesser degrees of success, all masters recognize that these methods are the reflections of, not substitutes for, the perceptive genius of the masters who advance the field.

471 responses to others’ initial acts of assessment. Intellectual moves and responses are then

wagered in discourse about the hypothesis, just as moves and countermoves are made in a game,

so that one can see what emerges from this provisionally-created intellectual world.

As in playing a game, the merit and depth of an hypothesis will only be revealed to those who engage in it seriously. Just as the game of chess reveals to the attentive player implications and principles not apparent to the novice, so too a good hypothesis reveals to an attentive theorist unforeseen connections and novel implications. Even though the theory is a purely human construct (like the game of chess), one begins to learn from it. The good game is recognized when it becomes, so to speak, an independent factor which guides the activities of the players.

Involvement in a good game reveals that it has a certain solidity; it does not quickly “fall apart” by degenerating into incoherent, or trivial, or non-productive activity. In the game of tic-tac-toe, the possibilities are limited; thus only children are amused by it, and adults consider the game as futile. So too a good theory does not “fall apart” by leading to contradictory, vapid, or pointless implications. Just as the game of chess has a compelling mystique to it, a good theory is compelling: it invites further revisitations to explore its implications. A good theory comes to shape the mind of a theorist. In chess, there is a reciprocal dynamic between the players and game: the game forms the mind of the players in ways they did not anticipate. So too in theorization: hypotheses are created, but good ones inform the mind of a theorist in unanticipated ways. Just as good chess playing is not about dominating the game by a sheer act of will, but rather, by respecting the game, a chess-master learns what is possible in a sophisticated way that gives him a mastery of it; so too in theorization, one does not impose one’s desired outcome on the theoretical exercise by assertion, but rather, through receptive attention to what emerges in consideration of the theory, one comes to master it. Just as the game of chess has achieved a 472 certain “ideal” form independent of all its players, so too a good theory achieves a certain ideal

form which becomes independent of the mental activity of the theorists who consider it.

For Gadamer, this achieving of an ideal form is not a departure from historicity. Just as

chess is marked by the individuality of its outstanding players who have shaped it throughout the

ages, so too long-standing theories bear the characteristics of the prominent human personalities

which have created and advanced them, as well as the shaping effect of the many people who

have propagated them to the present day. Just as with chess, or with judgment about art, so too for Gadamer in the realm of theory there are authorities, both communal (e.g., a scholarly body) and individual (an accomplished scholar). Finally, though somewhat muted in game play but more prominent in the experience of art, a participant has an Erlebnis, a lived experience of the

game or of the artwork, which relates to his whole life. Thus one may speak of the nobility of

the game of chess, or the profundity of a work of art. One can question whether a game is worth

playing, or question the worth of an artwork. Sometimes either the game or artwork can

interweave itself with the fabric of human existence so thoroughly it becomes a metaphor for

aspects of life: one’s corporate ambition is “stalemated,” a stressful time can be “surreal,” or

failing a routine duty can be “dropping the ball.” One finds such metaphors being used to

express life itself: “It’s all a game,” or “All the world’s a stage.”40 In this way, a game or work

of art can be “worked into the whole of life” such that “the whole of life is present in it too.” 41

Likewise a compelling theory has existential import, “beyond any ‘significance’ it might be

40 Shakespeare, As You Like It, act 2, scene 7.

41 TM, 69. 473 thought to have” with respect to its subject matter proper: it has value, relevance and import to the whole of life.

Through his analysis of play and aesthetic judgment, Gadamer emphasized several dynamics he believed essential to a phenomenology of understanding. Although theory involves the “free play of ideas” and certain elements of play are common to both theorization and to game play, there are important differences. As intelligent human social activity, games have

their own reality (their “ontology” as Gadamer calls it), but the imaginary (“as-if”) character of

the game’s items, and the values attached to them, are never intended to emerge from within the

imaginary construct of the game. Playing games remains in the realm of intentional detachment

from the real world. Theory, by contrast, emerges from provisional consideration into a genuine

assertion. A theorist intends to communicate something about real life. In order to treat this

important distinction without losing contact with the elements of play, Gadamer did not proceed

directly to the discussion of theory in the Geisteswissenschaften, rather he approached it by

stages, returning to the consideration of the question of truth in the work of art. The work of art

retains many of the same features of play found in a game, but has the additional feature of an

intention to communicate something related to real life. Gadamer first turned his attention to

theatrical plays, since here the form of the art is closest to a game. He then widened his

consideration to the fine arts of painting and the plastic arts, and then to literary work. Only after

this approach to the textual expression of meaning, did he begin to consider understanding in the

human sciences and general hermeneutics.

Gadamer next analyzed the theatrical play, which retains all the features of game play,

but adds the essential difference of the intent to communicate meaning through the play as an art

form intended for an audience. His analysis of a play also debuted his concept of the 474 “transformation into structure” to describe how an artwork is endowed with meaning. In the theatrical play, “the closed world of play lets down one of its walls.” While all games might be watched by others,

this possibility is the characteristic feature of art as play.… The directedness proper to all representation comes to the fore here and is constitutive of the being of art.42

Even in games that are watched by many people, the players are supposed to maintain their attention wholly absorbed into the closed world of the game: they must always “keep their mind on the game,” usually despite spectators. In a theatrical play, the intention is the opposite: “The audience only completes what the play as such is.”43 In his previous analysis of playing games,

Gadamer observed how the third-person perspective presented the game in “an ideal form,” in which the observer’s understanding focuses on the nature of the game, rather than the subjectivity of the players acting it out. In a theatrical play, the focus on this “ideal” or third- party perspective is absolutely central: the play is

experienced properly by … one who is not acting in the play but watching it. In him the game is raised, as it were, to its ideality.44

This shift indicates a certain objectification of meaning, because there is now something which is to be communicated to the audience, unlike a mere game:

The spectator has … methodological precedence: in that the play is presented for him, it becomes apparent that the play bears within itself a meaning to be understood and that therefore can be detached from the behavior of the player.45

42 TM, 108-109.

43 TM, 109.

44 Ibid.

45 TM, 110. 475 Gadamer then observed, in contrast to Newtonian science, that understanding is only conferred through the active engagement of the audience in the play, rather than the audience remaining aloof and detached. A curious transformation takes place when a theatrical play “lets down its fourth wall” and intentionally “puts the spectator in the place of the player” of a game.

By sitting down and watching a play, the audience enters into the free play of ideas within an artistic construct designed to communicate meaning. In watching a play, the audience becomes involved in the play. The activity sometimes described as the audience’s “suspension of disbelief” is, for Gadamer, not merely a practical convention where the audience imagines what is necessary to reproduce the richer fabric of real-world experience which can never be achieved on stage. Rather, the suspension of disbelief is akin to the detachment from the immediate world of aims and known facts which is the initial step of both game play and theory. Accordingly, the audience agrees to enter into the give-and-take dynamic of the players’ artistic representation of meaning: “Here self-forgetfulness is anything but a private condition, for it arises from devoting one’s full attention to the matter at hand, and this is the spectator’s own positive accomplishment.”46 The performance, considered as an imaginative representation of truth, becomes the meeting point of the understanding of the audience, on the one hand, and the players and playwright on the other. A performance is an artistic medium: it is the ground where meaning is mediated between two parties: the artists and the audience.

The concept of art as a medium is more apparent in static forms of representational art, such as painting or sculpture. The finished artwork, like the finished theatrical production, represents the sum of what an artist can convey to an audience. Once an artwork is finished, it

46 TM, 126. 476 becomes a freestanding creation, no longer supported by the actions of the artist. It exists now, whether in memory (as in a live performance) or in stone, only as an object of interpretation.

From this finished product alone, can interpreters draw their understanding.

Gadamer described this creation of an artistic medium as a “transformation into structure.” An artwork is created such that its meaning can be

detached from the representing activity of the players and consist in the pure appearance (Erscheinung) of what they are playing.… It has the character of a work, of an ergon and not only of an energeia. In this sense I call it a structure (Gebilde).47

The finished work of art comes to have “an absolute autonomy” from the artist who gave rise to it “and that is what is suggested by the concept of transformation.”48 The artwork has been permanently “endowed” with meaning. While the artwork certainly has some relationship to the mind of the artist (and in the case of plays or music, those who perform the work), the artwork, once finished, becomes a definitive locus of interpretation, a reservoir of meaning.

In later sections of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer elaborated on this endowment of meaning in the artwork. For Gadamer, authentic interpretation focuses on the meaning of what is conveyed by the artwork itself. The concept of an independent “structure of meaning” was intended by Gadamer to highlight how the meaning of a work of art remains independent of both the subjectivity of its creator and of its interpreter. The concept of transformation into structure is closely related to Gadamer’s understanding of what constitutes objectivity in interpretation.

For Gadamer, when the transformation into structure is forgotten, one is faced with two opposed hermeneutical extremes.

47 TM, 110.

48 TM, 111. 477 The first occurs when the act of interpretation is governed by the subjectivity of the artist.

For Gadamer, the intention of the artist cannot be the guiding hermeneutical principle for

interpreting the artwork for several reasons: first, an artist may have succeeded in expressing

only part of what he wished to convey. Artwork is nothing other than expression, and one’s

attempt at self-expression is not always successful. The finished work must be the norm of how

well an attempt at artistic expression has succeeded, not the artist’s ambitions. An interpreter

ought not judge the meaning of the artwork based on other supplemental communications with

the artist about what he intended to express, any more than a professor should grade an essay

based on something other than what the student has written. The meaning endowed in the

work—what has been “transformed into structure”—must be the basis of interpreting the work,

not what the artist wished he had incorporated into the work. Second, an artwork can continue to

communicate meaning long after contact with the artist is impossible: “Even if their place is only

in museums as works of art, they [artworks] are not entirely alienated from themselves.”49 If the intention of the artist is the hermeneutical key to the work, the interpretation of many works of even moderate antiquity becomes impossible, which seems contrary to common experience.

Third, an artist often puts more into his artwork than he consciously realizes. Using an artist’s intention as the guiding norm can actually result in an impoverished interpretation compared to focusing on the artwork itself. Even in casual conversation, for example, one can learn many things about someone that never explicitly arise as topics of conversation, such as his political views, religious tradition, ethnic heritage, temperament, education, and so forth. A whole host of

49 TM, 120. 478 values, presuppositions, and conventions can shape an artist’s work which can remain

subconscious to him, but are apparent to an interpreter.

The second hermeneutical extreme against which the concept of transformation into

structure guards is dominated by the subjectivity of the interpreter. Reader-response criticism

provides the easiest example. While interpretations cannot exist without the subjectivity of the

interpreter, and while a work can only be meaningful insofar as it relates to the mindset of the

interpreter, it does not follow that all appraisals of an artwork’s meaning are equally valid.

While Gadamer would not deny that a work of art can mean something to someone in a way

accidental to the work of art itself (such as a song played at one’s wedding), he would insist on

the distinction between this meaning and the meaning of the work of art judged in itself. An

artwork is neither a Rohrschach test, nor a token of personal experience; rather, an artist’s intent to communicate something must be respected as an equal partner in the interpretive dialogue.

The transformation into structure thus highlights the importance of an artwork as the intersubjective ground where understanding occurs in correct interpretation. A genuine meeting of minds occurs in interpretation, although the meaning intended by the author is limited by what has been transformed into structure in the artwork. A “mediation” thus takes place between the mind of an artist and an interpreter through the artwork.

Along with this transformation into structure, Gadamer considered the temporality of an artistic experience. Artworks that endure can communicate across the ages because of their detachment from the subjectivity of the artist. They continue to “speak.” The mediation of meaning happens in a way that is not possible in direct person-to-person conversation. Such artworks seem to “stretch out of the past into the present as enduring monuments” and “[a]s long 479 as they fulfill their function, they are contemporaneous with every age.”50 This enduring

relevance of an artwork is sometimes called its “timelessness,” but this expression is not a denial

of the object’s existence in time, but rather an expression which attempts to capture how the

artwork can mediate its meaning to many different ages while remaining fixed in itself. An artwork can “present itself so differently in the changing course of ages and circumstances,” yet it does not “lose all identity.” Rather, the meaning of an artwork is present in all correct

interpretations of it over the ages: “it is there in them all” and “They belong to it.”51 Gadamer

returned to enacted works for a “hermeneutical clue” to the temporal structure of artistic

understanding not by examining theatrical plays, but religious ritual:

We are familiar with this kind of highly puzzling temporal structure from festivals.… [T]he festival that comes around again is neither another festival nor merely a remembrance of the one originally celebrated. The originally sacral character of all festivals obviously excludes the familiar distinction in time experience between present, memory and expectation. The time experience of the festival is rather its celebration, a present time sui generis.52

The purpose of a recurrent festival (for example, the Passover) is not merely to recall annually

some factual information about the original event. Rather, the performative nature of the festival

prolongs the original event into the present by reliving it through representation. Festival makes

the original event “present again,” and thus there is a kind of unity between all the celebrations

of the festival despite the passage of time. Festivals share a kind of continuity of meaning as if

50 TM, 120. Weinsheimer translated gleichzeitig and Gleichzeitigkeit as “contemporaneous” and “contemporaneity” respectively when referring to this capacity of meaning to bridge separated moments of time in the technical sense Gadamer has employed. Gadamer used Simultaneität, by contrast, for events happening at the same time, which Weinsheimer translated as “simultaneity” (Cf. GW 1:132, 166).

51 TM, 121.

52 TM, 122-123. 480 they were chronologically simultaneous. This is what Gadamer meant by “a present time sui

generis.” He observed that the same concept was sometimes described by historians of religion,

less accurately, as all celebrations taking place in a kind of “sacred time” that transcends

mundane time. Gadamer thought that such a description, relying on the metaphor of an

alternative timeline, obscured more than it revealed about the essential continuity of meaning

over time. The temporal continuity that underlies the timelessness of a work of art is not a

“given” but rather “a task for consciousness and an achievement that is demanded of it.”53 It is an accomplishment of an interpreter, who receives the work from the past and interprets it into the present. For this reason, Gadamer found the parallel with festival instructive, since the representation of an original event in a festival, like the bringing-into-the-present of the meaning of an artwork, hinges on the productive function of an interpreter. The meaning of the work of art does not pass through history like a block, a “given” that must be passively received by each new age; rather, it must be recovered anew. By this continual act of recovery, the re-gathering or re- membering the meaning of an artwork against oblivion, an interpreter establishes a “communion of minds” between past and present.54

53 TM, 127.

54 He wrote: “Here we can recall the concept of sacral communion that lies behind the original Greek concept of theoria. Theoros means someone who takes part in a delegation to a festival. Such a person has no other distinction or function than to be there. Thus the theoros is a spectator in the proper sense of the word, since he participates in the solemn act through his presence at it.… In the same way, Greek metaphysics still conceives the essence of theoria and of nous as being purely present to what is truly real, and for us too, the ability to act theoretically is defined by the fact that in attending to something one is able to forget one’s own purposes” (TM, 124). Gadamer related to this the original Greek concept of theoria, which emerged out of Greek festal practice. 481 In this analysis, Gadamer acknowledged a debt to Kierkegaard, who gave the “concept of contemporaneity … a particular theological stamp”:

For Kierkegaard, “contemporaneity” does not mean “existing at the same time.” Rather, it names the task that confronts the believer: to bring together two moments that are not concurrent, namely one’s own present and the redeeming act of Christ, and yet so totally to mediate them that the latter is experienced and taken seriously as present (and not as something in a distant past).… Contemporaneity in this sense is found especially in religious rituals and in the proclamation of the Word in preaching. Here, “being present” means genuine participation in the redemptive event itself.55

The field of literature was Gadamer’s ultimate destination in the first part of Wahrheit

und Methode. Having moved from a phenomenology of play, to performed art, to more static

visual arts, Gadamer moved to the domain of texts: “Literary art can be understood only from the

ontology of the work of art,” he stated in the final section of Part One.56 Here all the elements of

play, the free play of ideas, theory, transformation into structure, the communion of minds in the

meaning of the work itself, and the transmission of meaning throughout time come together in

Gadamer’s approach to all forms of textual expression. Like the work of art, “Literature is a function of being intellectual preserved and handed down, and therefore brings its hidden history into every age.”57 Understanding it properly requires methodical awareness of the communal

55 TM, 127-128. While Kierkegaard’s formulation expressed the point suitably enough, the religious concept of anamnesis could have been developed with more depth from within the Patristic tradition. Gadamer returned to theologically-driven concepts as insights for how meaning emanates throughout history without diminishment by the end of Wahrheit und Methode. From the performative arts, Gadamer extended his analysis to the more static visual arts of painting and sculpture.

56 TM, 161.

57 TM, 161. 482 aspect of its propagation, and involves communally-normed dynamics of its interpretation, as in art:58

All written texts share in the mode of being literature—not only religious, legal, economic, public and private texts of all kinds, but also scholarly writings that edit and interpret these texts; namely the human sciences as a whole.59

For Gadamer, “literature is the place where art and science merge.”60 “Literature” is the category where Gadamer’s general norms governing all understanding become applied to writings in the arts and sciences in his attempt to provide a broader basis for hermeneutics:

“Every work of art, not only literature, must be understood like any other text that requires understanding,” and conversely, “hermeneutics must be so determined as a whole that it does justice to the experience of art.”61

Yet, in moving to this more specific area of the textual communication of meaning, an

interpreter encounters new challenges:

The written word and what partakes of it—literature—is the intelligibility of the mind transferred to the most alien medium. Nothing is so purely the trace of the mind as writing, but nothing is so dependent on the understanding mind either. In deciphering and interpreting it, a miracle takes place: the transformation of something alien and dead into total contemporaneity and familiarity. This is like nothing else that comes down to us from the past. The remnants of past life … a written tradition, once deciphered and read, is to such an extent pure mind that it speaks to us as if in the present.… In it, time and space seem to be superseded.62

58 For Gadamer, this point is clearly seen in the ongoing life of “classic” literature: “the effective grandeur that we call ‘classical literature’ remains a model for all later writers, up to the time of the ambiguous ‘battle of the ancients and moderns,’ and beyond” (TM, 161).

59 TM, 162.

60 TM, 163.

61 TM, 164.

62 TM, 163-164. 483 Literary hermeneutics has as its basic task understanding texts such that “the dead trace of

meaning” is transformed “back into living meaning.”63

Gadamer concluded the first section of Wahrheit und Methode by observing the rise of

hermeneutics as a universal discipline in the modern period: “Everything that is no longer

immediately situated in a world—that is, all tradition, whether art, law, religion, philosophy, and

so forth—is estranged from its original meaning and depends on the unlocking and mediating

spirit” that is hermeneutics. He continued: “It is to the rise of historical consciousness that hermeneutics owes its centrality within the human sciences.”64 In connection with this, he

mentioned the work of three thinkers whose influence on hermeneutics as a universal discipline

made them important in the remainder of Wahrheit und Methode: Dilthey, Schleiermacher and

Hegel. Gadamer critiqued at length Dilthey’s historicism.65 He would also consider the merits

and demerits of the approaches of Schleiermacher and Hegel to philosophical hermeneutics as

“two ways of understanding the hermeneutical task,” which Gadamer labeled as “reconstruction”

and “integration,” respectively. His critiques of all three figures are a prelude to his own

statement about hermeneutics.

According to Gadamer, the principal inspiration of Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics is the

idea of “reconstructing the past” so that one can understand the text or work of art exactly as the

author did in the time and place in which he created it. As later sections of Wahrheit und

63 TM, 164.

64 TM, 165.

65 “Today’s task could be to free ourselves from the dominant influence of Dilthey’s approach to the question [of historical consciousness] and from the prejudices of the discipline that he founded: namely ‘Geistesgeschichte’ (intellectual history)” (TM, 165). 484 Methode stated at greater length, Gadamer believed that this approach is ultimately untenable and misguided; the very nature of artistic communication is oriented toward continual development in time. For Gadamer, the historical dimension of meaning is not simply a temporal distance to be overcome by hermeneutically “rolling back the clock.” This approach overlooks the radically temporal “mode of being of Dasein itself.” Moreover, Schleiermacher’s approach involved what Gadamer considered the insurmountable difficulty of interpreting texts through the mindset of the intention of the author, a principle which he deemed invalid because of his understanding of the transformation into structure that underlies all communication through art. Nonetheless, Gadamer appreciated Schleiermacher’s emphasis on the need to contextualize historically the object of interpretation and also the role that Schleiermacher accorded to tradition. Gadamer further agreed that some communion of mind with the author is part of successful interpretation, but this was a mediated communion.

Gadamer typified Hegel’s hermeneutics as one of integration. In Gadamer’s assessment of Hegel, the hermeneutical task is to recognize the meaning presented in the text “in its essence,” to analyze its relationship to oneself, and to interiorize it—in short, to achieve a dialectical synthesis of the text into the subjectivity of the interpreter. Yet this act of integration, for Hegel, is only part of a larger dynamic: the world-historical dialectical process which integrates the individual spirit with Absolute Spirit. The interpreter’s hermeneutical act itself propels this larger integration, which Gadamer described as “the historical self-penetration of spirit” by Absolute Spirit which is accomplished through philosophy. For Gadamer, “Hegel states a definite truth, inasmuch as the essential nature of the historical spirit consists not in the restoration of the past but in thoughtful mediation with contemporary life” and “in this way, his 485 [Hegel’s] idea of hermeneutics is fundamentally superior to Schleiermacher’s.”66 Yet Gadamer took issue with Hegel’s treatment of the teleology of history as the ultimate framework for interpretation later in Wahrheit und Methode.

Gadamer’s remarks on Dilthey, Schleiermacher and Hegel at the end of Part One of

Wahrheit und Methode serve only as a contextualization of Gadamer’s own hermeneutical theory, which he presented in Parts Two and Three. In Part Two, Gadamer reviewed the history of post-Medieval hermeneutics, with particular focus on the Enlightenment, the Romantic movement, and the philosophy of Heidegger. Within this framework, Gadamer critiqued more fully Dilthey, Schleiermacher and Hegel, and he integrated some of their insights into his own hermeneutical theory.

2.2. The Extension of the Question of Truth to Understanding in the Human Sciences

The first chapter of Part Two of Wahrheit und Methode, entitled “Historical Preparation” focused on the change of hermeneutics from the Enlightenment to Romanticism; the initial section described the rise of hermeneutics from a specialized discipline within theology and jurisprudence to the “universal discipline” it has become in the twentieth century. At the outset,

Gadamer delimited the scope of his investigation in a way that aligned with the purposes of his monograph, but not in line with the comparative aspect of this dissertation:

We will entirely disregard the dogmatic interest in the hermeneutical problem that the Old Testament already presented to the early church and will be content to pursue the development of the hermeneutical method in the modern period, which culminates in the rise of historical consciousness.67

66 TM, 168-169; emphasis in original.

67 TM, 173. 486

In a similar way, Gadamer passed over the Reformers’ abandonment of the role of ecclesiastical

tradition in the interpretation of Scripture and “the ancient doctrine of the fourfold meaning of

Scripture.”68

Why did Gadamer avoid the Patristic and Medieval eras? The answer was not in his

occasional reserve about appraising the validity of intellectual movements within Christian

theology, but his intent in this chapter is to chronicle how “Hermeneutics had to rid itself one day

of all its dogmatic limitations and become free to be itself, so that it could rise to the significance

of a universal historical organon.”69 Since the theme of Gadamer’s historical narrative was the rise of hermeneutics from a specialized practice within the field of theology to a universal discipline as twentieth-century philosophy conceived it, its “prehistory” within Catholicism,

ancient Roman jurisprudence, and its continuation in Medieval civil and canon law did not

concern him. Yet in light of de Lubac’s analysis of the theological significance of the doctrine of

the four senses of Scripture, Gadamer’s judgment that the hermeneutics of the Patristic and

Medieval period played no significant part in the rise of hermeneutics to a “universal historical organon” seems questionable.70 Gadamer’s decision to pass over Patristic and Medieval

68 TM, 175. Obviously Gadamer’s explicit remarks on these subjects would have provided a direct comparison with Henri de Lubac’s appraisal of the biblical hermeneutics of these periods.

69 TM, 176.

70 De Lubac’s argued in Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse Médiévale that most nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians had missed the full scope and purpose of the theological hermeneutics of the four senses; not only did it contain a theology of history and Christian anthropology, and serve the integration of philosophy and theology within exegesis, but in some Medieval libraries, the four senses served as a framework for the organization of all knowledge; e.g., ME 1:12: “The Medieval charterhouse of Salvatorberg had a catalog for its library. The lengthy preface to this catalog … gives an exposition of the plan of the library and justifies it: 487 hermeneutics suggests that he would have been interested in de Lubac’s approach to “the

traditional hermeneutic” had he been aware of it.71

2.2.1. From Reformation Hermeneutics to Romanticism

Following Dilthey’s history of hermeneutics, Gadamer maintained that Reformation

theological hermeneutics, “developed from the reformer’s defense of their own understanding of

Scripture against the attacks of Tridentine theologians and their appeal to the indispensability of tradition.” About the same time, the birth of philological hermeneutics “developed as instrumental to the humanist claim to revive classical literature.”72 Gadamer saw in both fields a

parallel movement:

Both involve a rediscovery: a rediscovery of something that was not absolutely unknown, but whose meaning had become alien and inaccessible. Classical literature, though constantly present as material for humanistic education, had been completely absorbed within the Christian world. Similarly, the Bible was the church’s sacred book and as such was constantly read, but the understanding of it was determined, and—as the reformers insisted—obscured, by the dogmatic tradition of the church. Both traditions are dealing with a foreign language and not with the scholar’s universal language of the Latin Middle Ages.… By applying specialized techniques, hermeneutics claimed to reveal the original meaning of the texts in both traditions—humanistic literature and the Bible.73

after a first section devoted to the works under the jurisdiction of ‘historia,’ there came the sections on ‘allegoria,’ ‘anagogia,’ and finally ‘tropologia.’”

71 By the time of Wahrheit und Methode’s first appearance in 1960, only the first volume of Exégèse Médiévale had been published. Although Gadamer sought to be informed about pre- Reformation Christian hermeneutics, the fact that his own studies of this period did not examine the doctrine of the four senses is not surprising in light of the fact that his study of exegesis was at the Protestant Marburg school and with Bultmann in particular.

72 TM, 174.

73 Ibid. 488 The parallel movements of theological hermeneutics and philological hermeneutics were joined together in a moment “of decisive importance” when “through Luther and Melanchthon the humanistic tradition was united with the reform.”74

Gadamer lauded the desire of both movements to recover the meaning of texts that had passed through such a long tradition that their earliest moments of reception had become obscured. In the case of the Reformers, however, Gadamer took issue with Luther’s claim that

Scripture is sui ipsius interpres, thereby favoring the notion that “Scripture has a univocal sense that can be derived from the text: the sensus literalis.”75 Gadamer objected:

Indeed, reformed theology does not even seem to be consistent. By ultimately asserting the Protestant credal formulae as guides to understanding the unity of the Bible, it too supersedes the scriptural principle in favor of a rather brief Reformation tradition. This was the judgment not only of the counter- Reformation but also Dilthey.76

Gadamer also felt that the claim that Scripture is its own interpreter obscured the involvement of human interpreters in approaching the text.

Another laudable advance of Reformation hermeneutics was the development of what

Gadamer called “the hermeneutic circle”—a term which the Reformers did not use but later theorists applied to their practice. In its original sense, the hermeneutic circle refers to the

Reformers’ principle of obtaining a progressively better understanding of Scripture through a process which alternates between understanding the whole of Scripture through a close reading of its parts and understanding the parts of Scripture better in light of the whole:

74 Ibid.

75 TM, 175.

76 TM, 176. 489 For the whole of Scripture guides the understanding of individual passages: and again this whole can be reached only through the cumulative understanding of the individual passages.77

He then observed:

This circular relationship between the whole and the parts is not new. It was already known to classical rhetoric [and its description of a perfectly crafted speech].… Luther and his successors transferred this image … to the process of understanding, and they developed the universal principle of textual interpretation that all the details of a text were to be understood from the contextus and from the scopus, the unified sense at which the whole aims.78

The Reformers—insofar as they used this method of interpretation—remained “bound to

a postulate that is itself a dogma, namely that the Bible is itself a unity.”79 Eighteenth century

historians decoupled this method from the Bible and used it to interpret other historical texts.

Moreover, they extended the notion of the relationship between the whole and its parts to cover not merely a text, but a text’s relationship to its surrounding culture or context. By the nineteenth century, historical-critical biblical scholars brought this interpretative approach back home to its Scriptural origin. As Gadamer described it:

The old interpretive principle of understanding the part in terms of the whole was no longer bound and limited to the dogmatic unity of the canon; it was concerned with the totality of the historical reality to which each individual historical document belonged.80

For Gadamer, “there is no longer any difference between interpreting sacred or secular writings”

and thus “there is therefore only one hermeneutics” which is the art of the correct interpretation

77 TM, 175. Gadamer’s definition could have been clearer by specifying that this interpretive process is iterative. Only through multiple re-readings does the reader’s understanding of Scripture gravitate toward its real meaning.

78 TM, 175.

79 TM, 176.

80 TM, 177. 490 of any literary text whatsoever. At the same time, Biblical research highlighted the changing meaning of the Bible for each generation and particularly the shifts in understanding the meaning of biblical terms and concepts.81

In Gadamer’s estimation, the next major step in hermeneutics in becoming a universal discipline involved a shift from considering the meaning of a text to the meta-textual level of studying the meaning of texts within the context of history, as well as from recovering the meaning of concepts within a text to the meta-textual level of studying the development of concepts throughout history. Again, Gadamer saw a kind of hermeneutical circle at work:

For what is true of the written sources, namely that every sentence in them can only be understood on the basis of its context, is also true of their content. Its meaning is not fixed. The context of world history … is itself a whole in terms of which the meaning of every particular is to be understood, and which in turn can only be fully understood in terms of the particulars.82

Yet what is the whole in light of which individual historical works are supposed to be interpreted? For Gadamer, “World history is, as it were, the great dark book, the collected work of the human spirit, written in the languages of the past, whose texts it is our task to understand.”83

As such, the whole remains unfinished: world history is still in the process of emerging.

For Gadamer, its destination is unknown, and the book is “dark.” The discipline of hermeneutics thus finds itself in a novel situation, which more limited hermeneutical enterprises did not

81 Awareness of the changing signification of terms and evolution of concepts raised a deeper hermeneutical problem than was faced by earlier generations, spurred in part by the work of philological hermeneutics, which often observed such dynamics in its recovery of the original meaning of classical terminology.

82 Ibid.

83 Ibid. 491 encounter, insofar as they had a readily identifiable “whole” within the scope of which individual parts could be contextualized. When the whole is taken as world history, one can see the

attraction of the Hegelian hypothesis of the teleology of history for theorists of a universal

hermeneutics. It provides in advance, some finality to “the great dark book of world history,” in

light of which universal hermeneutics can perform its task. While Gadamer did not subscribe to

Hegel’s notion of a world-historical dialectic which culminated in the realization of Absolute

Spirit in history, he positively appraised Hegel’s synthesis between prior and present moments in

history as an essential step in the mediation of truth through time. Gadamer termed such an

approach to universal hermeneutics through Hegel’s influence as a hermeneutics of

“integration”—this approach influenced Gadamer’s concept of Wirkungsgeschichte presented

later in Part Two of Wahrheit und Methode.

In contrast to the Hegelian approach to universal hermeneutics, Gadamer found

Schleiermacher’s thought a deviation insofar as Schleiermacher did not seek the unity of hermeneutical understanding in the scope of world history, but rather in the mind of the author.

Yet Gadamer thought that Schleiermacher also made positive contributions to the universalization of hermeneutics: “In a new and universal sense, alienation [from the meaning of a text] is inextricably given with the individuality of the Thou.”84 Another novelty to

Schleiermacher’s approach which “has totally disappeared from the sphere of hermeneutics,”85

was his conceptualization of the hermeneutical task as “meaningful dialogue” with the mind of

an author through the medium of a text. Schleiermacher’s focus on the mind of the author and

84 TM, 179.

85 TM, 180. 492 his “brilliant sense of human individuality” was not a mere “idiosyncrasy influencing his theory.”86 Rather, Gadamer saw Schleiermacher’s approach as a Romantic reaction to

Enlightenment hermeneutics. In the Enlightenment, Gadamer attested, interpreters turned to the

mind of the author as a psychological way to explain the text whenever it was irrational. Since

the principles of reason are universal, whenever the text easily yielded to analysis, its meaning

was “clear” insofar as it was “rational” and in that same measure it was generically human—not particular to the author as an individual except by the historical fact that he happened to write this universal truth at a particular time and place. Only when the text departed from rationality was the individuality of the author invoked—as the explanation of the defect.87 Romantics,

reacting to the Enlightenment, responded by stressing the positive value of historical particularity

and the “individual genius” of the author.

In Schleiermacher’s case, this emphasis took the form of stressing the role of the

historical context of the author and his original audience and the author’s intention in writing as

keys to unlocking the meaning of the text. This emphasis did not deny that a text serves to

communicate universal ideas by reason; rather, the Romantic emphasis on the historical

particularity surrounding a work’s authorship resulted from the deepening awareness of the

equivocal nature of concepts and statements over time that was the fruit of the advances in

86 TM, 179.

87 Gadamer gave the example of Spinoza’s biblical interpretation in the Tractatus theologico-politicus: “we have to derive the meaning (mens) of the authors from historical data, since things are related in these books (stories of miracles and revelations) that cannot be derived from the principles [of] … natural reason.” Gadamer added: “In interpreting Euclid, says Spinoza, no one pays any heed to the life, studies and habits … of that author” because his works are purely rational” (TM, 181). Gadamer concluded, “The historical critique of Scripture that emerges fully in the eighteenth century has its dogmatic basis, as our brief look at Spinoza has shown, in the Enlightenment faith in reason” (TM, 182). 493 theological and philological hermeneutics, in contrast to the largely ahistorical presumption of static meanings which characterized the Enlightenment. Because texts could no longer be approached merely as a body of propositions which are either univocal or irrational, hermeneutics became more sensitive to historical context and authorial intention. Gadamer described this shift once again as motivated by realizations in philology:

For the ars critica of philology unreflectively presupposed the exemplariness of classical antiquity, which it helped to hand down. It, too, had to change its nature when there was no longer any clear relation of model to copy between classical antiquity and the present. That this is the case is shown by the [late seventeenth- century] querelle des anciens et des modernes, which sounds the general theme for the whole period.… This problem resulted in the development of historical reflection, which finally demolished classical antiquity’s claim to be normative. In the case of both literary criticism and theology, then, the same process led ultimately to the conception of a universal hermeneutics.88

With Schleiermacher, Gadamer argued, hermeneutics became its own science, and not merely a “technique,” as it was in “both the theological hermeneutics of the fathers and that of the Reformation.”89 The final impulse for Schleiermacher to do so came with the theological diversity and philosophical impasses of the post-Enlightenment period:

The art of understanding came under fundamental theoretical examination and universal cultivation because neither scripturally nor rationally founded agreement could any longer constitute the dogmatic guideline of textual understanding. Thus it was necessary for Schleiermacher to provide a fundamental motivation for hermeneutical reflection and so place the problem of hermeneutics within a hitherto unknown horizon.90

Gadamer highlighted two further contributions Schleiermacher made to universal hermeneutics: first was Schleiermacher’s attention to the role of tradition; although Gadamer noted that for

88 TM, 178.

89 TM, 178.

90 TM, 179. 494 Schleiermacher, tradition was chiefly valued as a way back to the mind of the author, rather than

something of cumulative value. The second was Schleiermacher’s broadening of the role played

by the hermeneutic circle in the act of interpretation:

Schleiermacher follows … the whole hermeneutical and rhetorical tradition when he regards it as a fundamental principle of understanding that the meaning of the part can be discovered only from the context—i.e., ultimately from the whole.… [B]ut Schleiermacher applies it to psychological understanding, which necessarily understands every structure of thought as an element in the total context of a man’s life.91

Moreover, for Schleiermacher, “this circle is constantly expanding,” since the concept of the

whole refers to the historical context of a man’s life and that context is constantly re-interpreted

by “being integrated in ever larger contexts” of history which in turn “always affect the

understanding of the individual part.”92 Accordingly, Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics of

“reconstructing the past” runs into problems similar to the Hegelian approach, namely, how to interpret a history that is still going forward from the time of the text to the time of a present-day interpreter and beyond.

In the classic form of the hermeneutic circle, “the whole text” and “a passage of the text” constituted two fixed poles between which successive interpretive effort eventually zeroed-in on the genuine meaning of the text. In Schleiermacher’s form of the hermeneutic circle, one pole is fixed (a man’s life) and the other (its historical context) is in motion. Thus, “the circle is constantly expanding” and one may question whether an interpretation can ever claim to have completed its task in any satisfactory way. According to Gadamer, Schleiermacher provided his

91 TM, 190; emphasis in original.

92 TM, 190. 495 own way out: “Hermeneutics is an art and not a mechanical process.”93 The aporia of the

expanding hermeneutical circle is overcome, because Schleiermacher “assumes something like

complete understanding when divinatory transposition takes place, ‘when all the individual

elements at last suddenly seem to receive full illumination.’”94 This divinatory moment is not

the routine product of a methodological process, but an inspired moment which “brings its work,

understanding, to completion like a work of art.”95 The divinatory moment occurs when one is

“overcome by feeling, by an immediate, sympathetic and con-genial understanding.”96 The

hermeneutic circle only gets an interpreter close to the author’s intention; the final gap must be

closed by a hermeneutical leap through sympathetic alignment with the author—a principle

which Dilthey adopted in his hermeneutics.

For Gadamer, this identification with the author “cannot mean mere equation.” An

interpreter, from his later vantage point, has a position of hermeneutical superiority to the author, due to the fact that an interpreter not only understands the author, but grasps him in his historical context in a way the author could not at the time.

Thus Schleiermacher asserts that the aim is to understand a writer better than he understood himself, a formula that has been repeated ever since, and in its changing interpretation the whole history of modern hermeneutics can be read.97

According to Enlightenment rationalists, one could understand a writer better than he understood

himself insofar as the principles of critical philosophy were better known to an Enlightenment

93 TM, 191.

94 Ibid.

95 Ibid.

96 TM, 191.

97 TM, 192; emphasis in original. 496 interpreter, who could critically assess their philosophical coherence according to higher rational standards that previous ages had not attained. According to Schleiermacher, one

sees the act of understanding as the reconstruction of the [original] production. This inevitably renders many things conscious of which the writer may have been unconscious.98

From this potentially superior position of later interpreters followed another conclusion which

Gadamer endorsed:

From this also follows the point—which hermeneutics ought never to forget—that the artist who creates something is not the appointed interpreter of it.… The only standard of interpretation is the sense of his creation, what it “means.” … [I]t is not the author’s reflective self-interpretation but the unconscious meaning of the author that is to be understood.99

Before considering later figures, Gadamer briefly addressed the writings of Johann

Martin Chladenius (1710-1759), who lived a generation before Schleiermacher, but who “has been singled out a precursor of romantic hermeneutics.”100 In Chladenius, Gadamer saw two noteworthy principles. First, “in him we find the interesting concept of ‘point of view,’ which explains ‘why we see a thing in one way and not another,’” a concept which Chladenius borrowed explicitly from Leibniz’s optics.101 Gadamer adopted a second principle of Chladenius as a moderation and critique of Schleiermacher’s approach to understanding the meaning of the text through the mind of the author. For Chladenius,

The norm for understanding a book is not the author’s meaning. For “since men cannot be aware of everything, their words, speech, and writing can mean something they themselves did not intend to say or write,” and consequently,

98 TM, 192.

99 TM, 193.

100 TM, 182.

101 Ibid. 497 “when trying to understand their writings, one can rightly think of things that had not occurred to the writers. Even if the reverse is the case, “that an author meant more than one has been able to understand,” for Chladenius the real task of hermeneutics is not to understand this “more,” but to understand the true meaning of the books themselves (i.e., their content).102

For Chladenius, hermeneutics was not a universal discipline as for Schleiermacher, but a

pedagogical and occasionally employed technique. As such, it did not rise to the level of

nineteenth century hermeneutics, but Gadamer found Chladenius’ approach to the concretion of

meaning in the text a useful analog to his concept of transformation into structure; Chladenius’ notion of a point of view would also be instrumental in Gadamer’s own similarly optical notion of horizons.

2.2.2. The Historical School: Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey

Gadamer next examined the work of the German historians, Leopold von Ranke (1795-

1886), Johann Gustav Droysen (1808-1884), and Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911). All three men are representatives of what Gadamer termed “The Historical School” (Die historische Schule).103

102 TM, 183-184.

103 In English, the movement is sometimes confusingly called “Historicism,” and the confusion is compounded by the existence of a “German Historical School of Law” and a “German Historical School of Economics.” Stefan Berger’s proposed translation of “Historism” for the movement that encompasses Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey, brings needed clarity to this debate, and corresponds in the main to Gadamer’s own distinctions. Berger wrote: “I deliberately use the term ‘historism’ (and ‘historist’) rather than ‘historicism’ (and ‘historicist’). Whereas ‘historism’ (in German, Historismus), as represented by Leopold von Ranke, can be seen as an evolutionary, reformist concept which understands all political order as historically developed and grown, ‘historicism’ (Historizismus), as defined and rejected by Karl Popper, is based on the notion that history develops according to predetermined laws towards a particular end. The English language, by using only one term for those different concepts, tends to conflate the two. Hence I suggest using two separate terms in analogy to the German language.” Stefan Berger, “Stefan Berger responds to Ulrich Muhlack,” German Historical Institute London 498 Gadamer began by considering how the Historist School addressed “this problem of universal

history,” that is, a comprehensive perspective on all human history as the framework for the

historical interpretation of individual events. For Gadamer, the distinguishing mark of the

Historist School was its break from the influence of Hegelianism:

Its birth certificate, as it were, is its rejection of the aprioristic construction of world history. Its new claim is that not speculative but only historical research can lead to a universal view of history.104

One impetus for this departure was the thought of the proto-Romantic philosopher and theologian, Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803). According to Gadamer, Herder’s critique

of the Enlightenment’s view of history resulted in his being the first to disclaim all attempts to

schematize history according to ahistorical concepts derived from metaphysics or the claims of

critical reason:

Herder … saw that in everything past there is a dialectical relationship between what is exemplary and what is unrepeatable. He could then set a universal historical worldview against the Enlightenment’s teleological view of history. To think historically now means to acknowledge that each period has its own right to exist, its own perfection. Herder took this step. The historical worldview could not reach full development as long as classicist prejudices accorded a special, paradigmatic place to classical antiquity. For not only a teleology in the style of the Enlightenment’s belief in reason, but also a reverse teleology that situates perfection in a past era or at the beginning of history, still posits a criterion that is beyond history.105

Bulletin 23, no. 1 (May 2001): 28, n. 5, http://www.ghil.ac.uk/publications/bulletin.html (accessed September 14, 2011).

104 TM, 200.

105 TM, 200-201. 499 Gadamer accordingly asserted that the basic assumption common to “all these representatives of

the historical worldview—Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey”106 is the assertion that their central

concepts for narrating world history (such as “idea,” “essence” and “freedom”) “do not find any

full or even sufficient expression in historical reality.”107 This realization is an asset, not a

shortcoming, because it acknowledges the essential role played by history in the emergence of

thought, a role which cannot be shortcut by philosophical speculation.108 Gadamer contrasted

the Historist School’s approach to a “Neoplatonic view of historical events” in which an event is

merely the emergence into the external world of an eternal idea knowable by philosophy, an

approach which “does not do justice to the metaphysical value of history and hence to the status

of historical science as knowledge.”109 In the Historist movement, one can recognize two

principles: first, the unfolding of human history has its own irreplaceable role in manifesting the

designs of the human spirit, which cannot be shortcut by philosophy. Second, the historist

approach is superior to philosophy as a way of understanding man, and so encompasses

philosophy, thereby constituting a backlash against rationalist theories of history.

106 “Aller Vertreter dieser historischen Weltansicht” (GW 1:205).

107 TM, 201.

108 Gadamer stated: “This must not be regarded as a mere deficiency.… Rather, they find the constitutive principle of history in the fact that the idea is only imperfectly represented in history. For this reason philosophy must be replaced by historical research to inform man about himself and his place in the world. The idea of a history that would be the pure representation of the idea would mean renouncing history as an independent way to truth” (TM, 201-202).

109 TM, 202. 500 Gadamer then turned to Ranke’s manner of determining what constitutes a significant historical event, “an event that is truly part of world history, and what the continuity of world history is based on.”110 Gadamer repeated that world history for Ranke

has no fixed goal that can be discovered outside itself. To this extent there is no necessity, no knowable a priori, at work in history. But the structure of historical continuity is still teleological, and its criterion is success.… [S]uccessive events indicate the importance of those preceding them.… Whether or not something is successful not only determines the meaning of a single event and accounts for the fact that it produces a lasting effect or goes unnoticed; success or failure causes a whole series of actions to be meaningful or meaningless. The ontological structure of history itself, then, is teleological, although without a telos.111

110 TM, 203.

111 Ibid. Gadamer’s German original is somewhat clearer than the English translation, and reveals a few nuances rendered equivocally as “success” and “failure” in English: “Aber die Struktur des geschichtlichen Zusammenhanges ist dennoch eine teleologische. Maßstab ist der Erfolg. Wir sehen ja, daß das, was ja folgt, über die Bedeutung des Vorgegangenen erst entscheidet.… Daß etwas gelingt oder mißlingt, entscheidet ja nicht nur über den Sinn dieses einen Tuns und läßt es eine dauernde Wirkung erzeugen oder wirkungslos vorübergehen, sondern dies Gelingen oder Mißlingen läßt einen ganzen Zusammenhang von Taten und Ereignissen sinnvoll sein oder sinnlos werden. Die ontologische Struktur der Geschichte selbst also ist, wenn auch ohne Telos, teleologisch” (GW 1:207). In this passage, Gadamer played with the nuances of Erfolg and Gelingen, both translated “success” in the English edition. Erfolg, formed by adding the perfective prefix er- to the root verb, folgen, which means “to follow,” connotes the following-out of an earlier movement to its completion. (The cognate verb, erfolgen, means “to occur” or “to ensue.”) History has “led us” somewhere, a term which emphasizes arrival somewhere in hindsight. The substantive Gelingen, and its verbal root gelingen, is formed from the Mittelhochdeutsch verb lingen, which bears the meaning of vorwärtsgehen (to move forward) and gedeihen (to thrive, to flourish, to develop, or prosper). Its antonym, mißlingen, can likewise connote “to fail” or “to miscarry an attempt.” Thus gelingen connotes the internal productivity of an earlier event, a more organic term indicating the event’s ongoing fecundity, which develops into something recognizable, rather than a botched or miscarried action which comes to naught. This perspective is more forward-looking. While Erfolg is the noun commonly used to describe succeeding in one’s ambitions, Gadamer’s use of Erfolg seemingly resonates more with its original sense and that of the cognate verb, erfolgen. One might better say, that history is successive in character, rather than that its index is “success.” Gadamer’s emphasis was on the carrying-out of productive human acts of meaning over time, rather than some abstract ideal or teleological idea placed on history from without, which “success” connotes in modern English. With respect to Gadamer’s paradoxical formulation that Ranke’s idea of history is “teleological without a telos,” perhaps he 501 Of particular importance in this statement is Gadamer’s view that later events decide the

meaning of those preceding them. By preserving the intentional continuity between

meaningful events, Gadamer retained the notion of progressive development contained in

the concept of teleology, while avoiding the cumbersome attempt to describe the fact that

no one knows where this fabric of purposive activity is leading by saying this teleology

has no telos. Although, a few sentences later, Gadamer spoke of an “unconscious”

(unbewußten) teleology, it makes little sense to speak of goal-oriented intentional action

when no one is aware of the goal. The ultimate coherence of human action in history, in

spite of the actors’ lack of foreknowledge of how it might cohere when they are enacting

it, does not necessitate projecting into the future some kind of virtual intention with

respect to which the actors are said to unconsciously act.112

Gadamer continued with the following appraisal of Ranke:

This defines Ranke’s concept of an event that is truly part of world history. It is such if it makes history—i.e., if it has an effect (Wirkung) that lends it continuing historical significance. Hence the elements of historical coherence, in fact, are determined by an unconscious teleology that connects them and excludes the insignificant from this coherence.113

could have expressed himself more directly, and less paradoxically, by saying that the fabric of history is woven from a number of purposive human efforts which build upon each other, and react to each other, over time. Cf. Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 21st ed. (Berlin: DeGruyter, 1975), s.v. “gelingen.”

112 Later in this chapter of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer noted how difficult it was for the Historist School to abandon the influence of Hegelianism. Gadamer’s own “teleology without a telos” expresses this problem rather well and may be the reason why he favored this paradoxical exposition of their thought.

113 TM, 203. 502 Gadamer retained Ranke’s emphasis on interpreting the character of history based on

what is going forward from the free human activity within it, rather than by means of ahistorical

concepts imported from philosophy to thematize history. In addition, he developed his concept

of “Effective History” (Wirkungsgeschichte) from his analysis of Ranke above: history is

composed of a coherent series of events in which one historical event effects another, and the

whole of this effective history can be interpreted more clearly in hindsight. Gadamer questioned

whether any kind of unity can be posited in the going-forward of history without some kind of teleology or metaphysical principle as the source of that unity. For example, with regard to the thought of both Ranke and Droysen, Gadamer observed that both claimed that

history is a “growing sum.”… [A]nd they consider this view to be based wholly on experience. The question is, however, whether they assume more than they know. That universal history is a growing sum means that it is a whole—though an unfinished one. But this is by no means obvious. Items that are qualitatively different cannot be added up. Adding up, rather, presupposes … the unity in terms of which they are grouped.114

For Gadamer, classical history, by contrast, did not presume such a cumulative nature of

history:

The world of history has not always been conceived in terms of the unity of world history. As with Herodotus, for example, it can also be considered a moral phenomenon. As such it offers a large number of exempla but no unity.115

Post-Enlightenment historical hermeneutics found itself haunted by the ghost of Christian

eschatology, according to Gadamer:

What justifies talk of the unity of world history? The question used to be answered easily when it was assumed there was a unity of goal, and hence of a

114 TM, 207.

115 Ibid. 503 plan, in history.… In the continuity of events there must be something that emerges as a goal giving an orientation to the whole. In fact, the place that is occupied in the eschatologies of the philosophy of history, both of religious origin and in their secularized versions, is here empty.116

Droysen, for his part, “agrees with Ranke, against historical apriorism” and admitted that

we cannot see the end but only the direction of the movement. The final goal of all our aims, toward which the restless activity of mankind is drawn, cannot be discerned through historical knowledge. It is only something we sense dimly, something we believe.117

Accordingly, Gadamer admired Droysen’s frank admission that he could do no better

than to admit that the unity of world history was for him like a Kantian “regulative idea” in place

of “a concept of a providential plan.” Gadamer found a “naïveté” in Ranke’s admiration of “the

amazing steadiness of historical development.”118 Ranke saw that “the main difference between

the Eastern and Western” views of history consisted in the fact that “in the West historical

continuity constitutes the form of cultural existence.”119 For Gadamer,

And so it is not by chance that Western civilization is characterized by Christianity, which has its absolute temporal moment in the unique redemptive event. Ranke recognized something of this when he viewed the Christian religion as the restoration of man to “immediacy to God” … the fundamental significance of this situation has not been fully acknowledged in the philosophical reflection of the proponents of the historical worldview.120

Later, Gadamer recounted Ranke’s theological exposition of historism—which, despite its rejection of Hegel, “The historical school was, instead, forced into a theological understanding of

116 TM, 207-208.

117 TM, 215.

118 TM, 208.

119 TM, 209, quoting Ranke, Weltgeschichte (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1883), 9:270f.

120 TM, 209. 504 itself.”121 Ranke’s guiding maxim, to narrate history “wie es eigentlich gewesen,”122 emphasized the intrinsic value of each era of history and resisted judging any era by the values of another era or by any ahistorical philosophical, moral or religious standard.123 Yet even Ranke’s egalitarian

assessment of the ages of history, undertaken in the name of empirical value-neutral objectivity, found the need to express itself in terms of a relationship to a transcendent principle that was the source of this egalitarian valuation of all ages of history. Ranke wrote:

I imagine the Deity—if I may allow myself this observation—as seeing the whole of historical humanity in its totality (since no time lies before the Deity), and finding it all equally valuable.124

Having thus envisioned God, the historian becomes imago Dei, and indeed, mediator between

man and God:

The historian who knows that all epochs and all historical phenomena are equally justified before God approximates that image. Thus the historian’s consciousness represents the perfect culmination of human self-consciousness. The more he is able to recognize the unique, indestructible value of every phenomenon—that is, to think historically—the more his thought is God-like. That is why Ranke compares the office of historian to that of priest.125

121 TM, 210.

122 “Man hat der Historie das Amt, die Vergangenheit zu richten, die Mitwelt zum Nutzen zukünftiger Jahre zu belehren, beigemessen: so hoher Aemter unterwindet sich gegenwärtiger Versuch nicht: er will blos zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen” (Geschichten der romanischen und germanischen Völker von 1494 bis 1514, dritte Auflage [Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1885], vii). [To history has been attached the office of judging the past and instructing one’s fellow man about the use of future years: the present attempt does not submit itself to so high an office: it will merely show, how it really was.]

123 As Gadamer later remarked: “[I]n the eyes of the historical school, speculative philosophy of history was a dogmatism no less crass than rational metaphysics” (TM, 220).

124 TM, 210, quoting Ranke, Weltgeschichte, vol. 9, part 2.

125 TM, 210, citing Ranke, Das politische Gespräch (Halle: Rothacker, 1925), 43: “For this is, as it were, a share in divine knowledge.” 505 Next Gadamer examined an advance of Droysen over Ranke. Droysen, “the acute

methodologist,” developed the notion of objective historical investigation beyond the empiricism

presumed by Ranke on analogy to the natural sciences. Droysen contrasted the objects of

scientific empiricism and historical “empiricism,” and noted that time plays a different role in the

investigation of history. According to Gadamer,

Droysen constantly quotes Aristotle’s statement about the soul—that it increases within itself (epidosis eis hauto). Unlike the mere repetitiveness of nature, history is characterized by this increase within itself. But this involves preservation and at the same time surpassing what is preserved. Self-knowledge embraces both.126

Thus Droysen added three components to Gadamer’s analysis of history. First, the object of historical investigation is constantly growing, unlike the natural object which is, in theory, fixed in its content and so exhaustive knowledge of it may be obtained by repeated investigation.

History, on the other hand, constantly develops beyond the latest investigation and because of the hermeneutic circle between the events of world history and the emergent significance of the whole, repeated historical analyses of even the same events require reconsideration in a way that the ascertained data of the physical sciences do not.127 Second, Droysen recognized an

126 TM, 209. The last two sentences in the original read: “Das heißt aber: durch ein Bewahren und Hinausgehen über das Bewährte. Beides aber schließt Sichwissen ein” (GW 1:213).

127 In light of Gadamer’s statements about the cumulative nature of the meaning of a work of art through time (section 2.1 above), one notes parallels between the task of artistic interpretation and the task of historical interpretation. Yet Gadamer asserted that the challenge of historical investigation even exceeds that of art, because the artwork is “transformed into structure” and only its interpretation accumulates through history as an exposition of its meaning; in contrast, both the object of historical research and its interpretations are constantly growing. In Gadamer’s assessment, Droysen correctly concluded that the “ceaseless” nature of historical research “designate[s] the infinite nature of the task that distinguishes the historian from the completeness of an artistic creation.… Only in ‘ceaseless’ research into the tradition, in opening up new sources and in ever new interpretations of them, does research move progressively toward the ‘idea’” (TM, 215). 506 isomorphism between the structure of the historical object of investigation and the structure of

the person who investigates it. Third, Droysen highlighted how an increase in historical

knowledge goes hand-in-hand with an increase in self-knowledge.

Among the Historists, Gadamer claimed that Droysen perceived more clearly than

anyone the need for a critical foundation for historism. Gadamer observed that as early as 1843,

Droysen lamented, “there is, I suppose, no field of knowledge that is so far from being

theoretically justified, defined, and articulated as history.”128 Droysen called for a Kant who

“would show the living source from which the historical life of mankind flowed” and so give the

idea of history a “center of gravity in which the chaotic movement of the human sciences will

gain stability and the possibility of further progress,” just as Kant did for the natural sciences.129

In his desire to ground historical knowledge in a transcendental analysis of the knowing subject,

Droysen directed the future of continental historiography toward a synthesis with phenomenology, a movement which Gadamer believed began with Dilthey and was consummated with Heidegger.

Gadamer devoted a substantial section of his “Historical Preparation” to Dilthey; however, much of this section is a detailed critique with the title, “Dilthey’s Entanglement in the

Aporias of Historicism.” In Gadamer’s estimation, “Dilthey owes his importance to the fact that he really recognizes the epistemological problem that the historical view implies with respect to

128 TM, 6, citing Droysen, Historik (Halle: Rothacker, 1925): 97.

129 Ibid. 507 idealism”; accordingly, Dilthey tried “to complement Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason with a critique of historical reason” thereby fulfilling the desideratum of Droysen.130

Just as Kant began the First Critique by inquiring into the possibility of knowledge of natural objects, Dilthey inquired into the conditions which made possible the knowledge of history:

“The first condition of possibility of a science of history is that I myself am a historical being, that the person studying history is the person making history.”131 Establishing this “homogeneity of subject and object” was “what makes historical knowledge possible” for Dilthey, who elaborated his concept of experience (Erlebnis), which focuses on how the subject partakes in historical reality, and expression (Ausdruck), which focuses on how the subject creates historical experience. Accordingly, Dilthey undertook a “descriptive and analytical psychology” in order to explain, “how one’s inner life is woven into continuity (Zusammenhang) in a way that is different from explaining the knowledge of nature by appeal to the categories” of Aristotle as rehabilitated by Kant.132 To provide an alternative set of concepts, Gadamer described how

Dilthey’s analysis of subjectivity developed

the concept of “structure” to distinguish the experiential character of psychological continuity from the causal continuity of natural processes. Logically, “structure” is distinguished by its referring to a totality of relationships that do not depend on temporal, causal succession but on intrinsic connections.133

130 TM, 218-219.

131 TM, 222, quoting Dilthey, Gesammelte Schriften (Leipzig: Teubner, 1921), 7:278.

132 TM, 223.

133 TM, 223. Here one sees the affinity between Dilthey and the phenomenological analysis of consciousness developed by Husserl (in a largely ahistorical fashion) and by Heidegger (in an historical fashion). Because Gadamer’s phenomenology is indebted to Heidegger far more than to Dilthey or Husserl, it should suffice to note how Dilthey’s attempt to root the unity of historical experience in a transcendental analysis of subjectivity permitted him to regard objects of historical investigation as phenomena, not noumena, and thus extricated him 508

2.2.3. Heidegger’s Hermeneutic Phenomenology

Gadamer constructed a number of his hermeneutical concepts from the phenomenology

of his close friend and mentor, Martin Heidegger. Gadamer entitled the section of Wahrheit und

Methode which debuts his own hermeneutical theory—“Elements of a Theory of Hermeneutic

Experience”—with a section devoted to Heidegger’s elevation of hermeneutics to a universal

science. Heidegger concluded that understanding was the mode of existence of Dasein and

sought to emphasize the radically historical nature of human understanding. Simultaneously,

Gadamer’s concerns were different than Heidegger’s:

Heidegger entered into the problems of historical hermeneutics and critique only in order to explicate the fore-structure of understanding for the purposes of ontology. Our question, by contrast, is how hermeneutics, once freed from the ontological obstructions of the scientific concept of objectivity, can do justice to the historicity of understanding.134

While Gadamer called Heidegger’s project a hermeneutic phenomenology (phenomenology with

a focus on Dasein as the being that understands), Gadamer termed his own project

phenomenological hermeneutics. Gadamer’s concern was to describe, from a phenomenological standpoint, the immanent operations of understanding.

Gadamer began his “rough abbreviation” of Heidegger with a description of

“Heidegger’s Disclosure of the Fore-Structure of Understanding,” which was a refinement of the

(albeit imperfectly, according to Gadamer) from problems of metaphysics and Hegelian idealism. This move presaged Gadamer’s own relocation of historical knowledge within the purely immanent experience of language.

134 TM, 265. 509 dynamics of the hermeneutic circle.135 Heidegger began with an analysis of a person’s

involvement in the act of reading, noting how texts are always approached with some kind of

preconception about their meaning, which is then either discarded, reformed, or sharpened in the

process of reading. Heidegger rejected as facile the blank slate approach to reading a text which

characterizes Lockean empiricism. Every text is approached from a particular perspective which frames the initial attempt to understand it: “A person who is trying to understand a text is always projecting.”136 To be interested in a text enough to read it already indicates a certain expectation

on the part of a reader, informed by the broader situation of the text in the life-world of the

reader. From this initial perspective, a dialectical process begins between the progressive

reading of more and more parts of the text, and reshaping a reader’s anticipation of what the

whole text might mean when a reader reaches the end of the book. Gadamer explained

Heidegger’s approach:

He projects a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as some initial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the initial meaning emerges only because he is reading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. Working out this fore-projection, which is constantly revised in terms of what emerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there.137

Heidegger thus described a person’s role in the traditional hermeneutical circle more

acutely than previous theorists, whose description typically focused more on the object of understanding (the text). These theorists simply described understanding the whole text through

135 “We will once more examine Heidegger’s description of the hermeneutic circle in order to make its new fundamental significance fruitful for our purposes” (TM, 266). Here Gadamer followed Heidegger’s exposition in Sein und Zeit.

136 TM, 267.

137 Ibid. 510 its parts and re-understanding the parts in light of the whole text. Heidegger added a description

of what sustains these acts of understanding and re-understanding: a reader’s constant projecting

of a hypothetical meaning of the text, and his revisions of that projection as the process of

reading continues. Gadamer joined his phenomenology of theory and play to Heidegger’s

discussion of the working-out of tentative understandings of the text: a reader puts an hypothesis

into “play” which is then revised progressively until the reader feels confident enough to make a

judgment about the meaning of the text. Indeed, the detachment of play is required to posit

simultaneously multiple possible meanings in order to weigh their merits and decide which one

makes better sense of the whole.

Gadamer described the completion of this process as arrival at the objective meaning of

the text. He described this arrival phenomenologically, rather than in terms of epistemology or

metaphysics:

Working out appropriate projections, anticipatory in nature, to be confirmed “by the things” themselves, is the constant task of understanding. The only “objectivity” here is the confirmation of a fore-meaning in its being worked out. Indeed, what characterizes the arbitrariness of inappropriate fore-meanings if not that they come to nothing in being worked out?138

Gadamer repeated Heidegger’s observation of the common experience of being “pulled up short by the text”—an experience of puzzlement when the text says something unanticipated and impossible to reconcile with one’s standing assessment of “where the text is going.” This experience forces a reader to reconsider his attempt at understanding it.139 In other words,

mistaken preliminary hypothetical meanings are shown to be mistaken when subsequent portions

138 Ibid.

139 TM, 268. 511 of the text make previously coherent interpretation harder and harder to sustain, until the point when the preliminary hypothetical meaning (which Gadamer called a fore-meaning) must be discarded, and a new one put into place which better unifies the passages of the text which have been so far read by the reader.

Gadamer considered a reader’s activity upon reaching such a “breaking point” in the attempt to arrive at understanding. At this moment, a reader ceases to read the text within the framework of his preliminary hypothetical meaning of the whole and rises to a higher level of reflexive awareness about his own act of reading and interpreting. He considers his projected meaning, notes its insufficiency and wonders where he might have “gone wrong.” Either he is

“stumped” or else, in a moment of creativity and insight, he puts a new tentative hypothetical meaning of the whole into play and begins again. Returning to the text, he tests the insight to see if this new fore-meaning is more successful, or if it too “comes to naught in being worked out.”

There is no automatic process for generating new preliminary hypothetical meanings.

Texts which are conceptually difficult for the reader to grasp, such as those which lead him into new intellectual terrain or which come from a background very foreign to his own, are illustrative because they force a reader to think “outside the box” of his typical mindset in an attempt to find a fore-meaning suitable to understanding the text. For Gadamer, this basic fact underlies the shallowness of methodologism.

Another important aspect of Gadamer’s “rough abbreviation” of Heidegger’s phenomenology of understanding was the fact that the act of understanding a text returns to the whole-life perspective from which it arose: Dasein’s concrete existential situation. The act of understanding a text always involves more than arriving at the meaning of the text itself. A whole fabric of concerns, values, and knowledge is brought to the text and is reshaped by reading 512 it. The act of reading the text—itself a hermeneutical circle—takes place within the context of a far broader one. Every reader not only engages fore-meanings of what the text might be saying; he also projects preliminary understandings of the ultimate truth value of the text and its connection to his other ideas. For example, in working-out the meaning of a text, its assertions

might emerge as profound, promising, threatening, life-altering, mistaken, or banal.

Gadamer believed that his universal hermeneutical theory was merely “the radicalization”

and formalization of this procedure which we use “whenever we understand anything.”140 In the

Kantian sense of critical—reflecting on one’s own rational processes to ensure they obtain the desired result—Gadamer sought to illuminate a thinking subject’s dynamics in the basic procedure of understanding and so to make it something interpreters could do critically in any discipline.141 From this foundation in Heidegger’s work, Gadamer proceeded to present his own

hermeneutical theory.

2.2.4. Gadamer’s Phenomenology of Understanding

Gadamer’s began his radicalization of the everyday process of understanding by considering the need to avoid error, which he understood as reading into a text something which

140 TM, 267.

141 Gadamer said in the Second Foreword to Wahrheit und Methode that his hermeneutics seeks to be so general a description of objective understanding that any discipline can apply its norms to own subject matter. While Gadamer’s particular interest was to find a hermeneutics for the humanities, by seeking a general method, he hoped to provide some foundation for agreement between theorists of very different disciplines, such as classicists, historians and natural scientists. Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), while not directly indebted to Gadamer, illustrated well the universality of Gadamer’s approach, insofar as Kuhn described the natural scientist’s approach to crafting a theory about a progressively larger body of experimental data in much the same way as Gadamer described a reader’s progressive interpretation of a text. 513 is not there—eisegesis. The fore-meanings brought to the task of interpretation may not be

correct, so one must ask: “how can we break the spell of our own fore-meanings”142 to be sure that we have understood a text correctly? How can a reader be sure he hasn’t missed a sign of disparity between his fore-meaning and the text, or that he has sufficiently comprehended a text’s meaning? The first virtue an interpreter must acquire, according to Gadamer, is a well- trained openness: “A hermeneutically trained consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity.”143 Yet many errors have arisen concerning such openness. The first error to be rejected is the notion that an interpreter ought consider himself a blank slate. There is no presuppositionless interpretation. The only effect of trying to discard all presuppositions in the act of interpretation would be to arrive at no interpretation at all, no assimilation of the text’s meaning by the interpreter. Rather,

[T]his kind of sensitivity involves neither “neutrality” with respect to content nor the extinction of one’s self, but the foregrounding and appropriation of one’s fore- meanings and prejudices. The important thing is to be aware of one’s own bias, so that the text can present itself in all its otherness and thus assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings.144

The error of attempting presuppositionless interpretation is what Gadamer called the

“extinction of one’s self.” Richard Palmer provided a thoughtful excursus on the error Gadamer called false “neutrality with respect to content”:

The idea of freeing understanding and interpretation from the prejudices of the prevailing opinion of the time is quite common to us. It would be ridiculous, we commonly say, to judge the achievements of a past age by the standards of today. The objective of historical knowledge, then, can only be fulfilled through freedom

142 TM, 268.

143 TM, 269.

144 Ibid. 514 from personal ideas and values on the subject and a perfectly “open mind” to the world of ideas and values of a past age. Dilthey’s exploration of worldviews … was predicated on an historical relativism which open-mindedly asserted that one historical age must not be judged in terms of another. Similarly, there are literary scholars who ask us to be open-minded about the theology of Paradise Lost because we have no right to judge a literary work by “today's standards.” We read Paradise Lost as a “work of art,” for the greatness of its style, the grandeur of its conception, its imaginative vigor—not because it is true.… [U]ltimately we see the epic as a “noble monument to dead ideas.”145

For Palmer, “this false view … masquerades as the ultimate in open-mindedness” but it can

conceal the fact “that the present is presumed as correct, as not to be put to the test, i.e., as

absolute. The present is to be suspended because the past cannot compete with it.” Behind this

notion of open-mindedness can be an unwillingness to put one’s own intellectual commitments

at risk in by engaging the ideas of a classic text. The threat is neutralized by enclosing the text

hermeneutically in the past as an artifact, “as something almost irrelevant, an object of interest to

antiquarians.”146

This form of open-mindedness can be a more subtle form of close-mindedness, insofar as

it also maintains the irrefragability of the reader’s own commitments by approaching the text as

merely a bunch of assertions, bracketing their truth-value in the name of “objectivity.” In

Gadamer’s view, genuine openness must involve openness to the possibility that a text may contain truth and so it may prove that its own assertions about the subject matter are correct and

145 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 181. Palmer alluded to the literary critic Walter Raleigh who called Paradise Lost “a monument to dead ideas” in his Milton (London: 1900), 88.

146 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 181. Palmer captured Gadamer’s concern about false neutrality with respect to content, but Gadamer never asserted that a timid defensiveness led Dilthey to his position. Palmer’s Hermeneutics, which concluded with a “Hermeneutical Manifesto to American Literary Interpretation,” sometimes reacted in polemical frustration to the state of American literary criticism in the 1960s and thus sometimes departed from Gadamer’s dispassionate tone. 515 the reader’s are mistaken, or as he put it: to allow the text to “assert its own truth against one’s own fore-meanings.” To fail to grant this possibility would be to deny the truth-telling intention that lies at the basis of every textual communication. In Palmer’s view, such false open- mindedness is dogmatic insofar as it undertakes interpretation without seriously engaging the possibility that the text, and not oneself, may be correct. For Palmer, close-mindedness and relativistic open-mindedness are two extremes of the same error.

Gadamer elaborated the consequences of his position. An interpreter ought not to eliminate his fore-meanings, which is impossible, rather he must “foreground” them: “to be aware of one’s own bias” and to remember to hold such biases in question. For Gadamer, bringing one’s own fore-meanings and convictions into engagement with the text is like a dialogue between an interpreter and a text, a dialogue which must be marked by intellectual charity to the text’s position on the one hand, and a Socratic habit of docta ignorantia safeguarding against undue attachment to one’s own positions on the other.147 Through methodically foregrounding one’s own fore-meanings, a reader simultaneously becomes more aware of himself and of the text in the process of interpretation. Every act of understanding a text is then also an act of self-understanding. Moreover, for Gadamer, fore-meanings are not merely negative elements in an act of interpretation, provisional elements that exist merely to be overcome. Rather, fore-meanings are positive elements insofar as they are productive starting points of engagement with a text. It would be nearly as foolish then to choose fore-meanings randomly as to try to discard them all together.

147 “Methodologically conscious understanding will be concerned not merely to form anticipatory ideas, but to make them conscious, so as to check them and thus acquire right understanding from the things themselves” (TM, 269). Cf. Palmer, Hermeneutics, 198. 516 Gadamer then turned to consider basic norms for the wise selection of fore-meanings. He believed that he had discovered another nexus of errors which played out historically from

Enlightenment hermeneutics to his own day. He described this spectrum of errors in the most famous and controversial section of Wahrheit und Methode, where he presented his own theory of productive prejudices, the role of tradition in providing good fore-meanings, and a rehabilitation of the concept of authority.

2.2.5. The Hermeneutical Inexorability of Tradition

“The recognition that all understanding inevitably involves some prejudice gives the hermeneutical problem its real thrust,” wrote Gadamer.148 By “prejudice” [Vorurteil] Gadamer meant the entire fabric of provisional dispositions an interpreter brings to the act of interpretation: his background knowledge, his values, his initial contextualization of the text, his preliminary assessment of its purpose and utility, etc. These prejudices are determined in large part by one’s personal history and such preliminary dispositions play an essential role in interpretation. They cannot be entirely discarded: there is no presupposition-less mindset. So what then to do with them? Gadamer argued that the only coherent position was to try to identify productive prejudices and to use these self-consciously as fore-meanings. He argued that tradition plays an important role in this process of identifying productive prejudices.

Gadamer was certainly aware that the term “prejudice” was a provocative one in the late twentieth century. He chose to employ it, because its rehabilitation was particularly instructive of the trends in intellectual history he sought to correct: “The history of ideas shows that not until

148 TM, 270. 517 the Enlightenment does the concept of prejudice acquire the negative connotation familiar

today.”149 In its fundamental sense, “prejudice” simply means a preliminary judgment: “a judgment that is rendered before all the elements that determine a situation have been finally

examined.” In this sense, prejudice is a neutral concept. Gadamer examined the pre-

Enlightenment usage of the term and noted there the origin of a negative connotation, which stemmed from its usage in law, but even there the term was not an essentially negative one.150

“Prejudice” did not acquire a wholly negative meaning until the Enlightenment, based on two of

its principles: first, the Enlightenment critique of religious belief as “unfounded judgment”

(which was an expression of its rationalism and naturalism), and second, the principle of

Cartesian doubt: “accepting nothing as certain that can in any way be doubted, and adopting an

idea of method that follows this rule.”151 For Gadamer, both principles are highly questionable,

but his essential concern was to demonstrate their utter incompatibility with an historically-

rooted phenomenology of understanding:

In our introductory observations we have already pointed out how difficult it is to harmonize the historical knowledge that helps to shape our historical consciousness with this ideal and how difficult it is, for that reason, to comprehend its [historical consciousness’s] true nature on the basis of the modern

149 TM, 270.

150 According to Gadamer, “In German legal terminology, a ‘prejudice’ is a provisional legal verdict before the final verdict is reached. For someone involved in a legal dispute, this kind of judgment against him affects his chances adversely. Accordingly, the French préjudice, as well as the Latin praejudicium, means simply ‘adverse effect,’ ‘disadvantage,’ ‘harm.’ But this negative sense is only derivative. The negative consequence [for the defendant] depends precisely on the positive validity [of the prejudice when it is confirmed in the final judgment].… Thus ‘prejudice’ certainly does not necessarily mean a false judgment, but part of the idea is that it can have either a positive or negative value” (TM, 270).

151 TM, 270-271. 518 conception of method. This is the place to turn those negative statements into positive ones. The concept of “prejudice” is where we can start.152

Gadamer rejected the Enlightenment’s negative evaluation of prejudices as philosophically inconsistent. The Enlightenment’s negative valuation of all prejudice arose, on the one hand, in its dogmatic rejection of all religious dogma. On the other hand, it arose in its categorical rejection of tradition: “there is one prejudice of the Enlightenment that defined its essence: the fundamental prejudice of the Enlightenment is the prejudice against prejudice itself, which denies tradition its power.”153

Since Gadamer’s analysis of the fore-structure of understanding indicated the impossibility of presupposition-less interpretation, one must begin interpreting with some initial disposition or prejudice. For Gadamer, there was no extra-hermeneutical absolute standard to sort out true from false prejudices; so Gadamer refocused the question on distinguishing good prejudices from bad ones even as an interpreter is in the midst of them. The evaluation of prejudices can only happen progressively within the continual activity of human

152 TM, 271.

153 TM, 270. Gadamer argued that for the Enlightenment all judgments were “unfounded” unless they were given the dignity of a methodological justification—although such a methodological justification did not mean that the judgment was necessarily correct. Gadamer also observed that the historical school “despite its critique of rationalism and of natural law philosophy” was “based on the modern Enlightenment and unwittingly shares its prejudices.” Instead of rejecting the worldviews of all prior ages as pre-critical, the historical school retained the Enlightenment conviction that prior ages’ prejudices were rationally unfounded, but instead of rejecting them, it did the opposite and insisted on their fundamental equality and included the present era in the same judgment. Thus the historical school’s conviction that no age should be judged by the standards of another exemplifies the relativistic open-mindedness as Palmer stated explicitly of Dilthey above. 519 understanding.154 As a hermeneutical principle, one does not uncritically accept prejudices (as in

naïve close-mindedness), nor does one uncritically reject them (as in the Enlightenment).

Rather, one resolves never to leave prejudices unexamined. One constantly digs deeper by

continuing to examine the fundamental assumptions that one brings to the intellectual

examination of a question, which also involves seeking broader horizons by bringing one’s ideas

into dialogue with less familiar ideas, people and texts. For Gadamer, the best approach was to

begin by examining one’s own tradition as a starting point; he believed tradition could be a

constructive guide for the beginning of the hermeneutical process.

Most of Gadamer’s statements concerning tradition in Wahrheit und Methode identified

correct and incorrect assessments of tradition in intellectual history from the Enlightenment to

the twentieth century. He did not provide a philosophical definition of tradition. Perhaps

Gadamer thought that giving an abstract definition of tradition was inconsistent and that it was

better to approach the subject by examining the history of interpretation of tradition, thus using

his own method in the definition of this term. In any case, one may begin with Gadamer’s

understanding of the intrinsically historical nature of human existence. Following Heidegger,

Gadamer believed that a fundamental fact of human existence is that one always finds oneself

caught up in tradition, handed down from the past. As Palmer put it:

[T]he concept of historicality … simultaneously affirms the operativeness of the past in the present: The present is seen and understood only through the intentions, ways of seeing, and preconceptions bequeathed from the past. Gadamer's hermeneutics and his critique of historical consciousness assert that the

154 Gadamer stated that prejudice, which “appears to be … limiting … from the viewpoint of the absolute self-construction of reason [= Enlightenment rationalism] in fact belongs to historical reality itself. If we want to do justice to man’s finite, historical mode of being, it is necessary to fundamentally rehabilitate the concept of prejudice and acknowledge the fact that there are legitimate prejudices” (TM, 277). 520 past is not like a pile of facts which can be made an object of consciousness, but rather is a stream in which we move and participate, in every act of understanding. Tradition, then, is not over against us but something in which we stand and through which we exist; for the most part is so transparent a medium that it is invisible to us—as invisible as water to a fish.155

Accordingly, a distinctive feature of Gadamer’s treatment of prejudices was to highlight

the depth to which they are constitutive of one’s intellectual position, and simultaneously, the depth to which they are unconsciously held. In his appraisal, foregrounded prejudices are typically the tip of the iceberg of one’s beliefs:

In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it. Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination, we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the family, society, and state in which we live. The focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror. The self-awareness of the individual is only a flickering in the closed-circuit of historical life. That is why the prejudices of the individual, far more than his judgments, constitute the historical reality of his being.156

Accordingly, Gadamer thought it was often futile and always counterproductive, to begin

interpretation by attempting to jettison tradition:

It is not a matter of securing ourselves against the tradition that speaks out of the text then, but on the contrary, of excluding everything that could hinder us from understanding it in terms of the subject matter.157

One then should not presume a dichotomy between tradition and truth, as did the

Enlightenment. Tradition is not the enemy of truth. It is, at the very least, the starting point from

155 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 176-177.

156 TM, 276-277; emphasis in original. By “the focus of subjectivity is a distorting mirror,” Gadamer meant that the image of oneself that self-reflection presents must be worked through, again and again, in order to come into clear and complete focus. We are victims not only of misperceptions of ourselves, but more fundamentally, we are opaque to ourselves, specifically about how much history shapes our self-understanding.

157 TM, 269-270. 521 which we consider questions of truth and, as Gadamer affirmed later in Wahrheit und Methode,

tradition is often a repository of truth for understanding a text. Conversely, tradition is never

above the truth of the text. Complete objectivity involves a recognition of the uniqueness of the

text, even in contrast to the tradition in which it stands. For Gadamer, one ought to exclude

everything—even traditional presuppositions—if they prove inconsistent with what emerges as

the truth of the text. The text then stands as both a product of tradition and also a unique element

within it; its uniqueness means that it is potentially a differentiation from tradition. In this point,

Gadamer adapted Herder’s concept of the “dialectical relationship between what is exemplary

and what is unrepeatable.”

Before Gadamer went into detail about tradition, he found it necessary to rehabilitate the

cognate concept of authority. Hand-in-hand with the Enlightenment’s categorical rejection of

prejudice went its categorical rejection of authority:

That authority is a source of prejudices accords with the well-known principle of the Enlightenment that Kant formulated: Have the courage to make use of your own understanding.158

For Gadamer, the initial deployment of this principle was hermeneutical—a rejection of the

authority of Sacred Scripture—but it was soon extended as a general norm and not limited in its

application to the interpretation of texts. In stressing one’s own understanding, Gadamer saw a

false dichotomy between the use of reason, on the one hand, and believing something “on

authority” from another, as if “[a]uthority is responsible for one’s not using one’s own reason at

all.”159 Gadamer believed the essence of the authority relationship is one of reasonable

158 TM, 271; emphasis in original. Gadamer was quoting the beginning of Kant’s 1784 essay, “What is Enlightenment?”

159 TM, 277. 522 deference to the judgment of another. A person decides to let “the prestige of authority displace

… one’s own judgment” on a certain matter. While deferring to an authority means that a decision is ultimately made by the authority and not by one’s own judgment, this process is not

the abdication of reason, but the culmination of a rational process of assessing what is most

rational to do regarding expertise in judgment.

The authority of persons is ultimately based not on the subjection and abdication of reason but on an act of acknowledgment and knowledge— the knowledge, namely, that the other is superior to oneself in judgment and insight and that for this reason his judgment takes precedence—i.e., it has priority over one's own. This is connected with the fact that authority cannot actually be bestowed but is earned, and must be earned if someone is to lay claim to it. It rests on acknowledgment and hence on an act of reason itself which, aware of its own limitations, trusts to the better insight of others. Authority in this sense, properly understood, has nothing to do with blind obedience to commands.… But rather with knowledge.160

Thus deference to authority has as “its true basis … an act of freedom and reason” which defers to an authority “because he has a wider view of things or is better informed—i.e., once again, because he knows more.”161

The German theologian, Bernd Jochen Hilberath, who wrote an early appraisal of

Wahrheit und Methode’s prospects for Catholic theology, has provided a useful summary of

Gadamer’s arguments for the value of authority in judgment. Hilberath provided three

reasons.162 The first was that even the Enlightenment project of the “absolute self-construction

of reason” (as Gadamer put it) and its claims to discard all reliance on tradition and authority, in

160 TM, 279.

161 TM, 280.

162 Bernd Jochen Hilberath, Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik: Die philosophische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers als Herausforderung des theologischen Selbstverständnisses (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1978), 201-221. 523 fact relied on both. With respect to authority, even with Descartes, there was a reticence to jettison traditional morality while awaiting pure reason to fashion a new standard of morals.

Traditional morality still commanded a degree of moral authority which the forefathers of the

Enlightenment found important to retain.163 One might add that even later in the Enlightenment,

critically reconstructed morality, such as Kant’s categorical imperatives, tended to look like

traditional morality for reasons that probably had more to do with the moral authority still

possessed by the remnants of Judeo-Christian morality than a felicitous accidental conjunction of

the findings of critical reason and traditional mores.

Second, Hilberath deepened Gadamer’s observations about the origin of the term

auctoritas and its use within Roman culture in order to remove the coercive connotations of

authority. Where Gadamer only spoke of the deformation of the term during the Enlightenment,

Hilberath, following Eschenburg, clarified how the original sense of auctoritas, “[v]on ihrem

(römischen) Ursprung her hat Autorität … tatsächlich nichts mit Macht im Sinn von Gewalt zu

tun.”164 According to Eschenburg’s analysis of auctoritas:

Im römischen Staatsrecht bestand klare Unterscheidung zwischen einer begrifflich und einer ethisch höheren, auf Tradition und sozialer Geltung beruhenden auctoritas, wie sie etwa dem Senat zustand, und einer mit Vollzugsgewalt ausgestatteten potestas.165

Hilberath pointed out that the original sense of auctor was “Urheber, Schöpfer, Förderer,

Mehrer, im übertragenen Sinn maßgeblicher, aber auch verantwortlicher Ratgeber.” Thus, the

concept of authority “handelt es sich um ein wechselseitiges, ein Freiheitsverhältnis.” Hilberath

163 Hilberath, 202.

164 Hilberath, 203.

165 Theodor Eschenburg, Über Autorität (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976), 57. 524 then described the act of voluntary deference to an authority as more than mere “deference” or

“submission” which can connote passivity or the relinquishment of reasoning:

Auctoritas bewirkte freiwillige Unterwerfung unter den helfenden Rat eines anderen im Vertrauen auf dessen zwingende Überlegenheit. Einer bevollmächtigte einen anderen, ihm einen Rat zu geben. In der Bevollmächtigung liegt die Freiheit der Entscheidung.166

Hilberath distinguised the “authority/free-willed submission” relationship and the

“command/obedience” relationship, which is proper to civil executive power, military hierarchy, law enforcement, etc. For Hilberath, it belongs to the essence of authority, “daß sie helfend und damit selbstlos rät. Sie ist ‘helfender Wille’ und setzt Selbstlosigkeit voraus.”167

Third, Hilberath amplified Gadamer’s views concerning the rational recognition of the

superior competence of an authority to which one defers. He thought that Gadamer sought to

eliminate all notion of “blind obedience” to authority, thereby overturning a stereotype of the

Enlightenment which is often perpetuated to the present day. To obey an authority is ultimately

a judgment that an authority can see something better than one can see on one’s own and, as

such, is the best way to make a rational judgment. Such a decision to rely on the judgment of an

authority can be “ein Gebot der Vernunft selbst.” Just as reason might command someone to

obtain more data before making a judgment or to scrutinize one’s ideas before publishing them,

so too reason can find the resources offered by another’s presumably better judgment the most

rational path forward. This relationship remains fundamentally the same whether one is

deferring to the living voice of a present-day authority or “aus Überlieferung und Vergangenheit

166 Eschenburg, Über Autorität , 11.

167 Hilberath, 203. 525 tönende Stimme.”168 Hilberath thought that Gadamer’s development of the concept of authority involved a three-way relationship between the bearer of authority, the one subject to the authority, and the “subject matter” (die Sache) under consideration:

Der Anspruch auf Gehorsam ist lediglich eine Konsequenz der in Freiheit anerkannten Sachkompetenz des Autoritätsträgers: So ist die Anerkennung von Autorität immer mit dem Gedanken verbunden, daß das, was die Autorität sagt, nicht unvernünftige Willkür ist, sondern im Prinzip eingesehen werden kann.”169

Gadamer then approached tradition in two stages. First, he clarified what tradition is, working backward from the distortions of the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Second, he described how tradition ought to function in hermeneutics—that is, tradition’s critical appropriation—in his concept of Wirkungsgeschichte. The first stage was descriptive; the second, normative.

2.2.6. Gadamer’s Correction of the Concept of Tradition

Gadamer saw the dissolution of the Western concept of tradition as beginning in the attacks of Luther against the Church during the Reformation. In Luther’s hermeneutics,

Gadamer saw both promise and peril, which manifested itself historically in a significant positive effect and an even larger negative one. For Gadamer, Luther’s rejection of ecclesiastical authority in interpreting Biblical texts was a corrective in the history of Western hermeneutics because of Medieval Catholicism’s over-reliance on ecclesiastical authority in interpreting the

Bible, which, in turn, obscured the proper role of hermeneutics. Practically speaking, the role of

168 Hilberath, 204.

169 Hilberath, 205. 526 reason and historical research had become emaciated; therefore, Luther’s extremism helped

catalyze a return to these methods and was thus an important starting point for the emergence of

a flourishing hermeneutics which teaches the right use of reason in understanding traditionary texts. Neither the doctrinal authority of the pope nor the appeal to tradition can obviate the work of hermeneutics, which can safeguard the reasonable meaning of a text against all imposition.170

The negative effect of Luther’s position manifested itself in the Enlightenment, which took his

rejection of ecclesiastical tradition, the philosophical tradition, and Catholic dogma, and

extended it to a rejection of all tradition and all dogma. Thus after Luther,

Authority … is responsible for one’s not using one’s own reason at all. Thus the division is based on a mutually exclusive antithesis between authority and reason. The false prepossession in favor of what is old, in favor of authorities, has to be fought. Thus the Enlightenment attributes to Luther’s reforms the fact that … human prestige, especially that of … Aristotle and the Roman pope, was greatly weakened.171

170 TM, 277.

171 TM, 277. Gadamer did not deeply examine the question of why the Reformation, marked by fideism, so quickly generated the hermeneutically opposite movement of the Enlightenment, marked by rationalism, rather than remaining within the sphere of an anti- ecclesial but religious hermeneutic. He simply saw the Enlightenment as motivated by the radicalization of the discarding of authority. Perhaps Gadamer passed over a point he might have accepted: the disastrous effects of reducing ecclesial hermeneutics to sola scriptura and Scriptura sui ipsius interpres, which Gadamer had already noted as insufficient. In this regard, the First Vatican Council observed in Dei Filius: “those heresies, condemned by the fathers of Trent, which rejected the divine magisterium of the Church and allowed religious questions to be a matter for the judgment of each individual, have gradually collapsed into a multiplicity of sects, either at variance or in agreement with one another; and by this means a good many people have had all faith in Christ destroyed. Indeed even the Holy Bible itself, which they at one time claimed to be the sole source and judge of the Christian faith, is no longer held to be divine, but they begin to assimilate it to the inventions of myth. Thereupon there came into being and spread far and wide throughout the world that doctrine of rationalism or naturalism—utterly opposed to the Christian religion, since this is of supernatural origin—which spares no effort to bring it about that Christ, who alone is our lord and savior, is shut out from the minds of people and the moral life of nations. Thus they would establish what they call the rule of simple reason or nature” (Dei Filius, Preamble, §§ 7-8). 527 Gadamer believed that the anti-traditionalism of the Enlightenment generated a false notion of

methodologism. “The Enlightenment critique of religion” turned the notion of prejudices,

judgments made on the basis of tradition or authority, into “unfounded judgment” and gave

prejudice its inherently irrational connation:

The only thing that gives a judgment dignity is its having a basis, a methodological justification (and not the fact that it may be actually correct). For the Enlightenment the absence of such a basis … [means] that the judgment has no foundation in the things themselves—i.e., that it is “unfounded.” This conclusion follows only in the spirit of rationalism. It is the reason for discrediting prejudices and the reason scientific knowledge claims to exclude them completely.172

For the Enlightenment, all claims were “unfounded judgments” unless they were given

the dignity of possessing a methodological justification; yet, as Gadamer observed, having a

methodological justification did not mean an idea was necessarily correct! Thus Gadamer saw

the rise of methodologism, the antagonism between modern sciences and arts, and the pretense of

modern science to be a universal discipline based on its methodological superiority. Yet whether

a method is superior, or even correct, is not a matter settled by a method, but rather by dialectic.

As Palmer observed, “The discovery of method itself was not arrived at through method but dialectically, that is, through questioning responsiveness to the matter being encountered.”173

The evaluation of the methods of modern science, or any other discipline, was a matter for a

172 TM, 271. Gadamer saw the Enlightenment as merely a radicalization of the Reformation. The Reformation rejected appeal to ecclesiastical tradition and authority as groundless, requiring some other foundation (e.g., a private interpretation of Scripture, a sufficient rational defense, etc.). The Enlightenment extended this to all appeals to authority and tradition. Moreover, in the original area of controversy, biblical interpretation, Gadamer believed that the Enlightenment view of religious belief and authority were guaranteed to lead biblical scholarship to become a merely historical field of research (TM, 272).

173 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 165. 528 universal discipline of hermeneutics which had not yet emerged in the eighteenth century, and so, Western intellectual history continued, at least implicitly, to play out the inherent permutations of the changing relationship between reason, faith, authority, tradition, science and interpretation.

Gadamer considered the Romantic period a backlash to the Enlightenment.

It [Romanticism] shares the presupposition of the Enlightenment and only reverses its values, seeking to establish the validity of what is old simply on the fact that it is old: the "Gothic" Middle Ages, the Christian European community of states, the permanent structure of society, but also the simplicity of peasant life and its closeness to nature.174

In its own way, the Romantic period was just as doctrinaire as the Enlightenment. This can be seen in Romanticism’s categorical affirmation of all that is mysterious not rational, natural not man-made, organic not scientific, ancient not modern, individual and particular not universal and abstract, etc. Instead of the Enlightenment’s narrative of recent intellectual history as the triumph of reason over ignorance, the Romantic era lamented “the conquest of mythos by logos.”

In place of the Enlightenment doctrine of the future perfectibility of reason, the Romantic period posited “the perfection of the … paradisiacal primal state before the ‘fall’ of thought.… Primeval wisdom is only the counterimage of ‘primeval stupidity.’”175

Accordingly, Gadamer considered the Romantic recovery of tradition deeply problematic. On the one hand,

[To] Romanticism … we owe this correction of the Enlightenment; that tradition has a justification that lies beyond rational grounding and in large measure determines our institutions and attitudes.176

174 TM, 273.

175 TM, 273-274.

176 TM, 281. 529

While the Romantics correctly indicated the essential role tradition plays in historically-

constituted human existence, they assessed the nature of tradition and how one participates in

tradition incorrectly. In fact, Gadamer asserted: “the same break with the continuity of meaning

in tradition lies behind both” Romanticism and the Enlightenment.177 Hilberath called this idea

“ein geläufiger Grundton Gadamerscher Argumentation.”178 Both eras shared certain

presuppositions, but how they value them is reversed. For example,

Romanticism conceives of tradition as an antithesis to the freedom of reason and regards it as something historically given, like nature. And whether one wants to be revolutionary and oppose it or preserve it, tradition is still viewed as the abstract opposite of free self-determination, since its validity does not require any reasons but conditions us without our questioning it.179

For Gadamer, tradition can be reasonable and achievements of reason can become traditional; there is no need to oppose the two.

The Romantic period understood tradition as something distant, which must be recovered and not as a living stream in which one stands. Its view of tradition was actually one of

dysfunctional tradition, one premised on a rupture between the past and present that is to be

overcome. Romanticism valued this rupture negatively instead of positively as did the

Enlightenment, which saw the rupture between the Medieval and modern world as a happy sign of casting off the shackles of the past. As a result, the Romantic return to tradition was hermeneutically unbalanced. Instead of an authentic recovery of the meaning of tradition, an extremism was born: “traditionalism.” One error of traditionalism was its tendency to use

177 TM, 275.

178 Hilberath, Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik, 207.

179 TM, 281. 530 tradition as a trump card to reason. Traditionalism, like the Enlightenment, tended to oppose tradition and critical reason, but unlike the Enlightenment which exalted rational innovation over tradition, traditionalism did the opposite and uncritically valued historical precedent over rational innovation. For Gadamer, “the romantic faith in the ‘growth of tradition,’ before which all reason must remain silent, is fundamentally like the Enlightenment, and just as prejudiced.”180

A second and resultant error of traditionalism was to conceive tradition as ancient and not contemporary, only old and not also new. For the Romantics, if a tradition extends into the present, it lives on, almost as a relic from bygone days which must be preserved without alteration. Intermixing of tradition and innovation was impossible for the Romantic traditionalist. Gadamer contrasted this view of antiquarian tradition to living tradition, which continues to develop from the past into the future:

The fact is that in tradition there is always an element of freedom and of history itself. Even the most genuine and pure tradition does not persist because of the inertia of what once existed. It needs to be affirmed, embraced, cultivated. It is, essentially, preservation, and it is active in all historical change. But preservation is an act of reason, though an inconspicuous one. For this reason, only innovation and planning appear to be the result of reason. But this is an illusion. Even where life changes violently, as in ages of revolution, far more of the old is preserved in the supposed transformation of everything than anyone knows, and it combines with the new to create new value. At any rate, preservation is as much of freely chosen action as our revolution and renewal. That is why both the Enlightenment's critique of tradition and the Romantic rehabilitation of it lag behind their true historical being.181

Thus for Gadamer, a recognition of the rational element involved in tradition’s on-going mediation from past to present is essential to its description. Gadamer proposed his concept of

180 TM, 281.

181 TM, 281-282. 531 Wirkungsgeschichte to counter the Romantic traditionalist view of antiquarian tradition by

discussing living tradition as a history of effects that involves rational mediation in the present.

The third error of traditionalism was its relativism, which had two sources. The first was

traditionalism’s uncritical canonization of what is traditional. The second arose from

traditionalism’s anti-Enlightenment emphasis on particularity, uniqueness and local history in

contrast to the Enlightenment’s universal, abstract rationalism. These are relativisms of time and

place, respectively. For Gadamer, this aspect of Romantic traditionalism gave rise to “historical

science in the nineteenth century” which “no longer measures the past by the standards of the

present, as if they were an absolute, but it ascribes to past ages a value of their own” which are

absolute.182 In this way, historism grew out of Romanticism and both movements indicate the

same break with living tradition as found in the Enlightenment.

Gadamer then moved from describing past movements to formulating his correction of

them as a normative phenomenology of understanding. He introduced his central term,

Wirkungsgeschichte (conventionally translated “history of effect”) to indicate the need for

interpreters to situate themselves critically within the tradition of the text being interpreted:

At the beginning of all historical hermeneutics, then, the abstract antithesis between tradition and historical research, between history and the knowledge of it, must be discarded. The effect (Wirkung) of a living tradition and the effect of historical study must constitute a unity of effect, the analysis of which would reveal only a texture of reciprocal effects.183

Gadamer stressed that historically self-aware interpretation should not regard the mindset of the interpreter as something outside the object of their study (“as something radically new”); rather,

182 TM, 275.

183 TM, 282-283; emphasis in original. Gadamer tended to italicize his main theses. 532 interpreters should view their interpretive work as the latest element “in what has always constituted the human relation to the past.” According to Gadamer, interpreters must self- consciously “recognize the element of tradition in historical research and inquire into its hermeneutic productivity.”184 Interpretation might then be considered the creative reception of tradition:

Modern historical research itself is not only research, but the handing down of tradition. We do not see it only in terms of progress and verified results; in it we have, as it were, a new experience of history whenever the past resounds with a new voice.185

In contrast to both the Enlightenment, which judged the validity of texts by subjecting them to the ahistorical tribunal of reason, and the Romantic era, which stressed historicity to such an extent that it viewed the task of interpretation as reconstructing the text solely in terms of its author’s original meaning and his original audience, and also the Historical School, which insisted on affirming the truth of texts solely within the context of their own age, prescinding from all attempts to value them with respect to the present as the subjective imposition of today’s values, Gadamer’s historical hermeneutics sought to recover the meaning of past texts in such a way that mediates them into the present. Gadamer posited that all recovery of the past meaning of texts can be achieved only by bringing them into dialogue with the present.

For Gadamer, classical texts have a certain timelessness; a classic is recognized as such because it achieves a contemporaneity with each age through which it is passed down. Three emblematic features attend its interpretation. First, classics are classics precisely because we recognize the power of an ancient text to speak to us today in spite of the passage of time. One

184 TM, 283.

185 TM, 284. 533 would fall short by considering a classical text merely as an historical artifact. Second,

historically-aware reception of a text requires mentally projecting oneself back into the

worldview of the text, to understand the text in its historical context. In this regard, Gadamer

retained some elements of the Historical School, without their historicism. Third, and most

distinctively for Gadamer, reaching the historical meaning of a text involves not bypassing the

tradition through which it comes to us, but engaging it.

Gadamer explained his rationale behind the last point by the theme of transformation into

structure. Just as an author transformed into structure a certain meaning in endowing the text with its finished form, so too, in the passing down of a text to the present day, there is a certain

progressive development of its meaning as it travels through history that constitutes an additional

transformation into structure around the core of the original work. Gadamer’s concept has come

to be called the “the sedimentation of meaning” in scholarly literature.186 The sedimentation of

meaning is not the imposition upon the text of additional meaning, foreign to it, but the explicit

development of certain themes of a text as interpreted by the generations which receive it. The

sedimented meaning is an unfolding of the plenitude of the text through each generation’s

receiving and interpreting it. For example, the reception of the Iliad ranged from its Medieval

influence on the Western notion of the heroic ideal, to Shakespeare’s deconstructive approach in

Troilus and Cressida, to John Keats’ romanticization in On First Looking in to Chapman’s

Homer, to Alan Farrell’s appreciation of the worldly wisdom of Homer in light of the Vietnam

186 Gadamer borrowed the concept from Husserl’s 1936 work, Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften un die transzendentale Phänomenologie, § 15. Husserl used the phrase, but Gadamer subsumed the concept into his larger notion of Wirkungsgeschichte and referred to it by this latter term. Nonetheless, scholarly literature on Gadamer continues to use the Husserlian term to refer to this notion in Gadamer’s thought, e.g., John Arthos, Gadamer’s Poetics: A Critique of Modern Aesthetics (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 118. 534 War in “Cortez in Darien”187 (a phrase from Keats’ poem), to Christa Wolf’s feminist

meditation, Cassandra. The correctness of these receptions of the Iliad cannot be presumed by

an interpreter, but must be judged in light of a reader’s understanding of both the Iliad itself and

these reflections. Nonetheless, the hermeneutical fruitfulness of tradition shows itself in the way

in which the work has been received throughout time and illustrates Gadamer’s position that the

meaning of the original work is more than what the author consciously intended.188 In effect, the

transmission of an author’s text through history creates a “texture of effects” as the text lives as both a product of history and a maker of history through its ongoing interpretation. This reciprocal fabric of effects is the text’s Wirkungsgeschichte.

Another concept which drove Gadamer’s notion of Wirkungsgeschichte was the productive function of temporal distance. The shifting play between tentative fore-meanings and further investigation of a text needs time. So too, the interplay between traditional reception of a text and new historical research only occurs because man is an historical being.189 Since

Heidegger, time is not merely a gulf to be bridged; rather, time is the supportive ground of the

finite human intellect’s attempts to appropriate a stock of meaning from a text. Time gives rise

187 Alan Farrell, “Cortez in Darien,” Vietnam Generation 3/3 (November 1991); available at: http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative /Farrell_Cortez_in_Darien.html (accessed September 24, 2011).

188 As he stated: “Not just occasionally but always, the meaning of a text goes beyond its author. That is why understanding is not merely a reproductive but always a productive activity as well” (TM, 296).

189 Gadamer believed “the hermeneutical productivity of temporal distance could be understood only when Heidegger gave understanding an ontological orientation … when he interpreted Dasein’s mode of being in terms of time” (TM, 297).

535 to both the continuity and variety of tradition. Repeatedly Gadamer emphasized that the way we exist in history is essential to our manner of understanding, not merely an accident of it.

For Gadamer, temporal distance from the original act of creation allows the meaning of the text or work of art to emerge fully:

Everyone is familiar with the curious impotence of our judgment where temporal distance has not given us sure criteria. The judgment of contemporary works of art is desperately uncertain for the scholarly consciousness.190

Recognizing the frailty of all attempts to comment historically on recent history, Gadamer

located the source of the problem in the intensity with which recent things tend to dominate

thought:

Obviously we approach such creations with … presuppositions that have too great an influence over us for us to know about them; these can give contemporary creations an extra resonance that does not correspond to their true content and significance. Only when . . [these] have faded away can their real nature appear, so that the understanding of what is said in them can claim to be authoritative and universal.191

Gadamer also observed the tendency to lack perspective in considering contemporary

texts or artworks. In contrast, older works, after the passage of time, sharpen our judgment and

force us to recognize our prejudices in approaching them:

Temporal distance obviously means something other than the extinction of our interest in the object. It lets the true meaning of the object emerge fully. But the discovery of the true meaning of a text or work of art is never finished; it is in fact an infinite process.192

190 TM, 297.

191 Ibid.

192 TM, 298. By “infinite process,” Gadamer referred to the fact that one can never be certain the reception of a text is ever finished. The rediscovery of the Ugaritic language and the archeological finds at Ras Shamra provide an example of texts entering into dialogue with the Old Testament, and indeed Christianity, after thousands of years of obscurity. 536

Gadamer then pointed out that the passage of time provides a two-fold benefit: first, “fresh

sources of error are constantly excluded, so that all kinds of things that obscure the true

meaning” are weeded out from the welter of interpretations. Time lets “local and limited

prejudices die away” since they do not survive the transition to more distant times and places.

Second, time allows for insightful interpretations to emerge, as a product not only of human

ingenuity, but also as a result of new insights which a later perspective might have on the text.

One consequence is that hermeneutics cannot always separate in advance productive

interpretations from unproductive ones. Such an attempt always involves a fallible attempt to estimate how the future Wirkungsgeschichte of a work will unfold. Thus no method can be formulated for weeding out unproductive from productive interpretations. Among the phenomena that happen are: a genius who was not recognized during his lifetime; an artwork

“ahead of its time”; a paradigm-shifting interpretation of a work which forever alters its reception. For Gadamer, the passage of time was the best, but not infallible, differentiator of productive from unproductive fore-meanings in approaching a text. Tradition serves as a focusing lens rather than a barrier to the meaning of a text. While not a perfect lens, and always

under alteration, tradition provides far more insight than it obscures.

Gadamer deepened this point by considering “the nature of the question” in

hermeneutics. One only approaches a text in order to learn something from it. Given Gadamer’s

understanding of interpretation as a dialogue between an interpreter and a text mediated by tradition, the interpreter questions the text, seeking its meaning. Yet the interpreter’s questions

are historically conditioned: 537 [W]e are always already affected by history. It determines in advance both what seems to us worth inquiring about and what will appear as an object of investigation.193

For Gadamer, the hermeneutic circle is not “a methodological circle” in which an object

of interpretation remains fixed, needing only successive applications of some method of inquiry

to exhaust its potential meaning. Rather, the hermeneutical circle describes “the ontological

structure of understanding” itself. The hermeneutic circle carries tradition forward; it transforms

into structure a new reception of a text into the present age. Later authors have described

Gadamer’s notion of the hermeneutic circle, a circle which produces more meaning over time, as

a hermeneutical “spiral”—which seems to capture the sense of both temporal progression and an increase in understanding. For Gadamer, the productive tension that gives hermeneutics its power consists in constantly mediating between the present and a text which is only somewhat

unfamiliar, strange, or enigmatic—a text which both stands in a tradition we share and also alerts

us to its otherness. If a text is entirely alien, interpretation cannot even begin. If a text is too

familiar, we are not prompted to interpret it.

Gadamer then stated his reservation about using the customary term “object of historical

research.” The object of hermeneutical inquiry is not merely an original work (a text, an

artwork, an event, etc.), but the entire history of mediating that work to an interpreter:

Real historical thinking must take account of its own historicity. Only then will it cease to chase the phantom of a historical object that is the object of progressive research, and learn to view the object as the counterpart of itself and hence understand both. The true historical object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the other, a relationship that constitutes both the reality of history and the reality of historical understanding. A hermeneutics adequate to the subject matter would have to demonstrate the reality and efficacy of history within

193 TM, 300. 538 understanding itself. I shall refer to this as “history of effect.” Understanding is, essentially, a historically effected event.194

For Gadamer, “our need to become conscious of effective history” was “urgent because it is necessary for scientific consciousness.”195 In order for the humanities to become a critical discipline, philosophers must regard wirkungsgeschichtliche Bewußtsein (“historically effected consciousness”) as the productive condition for understanding the meaning of history. Thus, historically effected consciousness must take its place beside the other elements of the transcendental ego which phenomenological analysis has revealed.

For Gadamer, an additional corollary of historically effected consciousness was: “To be historical means that knowledge of oneself can never be complete. All self-knowledge arises from what is historically pre-given.” Moreover, “every finite present has its limitations.”196 Our historical consciousness is both delimited and informed by history both in terms of what we know about ourselves and the world around us; such knowledge provides a “horizon”:

The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen from a particular vantage point.… Since Nietzsche and Husserl, the word has been used in philosophy to characterize the way in which thought is tied to its finite determinacy, and the way one's range of vision is gradually expanded.… A person who has an horizon knows the relative significance of everything within his horizon, whether it is near or far, great or small. Similarly, working out the hermeneutical situation means acquiring the right horizon of inquiry for the questions evoked by the encounter with tradition.197

194 TM, 299-300.

195 TM, 301.

196 TM, 302.

197 Ibid. 539 Gadamer then re-described the hermeneutical process of understanding as a “fusion of horizons” (Horizontverschmeltzung).198 In order to understand a text, three activities must

facilitate understanding: first, the text has to be understood in its original historical context, in its

own horizon. One must “transpose oneself”; “we put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.”199 Of

course, historical retrieval of that original horizon can only take place by digging back through

history, and in this task, Gadamer urged not becoming swayed by the valuations of later ages.

Second, an interpreter must foreground his own horizon as best he can by noting the difference

between the culture and time of the text and the interpreter’s own culture and time, viewed,

imaginatively, from the timeframe of the text. The imaginative transposition of the first step

assists in the foregrounding of prejudices in the second step. Third, these two horizons, of the

text and the reader, should be fused as historically effected consciousness relates the two. By

relating both horizons, reciprocal acts of comparison and contrast that are intrinsic to mediating

the two horizons shed light on what is historically common to them both. By foregrounding the

two horizons, they both may emerge from a previously unseen ground in which both horizons are

located. One understands the circumstances of the text, oneself, and the history that unites the

two (the “history of effect”) more profoundly. This last activity is a reflexive action, insofar as reason critically re-examines the path it took backward to envisage the horizon of the text, which allows an interpreter to check his work. In this stage, an interpreter considers both a text and

himself holistically. He evaluates the recovered meaning of the text within his own horizon.

198 TM, 306; GW 1:311.

199 TM, 305. This was the insight of Schleiermacher and the Romantic school, or more accurately, Chladenius, since Gadamer was always careful to state that the “task of hermeneutics is essentially to understand the text, not the author” (Palmer, Hermeneutics, 185.) 540 The fusion of the two horizons propels the effect of the original text further in history, since by

its reception the interpreter adds to its Wirkungsgeschichte.

In Part Three of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer described the same process of understanding as a conversation between an interpreter and a text. Just as “it belongs to every true conversation that each person opens himself to the other,” so too a reader must be open to a text. After “accepting his point of view,” and “transposing himself into the other,” an interpreter should “transpose himself into the other to such an extent that he understands not the particular

individual, but what he says.”200 The telos of interpersonal conversation is that both

conversation partners stand before the truth of the matter. Whether the truth aligns more with

the initial position of one partner or the other is only accidental. Similarly, Gadamer considered

it an inferior form of “openness” merely to rest with transposing oneself into another’s shoes.

Rather, the transposition should go from one’s own presuppositions, through an interlocutor’s, to

arrive at the truth in the process of mediating the two viewpoints. Successful conversation, like

successful reading of a text, comes to completion in seeing what each participant can gain from

the other, in light of how the conversation took place.201 Obviously, in textual interpretation, the

written form of a text is fixed, but the benefit to the text, so to speak, comes from the critique it

receives in the reading process, which adds to the sedimentation of meaning surrounding it.

For Gadamer, full openness to another person is an openness to how much they share in

the truth. To describe hermeneutical openness as simply becoming aware of another person’s

200 TM, 385.

201 Gadamer explained: “I have described this above as a ‘fusion of horizons.’ We can now see that this is what takes place in conversation, in which something is expressed that is not only mine or my author’s, but common” (TM, 388). 541 opinions, bracketing their truth value, is tantamount to considering the text under only one aspect

“to the person who is trying to understand it, namely, how the other person could have arrived at

such an absurd opinion.”202 Such an hermeneutical approach falls short of genuine historical

reconstruction, since an element of reconstructing another person’s position is respecting his

intent to communicate a truth. Whether the other person was successful in his endeavor requires

an authentic appraisal.

A final consequence of Gadamer’s tradition-driven perspective is his retrieval of the role

of application in interpretation. After describing the fusion of horizons, he addressed the

traditional three-fold division of hermeneutical effort into acts of understanding, explication, and application.203 The subtilitas intelligendi is the art of understanding what the text is saying from

within the horizon of its original author and his audience. The subtilitas explicandi is the art of explaining that meaning to the interpreter’s audience, which is accomplished by fusing the horizons. The subtilitas applicandi is the art of relating that understanding and explanation of the text to the audience’s life: describing its relevance and integrating it into the existential concerns of the audience. For Gadamer, application is the final step intrinsic to all acts of interpretation, rather than a derivative effort after interpretation is finished.

The loss of historical perspective following the Enlightenment jeopardized the unity of these three acts of interpretation. In Romantic hermeneutics, Gadamer saw a recovery of the inner relationship of understanding and explication:

202 TM, 388

203 Palmer (Hermeneutics, 186-188) traced the variations of these three “powers” (subtilitates: subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicandi, subtilitas applicandi) of interpretation from the Reformation period, through J. J. Rambach’s 1723 work, Institutiones hermeneuticae sacrae, to Schleiermacher. 542 the hermeneutical problem acquired systematic importance because the romantics recognize the inner unity of intelligere and explicare. Interpretation is not an occasional, post facto [sic] supplement to understanding; rather, understanding is always interpretation, and hence interpretation is the explicit form of understanding.204

Yet the Romantic focus on interpreting texts according to the mind of an author and his milieu

entailed that the recovery of the unity between understanding and explication came at the price

of sacrificing application, which came to be considered as an entirely derivative act, having

nothing to do with proper interpretation itself.205

Such a perspective is unsustainable given Gadamer’s hermeneutics: “we are forced to go

one step beyond romantic hermeneutics … by regarding not only understanding and

interpretation, but also application as comprising one unified process.”206 Gadamer saw that the

last stage of interpretation—the appropriation of the meaning of a text in the present through a living tradition that mediates it to the reader—requires a return to the total perspective of one’s whole life in understanding the meaning of the text.207 For Gadamer,

In a tradition this process of fusion is continually going on, for there old and new are always combining into something of living value, without either being explicitly foregrounded from the other.208

204 TM, 307.

205 “The inner fusion of understanding and interpretation led to the third element in the hermeneutical problem, application, becoming wholly excluded from any connection with hermeneutics” (TM, 308; emphasis in original).

206 TM, 308.

207 As Palmer (Hermeneutics, 187) put it: “To understand, in the sense of knowing and explaining, already involves within it something like an application or relation of the text to the present.”

208 TM, 306. 543 The notion of achieving a fusion of horizons with the text belies the fact that the text is

ultimately seen within the total existential stance of an interpreter’s own self-understanding at

the last stage of interpretation, because the concept of horizon implies an interpreter’s entire

worldview. So too, the notion of interpretation as the final stage of Wirkungsgeschichte implies

a mediation of a text into the world of an interpreter’s self-knowledge, aims and values.

Gadamer understood his own hermeneutics to provide a much stronger position for the

interpretation of both legal and theological texts, since both of these disciplines have application

at the core of their interpretive norms:

A law does not exist in order to be understood historically, but to be concretized in its legal validity by being interpreted. Similarly, the gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a merely historical document, but to be taken in such a way that it exercises it saving effect.209

A second dynamic seen in both jurisprudence and theological hermeneutics is the fruitfulness of individual cases. The understanding of law is accomplished by being applied to new, challenging cases requiring the mediation of the legal tradition into a new situation. This act of application is a time of both crisis (in the original Greek sense of a time requiring acute judgment) and development. Precedent advances law and becomes part of the legal tradition of judgments which inform the application of foundational legal principles to future cases.

Similarly, theology’s task is to speak to the needs of the faithful in the present day, in their existential situation. A sermon, for example, provides an emblematic example of how the Word of God remains living and active in the Church community through application. Gadamer saw the same dynamics at work in the development of systematic theology over the ages. Gadamer also sketched how his hermeneutics might be useful in philology, ethics, and law and indicated

209 TM, 309. 544 his hope for his hermeneutical project: the reunification of disciplines which had been

methodologically separated since the Enlightenment.210

In the second part of Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer described the achievement of interpretive understanding as a meeting of the minds of an author and an interpreter through the medium of the text. The mind of neither author nor interpreter has primacy over the interpretive process; rather, Gadamer sought to reject any notion of interpretation as domination of the text.

As did Heidegger, Gadamer expressed concern about the creeping effect of the technological

mindset on modern consciousness. While Heidegger expressed this point in various ways, for

Gadamer, it often arose as the need to avoid habits of manipulation of the interpretive process or

the imposition of one’s own viewpoint. The act of understanding is an act of trained receptivity;

an interpreter is guided to understanding by retaining a focus on “what emerges in the text.” If

anything has primacy in the act of understanding for Gadamer, it is neither the author nor the

interpreter, but language itself.

The guiding idea of the following discussion is that the fusion of horizons that takes place in the understanding is actually the achievement of language.… It is not that the understanding is subsequently put into words; rather, the way understanding occurs—whether in the case of the text or dialogue with another who raises an issue with us—is the coming-into-language of the thing itself.211

The effect of language is to create a communion of souls:

Nor is it even right to say that the partners adapt themselves to one another but, rather, in a successful conversation they both come under the influence of the truth of the object and are thus bound to one another in the new community. To reach an understanding in a dialogue is not merely a matter of putting oneself

210 TM, 308.

211 TM, 378; emphasis in original. 545 forward and successfully asserting one’s point of view, but being transformed into a communion in which we do not remain what we were.212

Gadamer’s notion of language provided him with a foundation for the concept of objectivity in his hermeneutics. Language is the most subtle aspect of hermeneutics to study, because it is tied up with our very process of thought that one has a hard time getting distance from the phenomenon of language in order to better understand it. The core of Gadamer’s presentation of the ontology of language turns on a sustained comparison between semantics and

Trinitarian theology. Wahrheit und Methode is a book of many surprises (such as the rehabilitation of prejudice), but perhaps none is more surprising than this turn toward Trinitarian thought at the end of the book.

2.3. The Ontological Shift of Hermeneutics as Guided by Language

In Part Three of Wahrheit und Methode, “The Ontological Shift of Hermeneutics Guided by Language,” Gadamer presented his basic approach to the structure of language:

To understand what a person says is, as we saw, to come to an understanding about the subject matter, not to get inside another person and relive his experiences (Erlebnisse). We emphasize that the experience (Erfahrung) of meaning that takes place in understanding always includes application. Now we are to note that this whole process is verbal.… Language is the medium in which substantive understanding and agreement takes place between two people.213

As an example of how language guides its users to truth, Gadamer observed, “We say that we ‘conduct’ a conversation, but the more genuine a conversation is, the less its conduct lies within the will of either partner.” It is more accurate to say that one “falls” into a conversation,

212 TM, 379.

213 TM, 383-384. 546 or “becomes involved” in one. “No one knows in advance what will ‘come out’ of a

conversation”:

The way one word follows another, with the conversation taking its own twists and reaching its own conclusion, may well be conducted in some way, but the partners conversing are far less the leaders of it than the lead.… All this shows that a conversation has the spirit of its own, and that the language in which is conducted bears its own truth within it … it allows something to emerge which henceforth exists.214

From this example, Gadamer reprised three of his earlier points about his understanding

of language. First, the dynamics of Wirkungsgeschichte and the fusion of horizons

[have] taught us that understanding and interpretation are ultimately the same thing. As we have seen, this insight elevates the idea of interpretation from the merely occasional and pedagogical significance it had in the eighteenth century to a systematic position.215

Second, “language is the universal medium in which understanding occurs. Understanding

occurs in interpreting.” Third, “The linguisticality of understanding is the concretion of

historically effected consciousness.”216 In other words, the fact that language is the medium of

all understanding indicates how language is the ultimate repository of all historically effected consciousness. Language is tradition par excellence.217 “It is not just something left over, to be investigated and interpreted as a remnant of the past,” but a living re-gathering of the great

214 TM, 383.

215 TM, 288.

216 TM, 389.

217 “The fact that tradition is essentially verbal in character has consequences for hermeneutics. The understanding of verbal tradition retained special priority over all other tradition.… Linguistic tradition is tradition in the proper sense of the word—i.e., something handed down” (TM, 389). 547 collective past of human understanding, passed down to today in the very way that we

conceptualize ourselves and the world around us.218

In language, and especially in written language, Gadamer saw the fleeting existence of the past “raised beyond itself into the sphere of the meaning that it expresses” and attaining a permanency it could not otherwise have: “The ideality of the word is what raises everything linguistic beyond the finitude and transience that characterize other remnants of past existence.”219 Gadamer’s language of “ideality” and the type of permanence which linguistic

meaning has beyond all other human acts (yet not the type of permanence of physical things),

may suggest the influence of Platonism.220 Yet Gadamer remarked in the Second Foreword to

Wahrheit und Methode that he intended to remain within Kantian boundaries:

I have recorded my acceptance of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason: I regard statements that proceed by wholly dialectical means from the finite to the infinite, from human experience to what exists in itself, from the temporal to the eternal, as doing no more than setting limits, and am convinced that philosophy can derive no actual knowledge from them.221

Gadamer remained within the domain of phenomenology. The permanence and

“ideality” of human acts that have been elevated into language still remains within the limit of

man’s experience of his own finitude: Gadamer made no direct claim to eternity or a metaphysical world of ideal entities. In fact, to his critics who claimed he had introduced

218 Gadamer sometimes referred to history as “the conversation that we are” which is a line from the poet Hölderlin (e.g., GW 2:230).

219 TM, 390.

220 Gadamer’s doctoral dissertation treated Plato and he was known occasionally to declare, “I am a Platonist,” sometimes to the surprise of his audience. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Gadamer on Strauss: An Interview,” ed. Ernest L. Fortin, Interpretation 12/1 (January 1984): 10.

221 TM, xxxvi. 548 “ontology” into his analysis of language, Gadamer in the Second Foreword stated bluntly “my book is phenomenological in method” and “I must emphasize that my analyses of play and of language are intended in a purely phenomenological sense.”222

Gadamer’s first concern was to conceive properly the relationship between word and concept from within a phenomenological perspective. For him, there was no mental access to concepts outside of language. Even the fact that one struggles to express oneself at times does not belie, but rather confirms, this point. The fact that we hone or shift the meanings of words in conventional language indicates that language is the essential vehicle for thought, since all reshaping and development of terms only happens through language itself.223 One does not first think alinguistically and then adopt suitable words to signify these thoughts.

2.3.1. Rejecting the Instrumentalist View of Language

In order to understand the close unity between concept and language in the modern period, Gadamer believed it was necessary to reject an instrumentalist theory of language, particularly the approach of logical positivism and the Vienna Circle’s philosophy of language.

Gadamer did so in unambiguous terms:

It is obvious that an instrumentalist theory of signs which sees words and concepts as handy tools has missed the point of the hermeneutical phenomenon.… If we stick to what takes place in speech and … [in] the human sciences, we cannot fail to see that here concepts are constantly in the process of being formed.… The interpreter does not use words and concepts like a craftsman who picks up his tools and then puts them away. Rather, we must recognize that all

222 Ibid.

223 TM, 401. 549 understanding is interwoven with concepts and reject any theory that does not accept the intimate unity of word and subject matter.224

Gadamer then reflected from a phenomenological perspective on how language

functions, which he believed provided some clues to how language and concepts relate. These

points have been aptly summarized by Werner Jeanrond.225 First, there is “the essential

forgetfulness that belongs to language.” The actual operation of language is such that it entirely

vanishes behind what is said in it. When linguistic communication occurs without a problem,

one does not attend to the words themselves; rather, the unity of word and concept is so close

that the words themselves are almost immediately passed over in clear communication. Only

when communication becomes disrupted (e.g., a vague expression, a mumbled statement, a

corrupted text) does understanding redound first to the words and then to the concepts. When one reads or converses in one’s native language, one simply thinks about the subject matter. Yet

as tempting as it might be to say that one thinks “directly” about the subject matter, such thought

is always conducted through language, even in the interior dialogue one has with oneself in

contemplation. So too, the mark of fluency in a foreign language is a mental shift in which one

“thinks” in the foreign language, without attending to the translational dynamics of which a

novice speaker must be mindful.

224 TM, 403; emphasis added.

225 Werner G. Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking, transl. by Thomas J. Wilson (New York: Crossroad, 1988; reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005), 25-27. 550 Second, there is “the selflessness of language.” Natural language226 is not the creation of any one individual but the common possession of a society which possesses a language in the manner of a tradition. In individual acts of linguistic communication, every person participates in language and subordinates himself to it, so that language guides the “dialogue and elicits statement and counterstatement and in the end plays them into each other” so that various parties can arrive at mutual understandings.227

Third, Gadamer understood the “universality of language” in two senses. The first sense

concerns the unlimited potential for every discourse to continue. While individual parties might break off a dialogue for various reasons, sometimes accidental or practical, intrinsically the dialogue can always be resumed. The second sense concerns the unlimited nature of language to express being. For Gadamer, language is never “simply an object [of thought] but instead comprehends everything that can ever be an object.”228

Gadamer saw these aspects as evidence against the instrumentalist view of words as signs

conventionally employed to express pre-linguistic meanings. He examined the Western tradition

of philosophy of language in its earlier periods. He first turned to ancient Greek philosophy,

drawing upon his own expertise as a philologist, and then to the Christian Medieval tradition. He

believed that a fundamental miscarriage of thought about language occurred in the Platonic

226 Gadamer considered technical terms as a separate case, more akin to signs; he even asserted: “Using a word as a technical term is an act of violence against language” (TM, 415).

227 Here Gadamer sees understanding as something which happens to participants in a dialogue, through receptivity, rather than the result of a willful process of one party triumphing over the other.

228 TM, 404, citing his early mentor, Richard Hönigswald, Die Grundlagen der Denkpsychologie (Leipzig: Teubner, 1925), 448. 551 tradition, particularly though the dialogue, Cratylus, and the question of how logos, onoma, and semeion relate. For Gadamer, the legacy of Plato’s Cratylus was

the first step towards modern instrumental theory of language and the ideal of a sign system of reason. Wedged in between image and sign, the being of language could only be reduced the level of pure sign.229

“In my view,” Gadamer stated, “this path leads us away from the nature of language.”230 For

Gadamer, signs have no intrinsic content that relates to the concept they signify.231 They simply

have a pointing function: “The more univocally a sign-thing signifies, the more the sign is a pure

sign—i.e., is exhausted in the coordination” with what it signifies.232 It has none of the inner

richness of a word; its univocal deictic significance demonstrates its poverty of meaning and its

distance to concepts.

“At the other extreme,” for Gadamer, was the ancient Greek notion of “the copy.” The

copy or image (eikon) is very close to what it depicts and makes the depicted virtually present,

but it is also not like linguistic expression of meaning. The copy

does not acquire the function of pointing or representing from the subject who takes it as a sign but from its own content. It is not a mere sign. For in it the thing copied is itself represented, caught, and made present. That is why it can be judged by the standard of resemblance—i.e., by the extent to which it makes present in itself what is not present.233

229 TM, 418.

230 TM, 417.

231 “A sign, then, is not something that insists on its own content. It does not even need to have any similarity to its referent—and if it has, then it need be only schematic. But this means again that all visible content of its own is reduced to the minimum necessary to assist its pointing function” (TM, 413). Gadamer had in mind something like the stick figures used to represent a person on bathroom doors.

232 TM, 413.

233 TM, 413; emphasis in original. 552

An image better captures the essential ability of words to make present what they signify in a

rich and productive way, a way which makes virtually present, like an image does, the concept

which the word represents. Yet obviously words are not visually tied to what they represent in

the way images are, and so the manner in which words make concepts present to thought still needs to be more precisely articulated. Gadamer believed that the ancient Greek metaphysical tradition turned away from its potential to articulate the true nature of words, and fell into an

intellectualist divide which established, on the one hand, a close identity of image and concept

through the notion of the Platonic form, and, on the other hand, an instrumentalist view of words

as mere signs.

In the Cratylus, Gadamer saw the “legitimate question whether the word is nothing but a

‘pure sign’ or instead something like a ‘copy’ or ‘image’ thoroughly discredited.” For Gadamer,

“Since there the argument that the word is a copy is driven ad absurdum, the only alternative

seems to be that it is a sign.” The negative consequence is that knowledge is “banished to the intelligible sphere” which is elevated above, and separated from, language, which is now understood instrumentally as merely a system of signs.234 Gadamer concluded, that after Plato’s

Cratylus, the Greek notion of language was headed for oblivion:

In all discussion of language ever since, the concept of the image (eikon) has been replaced by that of the sign (semeion or semainon). This is not just a terminological change; it expresses an epoch-making decision about thought concerning language. That the true being of things is to be investigated "without names" means that there is no access to truth in the proper being of words as such—even though, of course, no questioning, answering, instructing, and differentiating can take place without the help of language. This is to say that thought is so independent of the being of words—which thought takes as mere

234 TM, 413-414. 553 signs through which what is referred to, the idea, the thing, is brought into view— that the word is reduced to a wholly secondary relation to the thing.235

Gadamer envisioned a profound corrective which “prevented the forgetfulness of language in

Western thought from being complete,” namely, the Christian concept of the Incarnation of the

Word of God.236 This theological development “opened up a new dimension” to Hellenistic

thought, and provided for the Medieval period the best articulation of the nature of language that

the West has possessed in the concept of Verbum.

2.3.2. Gadamer’s Trinitarian Model of the Word

In the section entitled, “Language and Verbum,” Gadamer argued that the Christian

doctrine of the Unity of the Three Persons of the Trinity and the two natures in the One Person of

Christ, as articulated by the first seven ecumenical councils of the Church, provided the West an

essential insight into the nature of what it means to be a word. In Gadamer’s view, Niceno-

Constantinopolitan orthodoxy alone managed to retain a proper concept of the word necessary

both to defend the very “ungreek” notion of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God and also

a proper understanding of how a word, as a human creation, nonetheless “raises everything

linguistic beyond the finitude and transience that characterize other remnants of past existence.”237 In Gadamer’s appraisal, Christianity provided what a Platonic theory of language

failed to deliver. Moreover, through this meditation on the orthodox concept of the Trinity,

235 TM, 414.

236 TM, 418.

237 TM, 390. 554 Gadamer made a place for the entrance of the divine into phenomenology in the experience of

the productive power of the word.

The significance of Gadamer’s Trinitarian analogy of language has unfortunately escaped

notice in many commentaries on Wahrheit und Methode. Werner Jeanrond’s Text and

Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking as well as his Theological Hermeneutics,

both of which are theological in character, made no mention of it.238 Similarly, Palmer’s

Hermeneutics, otherwise an admirably concise summary of the principal themes of Gadamer’s

thought, passed over this section. Anthony Thiselton’s The Two Horizons approached the topic

of Gadamer’s relationship to the divine through the writers of the New Hermeneutic school, but

did not develop Gadamer’s thought on the Trinity.239 Jean Grondin’s The Philosophy of

Gadamer, another admirable summary from someone close to Gadamer both personally and

intellectually, mentioned Gadamer’s use of Augustine’s De Trinitate, but commented on it only

as a corrective to Plato.240 Walter Lammi, in a recent study, lamented that the significance of

Gadamer’s use of the concept of the divine in his philosophical hermeneutics has been “almost

238 Werner G. Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking, and Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance (New York: Crossroad, 1991).

239 Anthony Thiselton, The Two Horizons: New Testament Hermeneutics and Philosophical Description with Special Reference to Heidegger, Bultmann, Gadamer, and Wittgenstein, with a foreword by J. B. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980), 339-349.

240 Jean Grondin, The Philosophy of Gadamer, trans. by Kathryn Plant (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003), 132-155. Grondin noted: “The last pages of Truth and Method announce the universal thought of finitude, but in such dizzying developments that they have disconcerted many” (150). Yet Grondin confessed that even Gadamer may have “astounded himself by the boldness of his own formula. But there are always these most risky expressions, those of which we are the least sure, which render best what thought seeks” (144). 555 universally ignored.”241 Bernd Jochen Hilberath also did not fail to appreciate the significance of

this point.242

The fundamental analogy that Gadamer made involved a comparison of three aspects of

the problem of verbal expression of meaning, which Gadamer approached by considering two

fundamental relationships. The first relationship is that between concept and word in the mind.

The second relationship is that between the word as thought and the word as expressed (in speech, writing, gesture, etc.). The three aspects of the problem of verbal expression of meaning are: the concept, the interior word, and the expressed word. To this triad of concept, interior word and expressed word, Gadamer compared God the Father, God the Word, and the Incarnate

Word, respectively. Against instrumentalist theories of language, Gadamer sought to describe the two fundamental relationships by analogy to the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation. For

Gadamer, the relationship between concept and interior word is similar to the relationship between God the Father and God the Word. The relationship between the interior word and the expressed word is comparable to the relationship between the divine nature and human nature in the One Person of Christ. Gadamer saw in the formation of Niceno-Constantinopolitan orthodoxy, not only “the victorious doctrine of the Church against subordinationism” but also the development of a rich enough understanding of “word” satisfactorily to “situate the problem of language.”243 Just as the one divine being is present in both Father and Word, considered as

either the Word Eternal or the Word made flesh, so too Gadamer described how one meaning is

241 Walter Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine (New York: Continuum, 2009), 7.

242 Hilberath, Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik, 222-229.

243 TM, 420. 556 present in the concept, the interior word and the expressed word, thus maintaining a closer unity

between all three than Gadamer found in either ancient Greek or modern positivist philosophies

of language.244

Gadamer observed how, against subordinationism, the Nicene doctrine of homoousios

affirmed that the full measure of Being which the Father has, the Word also has, even though the

Two can be genuinely distinguished in a way that is not merely nominal. Likewise, everything

that the concept has, the interior word also has; although one can distinguish the two, one cannot

distinguish their meaning. (Meaning is consistently likened to divinity in these analogies.) In addition, the formation of the theological concept of the procession of the Eternal Word from the

Father expresses a logical primacy of the Father as “Source” to the Word which proceeds from this Source, but it denies any temporal succession to this relationship of the Word being “from” the Father. Gadamer believed the relationship between concept and interior word in the human mind was similar: the interior word proceeds from the concept, but in a logical way rather than

“an essentially temporal” way.245

For Gadamer, the mind does not first think alinguistically and then attach words to

concepts; rather, a concept is always obtained through an interior word, even though we are

aware of a certain primacy of the concept and a derivative character of the interior word.

Borrowing Augustine’s metaphors in De Trinitate, Gadamer compared the atemporal

244 “The human word is used only as a counterpart to the theological problem of the Word.… But the important thing for us is precisely that the mystery of this unity is reflected in the phenomenon of language” (TM, 419).

245 While the human mind, unlike the divine, is characterized by a temporal succession of states, Gadamer’s point here is that the derivative character of the interior word from the concept is not essentially temporal. 557 relationship of the procession of word from concept to the “deduction of a conclusion from the premisses (ut conclusio ex principiis).”

Thus the process and emergence of thought is not a process of change (motus), not a transition from potentiality into action, but an emergence ut actus ex actu. The word is not formed only after the act of knowledge has been completed—in Scholastic terms, after the intellect has been informed by the species; it is the act of knowledge itself. Thus the word is simultaneous with the forming (formatio) of the intellect.246

This insight into “the intellectual nature of the generation of the word” was “of decisive importance for its function as a theological model.” Gadamer explored this relationship in the opposite direction: he began by considering the theological precisions developed to articulate the mysteries of the Trinity, in order to bring precision to the philosophical articulation of the mysteries of language. For Gadamer, “The process of the divine persons and the process of thought really have something in common.”247

In regard to Christology, Gadamer focused on the concept of “word” as it is used to describe the Incarnation in the prologue of John’s Gospel. Gadamer stressed that this concept of word is fundamentally different than anything found in the Hellenistic use of logos.248 In interpreting “the speaking of the word to be as miraculous as the incarnation of God,” Gadamer recognized how, just as the divinity of Christ is not in any way altered or severed from the Father in taking on a new nature in becoming flesh, so too, the interior word (and its intrinsic

246 TM, 424.

247 Ibid.

248 To give a few examples, Gadamer began the section: “There is, however, an idea that is not Greek which does more justice to the being of language…” [Es gibt aber einen Gedanken, der kein griechischer Gedanke ist…] (TM, 418; GW 1:422). It is “a dimension foreign to Greek thought,” “a new dimension” envisaged by the Fathers, and “an un-Greek idea” [ungriechischer Gedanke] (TM, 419; GW 423). 558 connection to the concept) remains unaltered in becoming the expressed word in conventional

language. Gadamer believed that the orthodox formulations of the ecumenical councils correctly captured both dynamics:

In both cases the act of becoming is not the kind of becoming in which something turns into something else. Neither does it consist in separating one thing from the other … nor in lessening the inner word by its emergence into exteriority, nor in becoming something different, so that the inner word is used up.249

Just as the Word does not take flesh in a way that is kenotic250 (“turns into something else”),

Nestorian (requiring separating “one thing from another”), or monophysite (“in becoming

something different”), so too the interior word gives rise to the expressed word in a way that exhausts neither its inner being (kenotic), nor mutates it (monophysite), nor separates the interior and expressed words, as if they were two wholly distinct realities (Nestorian—“one and another”). Rather, there is a unity of identity (like the unity of Person) which allows us to speak of the same word, whether in its “ideality” (the interior word) or in its transient, conventional form of outward expression. When language functions correctly, possession of the expressed word also means possession of the interior word united to it, and through the interior word, the concept, just as being in the physical presence of Christ means His divinity is also present there.

The movement of a concept in “coming-to-speech” is similar to the mission of the Second

249 TM, 420.

250 The term “kenotic,” originating from ekenōsen in Philippians 2:7, has borne several senses as a theological term over the past five centuries. Here the term is employed in the contemporary sense of the kenotic christology school of thought, which asserts that in becoming man, the divine nature of the Word underwent change, and thus it diminished in its being or attributes. Thomas Weinandy provided an overview of the development of kenotic christology in Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Change? The Word’s Becoming in the Incarnation, Studies in Historical Theology 4 (Still River, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 1985), 101-123. Pope Pius XII condemned the “kenotic doctrine” in this sense as incompatible with the teaching of the Council of Chalcedon in his encyclical, Sempiternus Rex (13 September 1951), section 29, in AAS 43 (1951): 625-644. 559 Person in taking flesh, which draws a person (e.g., the mind) back to the Father (e.g., the

concept). To see Christ in the flesh, is to see the Father (John 14:9).

Gadamer saw an important advance in the notion of “intellectual procession” in Christian

theology compared to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus, which was less successful in capturing the idea of intellectual procession in its concept of emanation. Both Christian orthodoxy and

Neoplatonism have a concept of atemporal intellectual generation and both possess a notion of how something comes forth from its eternal Source without diminishing the Source:

The idea of emanation in Neoplatonism implies more than the physical movement of flowing out. The primary image … is that of a fountain. In the process of emanation, that from which something flows, the One, is not deprived or depleted. The same is true of the birth of the Son from the Father.251

The crucial difference in Neoplatonic emanationism, however, is that what emanates is

diminished when compared to the source. In the emanation of Psuche (World-soul) from Nous

(Mind) and Nous from To Hen (The One), Psuche is a lesser being than Nous, which in turn is

less than The One from which it proceeds. In contrast, the Christian notion of the procession of

the Eternal Word from the Father maintains that there is an atemporal procession without

diminishment in being: the Word and the Father are consubstantial.

In Gadamer’s appraisal, the semantic import of Christian orthodoxy’s concept of “the

Word” on all verbal communication is that, unlike the Platonic tradition, the Christian

theological tradition’s influence on the concept of word enables it to affirm that nothing is lost

when an interior word proceeds from a concept in the mind and likewise, the interior word’s

coming into utterance does not imply diminishment of its content. Rather, the interior word

unites itself to an outward form suitable for interaction through the sensory realm. The

251 TM, 423. 560 Neoplatonic understanding of verbal communication could not avoid the conclusion that the

process of human intellection, since it takes place through an interior word, was a fall from

perfection. Its distinctive mode of existence could only be understood as evil, at least in part,

compared with the idea of nonverbal pure contemplation which is unattainable by man. For

Gadamer,

Knowing this constitutes the superiority of the Christian philosopher over the Platonist. Accordingly, the multiplicity in which the human mind unfolds itself is not a mere fall from true unity and not the loss of its home. Rather, there has to be a positive justification for the finitude of the human mind, however much this finitude remains related to the infinite unity of absolute being.252

This perspective, Gadamer believed, allowed the Christian tradition to understand the dynamics of concept formation and natural language in a way superior to either ancient or modern

“instrumentalist” theories of language. The fundamental challenge involves correctly describing

the relationship between the interior word and conventional words which express it.

Gadamer considered this theme as broached by Plato and Aristotle:

The natural concept formation that keeps pace with language does not always simply follow the order of things, but very often takes place as a result of accidents and relations. This is confirmed by a glance at Plato's analysis of concepts and at Aristotle's definitions. But the precedence of the logical order established by the concepts of substance and accident makes language's natural concept formation appear only as an imperfection of our finite mind.253

When Aristotelian thought is fused with the Christian tradition in Aquinas, a new approach was

given to the question of how natural language (conventional words) can shift in their meaning.

Rather, when the Greek idea of logic is penetrated by Christian theology, something new is born: the medium of language, in which the mediation of the incarnation event achieves its full truth. Christology prepares the way for a new

252 TM, 435.

253 TM, 428. 561 philosophy of man, which mediates in a new way between the mind of man and its finitude and the divine infinity. Here what we have called the hermeneutical experience finds its own, special ground.254

In the first statement, the Christian tradition’s appraisal of the Word taking flesh (a

“folly” to the Greeks) prepared for a positive appraisal of how the changing meaning of conventional words deepens and enriches our grasp of the depths of the interior word and what it signifies. Just as the Christian tradition sees a revelatory character to the Incarnation, which in no way threatens or diminishes the divinity of Christ, so too, the Christian tradition prepared the way for seeing the evolving character of natural language as revelatory of “the ideality of

meaning” rather than as a compromise of it or as a misbegotten pairing of ill-fitted signs to “pure

meanings” until one day conventional language would be overcome by logical positivism’s

dream of purely univocal language.

In Gadamer’s assessment, Nicholas of Cusa’s thought achieved an unparalleled approach

to the nature of language.255 Cusa was situated in a favorable time in intellectual history: after

the incorporation of Aristotle into Scholasticism with Aquinas, and at the beginning of the

Renaissance’s newfound consideration of the classics and language studies.256 He possessed

254 TM, 428; emphasis in original.

255 Gadamer served as chair of the Cusanus Commission of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences (for 24 years) and was a member of the Academic Advisory Council of the Cusanus Society. As Peter Casarella wrote: “[D]er Mitarbeit Gadamers in der Commission entsprach ein genuines Sach-Interesse an der Kreativität des philosophischen Fragens im Übergang zur Neuzeit. Gadamer selbst behauptete, genau diesen schöpferischen Charakter des Wortes in der Untrennbarkeit des Philosophischen und des Theologischen beim konjekturalen Denken des NvK [Nikolaus von Kues] entdeckt zu haben” (Peter Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen nach Nikolaus von Kues und modernes Verständnis des Menschen: aufgezeigt an Hans-Georg Gadamer,” Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 31 [2005]: 39).

256 Gadamer remarked: “but the problem of language could not emerge fully until the Scholastic combination of Christian thought with Aristotelian philosophy was supplemented by a 562 unique theoretical insights, including: a theology of human creativity in light of the Divine

Creator; his concepts of complicatio and explicatio to describe the relationship of the world to its

Creator; an awareness of nominalism’s influence on the Medieval theory of language,257 and his

contact with the Platonic tradition. For Cusa:

As an explication of the unity of the Spirit, the concepts expressed in words still retain their connection with a natural word (vocabulum naturale), which is reflected (relucet) in all of them, however arbitrary an individual name may be (impositio nominis fit ad beneplacitum).258

Gadamer ratified Cusa’s conclusion:

It makes methodological sense to say that the individual words of each language are in an ultimate harmony with those of every other one, in that all languages are explications of the one unity of the mind.259

In contrast to instrumentalist theories of language, which attempt to ground semantics in

univocal signs, Cusa, following the influence of nominalism, starts

from the fundamental inexactness of all human knowledge. Combining Platonic and nominalist elements, Cusa's theory of knowledge is that all human knowledge is mere conjecture and opinion (coniectura, opinio).260

Just as human knowledge is essentially inexact, so too is human language:

new element that turned the distinction between the divine and the human mind into something positive and was to acquire the greatest importance for modern times. This is the element, common to both, of the creative. This, it seems to me, is the real importance of Nicholas of Cusa, who has recently been so much discussed” (TM, 434; emphasis in original).

257 Gadamer noted “with the nominalist breakup of the classical logic of essence, the problem of language enters a new stage” (TM, 435).

258 TM, 437, citing phrases from Cusa’s Idiota de mente.

259 TM, 437.

260 Ibid. 563 all natural words nonetheless have a natural connection with the natural expression (nomen naturale) that corresponds to the thing itself (forma). Every expression is fitting (congruum), but not every one is exact (precisum).261

The changing arrangement of natural words to the concepts they represent is not necessarily a negative phenomenon for Cusa, although interwoven with missteps caused by mistakes and ignorance, the evolution of suitable terms in conventional language to express an idea is a positive expression of the creativity of the human intellect as it plumbs the subject matter through rational inquiry. In this connection, Casarella observed:

Gadamers Auseinandersetzung mit der Philosophie des Nikolaus von Kues bleibt aber immer noch aktuell.… Darüber hinaus betont Gadamer als Gegenpol zur anscheinenden Einseitigkeit der neukantianischen Deutung, daß Cusanus das Sein als ein schaffendes Wort betrachtet habe.262

Ultimately a reflection of divine creativity, man’s formation of natural language is a result of the finitude of the human intellect attempting to receive, in many and various ways, the

much vaster domain of knowable reality offered to its understanding. From this perspective,

Gadamer saw Cusa as able to resist the Platonic temptation of the Cratylus, while retaining a theory of the formation of natural language which was true to its historicity—an insight guided by the positive power of the Incarnation to disclose God:

Such a theory of language presupposes not that the things (formae) to which the words are attached belong to a pre-established order of original models that human knowledge is gradually approaching, but that this order is created by differentiation and combination out of the given nature of things. In this Nicholas of Cusa's thought has been influenced by nominalism.… [Yet] it is clear that the words can be in agreement with the perception of the thing to which they give expression, even if different languages use different words.… [T]here is an essential inexactness.… This kind of essential inexactness can be overcome only if the mind rises to the infinite. In the infinite there is, then, only one single thing

261 Ibid.

262 Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen,” 30. 564 (forma) and one single word (vocabulum), namely the ineffable Word of God (verbum Dei) that is reflected in everything (relucet).263

Here, Gadamer maintained that a notion of the infinite, while not directly conceived by

the human mind, stands behind the fact that changing natural language words can reflect the

depth of a concept in various ways without loss or diminishment of it. “The infinite” stands as a

background against which the depth of concepts appears as they are explored by changing

natural language. Gadamer borrowed St. Thomas’ simile of the mirror to make the same point

about how intellectual species are related to the infinite divine mind.264 In reflecting on the

delimited scope of individual intelligible concepts and how they overlap, are related and can be

variously expressed, these limited meanings are seen in the foreground against an unlimited

background of Infinite Meaning—all through the power of phenomenological meditation on the

relationship of word to concept, guided by a deployment of the Christian notion of verbum into the modern philosophy of language.

Gadamer’s deduction of the Infinite is a startling conclusion, but it is still executed within the phenomenological method. The infinite never enters into experience or into direct conceptualization. Gadamer treats it much like a Kantian object-in-itself: it is discovered as the condition of the possibility of natural language to explicate concepts. The mind explores the

totality of what can be understood through its ever-shifting attempts to relate finite words and

concepts. Gadamer believed that reflection on how this was possible surfaced the notion of the

Infinite as a necessary background to this mental operation: an unlimited sky beyond the finite

field of human intellectual exploration. Just as the Christian theological tradition understood the

263 TM, 437-438.

264 ST, I, Q. 14, aa. 5-7. 565 coming of the Infinite into human experience in the creaturely finitude assumed by Christ in the

Incarnation, Gadamer compared the coming of the Infinite into finite human awareness as the background precondition for how the human mind explores conceptual meaning through words.265 Walter Lammi has analyzed Gadamer’s statement in this way:

The finitude of human understanding is the finitude of speech. Gadamer's “linguistic turn,” far from implying nominalism, is a key to a phenomenology of the divine. This is not, however, of the divine per se, which Gadamer considers impossible, but of an experience of understanding to which the silent presence of the divine whole provides the backdrop.266

Gadamer’s introduction of the transcendent presence of the divine in the phenomenology

of understanding is the immediate context for his subsequent affirmation: “Here what we have

called the hermeneutical experience finds its own, special ground.” A mediation of the word and

its source thus leads man back to an implicit awareness of the Infinite behind all human

conceptualization, assisted by the Christian development of the concept of the Divine Word

revealing its unapproachable Source. As Casarella concluded:

Das Ende der Konjektur solle auf Gott, den einzigen Ursprung alles Seienden und das zentrale Symbol des Weltgeschehens, auch als einen allumfassenden Horizont des menschlichen Geistes hinweisen. Vor der göttlichen Offenbarung erkennt der Mensch sich selbst als Vermittler eines unendlichen Horizonts. Der menschliche Schöpfer der konjekturalen Welt kennt die Wirklichkeit Gottes in der Vermittlung der Konjekturen, die er ‘vorgängig, anterioriter” shafft.… Das Ende der menschlichen Konjektur liegt also in der Selbstmitteilung Gottes.267

265 This indirect deduction of the Infinite as the ultimate horizon of the activity of human intentional consciousness is similar to the argument of Karl Rahner in Hearer of the Word for man’s indirect knowledge of God as “pre-given” in every finite act of intentional consciousness, although Gadamer’s formulation is situated squarely within the phenomenology of understanding and language. See Karl Rahner, Hearer of the Word: Laying the Foundation for a Philosophy of Religion, transl. Joseph Donceel (New York: Continuum, 1994).

266 Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 12. Lammi provided a summary of Gadamer’s analysis of Cusa’s understanding of language (18-19).

267 Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen,” 31. 566 3. The Charge of Relativism and Subjectivism

In the fields of philosophy, literary criticism, and cultural studies, Gadamer’s Wahrheit

und Methode has garnered appreciable secondary literature. To a lesser but still significant

degree, theological appropriation of Gadamer’s work has continued to grow over the last four

decades amongst both Catholics and Protestants.268 Criticisms of Gadamer’s thought have also continued. Among these criticisms are those aforementioned by Jonathan Barnes and Murray

Rothbard, which while rare in their severity, encapsulate a common concern about any modern

hermeneutical theory: does it successfully describe how to obtain truth in interpretation?

Rothbard believed that contemporary hermeneutics could not escape “relativism and

solipsism,” alleging for Gadamer,

there is no objective truth or, if there is, we can never discover it … there is no method of discovering objective truth.… Communication between writer and reader becomes hopeless.269

In Barnes’ review of Wahrheit und Methode, leaving the ad hominem charge aside, Barnes’

fundamental concern was subjectivism, particularly the projection of the reader’s personal interests into the text. As such, these concerns are legitimate charges deserving of a response by those who employ Gadamer’s theories.

A similar concern about truth in interpretation has been expressed by Werner Jeanrond in

Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking, who concluded that Wahrheit und Methode provided no norm for distinguishing truth from error. According to Jeanrond’s

268 A review of the secondary literature about the way that Gadamer’s thought has been adopted by theologians would extend beyond the purpose of this dissertation. This section provides a brief review of some major critiques of his thought for the purpose of facilitating a comparison with Henri de Lubac’s hermeneutics.

269 Rothbard, “Hermeneutical Invasion,” 46. 567 appraisal, Gadamer sacrificed objective truth in pursuit of adherence to tradition. Just as

Gadamer criticized Romantic hermeneutics for its tradition-based historical relativism, Jeanrond

saw Gadamer’s project as a more sophisticated version of the same error, with the

Wirkungsgeschichte of a work replacing the Romantic standard of intentio auctoris as the

standard for truth. In both cases, the accurate historical recovery of an idea is, in itself,

insufficient to determine its truth and the question remains: what norms verify that the historical

recovery was accurate? Is what is recovered true?

Unlike Rothbard and Barnes, the sympathy of Jeanrond’s engagement with Gadamer’s

hermeneutics is evident in his desire to adapt some of Gadamer’s insights to the field of textual

interpretation.270 In Text and Interpretation, after describing Gadamer’s adaptation of

Heidegger’s hermeneutic circle and Gadamer’s exposition of the role of prejudice and the

projection of fore-meanings in the act of understanding, Jeanrond identified some of his

concerns.271 In regard to Gadamer’s assertion that prejudices can play a positive role in

interpretation, Jeanrond observed:

Gadamer goes so far as to speak of prejudices as “preconditions for understanding.” He adds the remark however that one has to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate prejudices. But how one is to make this distinction is not explained by Gadamer. He is, rather, concerned with the rehabilitation of the notions of “authority” and “tradition” in this connection.272

270 Jeanrond stated: “essential parts of Gadamer's hermeneutical reflection can certainly be accepted and welcomed. It is, for example, to Gadamer's great credit that he has described understanding as a process experience [sic] of the fusion of horizons conditioned by effective historical consciousness” (Text and Interpretation, 22).

271 Cf. the section entitled “Towards a Definition of ‘Interpretation’ after Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics,” in Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 8-37.

272 Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 13. 568 After Gadamer’s discussion of tradition, authority, and the classics, Jeanrond expected Gadamer to elaborate on the criteria for distinguishing illegitimate from legitimate prejudices, but found this important treatment continually postponed. By the end of the section on the rehabilitation of prejudice, Jeanrond observed:

And again Gadamer emphasises the fact that the understanding person himself is not in the position, of himself, “to separate in advance the productive prejudices that make understanding possible from the prejudices that hinder understanding and lead to misunderstandings.” This distinction must take place in understanding itself. Hence, Gadamer again postpones the information about the manner in which he conceives of the critical distinction between productive and destructive prejudices. He proceeds, rather, at present to discuss the importance of the temporal distance which separates the interpreter of a text from the situation in which the text was produced.273

Jeanrond hoped that Gadamer would provide criteria to distinguish productive prejudices from unproductive ones; instead he felt that Gadamer engaged in a circular argument. According to Jeanrond, Gadamer saw the completion of the process of historical understanding as evidence that a successful distinction between productive and unproductive prejudices had been made.

For Jeanrond,

Gadamer elevates, finally, the temporal distance to the status of the critical norm which contributes to the possibility of “filtering” the true prejudices from the false ones, which lead to misunderstandings. He thus transfers the responsibility for successful understanding onto the unending process [of Wirkungsgeschichte].… Accordingly, his description of what happens in understanding rests from the very beginning on the vague reference to the ongoing process of understanding itself and not on a basis which would stand up to criticism. Understanding, as a moving into the process mediated by tradition and its authority, is then reduced to adherence to a movement which promises to filter itself, without saying in what exactly this sieve consists.274

273 Ibid., 14, quoting TM, 295.

274 Jeanrond, Text and Interpretation, 15. 569 Accordingly Jeanrond found Gadamer’s emphasis on the process of historical

understanding to be tantamount to an assertion that there was, on the one hand, no way to

determine productive from unproductive prejudices beforehand, and, on the other hand, no need

to do so afterward, because understanding had been achieved. Thus the critical question of how

to root out adverse prejudices had been bypassed entirely. Jeanrond believed that Gadamer’s

phenomenology of understanding was inattentive to the routine and fundamental fact of “how

misunderstandings can occur and why texts, in spite of everything, evidently never cease to be

subject to wrong interpretations.”275 Jeanrond concluded:

Gadamer’s concept of understanding is based on the belief that understanding, generally speaking, is successful and that we who wish to understand require only to be appropriately open to understanding, so that it can happen to us. This optimistic conception has elicited a lot of criticism.276

Jeanrond then introduced Jürgen Habermas’ criticisms of Gadamer which appeared

during a series of essays exchanged between 1967 to 1971—starting with Habermas’ review of

Wahrheit und Methode.277 Jeanrond endorsed two of Habermas’ criticisms of Gadamer. The

first focused on the phenomenon of “pseudo-communication,” where both parties believe they

understand each other until a third party makes it plain to them that their perceived mutual

understanding was mistaken.278 Habermas’ second critique involved the Marxist concept of

275 Ibid., 16.

276 Ibid., 22.

277 For an account of this debate, see Karl-Otto Apel, ed., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971).

278 While pseudo-communication commonly occurs in translating from one language to another, it also occurs among speakers of the same language; for example, real estate transactions often include a lawyer at the closing to ensure that both buyers and sellers understand the terms of the contract in the same way. 570 ideology. How could Gadamer’s hermeneutics prevent systemic distortion of a reader’s

understanding, such as might occur under the influence of ideology? Even though Habermas’

approach, rooted in the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, suspected Gadamer of sheltering

politically conservative bourgeois class interests under the mantle of tradition, one must concede

that prejudices sometimes shelter noxious biases and, if they fail to critique themselves, they can

have damaging effects. Thus the need to distinguish productive from unproductive prejudices is intertwined with the need for a standard of truth in philosophical hermeneutics, both of which

Habermas argued were insufficiently addressed by Gadamer.

In response to the criticisms of Barnes and Rothbard, first it should be noted that

Gadamer’s approach was phenomenological and his work was philosophically related to Kant and Heidegger and so there was a heavy emphasis on the dynamics of the thinking subject and not merely on the object to be understood. Yet Gadamer’s emphasis on the role of the subject in hermeneutics must not be equated with the position that all truth is ultimately subjective, in the sense of all opinions being equally valid.

Second, while Gadamer’s notion of Wirkungsgeschichte implies that the meaning of a text to a particular reader can change significantly from age to age and from place to place, depending on a reader’s horizon, this does not mean that the sense of a text is arbitrary or malleable. Rather, what gives rise to the fact that different readers can take away different meanings from the text was Gadamer’s view of the plenitude of meaning endowing a text when it is transformed into structure (a plenitude which exceeds an author’s conscious intent).

Gadamer employed the term “structure” to emphasize the free-standing objectivity of a text now independent from its author. Accordingly, while Gadamer claimed that the meaning of a text can grow, change, and even differ from age to age, he never said that the meaning of a text can 571 contradict itself over time. At worst, two readers with very different horizons—presuming neither are wrong about the meaning of the text—might have partial understandings which seem irreconcilable.

Third, Gadamer never asserted that readers never come to understand “the text itself.”

His protestation about terms such as “objectivity” and “the text itself” were his safeguards against “objectivism,” i.e., treating intellectual objects of human history in the same way that empirical science treat physical objects of nature. This erroneous methodological presumption was unacceptable to Gadamer because, by failing to understand the kind of object a text is, methods are adopted to read the text which do not reach the text itself. For Gadamer, hermeneutics is precisely about reaching the “objective meaning of the text,” provided that readers have a correct assessment of the terms “objective,” “meaning” and “text.” None of these terms are self-evident, and all of them have been the subject of legitimate debate over the past three centuries.279

Fourth, Gadamer did not deny the importance of understanding what a text meant for its original author and his audience. Gadamer avoided the trap of locking the genuine meaning of the text in an author’s (relatively inaccessible) psychology, yet he affirmed that understanding the original meaning of a text (as expressed in the text, not what an author thought he expressed

279 Some of the criticisms of Gadamer by thinkers within the analytic school of philosophy stem from the abstruse terminology employed by continental philosophers; in this instance, the problem is multiple senses of “objective.” At other times, Gadamer’s use of Heidegger’s terminology has provoked puzzled consternation (e.g., Barnes’ review). Perhaps all concerned could benefit from Fredrich Nietzsche’s aphorism: “Tief sein und tief scheinen. Wer sich tief weiss, bemüht sich um Klarheit; wer der Menge tief scheinen möchte, bemüht sich um Dunkleheit” (Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Neue Aufgabe [Leipzig: E. W. Fritzsch, 1887], 176, aphorism 173).

572 in the text), is the first step in understanding the Wirkungsgeschichte of the text. Gadamer thought that stopping at this first step of understanding, as a principle of “objective interpretation,” is to misconstrue the point of interpretation: mediating between past and present.

To stop short of applying a text to its present-day readers is to fail to appropriate its meaning fully. To fail to trace how the meaning of a text has been passed down to a reader’s own situation is to fail to appraise critically how well a reader did in his reconstruction of the original

meaning of a text, since both the data of the original milieu and the interpreter’s presuppositions

about it come through the same tradition which mediates a text to a reader. Gadamer’s concept

of Wirkungsgeschichte not only provides an accurate view of how meaning comes to readers

through history, but provides a more critical framework (because of the need to foreground

prejudices and fuse horizons) than naïve objectivity.

These four points, which especially apply to the criticisms of Barnes and Rothbard, are

also foundational to the following points which apply to Jeanrond’s critique. Fifth, Gadamer’s

critiques of the inadequacy of various methods of interpretation indicate his concern for truth in

hermeneutics. His critiques of “methodologism” implied that some social scientists and

historians have a false understanding of interpretation. Accordingly, against Jeanrond’s concern

that Gadamer has no standard for truth, one should note that Gadamer clearly saw the need for a

standard of truth beyond method.280 The “absolute priority of the question,” for Gadamer, and his insistence on the need to foreground one’s own viewpoint (horizon), means that all attempts at “methodological understanding” must critique themselves. In his critique of Enlightenment

280 “Truth Beyond Method” might be a better title for Gadamer’s book, since it surpasses all debates whether the conjunction in the title should have been “and” or “or” while capturing Gadamer’s concern for truth both in methodical understanding and above it. 573 hermeneutics, Gadamer noted that just because an interpretation has a methodological justification doesn’t mean that it is correct, since the method may not be correct. Methodological interpretation is always limited. Gadamer was concerned not only to avoid erroneous interpretations but also partial ones. As Palmer observed: “Method involves a specific kind of questioning which lays open one side of a thing,” i.e., the truths elucidated are typically correlated to the methods employed, which is a narrower field of inquiry than the unlimited scope of “dialectical hermeneutics” which “opens itself to be questioned by the being of the thing, so that the thing encountered can disclose itself in being.”281 For Gadamer, there is no method for adjudicating the correctness of methods. Such can only happen in the meta- methodological arena of philosophical hermeneutics.

One might argue, on the side of Jeanrond, that even though Gadamer believed that there must be a standard for truth in interpretation, he did not provide it in Wahrheit und Methode.

However, Gadamer often made two points in self-defense. First, in order for his phenomenology of understanding to remain sufficiently general, his description of coming to understanding was consequently rather broad. He had no intention of prescribing particular norms for interpreters in various fields (e.g., art criticism, Old Testament studies, etc.). Rather, he expected his discussion of hermeneutics as a universal science to remain general enough to be adoptable by any field of interpretation. Thus Gadamer expected particular fields to provide concrete norms for the separation of productive from unproductive prejudices. Second, Gadamer’s wariness of overdependence on methodical standards of assessing truth also emphasized the inalienable role of philosophical dialectic in assessing the truth of an interpretation. Some questions of truth in

281 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 166. 574 interpretation can only be solved through philosophical consideration rather than by the special norms of a subordinated discipline. Philosophical hermeneutics thus occupies a medial position, between philosophy and the particular disciplines which adopt its norms. Part of the open- endedness of the norms of philosophical hermeneutics thus stems from Gadamer’s wish to avoid, on the one hand, philosophical hermeneutics usurping the proper function of the individual fields it serves, and on the other hand, a humble recognition that no matter how universal hermeneutics had become, it is still not synonymous with philosophy. Some questions that hermeneutics raises can only be adjudicated in the superior domain of philosophy itself.282

In response to the critique of Habermas, Hilberath posited his own formal criterion for distinguishing productive prejudices from the more negative types of prejudice which frequently provoke the most concern: bigotry, fundamentalism, ideology, fanaticism, and so forth. While

Gadamer did not articulate this criterion in his own words, Hilberath believed it to be a faithful synthesis of the principles of Wahrheit und Methode:

282 An analogy may be made between the medial place of the philosophy of science between philosophy and particular natural sciences where empirical research is conducted, and the medial place of philosophical hermeneutics between philosophy and particular sciences where interpretation is conducted. Just as the philosophy of science treats of very general norms for the testing and successful induction of natural laws, but does not, for example, discuss appropriate research methodology in a laboratory, so too, philosophical hermeneutics proposes general norms, which, if abandoned, invalidate the interpretive act, yet these norms are not so specific as to legislate what are productive versus non-productive prejudices in a particular field. In addition, in conducting research, sometimes a question arises which becomes genuinely philosophical and can only be resolved through philosophical consideration. For example, the wave-particle duality provoked a fundamental reconsideration of the notions of substance and causality in quantum mechanics. So too, some questions of interpretation might arise which can only be assessed philosophically, for example, how to interpret a text which claims to be God’s word? Such a task might call for a re-examination and modification of the norms of philosophical hermeneutics, and as such, is a matter of philosophy per se.

575 [Ich] möchte … noch einmal klarstellen, daß jedes Vorurteil eine positive und eine negative Seite hat; ‘produktive’ oder ‘legitime’ Vorurteile nenne ich dann die, bei denen die ‘Geschlossenheit’ zugleich eine Offenheit für neue Erfahrungen einschließt. Je nach Grad der Offenheit bzw. Geschlossenheit bestimmt sich die Produktivität eines Vorurteils.283

Such a standard, however, does not by itself safeguard against the more benign and more common phenomenon of unintentional misunderstanding. One can be open-minded and enthusiastic, and develop an interpretation at great length and still be mistaken. For this reason,

Jeanrond typified Gadamer’s phenomenology of understanding as overly optimistic.

4. Gadamer, Faith and The Divine Transcendent

In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer made several statements which relate to faith:

Walter Lammi has recently appraised Gadamer’s approach to religious faith in Gadamer’s later works:

Finitude is the mantra of philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer has gone so far as to describe his life's work as developing the hermeneutical implications of the insight into ineluctable finitude that he shares with Heidegger. One notes Heidegger's warning against such facile dualisms as "finite" and "infinite," and Gadamer points out that the term “finite” presupposes its opposite, which he describes as “transcendence, or history or (in another way) nature.” But he goes on to insist that we must guard against all “dialectical supplementation” of experience, whereby we think that to see the limits of the finite is to gain insight

283 Hilberath, 202.

284 TM, xxxvi. 576 beyond those limits. Philosophy can show us the borders of the finite but cannot transgress them.285

In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer explicitly rejected the Enlightenment’s categorical

denial of tradition, authority and faith in the name of reason. In his appraisal, post-modern

hermeneutics must move beyond the Enlightenment’s closed-world atheism and its “dogmatic”

prejudice against even the possibility of faith as an offense to reason. He also noted that the

Enlightenment urge to critique everything which came from the Medieval period

does not necessarily mean that the “prejudice against prejudices” was everywhere taken to the extremes of free thinking and atheism, as in England and France. On the contrary, the German Enlightenment recognized the “true prejudices” of the Christian religion.286

In calling the prejudices of the Christian religion, “true,” Gadamer indicated that, as provisional

starting points for interpretation, these prejudices should not be immediately discarded as non-

productive. They may prove insightful. As a result, Gadamer’s theoretical agnosticism never

turned into practical anti-theism, as sometimes happens with philosophical agnostics. Yet

Gadamer also affirmed: “True prejudices must still be justified by rational knowledge, even

though the task cannot be fully completed.”287

The basis for an even partial justification of Christian premises is severely limited in

Gadamer’s philosophy by his adherence to Kantian limitations. As Lammi noted, Gadamer shared Heidegger’s rejection of the “onto-theological” turn in Western metaphysics. Like

285 Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 81. The first statement is from Gadamer, “Text und Interpretation” (GW 2:357); the point which follows, concerning transcendence, is from Gadamer, “Die phänomenologische Bewegung” (GW 3:141).

286 TM, 272-273.

287 TM, 273. As noted, Gadamer believed such a justification of theism had never been given by philosophy.

577 Heidegger, he believed that, as a result of the union of Hellenistic thought and Christian revelation, Western metaphysics of the Patristic and Medieval eras was imbued with an intrinsically theological character. In this regard, Lammi wrote:

Since Gadamer sees the error of metaphysics as the assumption of divine perspective, he approaches ontology not in traditional metaphysical terms, but by way of phenomenology.288

As a result, Lammi also noted:

[The] centrality of the question of the divine to philosophical hermeneutics is best approached with its own kind of via negativa. Clearly it does not mean that the divine provides some sort of hermeneutical "ground" or foundation, like the role of God in dogmatic religion or metaphysics.289

Even though Gadamer is antifoundationalist in his rejection of the Western tradition of realist metaphysics, he still views the Western metaphysical tradition as insightful, as we have just seen in Gadamer’s analysis of Cusa’s thought on the Incarnation of the Word. Realist metaphysics would thus also be classed as a productive prejudice in Gadamer’s thought, even though it is not ultimately ratified as a philosophically tenable system.290

For Gadamer, if there is a place for the manifestation of God in human experience, it will

be wholly in the inner life of man, rather than through metaphysics or supernatural revelation in

history. In this conclusion, he shared a conviction with post-Kantian liberal Protestantism. Just

as Schleiermacher attempted to rehabilitate Christianity for post-Kantian Europe by re-

conceiving religious experience by analogy to aesthetic experience and just as he described

288 Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 67.

289 Ibid., 7.

290 Lammi remarked that the examination of the concept of the infinite in philosophical hermeneutics “puts Gadamer into a more respectful dialogue with metaphysics than is common in our post-Heideggerian age” (Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 7). 578 sacramental communion by analogy to communal participation in the experience of art, so too

Gadamer in his later works explored the connection of the contemplative experience of art, the

performance of drama, and ancient Greek cultic practices to “the experience of the divine.”291

Gadamer’s restriction of religious experience to the domain of human interiority was not

subjectivism. Although he approached the nature of the human person phenomenologically, his

approach can still be classified as a limited (post-Kantian) realism. In discussing the human

person, he consistently employed the term “ontology” to describe what appears in his

phenomenological analysis of the thinking subject. Precisely because he rejected blank-slate,

purely passive pre-critical epistemology, and instead developed, on the basis of critical self-

reflection, a rich description of the structure of human consciousness, and a corresponding

ontology of meaning as mediated through history, he was able to assert the findings of his

phenomenological investigation as real, albeit within the confines of human interiority.

Casarella has located Gadamer’s phenomenology of understanding, as guided by Cusa, under the

rubric of human self-formation:

Innerhalb seines Epilogs [zu Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus- Gesellschaft] aus dem Jahre 1975 finden wir aber eine specifische Kennzeichnung seines Sach-Interesses an der cusanischen Denkform, und zwar die bleibende Relevanz der Gottesfrage als solcher innerhalb einer stets dialogischen Offenheit zur Welt. Diese Offenheit betrifft das Phänomen des Verstehens. Gadamers Behandlung der menschlichen Selbstgestaltung muß also im Lichte des hermeneutischen Ereignisses des Verstehens analysiert werden.292

The self-structuring activity of the human mind, while an interior dynamic, is certainly real.

Gadamer’s transcendental deduction of the Infinite as the ultimate horizon of the human mind’s

291 Cf. Lammi, “Art, Religious Experience, Philosophy” in Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 80-96.

292 Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen,” 40. 579 quest for understanding is therefore a constitutive element of what it means to be human.293

Gadamer stated as much when he affirmed:

Christology prepares the way for a new philosophy of man, which mediates in a new way between the mind of man and its finitude and the divine infinity. Here what we have called the hermeneutical experience finds its own, special ground.294

Even though Gadamer did not affirm the tenets of Christology, Casarella stated that

Gadamer’s phenomenological deduction of the transcendental divine horizon to human understanding was intended as a safeguard against ersatz Absolutes filling the lacuna left by the absence of God in post-Kantian philosophy:

Die hermeneutische Offenheit zur Welt, wie Gadamer sie entwickelte, enthält keine Theologie der Gotteskindschaft. Gadamer hat aber den christlichen Inkarnationsgedanken als eine richtige theologische Lehre sehr ernst genommen. Er wollte dabei die Hegelsche Aufhebung der christliche Vorstellungen in eine absolute Philosophie zum Teil vermeiden. Am Ende aber interessiert Gadamer sich für die Christologie nur indirekt. Die Christologie hat einen neuen Horizont für die Interpretation eröffnet. Die Offenheit zur Tranzendenz bleibt allerdings innerhalb der hermeneutischen Offenheit möglich und legitimiert sogar den Vorrang der Frage, den Gadamer behauptet und verteidigt.295

293 Gadamer’s approach, as interpreted by Casarella, bears some resemblance to the ethical phenomenology of Karol Wojtyla at the end of his Lublin period, when he became convinced that “phenomenology, properly modified, can help us to explore the inner region of human experience … [and free modern man from] ‘the secularization of interiority.’ But these techniques must first be purged of their idealism and subjectivism and be brought into harmony with a realist metaphysics” (Kenneth Schmitz, At the Center of the Human Drama [Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993], 37). Wojtyla did so by focusing on the self-structuring activity of the ethical subject as a way to introduce concepts of cause and effect, act and telos, and ultimately a summum bonum into an interior description of man, thus demonstrating a certain parallelism to a Thomistic metaphysical approach to the acting person, without abandoning the phenomenological perspective.

294 TM, 428.

295 Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen,” 46-47. 580 Thus, in a more profound way, Gadamer retained a place for the possibility of Christian faith

against the encroachments of German Idealism, without in any way endorsing that faith.296

Lammi examined Gadamer’s later work and concluded that “the divine” functions indirectly as a limit concept on many aspects of Gadamer’s hermeneutical anthropology:

There is clear evidence for Gadamer’s recognition of the importance of the question of the divine in his observation that the “true nature of humanity consists in the comparison to the divine.” This implies both commonality and contrast. This answer requires us to delve into the ineluctable finitude of human being.… We can only understand finite humanity in comparison with the presumably infinite divine.… In his studies of the question of death, Gadamer argues that we are always thrown back upon the experience of life. This, I believe, is a key to the question of the divine no less than to historicity.297

For Gadamer, there are several “transcendentals,” all of which circumscribe the horizon of

human knowing: the divine transcendent, but also “history or (in another way) nature.” Each of

these can only be approached indirectly as the condition of the possibility of the finite human

process of understanding for Gadamer.298

296 Lammi viewed Gadamer as rejecting the allure of “German Idealism … [which] famously appealed to such supplementation against Kant” using the concept of the Absolute which can be grasped by Hegelian Vernunft (Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 80).

297 Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 6. The quotation is from Gadamer, “Freundshaft und Selbsterkenntnis: Zur Rolle der Freundshaft in der greichischen Ethik” (GW 7:405); the second statement is paraphrased from Gadamer, “Vom geistigen Lauf des Menschen” (GW 9:84).

298 Gadamer’s attempt to describe extra-mental natures indirectly as “what comes to speech” can be seen at the end of Wahrheit und Methode: “The speculative mode of being of language has a universal ontological significance. To be sure, what comes into language is something different from the spoken word itself. But the word is a word only because of what comes into language in it. Its own physical being exists only in order to disappear into what is said. Likewise, that which comes into language is not something that is pregiven before language; rather, the word gives it its own determinateness” (TM, 475). 581 Casarella has proposed that Gadamer’s concept of the divine transcendent could provide

an eschatological dimension to philosophical hermeneutics, but, owing to Gadamer’s

subscription to Heidegger’s rejection of the onto-theological turn in Western metaphysics, this

notion of eschatology cannot be squared with traditional Christian eschatology:

Diese auch von der heideggerianischen Kritik an der ontotheologischen Verfassung der abendländischen Metaphysik bestimmte Hermeneutik führt zu einer zeitlichen Erfahrung des Menschen, die mit der christlichen Eschatologie nicht völlig vereinbar ist. Die meistens innerweltliche Dimension der hermeneutischen Aufgabe könnte zu einer Begrenzung der Erfahrung führen, wenn man von einem unendlichen Streben des Menschen nach Gott in die Zukunft ausgeht. Christliche Theologen könnten aufgrund dessen also die Frage stellen, ob die Hermeneutik ihre eigene innerweltliche Eschatologie bräuchte.299

5. Challenges and Prospects for Theological Integration

The concluding chapter of Hilberath’s Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik was dedicated to “Die Fundamentaltheologische Relevanz von ‘Wahrheit und Methode,’” and included “Acht Leitsätze für den Dialog zwischen Theologie und philosophischer Hermeneutik,” drawing on the work of Karl Lehmann.300 These eight guidelines provide a helpful encapsulation of some key concerns for bringing the thought of Gadamer into dialogue with the theological hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac.

299 Casarella, “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen,” 47.

300 Karl Lehmann, “Hermeneutik” in Herders Theologisches Taschenlexikon, edited by Karl Rahner (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1973), 3:286. 582 The first and simplest guideline stated that theologians who wish to employ the insights of philosophical hermeneutics must remain current with the state of the field.301

According to the second guideline, theologians who employ phenomenological hermeneutics cannot indefinitely postpone a confrontation with the question of whether post-

Kantian metaphysics is correct. Biblical revelation, Sacred Tradition, and historical theology all assert the existence and intelligibility of realities which Kant denied: the existence of a Supreme

Being, who is the Creator of the world and the destiny of human history; the reality of the immaterial soul and its afterlife; a supernatural order and divine vocation of man: miracles and divine revelation in history, etc. Whether one can meaningfully discuss these claims and assess their truth or whether they must be considered as untenable assertions, demythologized, or redefined according to the dictates of critical reason,302 is a decisive judgment which affects the entirety of one’s theology.303 According to Hilberath,

Die Krise der Metaphysik läßt sich nicht durch den Rückzug auf Hermeneutik lösen. Hermeneutik als einzige universale Ontologie ist derzeit noch eine Aporie oder schlechtes Surrogat für Metaphysik.304

Thus, theologians who assume a post-Kantian epistemology and metaphysics must end up treating Christian revelation as an historicist would:

301 “Jeder Gebrauch des Begriffs ‘Hermeneutik’ darf nicht hinter die gegenwärtige Problematik der philosophischen Hermeneutik zurückfallen, sondern muß sich mit den darin liegenden Fragen kritisch auseinandersetzen” (Hilberath, 235; emphasis in original).

302 As Kant did in Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft.

303 “Wenn die theologische Rede an einem ‘Ansichsein’ festhalten muß, das die universale geschichtliche Bewegung und Bedingtheit wechselnder Weltverständnisse einschränkt, zusammenhält und übertrifft, dann kann sie nicht unbedenklich die in der modernen Hermeneutik anerkannte Basis der nachkantischen Ontologie übernehmen” (Hilberath, 235; emphasis in original).

304 Hilberath, 235. 583 Wenn Hermeneutik frühere Weltverständnisse nur erinnert—und geschehe dies noch so sachbezogen und werbend—, dann kann sie den absoluten Anspruch des Christentums an die wirkliche Gegenwart kaum vermitteln und bleibt einer retrospektiven, nur theoretischen und schließlich historischen Geschichtsauffassung verhaftet, die wichtige Erkenntnisse und Aufgaben heutiger Philosophie und Theologie übersieht (Apologetik) und so den universalen Anspruch verliert.305

Such an historicist view of the historical claims of Christianity cannot claim to be an authentic continuation of the Christian theological tradition which originally made these truth claims absolutely. The critical question for the integration of philosophical hermeneutics and theology then becomes: are the premises of a philosophical hermeneutics that has been developed in a post-Kantian milieu compatible with the metaphysical worldview of Patristic and Medieval theology?

Gadamer tried to frame his hermeneutics so as not to violate the requirements of post-

Kantian philosophy, while simultaneously seeking to eliminate any irreconcilable conflict with the tradition of Western metaphysics and theism:

This [phenomenological] kind of hermeneutics need not lead to the radical critique of religion that we have found, for example, in Spinoza. Rather, the possibility of supernatural truth can remain entirely open.306

If Gadamer has been successful in bracketing metaphysical commitments, rather than denying them, perhaps his hermeneutics could be translated into a Scholastic framework.

305 Hilberath, 235; emphasis in original.

306 TM, 278. Gadamer noted that, unlike the more radical French, in Germany during the Enlightenment, the intellectual vanguards tended toward secularization, but “[in] popular philosophy, the Enlightenment limited the claims of reason and acknowledged the authority of the Bible and the church” (Ibid). Gadamer stated that this was a better model for the integration of the Enlightenment’s critical turn to the subject and religion. 584 The third guideline also concerns how an interpreter’s metaphysical commitments impact

biblical interpretation:

Die Deutung der biblischen Texte allein als Ausdruck menschlichen Daseinsverständnisses bei einer hermeneutischen Abblendung der Aussagen über Gott, Welt und Geschichte … bedeutet eine illegitime anthropologische Engführung des biblischen ‘Vorverständnisses’ und auch des ursprünglich von Heidegger mit ‘Dasein’ Gemeinten (existentiale Interpretation).307

Biblical discourse cannot be authentically interpreted if the hermeneutics used to interpret it

denies Christian supernatural concepts in favor of human categories more amenable to an

Enlightenment anthropology. If theologians wish to receive the meaning of the text in the same

sense as it has had in the Christian tradition, they cannot put the meaning of the biblical text in

historicist brackets, or attenuate its meaning according to an Kantian filter.

The fourth guideline also warns against denying the specifically theological categories of

biblical interpretation in favor of the generic anthropological categories of universal

hermeneutics:

Hermeneutik darf nicht zugunsten (begrenzter) formaler Kategorien (‘Entscheidung,’ ‘Mitteilung,’ ‘Sprachereignis,’ ‘Wortgeschehen,’ usw.) die gehaltlichen Aussagen der christlichen Botschaft abdrängen.308

The fifth guideline summarizes the positive prospects of Gadamer’s retrieval of the

concepts of tradition and authority for Catholic theological hermeneutics, since these concepts have a central role in Catholic fundamental theology.309

307 Hilberath, 236.

308 Hilberath, 236.

309 “Hermeneutik kann eine intellektuell verantwortbare Rehabilitierung kirchlicher Tradition und Autorität als notwendiger Funktionselemente des Glaubensdenkens veranlassen, wobei beständige Bewußtmachung des Überliefertem 585 The sixth guideline indicates the critical role that a theology of history has in

interpretation:

Innerhalb einer theologischen Hermeneutik muß ‘Tradition’ als umgreifender hermeneutischer Horizont eine konkrete geschichtliche Bestimmung mit allen konstituierenden Momenten finden.310

For Gadamer, world history remained “the great dark book,” a collected work of the human spirit

with no certain teleology. Absent such, it is impossible to provide the encompassing

hermeneutical horizon Christianity needs to make sense of the events which comprise the history

of divine revelation. At the same time, Gadamer’s philosophy of history resisted the temptation to provide an ersatz teleology for the role once played by Christian eschatology. Gadamer rejected the utopian Enlightenment narrative of history as the triumph of reason over superstition and ignorance; he denied its Romantic inversion that idolized the past; and he also rejected historism’s attempt to deny the importance of the teleology of history by its relativistic attitude toward the meaning and values of each age.

The seventh guideline stipulates that philosophical hermeneutics should assist theology in relating to the humanities and natural sciences, while respecting each discipline’s area of competence.311

und freie Anerkennung der Autorität notwendige Voraussetzungen der ‘dogmatischen’ Denkweise sind” (Hilberath, 236).

310 Hilberath, 236.

311 “Beim unerläßlichen Festhalten methodischer Arbeitsweisen innerhalb der theologischen Einzelwissenschaften vermag Hermeneutik zu zeigen, was allem verstehenden Verhalten der Subjektivität (auch dem methodischen der Wissenschaft!) vorausliegt, von ihm ‘ausgelassen’ und ‘abgeblendet’ wird: Der ursprüngliche Wahrheitsanspruch des Evangeliums und das originär erfahrene Glaubensverständnis dürfen nicht total wissenschaftlich verfremdet, sondern müssen methodisch artikuliert werden. Hermeneutik erschöpft sich nicht in der wissenschaftsimmanenten Funktion der bisherigen theologischen Disziplinen” (Hilberath, 236). 586 The eighth guideline, like the second and third, was concerned with whether

contemporary hermeneutics provides an adequate vehicle for expressing supernatural realities, such as sacramental rituals, miracles, and the events of divine revelation.312 Here too, Gadamer

was explicitly attentive to this theological need in biblical exegesis and its kerygmatic

continuation in the Church. In analyzing the “unity of the divine Word,” he saw the divine

Word’s plenitude as incapable of being exhausted by human words;313 rather, its plenitude

requires it to be proclaimed ever anew in the Church as a saving event:

It is true that the divine Word is one unique word that came into the world in the form of the Redeemer; but insofar as it remains an event … there is an essential connection between the unity of the divine Word and its appearance in the church. The proclamation of salvation, the content of the Christian gospel, is itself an event that takes place in sacrament and preaching, and yet it expresses only what took place in Christ’s redemptive act.314

Gadamer once remarked that “the gospel does not exist in order to be understood as a merely

historical document, but to be taken in such a way that it exercises it saving effect.”315

Accordingly, philosophical hermeneutics should be structured so as to be able to describe the

312 “Die Universalität des hermeneutischen Problems einmal zugegeben, bleibt doch die Frage, ob die gegenwärtige Hermeneutik den wirklich universal gültigen Boden jeglichen Seinsverständnisses (einschließlich des Handelns und der religiösen Wirklichkeit) abgibt und ob die Sprache als universales hermeneutisches Medium alles verstehen läßt, was wirklich verstanden werden kann; theologisch unerläßliche Stichproben: sakramentale Strukturen, Wunder, Überholen des Wortes durch das Geschehen, Endgültigkeit der Wahrheit, um die es in der Theologie geht.”

313 After describing the relationship between the one divine Word and the many conventional words and limited concepts used to express it, Gadamer stated: “the unity of the divine Word and the multiplicity of human words does not exhaust the matter” (TM, 427).

314 TM, 427.

315 TM, 309. 587 anamnetic character of the proclamation of the Word of God, which has a sacramental force in its continuation in preaching and its ritual celebration in the sacraments.

6. Conclusion

In Wahrheit und Methode, Gadamer presented his understanding of: his phenomenology of play; its evolution into social conventions for the expression of meaning; his phenomenology of aesthetic experience as an insight into the experience of meaning in the humanities; the manner in which works of art achieve “contemporaneity” with later generations; and his synthesis of these elements into a description of the elements of textual interpretation. In his concept of the transformation into structure, Gadamer emphasized the importance of the text, rather than the mind of the author as the basis of interpretation, as well as the role of authority, both personal and communal, in interpretation.

Gadamer situated his project within the history of post-Medieval hermeneutics, with a focus on the evolution of the function of the “hermeneutic circle” in interpretation from Luther to

Heidegger, and the changing roles of history, tradition, faith and critical reason in interpretation.

The Historical School of German historiography, as represented by Ranke, Droysen and Dilthey, assisted Gadamer in formulating how meaning in the humanities is created, transformed into structure, and mediated through history. Gadamer critiqued methodologism, which in his view arose from misbegotten attempts to derive a hermeneutic for the humanities based on the model of the natural sciences. Natural objects, he claimed, provide a poor model for the type of objects studied by the humanities. Accordingly, his historical review culminated in his concept of

Wirkungsgeschichte, as well as his description of interpretation as a “fusion of horizons” in order to describe the way human communicative works which have been “transformed into structure” 588 pass through history differently than natural objects and so demand a different manner of understanding.

As the last stage of his project, Gadamer adopted Heidegger’s use of the hermeneutic

circle, including the concepts of the projection of fore-meanings in the act of interpretation and the role of prejudices as a consequence of Dasein’s essentially historical character. Like

Heidegger, Gadamer rejected a view of understanding as a technical, manipulative process, which was prone to error because of the domineering role the subject is presumed to have in this view of interpretation. In his phenomenology of understanding, Gadamer emphasized receptivity in approaching a text, foregrounding one’s own prejudices in order to be sensitive to the “otherness” of the text, the role of temporal distance in promoting objectivity, and the fusion of horizons through which meaning is mediated into the present in the mind of the interpreter.

The act of interpretation, for Gadamer, is then the latest stage of the Wirkungsgeschichte of the

interpreted work, if an interpreter expresses his interpretation in a work of his own. Thus,

applicatio appeared as an intrinsic element of interpretation, rather than a derivative process to

be done after interpretation has finished. In the process of interpretation, Gadamer highlighted the role of authority and tradition.

In Gadamer’s view of language as the medium of understanding, he rejected instrumentalist semantic theories, in a way that allowed both for philosophical hermeneutics itself and its integration into other disciplines, particularly theology. Gadamer also argued for a

recognition of “the divine” in phenomenological hermeneutics. He deduced the “transcendent

divine” indirectly, as the condition for finite concepts and words to interrelate, change over time

and represent an unlimited field of potential meaning. In this regard, he was guided by the

Christian theology of the Trinity and Incarnation as expressed in Niceno-Constantinopolitan 589 orthodoxy and particularly by the works of Nicholas of Cusa. Nonetheless, some commentators have charged Gadamer’s hermeneutics with relativism and an inability to distinguish truth from error. Conclusion

A Comparison of the Hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer

The writings of both Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer have been of growing

interest in the field of biblical interpretation. A few scholars of de Lubac have suggested that his

theological hermeneutics might be fruitfully combined with the philosophical hermeneutics of

Gadamer. For example, Karl Neufeld, who co-prepared a comprehensive bibliography of de

Lubac’s writings, has used Gadamerian terminology to describe de Lubac’s approach to

historical interpretation. Neufeld’s review of La Postérité spirituelle in 1982, which bore the

title, “Wirkungsgeschichte Joachims von Fiore,”1 seems correct in characterizing La Postérité as

a study of the Wirkungsgeschichte of Joachim from the thirteenth century to modern times.

Marcellino D’Ambrosio’s doctoral dissertation, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the

Traditional Hermeneutic,” assessed how Gadamer’s concepts of Wirkungsgeschichte and the

fusion of horizons are appropriate descriptions of de Lubac’s method of historical investigation

and ressourcement.2 Although de Lubac never referred to Gadamer’s writings, nor is there any

evidence that de Lubac ever read Gadamer, D’Ambrosio described the surprising correspondence

of several elements of Gadamer’s hermeneutics with the approach de Lubac used in his retrieval of “the traditional hermeneutic” in Histoire et Esprit:

With regard to Gadamer’s description of authentically hermeneutical interpretation as a fusion of horizons, de Lubac’s study of ancient exegesis provides a remarkable example of the dialectical relationship between past and present that Gadamer seeks to describe by this metaphor. From the outset of his

1 Karl Neufeld, “Wirkungsgeschichte Joachims von Fiore,” Gregorianum 63, no. 2 (1982): 333-338.

2 Marcellino G. D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic” (Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1991), 325-327.

590 591 investigation, de Lubac does his best to project the horizon of Origen and the Fathers and bring out just how different this horizon is from our own. Yet from his very first writing on the subject, de Lubac never ceases seeking to appropriate the “classical” elements of traditional hermeneutical theory. These he is able to identify with the help of temporal distance as well as by means of the light provided by the historical consciousness which is the unique contribution of de Lubac’s own twentieth-century horizon. Yet de Lubac allows the ancient tradition to broaden a certain narrowness and myopia of the contemporary horizon as well.3

After highlighting the role of temporal distance, the fusion of horizons, application as an intrinsic

element of interpretation, and critical historical consciousness in any work of interpretation,

D’Ambrosio stated that de Lubac’s contribution to the contemporary debate concerning

Scriptural interpretation may best be described as “the formulation of a comprehensive horizon

broad enough to encompass the “classical” insights of both ancient and modern biblical

interpretation while leaving behind the unessential, ephemeral presuppositions of both.”4

Another impetus for comparing Gadamer and de Lubac came from the executor of de

Lubac’s archives, Georges Chantraine, who suggested that while de Lubac’s vast corpus might initially seem of interest mainly to scholars of historical theology, de Lubac’s own interest was postmodern. According to Chaintraine, the aim of Lubac’s historical studies was to engage the

Catholic faith in a dialogue with postmodernity in order to “search the past and present history for signs of the Spirit which leads history to Christ, giving him witness.”5 Insofar as Gadamer

3 Ibid., 326-327.

4 Ibid., 327.

5 Georges Chantraine, “Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity: The Thought of Henri de Lubac,” Communio 17 (Summer 1990): 210. Many of de Lubac’s works that concern post- Enlightenment questions about the Catholic faith have a hermeneutical character: Catholicisme, Histoire et Esprit, Le Drame de l’humanisme athée, Exégèse Médiévale, Le mystère du surnaturel, Pic de la Mirandole and La Postérité Spirituelle. 592 was a leading figure of postmodern hermeneutics with similar interests and hermeneutical approaches as de Lubac, the question arises whether a synthesis of their thought would be mutually enriching for those who want to engage postmodern currents in biblical interpretation, systematic theology or Christian history.

This concluding chapter compares the hermeneutics of de Lubac and Gadamer by identifying principles which they shared, by noting points of contrast, tension and difference, as well as by observing areas where their thought is complementary. As Chapter Two indicated, de

Lubac’s theological hermeneutics were expressed entirely in historical studies, rather than in any theoretical treatment, and his thought developed from his first essay in 1930, “Apologétique et

Théologie,” to his final work La Postérité Spirituelle in 1981. The major points of de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics that were identified in Chapter Two will be related to Gadamer’s hermeneutical principles that were analyzed in Chapter Three in regard to the themes of tradition, community and faith in both authors, as well as a fourth area of their “foundational principles”—insofar as both authors shared a common concern for describing: the way that ideas pass through history; the teleology of history; the need for hermeneutics to integrate the findings of the humanities and theology with those of modern science; and the divine aspects of the revelatory word.

1. “Apologétique et Théologie” (1930)

De Lubac’s inaugural essay on fundamental theology manifested his interest in a theological hermeneutics which could integrate theology with a modern, scientific worldview.

Gadamer similarly sought a universal hermeneutic that can integrate the natural and human sciences. De Lubac’s debut essay emphasized how such an integration could provide both the 593 sciences and theology with a better basis for addressing the “frontier problems” confronting

theology from other disciplines, such as cosmology, evolution, and human culture. Contrary to

the charges of his critics, de Lubac’s theological project of ressourcement in general and his

recovery of the traditional hermeneutics of Patristic and Medieval exegesis in particular, was a

project of theological synthesis, rather than a reactionary project of theological conservatism.6

De Lubac was concerned about aligning the advantages of modern critical exegesis with

traditional biblical hermeneutics. De Lubac’s “Apologétique et Théologie” and Histoire et

Esprit indicated how such an integration could enhance the dignity and relevance of a scientific

investigation of the natural and social world by placing these investigations within a theological

and philosophical framework which had been lost since the modern division of sciences as a

result of the Enlightenment.7 De Lubac believed that this approach was the only way to

overcome the “reactionary posture” of nineteenth century apologetics and biblical interpretation.

Gadamer sought a similar integration through a universal hermeneutics, rather than a theological framework. In Wahrheit und Methode, he sought to integrate literature, art, religious ritual, the humanities and the natural sciences, by overcoming their methodological separation that had occurred via the Enlightenment. Gadamer also sought to retrieve tradition in a way that denounced reactionary antiquarianism in favor of synthesis.

De Lubac was adamant that Catholic practitioners of these scientific disciplines should employ them with a critical rigor that satisfied their secular practitioners. In “Apologétique et

6 Gadamer was criticized by people like Habermas who alleged his project was conservative; but like de Lubac, Gadamer stressed that his aim was to bring the past and present into constructive, unbiased dialogue.

7 The many “Teilhardian metaphors” in Histoire et Esprit, which use images from the sciences to explicate points in theology, indicate de Lubac’s ongoing ambition on this front. 594 Théologie,” even in the midst of the modernist crisis, de Lubac endorsed the use of the historical-

critical method. Simultaneously, like Gadamer, de Lubac protested against the uncritical

adaption of methods derived from the natural sciences in a field where the object of investigation

was different from that of the natural sciences. Nothing was to be gained by a superficial

employment of these methods without a framework for their hermeneutical integration with

theology. Otherwise, contemporary theology merely garnered a “pseudoscientific allure,” which

caused “men of science simply to shrug their shoulders.”8 On this point, Gadamer concurred.

De Lubac’s lifelong concern to resist the separation of the natural and supernatural orders and his view that the truths of faith and reason are compatible but mutually irreducible led him to

assert in “Apologétique et Théologie” that faith makes a critical difference in the activity of

interpretation. Gadamer also saved a place for a faith-perspective in interpretation, but for

reasons different from those of de Lubac: Gadamer rejected the Enlightenment’s “prejudice

against faith.” De Lubac’s conviction that fundamental theology must engage intellectual

movements opposed to the involvement of faith in interpretation rested on philosophical and

theological grounds. For de Lubac, the truths of reason are drawn to the truths of faith, just as

the natural order is drawn to the supernatural as its end. One must not conceive of their

relationship as merely a détente between natural and supernatural, but as a fulfillment of the

former in the latter. Here the thought of de Lubac contrasted with that of Gadamer.

In “Apologétique et Théologie,” de Lubac asserted that theology grows from its

application to “frontier problems.” Only by integrating theology with the advances of other

8 AT, 94. 595 modern disciplines can theology remain “honest and alive.”9 Gadamer also asserted that

applicatio is a driving factor of a discipline’s development—as for example in preaching and

jurisprudence. For de Lubac, the ultimate goal is to demonstrate that “Catholicism is the true

religion because it alone brings the adequate response to the aspirations of humanity.”10 This point of de Lubac’s thought had no parallel in Gadamer.

In “Apologétique et Théologie,” de Lubac stated that “dogma reveals us to ourselves”;11

in Catholicisme, he stated that “Christ completes the revelation of man to himself,”12 and he

observed this dynamic at work in patristic biblical interpretation.13 In Gaudium et spes, which de

Lubac helped to draft, one finds the statement: “Christ … fully reveals man to himself.”14 This statement paralleled Gadamer’s more general observation that every act of understanding is also an act of self-understanding. De Lubac’s maxim that “truth and life are one, vita est lux,”15 also paralleled Gadamer’s conviction that all acts of interpretation must return to the total perspective of one’s “lifeworld” as the final step of understanding. De Lubac observed that the litmus test of theological success is evangelical effectiveness in engaging alternative perspectives, while spiritual sterility indicates failure. The theologian should therefore thoroughly understand the

9 AT, 97.

10 AT, 101.

11 AT, 99.

12 Catholicism, 339.

13 Catholicism, 206-216.

14 Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, § 22, in AAS 58 (1965): 1042.

15 AT, 96. 596 worldview or disciplines he addresses.16 Gadamer observed that productive discourse between

two disciplines or worldviews requires the fusion of horizons.

“Apologétique et Théologie” marked the beginning of de Lubac’s position that all

exegesis that wishes to be fully effective must end up in theology and that all theology that does

not wish to be deficient and distorted needs an exegetical foundation. Theology and exegesis

must be thoroughly integrated, just as theology and the findings of modern science must be

integrated. Since Gadamer did not treat the history of Catholic theology, only a general

comparison can be made: modern hermeneutics should be able to integrate the work of

specialists within a field. In theology, this would encompass the work of preachers, exegetes and

theologians, an aim which de Lubac indicated in “Apologétique et Théologie.”

2. Catholicisme (1938)

As Chapter Two indicated, de Lubac’s Catholicisme (1938) was a programmatic

expression of theological concerns which he subsequently elaborated. Key doctrinal themes

included his focus on the communal dimension of dogma; how Christianity alone asserts the

transcendent destiny of individual persons and their common historical destiny in God,17 the social dimension of the spiritual sense of allegory, and de Lubac’s desire to formulate “an

“integral humanism.” This integral humanism sought to combine the social theology outlined in

16 AT, 96-98.

17 Catholicism, 83. As indicated in Chapter Two, the social dimension of de Lubac’s anthropology began with the principle that man must be understood as a creature in relation to other men and to God. The human race’s destiny has an implicit intrinsic orientation to the Church, the body of Christ, which is the divinely appointed means whereby man fulfills his desire for God both individually and communally. 597 Catholicisme with modern humanism’s embrace of all forms of scientific, cultural and artistic progress. He described this humanism as “integral” because all its humanist pursuits are located within a hermeneutical framework based on a Catholic anthropology and theology of history, a framework which posits the human supernatural vocation as the basis for the solidarity of the human race and this solidarity as the goal of human history. De Lubac hoped that within such a framework the natural and human sciences could be integrated with metaphysics and religion and avoid the mutually detrimental oppositions between religion and science which plagued

Renaissance and secular humanism. These goals required a further development of the

“fundamental theology” which he sketched in “Apologétique et Théologie.”

Catholicisme indicated the first stage of de Lubac’s integration of the theology of history into his theological hermeneutics: “Henceforth the stages of history are important: they are in reality stages of an essentially collective salvation.”18 De Lubac’s fundamental theology in

Catholicisme also provided what may be called a “three-fold theistic perspective” which he retained in his later works. In this three-fold theistic perspective, man must be understood in relationship to society, to the natural world, and to God, who has created man within the natural and social orders and who alone gives full significance to each of them. This perspective served as the anthropological basis for de Lubac’s view of the ultimate compatibility of theology and science. By contrast, Gadamer declined to adopt any metaphysical standpoint, preferring to philosophize in a purely phenomenological mode. Gadamer affirmed the essential role of history in human development by arguing from phenomenological observations of the historicity of man’s being in time.

18 Catholicism, 148. 598 In Catholicisme, de Lubac’s theological anthropology opposed the effects of modern

Western atheism, which he saw as the fruit of the separation of faith and reason in both

Protestantism and recent Catholic thought. Accordingly, he rejected any hermeneutics which

opposed reason to faith as well as any biblical hermeneutics which denies the possibility of the

supernatural. His rejection of contemporary atheism went further than Gadamer’s agnosticism,

yet the two thinkers would agree that postmodern hermeneutics ought not to subscribe to the categorical prejudice of the Enlightenment against the supernatural; rather, it must allow for the

possibility of faith and the supernatural in interpretation. This conviction had direct

ramifications for de Lubac’s approach in Catholicisme to historical criticism, source criticism,

biblical historiography and a biblical theology of creation and covenant history. As a result, de

Lubac would have rejected purely immanentist approaches to interpreting divine revelation,

since these are based upon a denial of the natural knowledge of God and His supernatural

revelation in world history. Immanentism vitiates divine revelation of its historical character by

locating its sole manifestation in the interior experience of man. Here de Lubac and Gadamer

are irreconcilable, since the latter did not affirm natural knowledge of God or the existence of

extra-mental supernatural acts of divine revelation in history and instead endorsed Kant’s

conclusions from the Critique of Pure Reason.19

19 “I have recorded my acceptance of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of Pure Reason: I regard statements that proceed by wholly dialectical means from the finite to the infinite, from human experience to what exists in itself, from the temporal to the eternal, as doing no more than setting limits, and am convinced philosophy can derive no actual knowledge from them” (TM, xxxvi). 599 In both “Apologétique et Théologie” and Catholicisme, de Lubac stated that science

should lead men to religion and religion should lead men to a new devotion to science.20 He further stated that the Patristic view of reason and natural science can give contemporary theology the formal principles to reconcile theology with science, even though the Fathers could have never foreseen the depth of their application and the future scope of modern science.21 For de Lubac, as for Gadamer, the development of modern science and its impact on theology and the humanities must be understood as an intrinsically historical process, requiring a history and philosophy of science, and not merely a consideration of science’s methods and findings. For both thinkers, anyone who is committed to the history of human understanding must take account of such studies and seek a hermeneutic for integrating them.

Catholicisme contained de Lubac’s first treatment of the positive value of tradition and community in theological interpretation. For de Lubac, the full meaning of a concept is only grasped by a recovery of both the historical context of its origin and its subsequent influence on later generations. This approach entirely agreed with Gadamer’s hermeneutics, which also required understanding a concept within the original horizon of its genesis and through its

Wirkungsgeschichte. For both thinkers, to neglect the communal aspect of interpretation was to neglect the inherently social fabric of human rationality. For de Lubac, it also entailed a neglect of the collective aims of God’s providence for His creatures—a teleology Gadamer did not share.

20 AT, 97-87; Catholicism, 352-353.

21 Catholicism, 352. 600 De Lubac’s emphasis on understanding ideas diachronically directly resulted from two

principles: first, his hermeneutical consideration of the social fabric of truth and the historical nature of all human understanding; second, his fundamental theology rooted in theological anthropology. The first principle de Lubac shared with Gadamer; the second he did not. De

Lubac’s historical approach was succinctly expressed in Catholicisme:

For de Lubac, the communal and historical dimension of truth requires that theological

hermeneutics must be attentive to factors such as the progress of revelation, covenant history, the

development of doctrine, and the reception of doctrine through history. Going beyond Gadamer,

de Lubac stressed that the teleology of human history is the ultimate reason for hermeneutics to

be attentive not only to the history preceding supernatural revelation (such as how both natural human history and the Old Testament prepared for the Gospel), but also to the subsequent doctrinal development of that revelation, since such development also has a purpose in God’s providence. Accordingly, de Lubac transformed what he called “the uniquely Christian concept” of the teleology of human history into a distinctively Catholic notion of the teleology of theological tradition. While Gadamer did not include a theological dimension in his

hermeneutics of history, there were several similarities of approach: first, Gadamer’s notion of

Wirkungsgeschichte sought to synthesize the influence of a work’s antecedent influences, the

genius of an individual author, and the work’s reception, to form a complete understanding of the

text. In this respect, the approach of Gadamer and de Lubac were parallel. Second, Gadamer

22 Catholicism, 166; emphasis added. 601 developed his notion of Wirkungsgeschichte from his critiques of the Historist and Romantic

schools, as did de Lubac albeit far more briefly. Third, both thinkers spoke of a text as having a

teleology, yet in different ways: for Gadamer, the text has a “teleology without a telos”23 because no human interpreter knows the larger course of world history; for de Lubac, Catholic eschatology provides this framework.

On the first two points, Gadamer’s considerably more developed hermeneutical theory can fruitfully supplement the work of de Lubac, without any real modification of the latter, since the parallel between their thought rests on shared convictions about the historical nature of truth.

On the third point, there is some incompatibility: much of Gadamer’s hermeneutics—because of its phenomenological mode and self-conscious avoidance of rationalism—is open to theological adaptation. However, the result would no longer be purely Gadamerian, but a Catholic theological adaptation.

In Catholicisme, de Lubac explained how the communal dimension of truth should be always oriented toward the Church, which by divine design is the means for the recovery of the lost unity of the human race that was shattered by sin at the dawn of human history. The communal dimension of interpretation always has at least an implicit orientation toward ecclesial communion. Thus, communio is not merely one important theological point among many; rather, it is a genuine dimension of all theological hermeneutics: no matter what area of Catholic theology one considers, the notion of communion in the Mystical Body should always be present. If communio is absent, the theology ceases to be Catholic, since the very notion of

23 TM, 203. 602 Catholicity rests on the revelation of God’s desire to reunite all people in Christ.24 Accordingly,

de Lubac emphasized the social telos of reading Scripture: biblical exegesis should edify in both

senses of the word: it should inform and it should build up the Mystical Body of Christ. In

Catholicisme, de Lubac focused on the communal function of allegory in Patristic exegesis and

its role in creating communion among readers of Scripture. The communal function of allegory

was developed more in Catholicisme than in any of his other works.25 In contrast, Gadamer

never made ecclesial communion a constitutive aspect of his hermeneutics. Yet one can observe

a more generic parallel: Gadamer emphasized the social dimension of interpretation by observing

that mutual understanding of a text creates a communion of understanding among readers,

whether they are contemporaneous or separated by centuries.

De Lubac’s view of tradition in Catholicisme was unambiguously positive yet also

critical, similar to Gadamer’s view. In Catholicisme and Histoire, de Lubac was well aware of

the potential for distractions, distortions, and errors in theological tradition, since the free

cooperation of fallen men is an essential part of the process. De Lubac eschewed triumphalism

in his retrieval of the role of tradition in interpretation. While tradition must be critiqued,

studying a text through its Wirkungsgeschichte plays a constructive, not destructive, role in objectively appraising its meaning. To demonstrate this point, de Lubac began in Catholicisme what he would continue to provide at great length in Histoire and Exégèse Médiévale: example after example from Patristic and Medieval exegetes. In Catholicisme, he placed them side by

24 Catholicism, 49.

25 While communio is not absent from Histoire et Esprit and Exégèse Médiévale, in these books de Lubac highlighted more the communal function of tropology and anagogy, which receive considerably less attention in Catholicisme.

603 side with insights drawn from modern scholars. Like Gadamer, de Lubac saw a productive

hermeneutic circle at work in each generation’s reception of the biblical text, a reception drawing

out more and more aspects over time. The full meaning of the biblical text is only realized

through its reception. Recovering the original author’s horizon provides one set of key insights

into a text, while temporal distance brings others to light, while also revealing shortcomings and

errors.

The full depth of de Lubac’s hermeneutics of tradition had not yet taken shape in

Catholicisme. In fact, he demurred in both Catholicisme and Histoire from discussing at length

“the Catholic principle of Tradition.”26 As guidelines for a critical appraisal of the meaning of a

biblical text and its theological reception, he provided only the broad norms of the rule of faith,

the rule of charity, and adhering to statements of the Magisterium in Catholicisme. As a Catholic

theologian, he placed particular weight on Magisterial guidance regarding the text. For example,

the Christological definitions of the early councils, which were informed by biblical revelation,

provided dogmatic statements of how a text should be interpreted, but they can also become a

catalyst for further exploration of the genuine meaning of the biblical text. In Catholicisme, he provided these traditional norms for biblical interpretation with some new depth, insofar as he located them within his theology of history and his view of the communal dimension of interpretation with its intrinsic orientation toward the ecclesial communion of interpreters.

De Lubac also expressed his awareness of the need for a philosophical grounding for his hermeneutics of tradition which he could not find in Patristic theology:

26 In Catholicisme, de Lubac made the disclaimer: “Nor have I mentioned the Catholic principle of Tradition, the ‘constitutive thinking’ of Christianity, whose social nature is just as clear as that of its ‘constituted thinking,’ that is, of dogma: it would have raised a whole new series of problems which would have been beyond me.” Catholicism, 18. 604 [T]he theology of history which occupied so large a place in the Fathers’ thought never foundor was never provided withits essential groundwork, a more or less systematic philosophy of history; I mean a philosophy of history as such, a philosophy of humanity in time.27

In Histoire and Exégèse Médiévale, he made some additional contributions to this “philosophy of

humanity in time”; in this regard, Gadamer’s work could provide many more elements for a

suitable philosophical foundation of de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics.

In Catholicisme, de Lubac also began to articulate a key point for his theological

hermeneutics of the spiritual senses: how the spiritual senses of Scripture arise from the literal

sense, and are not separate from it or added to it. He described the process by which

interpretation proceeded to the spiritual sense of Scripture as a shift of interpretive approach

from interpreting “spiritual things historically” (pneumatika historikōs) to interpreting “historical things spiritually” (historika pneumatikōs). Interpreting spiritual things historically requires an

exegete to view the data of salvation history in its historical perspective. While this task of historical assessment might begin with the tools of historical criticism, a complete historical understanding ultimately entails interpreting these events within the three-fold theistic perspective mentioned above. The perspective of faith reveals that some of these historical events are the key for a correct thematizing of world history, which centers on the revelation of

Jesus Christ as God’s maximal self-disclosure in history.

This perspective then gives rise to a second level of consideration, where the same historical events are reconsidered spiritually, with clearer reference to their purpose in salvation history. Accordingly, the allegorical sense can be understood as a prolongation of the meaning of the literal sense, a later stage of its reception in light of the Christian mystery, which is itself

27 Catholicism, 308. 605 revealed in the literal sense.28 Thus, de Lubac sought to guard against any notion that the allegorical sense was in some way extrinsic to the literal sense of the text. His conceptualization of how the literal sense relates to the allegorical sense turns on two hermeneutical principles that are common to both de Lubac and to Gadamer. First, the meaning of the biblical text is larger than the meaning which the text may have had to its original audience or in the mind of its inspired human author. Second, the Wirkungsgeschichte of the biblical text is part of its genuine meaning. Both of these principles underlie de Lubac’s view of the “divine pedagogy” at work in a revelation, which is not only deployed progressively in stages, but intended to be understood subsequently in continued stages of reception throughout salvation history.

What emerges through temporal distance and the subsequent incorporation of the literal sense into the wider theological reflection upon its meaning is part of the meaning of the text itself. Thus allegory is exegesis, not eisegesis. This understanding of the divine pedagogy at work in the text drives de Lubac’s understanding of all the spiritual senses, although his focus was almost exclusively on allegory in Catholicisme. These same two principles guided de

Lubac’s understanding of how biblical exegesis becomes incorporated into dogmatic theology.

As a result, he believed that an authentic use of historical criticism was essential to the first phase of biblical exegesis (understanding spiritual things historically), but, unlike some practitioners of the historical-critical method, he did not oppose the later insights of dogmatic theology or spiritual sense interpretation to the historical understanding of the biblical text as if the later reception of the text was a distorting lens or the imposition of a foreign bias. Rather, his hermeneutics aimed for a unity between the source of revelation and the theological tradition that

28 This point was addressed more fully in Histoire. 606 flows from it. Gadamer described the central thesis of his historical hermeneutics in similar terms:

At the beginning of all historical hermeneutics, then, the abstract antithesis between tradition and historical research, between history and the knowledge of it, must be discarded. The effect [Wirkung] of a living tradition and the effect of historical study must constitute a unity of effect, the analysis of which would reveal only a texture of reciprocal effects.29

In Catholicisme, de Lubac explicitly criticized the influence of Hegelianism in theology and the legacy of Joachim of Fiore. Growing together with de Lubac’s awareness of the critical importance of the theology of history, was his concern about modern movements which attempt to posit an alternative teleology of history to the Christian one. His statement in Catholicisme that “the Spirit of Christ cannot lead further than Christ”30 is an early articulation of the motivation which ultimately led him to write his final work, La Postérité Spirituelle. In

Catholicisme and Histoire, however, de Lubac’s defense against Joachimism extended no further than explaining how Christian theology has traditionally understood the New Testament to be the full, final and definitive revelation of God to man. Because Christian revelation cannot be surpassed, it is the reference point for all history.

Gadamer, by contrast, had no such conviction about the status of the New Testament:

“World history is, as it were, the great dark book, the collected work of the human spirit, written in the languages of the past, whose texts it is our task to understand.”31 History has a progressive

29 TM, 282-283; emphasis in original.

30 Catholicism, 172.

31 TM, 177. 607 unfolding, but for Gadamer, this is a “teleology without a telos.”32 Yet there is one area of overlap between the two thinkers. Just as Gadamer was critical of any philosophical attempt to posit a rationally discernable telos of world history (such as Hegelianism), de Lubac also rejected

all such attempts. Their motivations were, of course, quite different. De Lubac saw such

philosophies as attempts to provide an ersatz teleology to the Christian view of history, rooted in

rejection of traditional Christianity; Gadamer only believed these philosophies to be untenable

in postmodernity.33 Both seem to have been led to their conclusions by similar critiques of the

historiography of rationalist historicism.

In Catholicisme, de Lubac began to express concern about an overly methodological

approach to biblical interpretation. Similar to Gadamer’s concern to defend truth beyond

method, de Lubac held that modern critical methods can be accurate and necessary, but he

cautioned that one must be aware that such methods are always limited, and are subject to

critique, just as Gadamer stated. Both thinkers would agree with Palmer’s statement that,

“Method involves a specific kind of questioning which lays open [only] one side of a thing,”

32 TM, 203.

33 Gadamer saw a positive moment in the development of hermeneutics when biblical interpretation during the Enlightenment began to focus on the text as ancient literature: “Hermeneutics had to rid itself one day of all its dogmatic limitations and become free to be itself, so it could rise to the significance of a universal historical organon. This took place in the eighteenth century, when men like Semler and Ernesti realized that to understand Scripture properly it was necessary to recognize that it had various authors—i.e., to abandon the idea of the dogmatic unity of the canon. With this ‘liberation of interpretation from dogma’ (Dilthey) … [t]he old interpretive principle of understanding the part in terms of the whole was no longer bound and limited to the dogmatic unity of the canon; it was concerned with the totality of the historical reality to which each individual document belonged” (TM, 176-177). While de Lubac would not have agreed with Gadamer that dogmatic principles shackle interpretation, he would probably have agreed that the rise of hermeneutics to a universal discipline from its previous confines within exegesis was a positive development, in spite of its historical origin in the rejection of the inspired unity of the canon. 608 which never captures the full reality of it.34 As a result, de Lubac, while endorsing modern critical methods of interpretation, also critiqued their limitations: the mutual relationship between

interpreter and the biblical text gives rise to certain practices of interpretation which are not

methodological or scientific. Because spiritual advancement, grace, mystery, and the dynamics

of humanity community are all involved in the activity of interpretation, the practice of exegesis

considered in its fullest scope is often more like an art—a discipline requiring habit, formation,

custom, prudence, insight and inspiration—than a cut-and-dried technical science.

Catholicisme also introduced de Lubac’s first statements about the role of disciplina in

exegesis. Histoire and especially Exégèse Médiévale greatly expanded these ideas. One concept

from “Apologétique et Théologie” which de Lubac reprised in this regard was the idea that any

act of rational inquiry is always an act of inquiry into oneself. A person is always involved

constitutively in the activity of interpretation and so de Lubac began to attend to the dynamics

involving the historical, communal and spiritual formation of the interpreter, rather than just of

the author of the text. Gadamer would have agreed that every act of rational inquiry is also

inquiry into oneself, and he provided a deeper explanation of why this was so in his discussion of

the need to foreground one’s personal horizon and make explicit one’s prejudices in any activity

of interpretation. In fact, Gadamer began Wahrheit und Methode with a broad and remote

approach to the interpretation of texts by first studying the dynamics of play, theatrical

performances, ritual, artistic representation, and the cultivation of taste in art before considering

the particular act of interpreting literature, precisely to study the subjective dynamics of the

interpreter. Gadamer also developed the notion of trained receptivity and interpretation as a

34 Palmer, Hermeneutics, 166. 609 “dialogue” with the work in the first part of Wahrheit und Methode. While their focuses were

different, the attention which both Gadamer and de Lubac paid to the formation of an

interpreter’s “horizon” by a variety of social and historical factors is mutually enriching.

In Catholicisme, de Lubac maintained that the activity of interpretation should take place within a formative ecclesial culture that aims at the intellectual formation of an interpreter (an individual focus), the handing-on of the meaning of the text to others (a communal focus), and

the glory of God (a doxological focus). Because de Lubac understood the human subject within

this three-fold theistic perspective, the self-discovery that occurs in the activity of interpretation

takes place on several levels, insofar as an interpreter is an individual, a member of society, and a

creature of God. In the order of nature, on the individual level, exegesis should prompt a deeper

awareness of one’s place in the cosmos and in the plan of history, and on the social level it

should promote the social advancement the human race and thereby build human solidarity in

service to God. In the order of grace, on the individual level, exegesis is a self-discovery of

one’s supernatural vocation which, on the social level, is realized through communion with the

Church and is promoted by evangelism. The doxological consummation of exegesis takes place

in worship: in the Eucharist, in lectio divina, in praying the psalms, in the liturgical proclamation

of the Gospel, and in homiletics. According to de Lubac, “For one and the same essential

mystery permeates the whole of Scripture and liturgy, apart from which there is no participation

in the mystery of God.”35 When exegesis is practiced faithfully within an ecclesiastical context,

there arises a synergy between the sacramental life and the act of interpretation, since both arise

from the same source of faith in revelation and tend toward the same end.

35 Catholicism, 215. 610 Gadamer’s thought corresponded to only some of the elements of de Lubac’s perspective.

Gadamer maintained that all acts of interpretation were also acts of self-discovery. In Gadamer’s concern to formulate a general hermeneutic that can integrate the discoveries of the arts and sciences, there is some similarity to the breadth of de Lubac’s hermeneutics, but Gadamer did not situate his hermeneutics within a larger theological framework as de Lubac did. Nonetheless, in a limited but analogous way, Gadamer provided a phenomenology of understanding which has the capacity to emphasize the reception of religious texts through performative ritual.36 In his treatment of the revelatory power of the word in Part Three of Wahrheit und Methode, his statements about the transcendent divine character of the word permitted him to see the proclamation of the word and its sacramental expression as a consequence of its divine plentitude and the humble recognition of finite man’s incapacity to receive it.

3. Review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè (1945)

De Lubac’s book review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè provided insight into how de

Lubac approached the history of ideas. In the course of critiquing Nygren’s historical study of the concepts of erōs and agapē in Christian thought from the Apostolic period to the

Reformation, de Lubac stated, by contrast, the norms he thought should guide the interpretation of historical ideas and their reception over time. This book review and his “methodological introduction” to Histoire et Esprit contained the only two explicit theoretical formulations of his approach to historical interpretation in his works on the history of exegesis.

36 TM, 122-123. 611 First, de Lubac critiqued Nygren for a lack of receptivity, stating that it did not seem as if

Nygren was seeking to engage in an open-minded fashion with the subject matter, rather, he

investigated the subject matter as if he were “defending a thesis rather than engaging in truly

historical inquiry.”37 De Lubac, like Gadamer, believed that a “hermeneutically trained

consciousness must be, from the start, sensitive to the text’s alterity.”38

Second, de Lubac critiqued Nygren for failing to see how his Lutheran background led

him to fault the writings of St. John as being “tainted with Hellenism.” Nygren thereby derogated

the relevance of this biblical witness to the desire for union with God, which accordingly reinforced his prejudice that all mentions of erōs in the subsequent theological tradition were corruptions of Christian revelation by Hellenism, rather than a genuine manifestations of Gospel revelation. De Lubac thought that the same prejudice caused Nygren not to see the significance of all the biblical texts which speak of “man’s desire for God” metaphorically, such as the thirst for God in the Psalms or in the Gospels. In Gadamerian terms, de Lubac critiqued Nygren for failing to foreground his own prejudices before engaging in interpretation. Thus, he misjudged the significance of biblical texts indicating a unitive desire for God, and his biased view distorted his subsequent analysis of the Christian reception of biblical revelation.

Third, de Lubac stated that Nygren held erroneous views of how ideas pass through history: comme des blocs,39 a remark which echoed de Lubac’s identification in “Apologétique et

Théologie” of “the error [that] consists in conceiving of dogma as a kind of ‘thing in itself,’ as a

37 RevEA, 87.

38 TM, 269.

39 RevEA, 88-89. 612 block of revealed truth with no relationship whatsoever to natural man.”40 Thus, Nygren erred

because he presumed that the term, erōs, always meant the same thing in historical texts and so

failed to see the historical shifts in the term’s meaning. In this regard, de Lubac’s critique

paralleled Gadamer’s critique of naïve objectivism, which treats objects of meaning like the

physical objects of natural science, or as de Lubac said, “like blocks.” In this connection,

Gadamer also observed the shallowness of logical positivism’s view of purely univocal language

as superior to the plurality and nuances of meaning in conventional language, since the positivist

conception of language obscures the dynamic of how the same word can gain nuance and

accumulate new conceptual depth through time.

Fourth, de Lubac pointed out that Nygren’s block-like conception of how ideas pass

through history also made him incapable of perceiving the cross-pollination between the

concepts of erōs and agapē in the Medieval period: “Why refuse to see the transformations to

which eros was subjected by the doctrine of the creation of man in the image of God?”41 In contrast, de Lubac observed how the historical development of a single concept may be complicated. Good historical research must be perceptive enough to capture these nuances.

Rarely does the development of a profound concept or doctrine progress monotonically to its final expression. Nygren should then have expected to find divergences, misinterpretations, and differing emphases throughout the historical tradition of the Christian reception of the concepts of erōs and agapē. In this critique, de Lubac criticized Nygren for being unaware of the dynamic

40 AT, 93.

41 RevEA, 88-89. 613 which Gadamer called Wirkungsgeschichte,42 a dynamic to which de Lubac was frequently

attentive in his own historical studies.

4. Histoire et Esprit (1950) and Associated Essays

The introduction to Histoire et Esprit contained the longest theoretical statement of de

Lubac’s principles of historical investigation. De Lubac described his investigation of Origen’s thought in these terms: “My purpose is thus historical—and I intend my method to be so as well.”43 De Lubac stated that his goal was an objective recovery of Origen’s thought.44 But precisely what does “objectivity” entail when the object of study is the thought of a third-century

Alexandrian Christian author and the vantage point is twentieth-century European culture? For

de Lubac,

This starting point corresponded to Gadamer’s starting point of recovering the original horizon

of an historical work, a principle which he inherited from historicism. However, Gadamer

rejected historicism’s assertion that genuine objectivity requires maximal detachment from the

42 In TM, 282-283, Gadamer provided the definition; in TM, 299-307, he outlined the application of the concept.

43 HS, 239.

44 “I have sought, not to ‘defend’ Origen, but simply to know what he in fact said” (HS, 10). “I am seeking to discover what Origen thought by finding out, without any preconceived decision, what it was he said” (HS, 12). “I am employing with regard to him … basic objectivity” (HS, 12).

45 HS, 12. This statement was given in quotation marks in both the English and French editions, but the source of this quotation was not given. 614 object of study, like an observer of a Newtonian physics experiment.46 Gadamer also rejected

historicism’s relativism: its refusal to judge the thought of a past age by any standard from

another one. De Lubac likewise rejected both errors. He emphasized that his method of

investigation required “intentional sympathy [with the text], methodical docility,”47 which

corresponded to Gadamer’s method of “transposing oneself” into the text’s horizon so that “we

put ourselves in someone else’s shoes.”48

De Lubac also stated that an interpreter should not approach the subject matter of his

investigation in a disinterested way, like an archivist cataloging opinions. Rather, historical texts

must be interpreted in the process of reading them so that the text genuinely engages the intellectual commitments of the interpreter:

This “translation” corresponded to Gadamer’s description of the fusion of horizons. Like

Gadamer, de Lubac drew on the analogy of translation to describe the process of how meaning is

transferred from an ancient text to an interpreter’s modern understanding through such a fusion.

In the existential risk that a person who reads deeply and sympathetically may be converted by

46 TM, 5-8.

47 HS, 13-14. Thus de Lubac distinguished what some of his critics would later conflate. His “method” of intentional sympathy with the author’s text is a preliminary stage of understanding its meaning and is distinct from a sympathetic endorsement of the text, which is a judgment about the text’s value that can only be made once it has been adequately understood. To put oneself in another’s shoes is not to endorse every act of the other person.

48 TM, 305. Gadamer adopted this method from Chladenius.

49 HS, 12. As in Catholicisme, so too in Histoire: the activity of interpretation is simultaneously an activity of self-discovery. 615 what he reads, one finds another connection to Gadamer’s principle that all complete

interpretation must ultimately return to the framework of the interpreter’s lifeworld,

commitments and values; thus a text presents a dialogical opportunity for an interpreter to be

changed by what he has read. According to D’Ambrosio, de Lubac’s “ultimate goal [in Historie] is some sort of critical re-appropriation of the past in the present”; in pursuit of this goal, de

Lubac rejected historicism because its

scrupulously detached and “objective” reconstruction of the original meaning of a text … so emphasizes the difference between the text’s historical milieu and the present that little or no contemporary application can be hoped for.50

For de Lubac as for Gadamer, genuine interpretation must include the possibility of application

to the present.

In the introduction, de Lubac insisted that the ultimate goal of objective interpretation is

to “penetrate beneath the particularities of time and place to what is eternal” so that all might

judge the text “in the same light.”51 Here de Lubac notably departed from Gadamer’s principles

of interpretation and strongly emphasized the need to appraise the truth value of what is

interpreted within a philosophical system that is realist and theistic: the three-fold theistic

perspective of Catholicisme. Gadamer’s postmodern hermeneutical situation lacked this

emphasis. For de Lubac, the essence of complete interpretation is to arrive at an objective,

eternal truth within the work, and he did not hesitate to combine the fruits of such interpretation

with doctrines of metaphysics and revealed religion. As a post-Kantian, Gadamer would not

have subscribed to de Lubac’s metaphysical or religious convictions, nor would he have

50 D’Ambrosio, xiii.

51 HS, 13-14; emphasis added. 616 endorsed the idea of a set of eternal philosophical principles that stands alongside the interpretive

enterprise, guiding, correcting, or evaluating its outcomes according to some foundationalist

system. For Gadamer, a post-foundationalist, there is no truth outside of dialogue. De Lubac’s

commitment to a foundationalist basis for interpretation helps to defend his approach from the charges of subjectivism leveled at Gadamer, such as those of Jeanrond. Moreover, de Lubac strongly emphasized the need to critique how a text has been received in tradition, by observing

distortions, false presentations of the original thought, impoverishments of understanding, as well as the need to judge its ultimate truth value. This emphasis was muted in Gadamer, and as a result, critics, such as Jeanrond, have expressed concern that Gadamer’s hermeneutics lacks sufficient criteria for judging the accuracy of historical interpretation and the truth value of the subject matter.

In de Lubac’s Introduction, a philosophical prerequisite to hermeneutics is that an

interpreter must recognize his historically-conditioned finitude. This principle corresponds well

to Gadamer’s foundational principle of the historicality of Dasein and its finitude, which Lammi

described:

Finitude is the mantra of philosophical hermeneutics. Gadamer has gone so far as to describe his life's work as developing the hermeneutical implications of the insight into [man’s] ineluctable finitude.52

According to de Lubac, one consequence of the finite, historically-embedded consciousness was

that each act of interpretation

without doubt, [is] a task that is always incomplete, an interpretation necessarily partial. Every epoch, every historian, returning to the great works of the past, illuminates one aspect of them while leaving others in shadow. In that sense, too,

52 Lammi, Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, 81. 617 subjectivity is unavoidable. Yet the work is indispensable, all the more indispensable as the thought being studied is more actually thought.53

Again, de Lubac’s remark bears striking similarity to Gadamer’s description of how different

aspects of the text are revealed by the different horizons of interpreters that are fused with it,

while leaving other aspects in shadow.

The historically-conditioned finitude of every interpreter led, in Gadamer’s thought, to

the productive function of temporal distance in interpretation. Similarly, de Lubac emphasized

that the role of history in the process of interpretation is not merely negative. History is not

simply the creator of distance which must be overcome by the activity of interpretation.

Historical distance also plays a constructive role in opening a text for more ready exposition.

The productive role of temporal distance, for de Lubac, was particularly heightened when an

interpreter stood “in the same stream of tradition” as the subject and author he studied.54 In this respect, de Lubac’s thought corresponds to Gadamer’s view of tradition as conveying productive prejudices for the interpretation of the text. For both thinkers, to bracket the insights of tradition would be to impoverish one’s insight into the text.

Like Gadamer, de Lubac was careful to qualify the constructive role of tradition in interpretation. While de Lubac’s method of “intentional sympathy” was derived from the hermeneutics of Romanticism, like Gadamer, de Lubac stressed that he did not share

Romanticism’s “archivist” absolutization of the value of the past per se. Like Gadamer, de

Lubac avoided the Romanticist pitfall of believing that intentional sympathy with the mind of the original author is necessary for genuine interpretation of a text. Throughout Histoire de Lubac

53 HS, 13.

54 HS, 13. 618 described the object of interpretation as the text rather than the mind of the author, in alignment with Gadamer’s principle of “transformation into structure.” For de Lubac, the text, not the author, is always the object of “intentional sympathy,” “reaching the heart,” and “what is eternal.”

Finally, de Lubac emphasized that commitments of faith cannot be bracketed when trying to understand texts written from the perspective of faith. Not only would this preclude intentional sympathy with the text, it would deny a key principle of the anthropology which underlies his theological hermeneutics. While Gadamer did not share the same anthropological convictions, he did agree with de Lubac in rejecting the Enlightenment prejudice against faith; indeed, Gadamer tried to provide a place for faith in postmodern hermeneutics.

In sum, with regard to both de Lubac’s review of Anders Nygren’s Erôs et Agapè and his

Introduction to Histoire et Esprit, there are extensive similarities between the hermeneutics of

Gadamer and de Lubac. Gadamer and de Lubac both believed in the foundational role of man’s historically-conditioned finitude. They both rejected the notion that ideas pass through history as static blocks; they both understood in the same way how terms evolve in reciprocal relation to the conceptual development of the concepts considered. Both thinkers emphasized the productive function of temporal distance, the sedimentation of meaning, and the insightful role that tradition affords when an interpreter stands in the same tradition as the text. Both thinkers stressed that every interpreter ought to have a trained sensitivity to the text’s alterity. Both thinkers described the act of interpretation according to Gadamer’s three stages of the fusion of horizons: foregrounding one’s prejudices, cultivating intentional sympathy in order to put oneself in the text’s horizon, and translating the meaning of a text into an interpreter’s contemporary framework of understanding. Both thinkers believed that existential engagement with a text is 619 the hallmark of a complete interpretation, and both saw, contra historism, application to the

present as an intrinsic part of historical recovery. Both thinkers appraised tradition positively,

and both unambiguously rejected the Romantic view of tradition as unproductive antiquarianism.

Both thinkers clarified that the object of investigation is what stands in the text (what has been

transformed into structure) not what was the intention of its author. Both thinkers rejected the

Enlightenment’s categorical rejection of the role of faith in hermeneutics.

The principal differences between the two theorists lie in their anthropologies and their

differing views about the domain of philosophical reason. Gadamer, an agnostic and antifoundationalist, did not subscribe to metaphysical realism. De Lubac takes the opposite

stance on all three counts—with his explicitly Christian theological anthropology, teleology of

history, and its corresponding expression in the three-fold theistic perspective which provided a

metaphysical realist framework for his theory of interpretation.

4.1. Histoire et Esprit

De Lubac’s Histoire et Esprit contains his most detailed, densest treatment of the

theological hermeneutics of the four senses, advancing well beyond what he wrote in

Catholicisme. In Histoire, de Lubac explicitly adopted the approach of what is today called

canonical criticism: an interpreter of Scripture may use any part of the canonical Scriptures to

enlighten another:

Which is to say that we will methodically place the different parts of Scripture in relation to each other—“Scripturam sacram sibimet ipsi conferentes” (comparing Sacred Scripture to itself)—in such a way as to comment on it always by means of itself.55

55 HS, 353. 620

This norm does not replace but supplements historical criticism in the formation of biblical

theology. It stems from a recognition of the divinely inspired character of the whole Bible and a

recognition that the doctrinal sense of Scripture ought be developed in light of the historical

context of the completed formation of the biblical canon which is part of the tradition of the

Church. As de Lubac stated in “Distich”:

[The believer] receives Scripture from the Tradition and reads it within the context of the Church, because it was given to the Church, it was written within it, under the inspiration of the Spirit. Thus, from the beginning, the believer sees it as a whole, as a unique book—“quae tota biblioteca unus liber est.”56

While the canonical approach was a matter of Church doctrine for de Lubac—which was the ultimate reason why he adopted the norm—the canonical approach gains philosophical support from Gadamer’s doctrine of reading a text within its Wirkungsgeschichte; these two approaches to canonical criticism, while not the same, are complementary.

De Lubac’s theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses in Histoire rested on five

principles. The first principle was the legitimacy of the role of faith in the act of interpretation,

insofar as the spiritual senses require an affirmation of the divinely inspired nature of the biblical

text and a theology of God’s providence in revealing it. In a parallel way, Gadamer’s

hermeneutics saved a place for the role of faith in interpretation, but it was premised on post-

Kantian strictures about the ability of interpreters to affirm divine revelation in history. This

remains an area of tension between Gadamer and de Lubac.

The second principle was the ability to affirm that the biblical text is endowed with a

plentitude of meaning which may not have been apparent to the divinely inspired human author

56 “Distich,” 121. 621 at the time he wrote it. Subsequent readers’ recognition of the fuller meaning of the text should

be seen as an intrinsic part of its meaning, rather than an extrinsic development, application of it,

or re-appropriation of it for a new ulterior purpose. Accordingly, allegory is not eisegesis. This

principle is central to de Lubac’s concern to frame the theology of the spiritual senses as interior

to the literal sense, not separate from it. Correspondingly, Gadamer’s hermeneutics favored

exactly the same approach to the plenitude of meaning endowed upon a text by the

transformation into structure, and so is compatible with the second principle underlying de

Lubac’s theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses.

The third principle was a Christocentric teleology of history, which Catholicisme

described as the result of understanding historika pneumatikōs, pneumatika historikōs.57 Since

Gadamer’s theory is a philosophical hermeneutics aiming to be a universal science, it did not contain this explicitly theological premise. Yet Gadamer’s “historical preparation” for his own hermeneutics in Wahrheit und Methode observed the difficulty that post-Reformation philosophies of history have had in narrating the meaning of history without a clear sense of its end: “World history is, as it were, the great dark book, the collected work of the human spirit, written in the languages of the past, whose texts it is our task to understand.”58

Gadamer’s view of world history clearly contrasted with that of de Lubac, for whom

Christ has cast a new light illuminating this once-dark book. As a result, there is no component

of Gadamer’s hermeneutics which parallels de Lubac’s hermeneutics’ ability to interpret texts

57 Catholicism, 165.

58 TM, 177. 622 not only in light of their past tradition, but also in view of their future teleology in the restoration of all things in Christ.

The fourth principle of de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics of the spiritual senses required that the act of understanding terminate in existential engagement with the text. He explicitly rejected the false objectivism that characterized historicism. For de Lubac, applicatio must be an intrinsic part of the interpretation of Scripture, because application to the reader undergirds the unity of the tropological sense with the literal and allegorical senses. The

“rhythm” of the four senses in Histoire can be characterized as a movement from history, to mystery, to morality, to finality. For de Lubac, the tropological sense is the stage where the historical understanding achieved by the literal and allegorical senses is fused with the horizon of a present-day interpreter. Here, Gadamer’s notion of applicatio as an intrinsic part of the interpretive process is congruent with de Lubac’s approach and can provide support for it from philosophical hermeneutics. De Lubac, for his part, defended this principle on the basis of God’s salvific purpose in giving Sacred Scripture, which de Lubac epitomized in a quotation from

Origen: “What good does it do me for the Logos to have come into the world if I myself do not have him?”59 The thought of Gadamer has no parallel here.

The fifth principle, which was related to the third, consisted in de Lubac’s affirmation of the individual and corporate destiny of man in God, which in Histoire was used to explain how the spiritual sense of anagogy is intrinsic to the text. Since this principle depends on a teleology of history—which Gadamer did not present—his hermeneutics cannot assist de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics in this area.

59 ME 1/2:140, quoting Origen, In Jeremiam, homily 6, PL 25:632c. 623 De Lubac expressed his desire in Catholicisme for “a philosophy of history as such, a

philosophy of humanity in time” to undergird his recovery of the theological hermeneutics of the

Patristic and Medieval tradition.60 Here Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics may provide reasonable support for some key principles of de Lubac’s theology of the four senses of

Scripture, in particular principles two and four; de Lubac would not have expected a

philosophical hermeneutics to provide (in semi-rationalist fashion) properly theological theses in

regard to principles one, three and five. These areas of tension exemplify the second of

Hilberath’s eight guidelines for the theological integration of philosophical hermeneutics; his

second guideline stated that phenomenological hermeneutics cannot indefinitely postpone a

confrontation with the question of whether post-Kantian metaphysics is correct.61 However,

Gadamer was largely successful in bracketing metaphysical commitments, rather than denying

them, in his attempt at a purely phenomenological approach to hermeneutics, with the exception

of the fact that he was led to his phenomenological approach through the restrictions on

knowledge posited by the First Critique, which is itself a metaphysical and epistemological work

(in contrast, for example, to the work of Husserl). In light of some recent initiatives of Catholic

phenomenology (e.g., Wojtyla), one must ask whether an approach to phenomenology though

the restrictions of the First Critique is absolutely necessary. If not, then perhaps Gadamer’s

hermeneutics, with minimal alteration, could survive translation into a Scholastic framework, as

a phenomenological complement to the metaphysically realist tradition of Christian metaphysics

which undergirds pre-modern hermeneutics. While such a translation has yet to be undertaken,

60 Catholicism, 308.

61 Hilberath, 235. 624 the many parallels between Gadamer and de Lubac suggest the value of such a project to

integrate pre-modern and postmodern hermeneutics.

There are additional areas of synergy between the thought of Gadamer and de Lubac.

Among these was de Lubac’s caution against “too conservative a retrieval” of the traditional hermeneutic stemming from Origen. His first assertion in this regard was simply a development

of his rejection of the Romantic view of tradition and a search for authentic retrieval:

De Lubac believed that an ossified view of tradition jeopardized the advantages afforded by the

contemporary republication of Patristic exegesis. He faulted seventeenth- and eighteenth-

century Catholic commentaries which preserved, without much critical judgment and as if theologically authoritative, even the capricious allegories of the Fathers. This view of retrieval effectively severed the work of the Fathers from dialogue with contemporary Catholic thought, which in turn fueled the backlash against allegorical interpretation as arbitrary. According to de

Lubac, those who only admire the Patristic spirit from afar, by the very fact that they admire it, but do not participate in it, intensify the rupture of tradition, rather than assisting its recovery.

De Lubac’s goal was to enter again into a living tradition. For Gadamer as for de Lubac,

authentic traditionalism is neither archaism with its static view of the past, nor progressivism

masked as recovery. Gadamer’s concept of tradition in Wahrheit und Methode and his

62 HS, 450. 625 hermeneutics of Wirkungsgeschichte, as D’Ambrosio observed, capture the spirit of de Lubac’s

ambition.

Another area where Gadamer’s hermeneutics can provide philosophical support to de

Lubac’s theological hermeneutics came near the end of Histoire, where de Lubac returned to his

desire to unify biblical exegesis with homiletics and pastoral theology. Gadamer saw the process of interpretation as passing through the stages of intellectio, explicatio and applicatio—a

traditional division drawn from pre-modern theological exposition of the Bible. Gadamer’s

description of these functional specialties of theological interpreters corresponded to de Lubac’s

description of how to reunify exegesis, biblical theology and homiletics. De Lubac insisted on

the priority of critical exegesis before proceeding to consider the tradition and later reception of

the work. This stage corresponds to the second stage of Gadamer’s process of the fusion of

horizons,63 which correlated with intellectio: understanding the work in its own horizon. De

Lubac next focused on the reception of a text and its development within the broader tradition of

Catholic theology which constitutes the horizon of the present-day interpreter, which is the domain of biblical and systematic theology. In Gadamer’s terms, this third stage is the fusion of horizons and corresponds to explicatio: an explanation (or “translation”) of the meaning of the text into a contemporary framework. Third, de Lubac believed that the salvific purpose of the text and the intrinsic momentum of the spiritual senses led to a tropological application of the text to the lifeworld of the audience. This corresponds to Gadamer’s applicatio and to the place

of homiletics and pastoral theology in de Lubac’s schema. In this way, Gadamer’s recovery of

63 The first stage, in which the interpreter “foregrounds” his prejudices, is a preliminary step to make oneself aware of one’s prejudices and sensitive to the text’s alterity. 626 applicatio corresponded with de Lubac’s recovery of the role of homiletics and pastoral theology

in Histoire.

In Histoire, 64 de Lubac made a preliminary attempt to sketch a “philosophy of humanity in time” which he had projected in Catholicisme. His presentation was somewhat scattered and he did not take it up in any more detail in later works on biblical interpretation. Nonetheless, because his rudimentary philosophy of history and his account of how meaning passes through time was close to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, this element of de Lubac’s thought deserves comparison with Gadamer. In de Lubac’s appraisal, Origen’s intuition of the transient

character of historical events distinguished him as a Christian exegete from his Philonic

contemporaries and provided insight into the true nature of the anagogical sense. In two brief

passages, de Lubac articulated his view of how historical events, in themselves fleeting, survive

only by means of their transformation into something spiritual in us. The first stated:

For history is essentially something that passes. The events recounted in the Bible thus, so to speak, exhausted their historical role as they were unfolding, in order to live on only as signs in view of our edification. “The old things have passed away: behold, they have become new.” 65

The second, summarizing de Lubac’s treatment of this theme, stated:

Origen’s doctrine, however, includes a second aspect, inseparable from the first.… [H]istory, if it is in fact mediatory, must not hold us indiscriminately. Its whole role, on the contrary, is to pass on.… History … is essentially what passes on. Thus the events recounted in the Bible, whatever they might be, as they were unfolding, all exhausted, so to speak, their historical role at the same time as their factual reality, so as no longer to survive today except as signs and mysteries. In this new mode, they remain for the purpose of our “edification,” which is to say,

64 HS, 311-323.

65 HS, 311-312; emphasis added. 627 first of all, for the purpose of our spiritual re-creation in Christ, then for the purpose of our moral instruction as Christians.66

De Lubac’s view of the transient nature of historical events contributed to his attempt to

develop a more sophisticated view of how meaning passes through history by means of its

ongoing reception by spiritual human beings, in contrast to the objectivist view that meaning

passes through history like a physical item. While de Lubac’s philosophical articulation is not as

detailed as Gadamer’s, one can observe a clear parallel to Gadamer’s description of aesthetic

experience, play and the transformation into structure as “the clue to ontological explanation” of

meaning. Gadamer began with a phenomenology of these elements, because, like de Lubac, he

believed that the transient nature of aesthetic experience, the representative power of play, and its

“transformation into ideality” through theory, surfaced to conscious reflection some aspects of

all understanding which are more easily passed over, without reflection, in acts of understanding

literature.67

For de Lubac, as for Gadamer, the fact that there is an historical world, in contrast to a

natural world with no deeper meaning to its sequence of events, is a consequence of the fact that meaning is preserved through tradition by intelligent creatures. De Lubac saw in the transience

66 HS, 322; emphasis in original. See Chapter Two, section 5.3.3, where these texts are compared with a quotation from Exégèse Médiévale: “The first condition is to understand that this dialectic does not at all substitute for the investigation of a ‘temporal development,’ but it follows on it and gives it its meaning: for a temporal development is not self-sufficient; it must indeed finally lead to results if it truly advances, and time must ultimately lead to what no longer belongs to time. The history of salvation draws our attention, but it cannot arrest it: it carries on to salvation itself. In other words, one ought to avoid confusing the passage of time to eternity, which is always at the horizon of Christian thought, with escape into atemporal” (ME 1/2: 186).

67 See Chapter Three, section 2.1. 628 of historical events, yet their survival in the world of meaning, the intrinsic orientation of all

meaning to the spiritual formation of its tradents:

Thus, in its entirety, up to its final events, history is a preparation for something else. To deny that is to deny it. The truth to which it introduces us is no longer [of] the order of history. It goes hand in hand with spirit. And this spirit that is to be attained with the aid of history is revealed fully only in a higher realm. “In following the trail of truth in the letter of Scripture,” we “will thus be served by history as a ladder.” In that way, we will reach that “elevated place” which God proposes as our heritage.68

This view provided de Lubac with a philosophical basis for defending how the anagogical sense is intrinsic to the literal, historical sense of the biblical text. He was careful to note that the

spiritual level of meaning toward which all understanding points, while eternal, is not the

Platonic eternal realm of Philonic exegesis, but an historical reality: the afterlife.

The historically-achieved nature of human finality is one feature which definitively

separates traditional Christian exegesis from its Hellenistic counterparts. For Gadamer as well,

the manner in which concepts pass through history in human understanding indicated a

transcendent level of “the divine” as the condition of its possibility. For both Gadamer and de

Lubac, hermeneutics has an eschatological horizon, although the nature of this horizon is

different for each thinker. For Gadamer, it is a purely immanent eschatology, while for de

Lubac, there is both an interior eschatology and an eschatology of human history and the human

race, both of which are stamped by the biblical revelation of the recapitulation of all things in

Christ.

Another development of de Lubac’s “philosophy of humanity in time” in Histoire was his

analysis of how the reception of an idea builds community. Insofar as human solidarity is

68 HS, 322-323. The English translation lacks the word “of” in the original French: ““La Vérité à laquelle elle nous introduit n’est plus de l’ordre de l’histoire” (HE, 283). 629 principally spiritual and spiritual communion is based on shared meaning, he observed how

sharing in a tradition creates a human solidarity both through place and time. He described how

communities which share a common tradition also develop collectively an insight into the

meaning of the tradition they share. Their insight into their own history and tradition is more

acute than that of outsiders, and not merely because of a longer time of exposure to it. Rather, a

community that shares in a tradition develops habits and competences, which assists in the

interpreting of texts or events from within that same tradition. These insights are eventually passed to new members of the community.

To this preliminary philosophical sketch of the power of shared traditions to create

community, de Lubac added the theological dimensions of the saving message of revelation, and

the divinely constituted mission of the Church, in order to develop his notion of communio,

wherein the horizontal dimension of community gained a vertical dimension when the shared

meaning was divine revelation. He also developed his notion of the Magisterium as a particular

authority within the community with a divinely constituted competence to interpret texts and

events within the Christian tradition. Although Gadamer did not develop the concepts

theologically, his philosophy closely parallels de Lubac’s. Gadamer’s concepts of play, taste,

transformation into structure, community and authority exemplify many of the same elements of

de Lubac’s analysis of community. In this respect, the treatments of Gadamer and de Lubac are

comparable and mutually reinforcing on the philosophical, but not on the theological, level.

De Lubac related the notion of the communal development of what Gadamer called

“productive prejudices” in interpreting the biblical text to the Patristic hermeneutical principle

that exegesis is best done within the context of ecclesial communion. De Lubac endorsed a

sentiment of Origen: 630 The Church alone understands Scripture, the Church, that is to say, that portion of mankind that is converted to the Lord: “Ecclesiae ad Deum conversae ablatum est velamen.”69

For de Lubac, there was a reciprocal dynamic between the power of the Word to draw readers more deeply into the heart of the Church and the power of ecclesial communion to give readers more insight into the meaning of God’s Word. De Lubac described this dynamic between the biblical text’s sacramental force and the sacraments of the Church: “Scripture and the Eucharist

… never cease to build up the Church.”70

Accordingly, de Lubac developed his insights in directions where Gadamerian principles did not lead. One example was de Lubac’s claim that the Mystical Body of Christ is a corporate subject which alone reads Scripture fully and completely. Because this Mystical Body, considered as a whole and not as individual members, has a divinely constituted relationship to

Christ, it possesses a fuller perspective on the text than any other group.71 From this theological premise, de Lubac developed a broader foundation for the doctrine of interpreting Scripture within the Church, a synthesis which did not proceed from comparable elements in Gadamer’s hermeneutics.

A final point to observe is de Lubac’s treatment of the role of inspiration in understanding, as found in his discussion of Origen’s view of the divine inspiration of Scripture and of how divine revelation relates to the human interpreter. De Lubac focused on the dual role

69 HS, 347, quoting Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs, chapter 3.

70 HS, 418, which has unfortunately become abridged to focus only on the role of the Eucharist.

71 As de Lubac stated in Histoire: “The purpose of seeking the ‘spiritual meaning’ of Scripture is … to treat it as Catholic, verbum Dei catholice tractari.… It is to receive it from the hands of Jesus and to have it read by him” (HS, 73). 631 of the Holy Spirit: just as the Holy Spirit acts to inspire the human author in order to write what

God intended to communicate, so too the Holy Spirit is necessary for a reader to penetrate this meaning and appropriate it fully. For de Lubac, only superficial reading is possible without the

Spirit. De Lubac then discussed the need for conversion of heart in order to read Scripture deeply and the ecclesial context of this conversion. The Spirit draws readers into the heart of the

Church, and only there, as anima in ecclesia, can readers discern the meaning intended by the divine author in its fuller sense.

Five principles underlie de Lubac’s treatment of reading Scripture in the Church. First is the principle that the spiritual senses within the biblical text can only be created by divine inspiration. The second is biblical inerrancy. The third is the sacramental efficacy of the text.

The fourth is that readers need the assistance of the same Holy Spirit who inspired the text to interpret it. The fifth is that interpreting the biblical text draws readers into a dialogue which is no longer characterized only by conversation, but by the need for conversion.

The first two principles are theological in origin, and as such, the philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer provided no assistance. The third principle bears some similarity to

Gadamer, who found a place for the sacramental character of the word, although it only corresponded loosely to the Catholic sense this term had for de Lubac. The philosophical concept which underlies the fourth principle was elaborated in the same way by both Gadamer and de Lubac, in their understanding of “intentional sympathy” with the text: a text ought be interpreted in the same sense in which it was written. In this regard, de Lubac merely extrapolated this principle to its theological level when approaching the divinely inspired text of

Scripture. The fifth principle also finds some resonance with Gadamerian hermeneutics, insofar as both Gadamer and de Lubac conceived of the process of reading a text as engaging in an 632 open-minded dialogue with the ideas expressed in the text. For Gadamer, the open-ended nature of this dialogue meant that either an interpreter or the text itself might be wrong about its subject matter, and, as a result, either an interpreter or the Wirkungsgeschichte of the text may evidence a correction of the author’s intended meaning. In the theological extrapolation of his concept, however, the second principle, biblical inerrancy, changed this dynamic for de Lubac.

When one is assured that the text is inerrant, then, when disagreement is discovered in the process of the fusion of horizons, an interpreter knows he must alter his own convictions, rather than judge the text to have erred. While the process of reading Scripture is a dialogue through which God speaks to the heart (always, for de Lubac, in an ecclesial context), this conversational aspect, when discord between the reader and text appear, becomes a call for the reader to convert. As such, the fourth and fifth principles of de Lubac’s theory of inspiration and interpretation, might find a suitable philosophical basis in Gadamer’s hermeneutics, although they are developed in directions Gadamer did not follow as a consequence of their theological nature.

5. Exégèse médiévale (1959-1963)

One new theme in Exégèse Médiévale was de Lubac’s extended treatment of the role of disciplina in Medieval exegesis. His intention was to describe, at least cursorily, the formative culture that surrounded the activity of interpretation in the Medieval period. The scope of

Medieval exegetical discipline included the curricular prerequisites for the study of Scripture, the regimen of spiritual and moral formation of interpreters, their academic vocation within the

Church—what has been described above as the formation of an interpreter’s “speculative intent” 633 (the manner in which an interpreter was trained to raise questions),72 the cultivation of virtues

necessary for exegesis (e.g., humility, charity, and faith), the maintenance of academic rigor in

exegetes’ application of their art, and even the basic necessities of scheduling, rest and asceticism.

All of these factors can be understood in connection with Gadamer’s discussion of the role of productive prejudices in interpreting a text. For Gadamer, the formation of prejudices did not happen through methodical self-reflection; rather, they evolve organically, through the influence of tradition and culture. Similarly, in de Lubac’s analysis of the formation of the

Medieval culture of disciplina, these productive disciplines arose through gradual refinement, typically guided by the experience that they produced good results in exegesis. Likewise, these disciplines were often applied to an individual exegete prudentially, as in Gadamer’s description of the prudential application of the norms of taste to an individual case. De Lubac’s examination of exegetical disciplina also accords with Gadamer’s observation of “hermeneutical priority of the question” in interpretation. For Gadamer, one’s prejudices and one’s disposition in raising questions play a larger role in interpretation than even one’s consciously applied, rule-based norms:

we are always already affected by history. It determines in advance both what seems to us worth inquiring about and what will appear as an object of investigation.73

De Lubac’s presentation of Medieval exegetical discipline seems to be a non-methodological

way of shaping the prejudices and questions of exegetes in a way that has been refined by

72 See Chapter 2, section 5.3.4.

73 TM, 300. 634 tradition to be productive. This is another area where Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics serves to undergird de Lubac’s theological hermeneutics in a complementary fashion.

Another advance found in Exégèse Médiévale was de Lubac’s reflection on the process of

formulating explicit norms for the traditional exegesis that had been practiced for more than a

millennium.74 De Lubac showed that the methodology of Medieval exegesis was never fully

formalized, a fact which constituted the foremost problem with regard to its integration into post-

Tridentine theology. Gradually, the formation of Scholastic theology and shifts in ecclesial

culture, together with a lack of hermeneutical refinement of the traditional methods of reading

the four senses, meant that, by the modern period, this style of exegesis appeared outdated to

many interpreters both Catholic and Protestant. Part of the merit of de Lubac’s study in this

regard was the depth to which he traced the tension between the richness of a traditionally-

evolved hermeneutic, which was a rather sophisticated approach to interpretation, and the development of simpler, more rationalistic, methodical hermeneutics from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. Because the traditional hermeneutic was not able to specify its norms clearly, it often suffered by comparison with Scholastic theology, Reformation hermeneutics,

Enlightenment hermeneutics, and Romantic hermeneutics.

De Lubac’s historical analysis in Exégèse Médiévale was aptly complemented by

Gadamer’s description and critique of the rise of methodological approaches to interpretation in

Wahrheit und Methode, and his repeated observations about the difficulty of rational self-

reflection on the implicit norms of interpretive activity. In this regard, Gadamer provided a clear

and more philosophical approach through which de Lubac’s historical analysis can be better

74 This theme spanned the four volumes of Exégèse médiévale. It was not treated systematically in any section, but woven throughout the work. 635 understood. Considering de Lubac’s historical account of the denouement of Medieval exegesis through the principles of Wahrheit und Methode has the advantage of facilitating the integration of the traditional hermeneutic into a critical modern paradigm. Such was de Lubac’s own goal since Catholicisme announced “integral humanism”; Exégèse Médiévale, however, did not advance the theoretical foundations of this integral humanism very much; rather, it focused on an historical study of the Carolingian renaissance of the eighth century and the Italian renaissance of the sixteenth century as two case studies for how the central hermeneutical principle of Medieval

Catholic theology might function within a hierarchy of human sciences.

Another way in which de Lubac’s project in Exégèse Médiévale is complementary to

Gadamer’s project in Wahrheit und Methode consisted in the scope of their study of hermeneutics. Gadamer’s historical study goes back no further than the Reformation, which is where de Lubac’s historical study in Exégèse Médiévale concluded. This happenstance is somewhat unfortunate insofar as it would be fascinating to see how the two thinkers appraised the same periods in the history of hermeneutics. Moreover, de Lubac’s historical studies focused primarily on Roman Catholic theology, while Gadamer’s study focused more on the rise of hermeneutics as a universal science; when Gadamer treated theological hermeneutics, he considered mainly Protestant authors, with the exception of an extended consideration of

Nicholas of Cusa.

Nonetheless, there is one area in which de Lubac’s historical study of hermeneutics could serve as a corrective to Gadamer’s Wahrheit und Methode. Gadamer passed over Patristic and

Medieval hermeneutics because he believed that they played no role in “the development of the hermeneutical method in the modern period, which culminates in the rise of historical 636 consciousness.”75 However, de Lubac convincingly showed in Exégèse Médiévale that the hermeneutics of the four senses of Scripture was more than a practical hermeneutic for the interpretation of the Biblical text; rather, it reflected a comprehensive theory of Christian hermeneutics, which could be, and sometimes was, universalized. De Lubac’s intention of bringing readers into “into the presence of a great, overflowing fountainhead of thought” that sustained over a millennium of Christian reflection,76 turned out to be nothing less than a

Christian vision of language, history, revelation, and a theory of how meaning passes through time in an exitus from and a reditus to God.77 As such, Medieval hermeneutics has a tremendous potential for contributing to the rise of hermeneutics as a universal discipline, which was never realized. The key component which de Lubac believed that Medieval hermeneutics lacked was a philosophy of humanity in time to undergird its theological hermeneutics. In this area, de Lubac has much to offer Gadamer.

Another positive contribution which de Lubac’s Exégèse Médiévale could make to

Gadamer’s history of hermeneutics can be seen with regard to Gadamer’s critique of many principles of Reformation and Enlightenment hermeneutics. When de Lubac critiqued the same principles, he assessed them similarly to Gadamer insofar as both noted the opposition of reason and faith, the rejection of authority, and the negative value accorded to tradition. De Lubac’s history of hermeneutics, however, laid greater emphasis on Catholic thought and consequently has the advantage of showing how faith, reason, tradition and authority worked together

75 TM, 173.

76 ME 1/1:xiii.

77 Such was the underlying insight in titling the prior work, History and Spirit. 637 productively in the Patristic and medieval periods before their synthesis was disturbed by the

Reformation and the Enlightenment—a movement de Lubac continued to trace to the present day in La Postérité spirituelle. In contrast, Gadamer only recovered the role of these principles by working backward through a critique. De Lubac’s historical study also went beyond Gadamer’s in scope insofar as the traditional hermeneutic was integrated with a metaphysics of the natural and supernatural orders, which de Lubac described in the three-fold theistic perspective of

Catholicisme; accordingly, de Lubac’s study provided historical illustrations that Gadamer’s study did not.

In Exégèse médiévale, de Lubac also gave more consideration to the integration of theological hermeneutics with modern sciences, a concern which spanned his entire career. In his historical study, de Lubac pointedly observed that the triumph of theology as “Queen of the

Sciences” was threatened if the independent worth and absolute necessity of the other arts and sciences was forgotten. Regarding the unity and autonomy of the arts and sciences, de Lubac and Gadamer were entirely in agreement. The same conviction was expressed by Hilberath’s seventh guideline, which stipulated that philosophical hermeneutics should assist theology in relating to the humanities and natural sciences, while respecting each discipline’s area of competence.78 In this connection, de Lubac emphasized the need to balance scientific exegesis

with non-methodological arts of spiritual insight:

78 Hilberath, 236. 638 impede the scientific work of the exegete any more than scientific work can replace the spiritual understanding.79

Thus for de Lubac, scientific prowess is just as necessary as spiritual profundity; they are

complementary:

There was a continuous development of this theme from de Lubac’s “Apologétique et

Théologie,” to its final expression here in Exégèse Médiévale. This fact should serve to disprove

scholarly assertions that de Lubac’s retrieval of the spiritual senses was opposed to the advances

of modern criticism.

In Exégèse Médiévale, de Lubac returned a final time to the question of how interpreters

know when they are interpreting Scripture correctly. Like Gadamer, de Lubac rejected

rationalist approaches of constructing a hermeneutic a priori and described instead how

hermeneutical self-reflection is a process which must work backwards, by bringing to

consciousness the principles that are implicit in the activity of successful understanding.81

To understand de Lubac’s description of correct interpretation in Exégèse Médiévale, one must return to Catholicisme, where he described the act of interpretation in terms of a triad: the

79 ME 1/1:264.

80 ME 1/1:266-267.

81 De Lubac remarked: “As if the rules [for understanding] were not first immanent in the practice and mingled with the doctrine before being extracted from them so as to be codified in manuals!” (ME 1/2:16-17). 639 text, the subject matter, and the interpreter. For de Lubac, the activity of interpretation discerns

the meaning of the text, evaluates the truth of its subject matter, and reveals the reader more fully

to himself. The same stages of interpretation were present in Gadamer’s hermeneutics.

Conversely, de Lubac recognized that the act of interpretation can fail, or fall short, in three ways: first, interpreters can fail to discern, or incompletely discern, the meaning of the text; second, interpreters can misunderstand, or only partially penetrate, the subject matter of the text;

third, interpreters can fail to interiorize the meaning of the text in their lives and worldview. De

Lubac expressed the last point in different ways; for example, exegesis may fail to “bear fruit” in

an interpreter, or may be “sterile” or remain “extrinsic.” In effect, exegesis may fail to reveal an

interpreter to himself when the meaning of the text, as understood and evaluated by the

interpreter, proves irrelevant, negligible, or confusing to the interpreter within the larger

framework of his self-understanding. This larger framework of self-understanding

remains a fundamental difference in the hermeneutics of Gadamer and de Lubac which gives rise

to their divergent developments. Where de Lubac always understood an interpreter in terms of a

three-fold theistic perspective, Gadamer understood an interpreter within the framework of a

post-Kantian view of man informed by Heidegger’s analysis of the historicity of Dasein. As

Mark Schoof noted (though not in connection with this comparison), fundamental theology and

philosophical anthropology determined the character of de Lubac’s entire theological

enterprise.82 De Lubac’s hermeneutics diverged from Gadamer’s most notably in those areas

where the subjectivity of the interpreter is analyzed as part of the interpretive process. De

Lubac’s distinctive theological anthropology is the basis of the hermeneutical principles that

82 Mark Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970 (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), 112. 640 have no parallel in Gadamer, such as the role played by faith, the supernatural, Sacred Tradition, the Church and the Magisterium, and the teleology of history which makes the spiritual senses possible in de Lubac’s hermeneutics. Lewis Ayres seems correct in his assessment that

“Catholic and Protestant theologians seeking a new integration of biblical studies and theology” who turn to “de Lubac’s work on multi-sense scriptural reading” must note that his “account of scriptural interpretation involves a notion of the soul and its transformation in the Christian life

… [therefore] defending [such] a notion of soul is important for those seeking to appropriate pre- modern exegesis.”83 Hilberath expressed the same concern in his second guideline, which stated

that theologians who employ phenomenological hermeneutics cannot postpone indefinitely the

question of whether post-Kantian metaphysics is correct.84

Lastly, Exégèse Médiévale contained a fuller statement about the central role of the

Christian teleology of history than any of de Lubac’s works except La Postérité spirituelle. In

Exégèse Médiévale, de Lubac maintained that the Medievals had a view of history superior to the

modern one, even though it remained largely implicit, coming as it did before the modern age’s

development of historical consciousness. As de Lubac stated:

It is a theological sense of history, consubstantial with Christian thought, which it would be unfair to deny them. They doubtless had it more than we do. In often quite commonplace settings, they express it stoutly. But all sense of history supposes precisely that one does not stay at the level of its mere historia, i.e., … the pure and simple report of the facts. It supposes that one places oneself, at least at a second time, in another point of view than that of a simple narrator. To explicate the facts … one thus applies a principle of discernment.… One has recourse to the final causes that the facts would be unable to furnish and which give a retrospective clarification to the whole unfolding of these facts. This is

83 Lewis Ayres, “The Soul and the Reading of Scripture: A Note on Henri de Lubac,” Scottish Journal of Theology 61.2 (2008): 173-90.

84 Hilberath, 235. 641 why, if any not merely partial and relative, but total, comprehensive, and absolutely valid explication of history is truly possible, this explication can only be theological. Only faith anticipates the future with security. Only an explication founded upon faith can invoke a definitive principle and appeal to ultimate causes.85

As indicated above, Gadamer agreed that in the narration of world history—or any history which attempts to address the ultimate significance of human activity—one must have recourse to final causes which the facts as such do not furnish. Gadamer, however, remained agnostic; consequently, he rejected any modern secular ersatz teleology of human history (because “this explication can only be theological”), and so he did not develop his hermeneutics in ways consonant with those of de Lubac, in spite of their many similarities. Without a sense of its complete context, history remained for Gadamer “the great dark book”; de Lubac would have concurred that only an explication founded upon faith can invoke a definitive principle and appeal to ultimate causes in a comprehensive historical hermeneutics. Hilberath came to the same recognition in his sixth guideline for the integration of philosophical hermeneutics into theology.86 Thus, the role of faith and human destiny remains a decisive diving line between the hermeneutical approaches of de Lubac and Gadamer.

6. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore (1978-1981)

In La Postérité spirituelle, de Lubac argued that a number of aberrant Christian ideas and ersatz Christian movements arose from the disintegration of what Medieval theology once

85 ME 1/2:71; emphasis added.

86 “Innerhalb einer theologischen Hermeneutik muß ‘Tradition’ als umgreifender hermeneutischer Horizont eine konkrete geschichtliche Bestimmung mit allen konstituierenden Momenten finden” (Hilberath, 236). 642 provided by its distinctive theological vehicle: the unified exegesis of the four senses. In the

traditional hermeneutic of the four senses, de Lubac saw the remedy for the false mysticisms,

utopianisms, and collectivist philosophies that plagued contemporary spiritual life. By tracing

the origins of these movements to the degeneration of the traditional hermeneutic, de Lubac’s

work shows, by contrast, how a modern retrieval of this hermeneutic could assist Catholic

theology with a biblical and systematic response to such problems.

In this regard, La Postérité spirituelle provides relatively limited points of comparison

with Gadamer. De Lubac did not substantially alter his views on tradition, community or faith in

the act of interpretation in the course of tracing the many permutations of the Joachimist error.

He reprised them with a stronger emphasis on the Trinity, rather than on the One God, in response to the “dislocated” unity of the Trinity which he believed sustained the Joachimist view of world history. In La Postérité spirituelle, he emphasized the Trinity’s “inextinguishable gift” to man in the Incarnation and its ongoing gift of life in the Mystical Body of Christ. These two positions animated de Lubac’s response to Joachimism in the final section of La Postérité spirituelle.

One comparison to Gadamer may be made with reference to how de Lubac discussed doctrinal development in La Postérité spirituelle. De Lubac explained it as the changing

theological application of the original meaning of the Deposit of Faith, as he had done in earlier

works, but he made a new analogy with the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Just as

the divinity of Christ remains unchanged in taking flesh, yet his humanity and its extension in the

Mystical Body manifest this unchanging divinity in different ways, so too the Christian

theological tradition, in its Wirkungsgeschichte of the Deposit of Faith, presented the unchanging

doctrine of Christ in various forms to the faithful throughout Christian history. Accordingly, de 643 Lubac affirmed, contra Joachimism’s supersessionism, the simultaneous existence of the original historical revelation of Jesus Christ, passed down through Apostolic Tradition, and the progressive development of ecclesiastical tradition through time, which nonetheless never

extended beyond the revelation of Christ. The growth of tradition is each generation’s

appropriation of the mystery of Christ, both in its understanding of the mystery at work in

salvation history (the mystery revealed by allegory) and in its own life (the mystery revealed by tropology) and in the expectation of the life to come (the mystery revealed by anagogy).

Gadamer likewise described how the unchanging meaning of a concept and its interior word can remain fixed, yet also be present in a variety of different terms of conventional language over the course of history. To do so, in the conclusion to Wahrheit und Methode, he employed the analogy of the doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation in the same way. Thus, his philosophy of language might provide philosophical support to de Lubac’s notion of doctrinal development as expressed in La Postérité spirituelle.

For de Lubac, as for Gadamer, there is not an either-or relationship between an original meaning and its traditionary development over time; rather, it is a both-and relationship.

Contrary to static views of tradition which give insufficient attention to how ideas pass through history, de Lubac’s understanding of historical consciousness added a dialogical dimension to the reception of tradition and so explained how an original meaning can be retained, while also paying a dividend in time. For de Lubac, the Church safeguards doctrine like the wise householder in the Gospel, “who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old”

(Matthew 13:52). For both de Lubac and Gadamer, one comes to realize how large a principle has been deposited in a tradition by the dividends it pays over time in its Wirkungsgeschichte. In de Lubac’s theology of revelation, this dividend is inexhaustible. 644

7. Epilogue

In conclusion, it is hoped that this discussion of the ways in which the hermeneutics of

Hans-Georg Gadamer and the hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac complement one another may

contribute to the ongoing scholarly effort to bring the thought of both men into dialogue.

Hopefully, the many areas of concord between the thought of Gadamer and de Lubac will

facilitate the efforts of Catholic exegetes to achieve a productive synthesis of the best elements of pre-modern and postmodern biblical hermeneutics, in service to the Word of God, which provides for the changing needs of each generation by “abiding forever” (1 Peter 1:25).

APPENDIX

The Textual Relationship Between Histoire et Esprit and Its Sources

Sigla Used in the Following Table:

HE = Histoire et Esprit (1950) HS = History and Spirit, English trans. by A. E. Nash. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007. HomGen = Introduction to Homélies sur la Genèse (1943) HomExod = Introduction to Homélies sur l'Exode (1947) SS = "Sens Spirituel" (1949) TA-Fr = "Typologie et Allégorisme" (1947) TA-Eng = "Typology and Allegorization," English trans. in Theological Fragments. P = Paragraph, L = Line, X = end of.

Sigla are followed by page numbers and where necessary by paragraph or line numbers.

When a page begins mid-paragraph, the first incomplete paragraph is designated zero. The first full paragraph on a page is always numbered as one. X indicates that the selection extends to the end of the specified line, paragraph or page, so that readers may see whether any text is omitted.

Thus HomGen 43P1L3 - 44P2X indicates a selection which begins on page 43, paragraph 1, line

3 and extends to the end of the second full paragraph on page 44.

In the table below, the left column divides the text of Histoire et Esprit into passages arranged within the chapter and section headings of the work. In the middle column, corresponding passages of History and Spirit are listed for the convenience of readers of the

English translation. In the right column, the source of each passage of Histoire et Esprit is identified from de Lubac’s antecedent essays.

A dash (-) indicates that there is no textual source for a particular passage of Histoire et

Esprit; it is an expansion added when de Lubac fashioned the antecedent essays into the book.

The nature of this expansion is sometimes discussed in a footnote. Any expansion spanning

645 more than three lines in the original French has been noted below. Numerous small expansions consisting of a few words have not been noted.

INTRODUCTION

HE 7 - 8 P2 L7 HS 9 - 10P2L7 HomGen 5 - 6P0L11 HE 8P2L7 - 12P1L2 HS 10P2L7 - 13X - HE 12P1L2 - 12X HS 14 - 14X HomGen 6P0L11 - P1X

CHAPTER 1 – Griefs contre Origène

Section 1 – Suite d'anathèmes HE 13 - 20P0X HS 15 - 22X HomGen 6P2 - 11P0X

Section 2 – Les anciennes querelles HE 20P1 - 30P0X HS 23 - 33P0X HomGen 11P1 - 17P0X

Section 3 – Origène contre Origène HE 30P1 - 38P0X HS 33P1 - 42P0X HomGen 17P1 - 21P0X1

Section 4 – L'oeuvre d'Origène HE 38P1 - 45P0X HS 42P1 - 49P0X - HE 45P1 - 46X HS 49P1 - 50X HomGen 21P1 - 22P0X

CHAPTER 2 – Origène homme d'Église

Section 1 – Le double front HE 47 - 55P0X HS 51 - 60P0X HomGen 22P1 - 26P1X

Section 2 – Piété et orthodoxie HE 55P1 - 68X HS 60P1 - 76X HomGen 26P2 - 31X Section 3 – Origène et saint Paul HE 69 - 77P1X HS 77 - 86P1X HomGen 32 - 35P0X

Section 4 – La sagesse et la croix HE 77P2 - 83X HS 86P2 - 94P0L2 HomGen 35P1 - 38P1L12 HE 84 - 86P0X HS 94P0L2 - 97P0X -2 HE 86P1 - 91X HS 97P1 - 102X HomGen 38P1L12 - 39X

1 The quotation from Möhler, HE 38P0L8-12, which corresponds to HS 42P0L6-10, also appears as the first paragraph of "Sens Spirituel," SS 542P0.

2 Here de Lubac continued the theme of the previous passage at greater length.

646 CHAPTER 3 – Le sens littéral

Section 1 – Affirmation de l'histoire HE 92 - 102P0X HS 103 - 116P0X HomGen 40 - 44P0L6 HE 102P1 - 104P0X HS 116P1 - 118P0X HomGen 46P1 - 47P0X

Section 2 – L'intention de l'Esprit HE 104P1 - 110P1X HS 118P1 - 125P1X HomGen 47P1 - 50P1X HE 110P2 - 113P0X HS 125P2 - 128P1X -

Section 3 – Précisions verbales HE 113P1 - 116P1X HS 128P2 - 132P0X HomGen 44P0L7 - 46P0X HE 116P2 - 117P0L10 HS 132P1 - 133P0L9 - HE 117P0L10 - 122P0X HS 133P0L9 - 143P0X HomGen 50P2 - 53P0X HE 122P1 - 125P0X HS 139P1 - 143P0X TA-Fr 201P0L8-207P0L53

Section 4 – Le point de vue du prédicateur HE 125P1 - 131 P0X HS 143P1 - 150P0X HomGen 53P1 - 55P1X 4 HE 131P1 - 138PX HS 150P1 - 158X HomGen 59P1 - 62X (end of HomGen)

CHAPTER 4 – Le sens spirituel

Section 1 – Le triple sens de l'Ecriture HE 139P1 HS 159P1 -5 HE 139P2 - 144P1L8 HS 159P2-165P0L1 HomExod 7P1L56 - 12P0X HE 144P1L8 - 147P2X HS 165P0L1 - 169P0X -7 HE 147P3 - 150P0X HS 169P1 - 171X HomExod 12P1 - 13P0X

3 This excerpt from TA expands HomGen 52, footnote 4. The excerpt is not found verbatim in HE. Some parts are summarized, and HE adds to this excerpt to connect it to the rest of the work. TA-Fr 201P0L8-207P0L5 corresponds to TA-Eng 145P0L9 - 149X.

4 HomGen 55P2-59P0X is not used in HE. This section of HomGen discusses the manuscript tradition for the text translated in Sources chrétiennes 7.

5 De Lubac wrote a new introductory paragraph to this section to bridge the end of HomGen and the beginning of HomExod.

6 The first few lines of HomExod (7P1L1-5) are not used in HE because they refer back to HomGen and summarize what is said there.

7 This passage in HE elaborates the text of HomExod with quotations in extenso which were references in HomExod 12, footnote 1.

647 Section 2 – La part de Philon HE 150P1 - 152P0L6 HS 172 - 154P0L3 - HE 152P0L6 - 154P1L1 HS 174P0L3 - 176P1L1 HomExod 13P1 - 14P0L17 HE 154P1L1 - 158P1X HS 176P1L1 - 181P1X - HE 158P2 - 166P0X HS 181P2 - 190P0X HomExod 14P0L18 - 17P0X

Section 3 – Les deux Testaments HE 166P1 - 178P0X HS 190P1 - 204P0X HomExod 17P1 - 23P1X

Section 4 – Ecriture et vie spirituelle HE 178P1 - 180P0L4 HS 204P1 - 205P1L11 -8 HE 180P0L4 - 184P0X HS 205P1L11 - 211P0X TA-Fr 222P0L9-225P0L119 HE 184P1 - 194X HS 211P1 - 222X -10

CHAPTER 5 – L'Évangile

Section 1 – Histoire et sens spirituel HE 195 - 206P0X HS 223 - 235P0X HomExod 23P2 - 29P0L8

Section 2 – Le mystère chrétien HE 206P1 - 210P1X HS 235P1 - 239P1X HomExod 29P0L8 - 31P0X HE 210P2 - 217P0X HS 239P2 - 247P0X -

Section 3 – L'Évangile éternel HE 217P1 - 227P1X HS 247P1 - 259P1X HomExod 31P1 - 33X

Section 4 – Le Dieu d'Origène HE 227P2 - 245X HS 259P2 - 280X -

CHAPTER 6 – Histoire et Esprit

Section 1 – Le développement religieux HE 246 - 250P1L1 HS 281 - 285P1L1 HomExod 34 - 36P0L10 HE 250P1L1 - 254P1L19 HS 285P1L1 - 291P0L2 - HE 254P1L19 - 258P3X HS 291P0L2 - 295P2X HomExod 36P0L10 - 37P2X

8 De Lubac wrote a new introduction to this section of HE.

9 TA-Fr 222P0L9-225P0L11 corresponds to TA-Eng 161P0L14-163P0L9.

10 This passage, on the theme of spiritual combat in Origen, is not borrowed from the 1943 essay, “Le combat spirituel,” Cité Nouvelle II 65 (1943): 769-783; this essay does not concern exegesis.

648 Section 2 – Anticipations prophétiques HE 258P4 - 265P0X HS 295P3 - 303P0X HomExod 37P3 - 40P0X HE 265P1 - 267P0X HS 303P1 - 306P0X -

Section 3 – Création du sens spirituel HE 267P1 - 277X HS 306P1 - 316X HomExod 40P1 - 47P0X

Section 4 – De l'histoire à l'esprit HE 278 - 284P0X HS 317 - 324P0X HomExod 47P1 - 51P0L24 HE 284P1 - 294P0L13 HS 324P1 - 335P0L13 - HE 294P0L13 - 294X HS 335P0L13 - 336X HomExod 51P0L28 - 52P0X

CHAPTER 7 – Inspiration et intelligence

Section 1 – Portée spirituelle de l'inspiration HE 295P0 - P0X HS 337P0 - P0X -11 HE 295P1 - 299P1X HS 337P1 - 342P1X HomExod 52P1 - 54P0X HE 299P2 - 304P1X HS 342P2 - 348P1X -

Section 2 – L'analogie de la foi HE 304P2 - 308P0L1 HS 348P2 - 352P0L12 - HE 308P0L1 - 315P0X HS 352P0L12 - 360X HomExod 59P0 - 61P1X

Section 3 – L'effort d'intelligence HE 315P1 - 325X HS 361 - 374P0X HomExod 61P2 - 65P1X

Section 4 – Le fruit de la palme HE 326 - 335X HS 374P1 - 384X HomExod 65P2 - 70P0X

CHAPTER 8 – Les incorporations du Logos

Section 1 – La Parole de Dieu HE 336 - 337P0X HS 385 - 386P0X HomExod 54P1 - 55P1L13 HE 337P1 - P2X HS 386P1 - P2X HomExod 58P1 - P2X12 HE 337P3 - 346P0X HS 386P3 - 396P0X HomExod 55P1L13 - 57P1X13

11 De Lubac wrote a new introduction to this chapter.

12 Here de Lubac relocated a block quotation to a more apposite point in his presentation.

13 The text in HomExod 57P2 - 58P0X appears to have been discarded.

649 Section 2 – L'Ecriture, l'âme et l'univers HE 346P1 - P1X HS 396P1 - P1X -14 HE 346P2 - 355P0X HS 396P2 - 406P0X HomExod 70P1 - 75X (end of HomExod)

Section 3 – L'Eucharistie, "corps symbolique" HE 355P1 - 363P1X HS 406P1 - 415X -15

Section 4 – Le primat de la Parole HE 363P2 - 373X HS 416 - 426X -16

CONCLUSION

HE 374 - 379P0X HS 427 - 432P0X - HE 379P1 - 385P1L15 HS 432P1 - 439P1L14 SS 543 - 550P0L12 HE 385P1L15 - 386P0L1 HS 439P1L14 - L16 -17 HE 386P0L1 - L10 HS 439P1L16 - 440P0L8 SS 550P0L12 - 551P0L3 HE 386P0L11 - L14 HS 440P0L8 - L14 SS 550n318 HE 386P0L14 - 393P1L7 HS 440P014 - 449P0L3 SS 551P0L3 - 559P0L2 HE 393P1L7 - 394P0L4 HS 449P0L3 - L6 -19 HE 394P0L4 - 396P0L14 HS 449P0L6 - 451P0L30 SS 559P0L3 - 561P0L27 HE 396P0L15 - L19 HS 451P0L30 - L34 -20 HE396P0L19 - 402P0L6 HS 451P0L34 - 458P0L9 SS 561P0L28 - 567P1L13 HE 402P0L6 - L10 HS 458P0L9 - L13 -21 HE 402P0L10 - 410P0X HS 458P0L13 - 467P0X SS 567P1L13 - 576X (=end of SS) HE 410P1 - 446X HS 467P1 - 507X -

14 De Lubac wrote a new introduction to this section.

15 This section contains a new theme, relating the Scripture to the Eucharist, insofar as both are the incarnate presence of the Word.

16 This section continues the previous theme, joining Scripture and the Eucharist as the two means whereby Christ builds up His Body, the Church. Scripture, Eucharist and the Church are then three incorporations of the Logos. The section then emphasizes the foundation of all three in the Eternal Word.

17 De Lubac inserted a quotation from Hans Urs von Balthasar into HE. This quotation, and three others mentioned below, are from works published shortly before HE went to press.

18 A footnote in SS was relocated to the main text in HE.

19 De Lubac inserted a quote from Hans Urs von Balthasar into HE.

20 De Lubac inserted a quote from Marrou into HE.

21 De Lubac inserted a quote from Podechard into HE.

650

The only passages of HomGen and HomExod which are not incorporated into HE are

HomGen 55P2-59P0X, HomExod 7P1L1-5 and 57P2 - 58P0X. These omissions comprise about

5 pages out of 127; thus about 96% of the text of HomGen and HomExod can be found in HE.

From TA-Fr, 9 pages out of 47 are used in HE; thus 19% of TA-Fr is found in HE. Only the second paragraph of the first page of SS (which comprises 35 pages) is not found in HE; thus more than 97% of SS is found in HE.

651 BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Works by Henri de Lubac de Lubac, Henri. “Apologétique et Théologie.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 57 (1930): 361-378. English translation: “Apologetics and Theology.” In Theological Fragments. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989.

———. Athéisme et sens de l’homme: Une double requête de “Gaudium et Spes.” Foi Vivante 67. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968.

———. Augustinisme et théologie moderne. Théologie 63. Paris: Aubier, 1965. English translation: Augustinianism and Modern Theology. Translated by Lancelot Sheppard. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2000.

———. “Causes de l’atténuation du sens du sacré.” Bulletin des Aumôniers catholiques de chantiers de la jeunesse 31 (1942): 27-39.

———. “Catholicisme.” Bulletin de l'Association Catholique Chinoise du Sud-Est de la France 3 (1932): 8-15.

———. “Catholicisme.” La Revue de l'AUCAM [Academica Unio Catholicas Adiuvans Missiones] 8 (1933): 130-141.

———. Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme. Unam Sanctam 3. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1938. English translation: Catholicism: Christ and the Common Destiny of Man. Translated by Lancelot C. Sheppard and Elizabeth Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988.

———. “Claudel théologien.” Recherches et Débats 65 (1969): 25-29.

———. “Commentaire du Préambule et du Chapitre I de la Constitution dogmatique ‘Dei verbum.’” In La Révélation divine. Translated by J.-P. Torrell. Edited by B.-D. Dupuy. Unam Sanctam 70. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1968.

———. Corpus Mysticum: L’Eucharistie et l’Église au Moyen Âge. Étude Historique. Théologie 3. Paris: Aubier, 1944.

———. De la connaissance de Dieu. Paris: Témoignage chrétien, 1945. English translation: The Discovery of God. Translated by Alexander Dru. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1960.

———. “Deux Augustiniens fourvoyés: Baius et Jansénius.” Recherches de Science Religieuse 21 (1931): 422-443 and 513-540.

652

———. “Dostoievski prophète.” Cité Nouvelle 2 (1943): 109-135.

———. “Esprit et Liberté dans la tradition théologique.” Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique 40 (1939): 121-150 and 189-207.

———. Exégèse médiévale: les quatre sens de l’Écriture. 4 vols. Théologie 41 & 59. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1959-1964.

———. “Faillite de l’athéisme  Les athées de Dostoievski.” Cité Nouvelle 2 (1943): 193-221.

———. Histoire et Esprit: l’intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène. Théologie 16. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1950. English translation: History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen. Translated by Anne Englund Nash. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007.

———. "In Memoriam: Le Père Joseph Huby." Recherches de Science Religieuse 35 (1948): 71- 80.

———. “Introduction” to Origène: Homélies sur la Genèse. Sources Chrétiennes 7. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1943.

———. “Introduction” to Origène: Homélies sur l’Exode. Sources Chrétiennes 16. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1947.

———. “La motif de la création dans l’ ‘Etre et les êtres’ de Maurice Blondel.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 65 (1938): 220-225.

———. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. Vol. 1, de Joachim à Schelling. Paris: Éditions Lethielleux, 1979.

———. La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore. Vol 2, de Saint-Simon à nos jours. Paris: Éditions Lethielleux, 1981.

———. “Le caractère social du dogme Chrétien.” Chronique Sociale de France 45 (1936): 167- 192, 259-283.

———. “Le combat spirituel.” Cité Nouvelle II 65 (1943): 769-783.

———. “Le credo de Paul Claudel.” Choisir 14 (1960): 9-12.

———. Le Drame de l’humanisme athée. Paris: Spes, 1945. English translation: The Drama of Atheist Humanism. Translated by Edith M. Riley. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1963.

653 ———. Les Églises particulières dans l’Église universelle. Paris: Aubier, 1972. English translation: “Particular Churches in the Universal Church.” In Motherhood of the Church. Translated by Sergia Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1982.

———. Le fondement théologique des missions. Paris: Bibliothèque de l’Union Missionnaire du Clergé de France, 1941.

———. “Le mystère du surnaturel.” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 80-121.

———. Le mystère du surnaturel. Théologie 64. Paris: Aubier, 1965. English translation: The Mystery of the Supernatural. Translated by Rosemary Sheed. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2000.

———. “Le rencontre de ‘superadditum’ et ‘supernaturale’ dans la théologie médiévale.” Revue du Moyen Age Latin 1 (1945): 27-34.

———. “Lettres échangées entre M. Blondel et J. Wehrlé sur la question biblique (janv/févr 1924).” Bulletin de Littérature ecclésiastique 64 (1963): 117-136.

———. “L’expérience de l’éternité: la ‘nouvelle naissance’ selon Dostoievski.” Cité Nouvelle 2 (1943): 297-330.

———. “L’origine de la religion.” English translation: “The Origin of Religion.” In God, Man, and the Universe: A Christian Answer to Modern Materialism. Edited by Jacques de Bivort de la Saudée. New York: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1953.

———, ed. Maurice Blondel et Auguste Valensin: Correspondance 1899-1912. 2 vols. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1957.

———, ed. Maurice Blondel et Auguste Valensin: Correspondance (1912-1947). Texte annoté par H. de Lubac. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1965.

———. M. Blondel et P. Teilhard de Chardin: Correspondance commentée. Paris: Beauchesne, 1965.

———. Méditation sur l’Eglise. 2nd ed. Théologie 27. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1953.

———. Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits. Namur, Belgium: Culture et Verité, 1989. English translation: At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the Circumstances that Occasioned His Writings. Translated by Anne Elizabeth Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993.

———. Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits. Edited by Georges Chantraine and Fabienne Clinquart. Oeuvres complètes 33. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2006.

654 ———. “Mémoire sur mes vingt premières années.” Bulletin de l’Association Internationale Cardinal Henri de Lubac 1 (1998): 7-31.

———. “Nécessité de Missions, tirée du rôle providentiel de l'Eglise visible pour le salut des âmes.” In Actes du IIe congrès national de l'Union missionnaire du Clergé de France. Paris: L'Union missionnaire du Clergé, 1933.

———. “Origène et Saint Thomas d'Aquin.” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 602- 603.

———. Petite catéchèse sur Nature et Grâce. Paris: Fayard, 1980. English translation: A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace. Translated by Richard Arnandez. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1984.

———. Pic de la Mirandole: Études et discussions. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1974.

———. “P. Rousselot: Petite théorie du développement du dogme.” Recherches de science religieuse 53 (1965): 355-390.

———. “Remarques dur l’histoire du mot ‘surnaturel’.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 61 (1934): 225-249 and 350-370.

———. Résistance chrétienne à l’antisémitisme. Souvenirs 1940-1944. Paris: Fayard, 1988. English translation: Christian Resistance to anti-Semitism: Memories from 1940-1944. Elizabeth Englund. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1990.

———. Review of Claudel et l’interlocuteur invisible: Le drame de l’appel, by Aimé Becker. Bulletin de la Societé Paul Claudel (1975).

———. “Sens spirituel.” Recherches de science religieuse 36 (1949): 542-576.

———. The Splendour of the Church. Translated by Michael Mason. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956.

———. “Sur la philosophie chrétienne.” Nouvelle Revue Théologique 63 (1936): 225-253.

———. Sur les chemins de Dieu. Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1956.

———. Surnaturel. Études historiques. Théologie 8. Paris: Aubier, 1946.

———. “Sur un vieux distique: la doctrine du ‘quadruple sens’.” In Mélanges offerts au R. P. Fernand Cavallera. Toulouse: Institut Catholique, 1948. English translation: “On an Old Distich: The Doctrine of the ‘Fourfold Sense’ in Scripture.” Translated by R. H. Balinsky. In Theological Fragments. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989.

655 ———. Théologie dans l’histoire. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1990.

———. “‘Tu m’as trompé, Seigneur’: Le commentaire d’Origène sur Jérémie, XX, 7.” In Mémorial J. Chaine. Lyon: Faculté de Théologie, 1950.

———. “‘Typologie’ et ‘Allégorisme’.” Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947): 180-226. English translation: “Typology and Allegorization.” In Theological Fragments. San Francisco: Ignatius, 1989.

———. “Un nouveau front religieux.” In Israël et la foi chrétienne. Edited by J. Chaine, L. Richard, and J. Bonsirven. Fribourg: Libr. de l’Université, 1942.

———, and Jean Bastaire. Claudel et Péguy. Paris: Aubier, 1974.

II. Works by Hans-Georg Gadamer

Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Anmerkungen zu dem Thema ‘Hegel und Heidegger.’” In Natur und Geschichte: Karl Löwith zum 70 Geburtstag. Hrsg. von Hermann Braun und Manfred Riedel. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1967.

———. “Antike Atomtheorie.” Zeitschrift für die gesamte Naturwissenschaft einschließlich Naturphilosophie und Geschichte der Naturwissenschaft und Medizin 1, Heft 2 (1935/36): 81-95.

———, Erich Fried, Werner Ross, and Hilde Domin. “Das Gedicht zwischen Autor und Leser: Zwei Doppelinterpretationen.” Merkur: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Europäisches Denken 20, no. 5 (May 1966): 431-442.

———. Dialektik und Sophistik im siebenten platonischen Brief. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 1964.

———. “Gadamer on Strauss: An Interview.” Edited by Ernst L. Fortin. Interpretation 12, no. 1 (January 1984): 1-13.

———. Gesammelte Werke. 10 vols. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1990-1995.

———. “Hegel und der geschichtliche Geist.” Zeitschift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft 100 Heft 1/2 (1939): 25-37.

———. Heideggers Wege: Studien zum Spätwerk. Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1983.

———. “Herder et ses théories sur l'Histoire.” In Regards sur l'histoire. Paris: Fernand Sorlot, 1941.

656

———. “Martin Heidegger und die Marburger Theologie.” In Zeit und Geschichte: Dankesgabe an Rudolf Bultmann zum 80. Geburtstag. Hrsg. von Erich Dinkler. Tübingen, J.C.B. Mohr, 1964.

———. “Mythos und Vernunft.” In Gegenwart im Geiste: Festschrift für Richard Benz. Hrsg. von Walther Bulst und Arthur von Schneider. Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1954.

———. “Nicolás de Cusa y la filosofía del presente.” Folia humanística: Ciencias, artes, letras 2, no. 23 (1964): 929-937.

———. Philosophical Apprenticeships. Translated by Robert R. Sullivan. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985.

———. Philosophische Lehrjahre: Eine Rückschau, 2. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995.

———. Platon als Porträtist. München: Verein der Freunde und Förderer der Glyptothek, 1988.

———. Platos dialektische Ethik: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zum “Philebos.” Leipzig: Felix Miner Verlag, 1931.

———. Platos dialektische Ethik und andere Studien zur platonischen Philosophie. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1968.

———. “Platos Staat der Erziehung.” In Das neue Bild der Antike. Bd. I, Hellas. Hrsg. von Helmut Berve. Leipzig: Koehler und Amelang, 1942.

———. Plato und die Dichter. Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1934.

———. “Plato und die Vorsokratiker.” In Epimeleia: Die Sorge der Philosophie um den Menschen (Festschrift für Helmut Kuhn zum 65. Geburtstag). Hrsg. von Franz Wiedmann. München: Verlag Anton Pustet, 1964.

———. “Retraktationen zum Lehrgedicht des Parmenides.” In Varia variorum: Festgabe für Karl Reinhardt. Münster: Böhlau Verlag, 1952.

———. “Sokrates und das Göttliche.” In Sokrates: Gestalt und Idee. Hrsg. von Herbert Kessler. Heitersheim: Die Graue Edition, 1993.

———. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1995.

657 ———. “Über die Möglichkeit einer philosophischen Ethik.” In Sein und Ethos: Untersuchungen zur Grundlegung der Ethik. Hrsg. von Paulus M. Engelhardt. Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald Verlag, 1963.

———. “Vom Wort zum Begriff. Die Aufgabe der Hermeneutik also Philosophie.” In Menschliche Endlichkeit und Komposition. Bamberg: Fränkischer Tag, 1995.

———. “Vom Zirkel des Verstehens.” In Martin Heidegger zum siebzigsten Geburtstag: Festschrift. Hrsg. von Günther Neske. Pfullingen: Verlag Günther Neske, 1959.

———. “Wilhelm Dilthey zu seinem hundertsten Geburtstag am 19. November.” Literarische Rundschau 3 (1933): 1.

———. “Zur Vorgeschichte der Metaphysik.” In Anteile: Martin Heidegger zum 60. Geburtstag. Hrsg. von Hans-Georg Gadamer. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1950.

III. Secondary Works

à Lapide, Cornelius Cornelii. Commentaria in Scripturam Sacram. 11 vols. Lyon: Tournes, 1732.

Alvesson, Mats and Kaj Sköldberg. Reflexive Methodology: New Vistas for Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications, 2009.

Apel, Karl-Otto, ed. Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971.

Arthos, John. “‘To Be Alive When Something Happens’: Retrieving Dilthey’s Erlebnis.” Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts 3, no. 1 (Spring 2000), http://www.janushead.org/3-1/jarthos.cfm (accessed August 28, 2011).

Augustine. On Christian Teaching. Translated by R. P. H. Greene. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Ayres, Lewis. “The Soul and the Reading of Scripture: A Note on Henri de Lubac.” Scottish Journal of Theology 61.2 (2008): 173-90.

Barnes, Jonathan. “A Kind of Integrity.” Review of Philosophical Apprenticeships by Hans- Georg Gadamer, London Review of Books 8, no. 19 (Nov. 1986): 12-13.

Barthold, Lauren Swayne. Gadamer’s Dialectical Hermeneutics. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.

658 Benedict XVI. Deus Caritas Est (25 Dec. 2005). In Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 (2006): 217-252.

Berger, Stefan. “Stefan Berger responds to Ulrich Muhlack.” German Historical Institute London Bulletin 23, no. 1 (May 2001): 22-33.

Biblia Sacra Vulgata Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem. 4th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.

Blondel, Maurice. Les premiers écrits de Maurice Blondel. Lettre sur les exigences de la pensée contemporaine en matière d’apologétique (1896). Histoire et Dogma. Edited by Henry Duméry. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1956. English translation: The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma. Edited by Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan. London: Harvill Press, 1964.

Bouyer, Louis. “Où en est la théologie du Corps mystique?” Revue des sciences religieuses 22 (1948): 313-333.

Braun, François-Marie. The Work of Père Lagrange. Translated by Richard T. A. Murphy. Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1963.

Brechter, Heinrich Suso. “Decree on the Church’s Missionary Activity.” In Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. Edited by Herbert Vorgrimler. Translated by H. Graef, W. J. O’Hara and R. Walls. New York: Herder and Herder, 1969.

Brennan, David. The Israel Omen: The Ancient Warning of Catastrophies [sic] Has Begun. n.p.: Teknon Publishing, 2009.

Brisson, J. “Introduction” to Traité des Mystères. By Hilary of Poitiers. Sources chrétiennes 19. Paris: Cerf, 1947.

Bulhof, Ilse N. Wilhelm Dilthey: A Hermeneutic Approach to the Study of History and Culture. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library 2. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1980.

Casarella, Peter J. “Selbstgestaltung des Menschen nach Nikolaus von Kues und modernes Verständnis des Menschen: aufgezeigt an Hans-Georg Gadamer.” Paper presented at the Symposium of the Cusanus-Gesellschaft, Trier, Germany, October 20-22, 2005. Mitteilungen und Forschungsbeiträge der Cusanus-Gesellschaft 31 (2005): 29-52.

Chantraine, Georges. “Beyond Modernity and Postmodernity: The Thought of Henri de Lubac.” Communio 17 (Summer 1990): 207-219.

———. Henri de Lubac. Paris: Editions du Cerf, forthcoming.

Chadwick, Henry. Review of Histoire et Esprit: L’Intelligence de l’Écriture d’après Origène by Henri de Lubac. Journal of Theological Studies 2, new series (1951): 102-104.

659

Childs, Brevard S. Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

———. Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.

Congar, Ives. “Part I, Chapter IV.” In Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. Edited by Herbert Vorgrimler. Translated by W. J. O’Hara. New York: Herder and Herder, 1969.

Coppens, Joseph. Review of Henri de Lubac, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, I, De Joachim à Schelling. Ephemerides Theologicae Louvanienses 56 no. 1 (April 1980): 189.

D’Ambrosio, Marcellino G. “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic.” Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1991.

———. Review of Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac, by Susan K. Wood. Pro Ecclesia 10, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 110.

Daniélou, Jean. Origène. Paris: La Table Ronde, 1948.

Denzinger, Henricus, and Adolfus Schönmetzer. Enchiridion Symbolorum: Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum. 36th ed. Barcelona: Herder, 1973.

de Tourville, Henri. Lumière et Vie. Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1924.

Devreesse, Robert, and Raymond Tonneau. Essai sur Théodore de Mopsueste, Studi e Testi 141. Vatican City: [n.p.], 1948.

Drosnin, Michael. The Bible Code. New York: Touchstone, 1997.

Dungan, David Laird. A History of the Synoptic Problem: The Canon, the Text, the Composition and the Interpretation of the Gospels. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Eberhard, Philippe. The Middle Voice in Gadamer’s Hermeneutics: A Basic Interpretation with Some Theological Implications. Hermeneutische Untersuchungen zur Theologie 45. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004.

Eschenburg. Theodor. Über Autorität. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976.

Farrell, Alan. “Cortez in Darien.” Vietnam Generation 3, no. 3 (November 1991), http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/sixties/HTML_docs/Texts/Narrative /Farrell_Cortez_in_Darien.html (accessed September 24, 2011).

660 First Vatican Council. Dei Filius (24 April 1870). In Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schönmetzer. Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum. 36th rev. ed. Rome: Herder, 1965.

Ford, John T. Review of Truth and Method by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Theological Studies 37, no. 3 (Spring 1976): 490-492.

Frege, Gottlob. “Über Sinn und Bedeutung.” Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, Neue Folge 100 (1892): 25-50.

Frei, Hans W. Eclipse of the Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Hermeneutics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974.

———. “The ‘Literal Reading’ of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does it Stretch or Will It Break?” in The Bible and Narrative Tradition. Edited by Frank McConnell. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Granskou, David. Review of The Sources of Revelation by Henri de Lubac. Journal of Ecumenical Studies 7 (1970): 586-7.

Geisler, Norman L., and James I. Packer, eds. Explaining Hermeneutics: A Commentary on the Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics. Oakland, California: International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, 1983.

Gese, Hartmut. Essays on Biblical Theology. Translated by Keith Crim. Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1981.

Grondin, Jean. Hans-Georg Gadamer: A Biography. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

———. The Philosophy of Gadamer. Translated by Kathryn Plant. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.

Guillet, Jacques. "Les Exégèses d'Alexandrie et d'Antioche, conflit ou malentendu?" Recherches de science religieuse 34 (1947): 265.

Gutiérrez, Gustavo. Theology of Liberation: History, Politics and Salvation. Translated by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson. New York: Orbis, 1973.

Hahn, Scott, and Curtis Mitch, eds. The Gospel of Saint Matthew: Commentary, Notes and Study Questions. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1999.

Hanson, R. P. C. Allegory and Event: A Study of the Sources and Significance of Origen's Interpretation of Scripture. London: SCM Press, 1959.

661

Haralick, Robert , Eliyahu Rips, and Matityahu Glazerson. Torah Codes: A Glimpse into the Infinite. New York: Mazal & Bracha, 2005.

Harney, Martin. The Jesuits in History: The Society of Jesus Through Four Centuries. New York: The America Press, 1941.

Haydock, George Leo, ed. The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: With a Comprehensive Catholic Commentary. New York, E. Dunigan, 1852-54. Reprint, Moravia, CA: Catholic Treasures, 1991.

Heidegger, Martin. “Letter on Humanism.” In Basic Writings: From Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964). Edited by David Farrell Krell. San Francisco: Harper, 1977.

Heilbron, J. L. The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Hellman, J. W. “Emmanuel Mounier: A Catholic Revolutionary at Vichy.” Journal of Contemporary History 8, no. 4 (Oct. 1973): 11-14.

———. Emmanuel Mounier and the New Catholic Left 1930-1950. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.

Hilberath, Bernd Jochen. Theologie zwischen Tradition und Kritik: Die philosophische Hermeneutik Hans-Georg Gadamers als Herausforderung des theologischen Selbstverständnisses. Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1978.

Hyslop, Henry. Review of Exégèse Médiévale: les Quatre Sens de l’Ecriture, Part II, Volume II, by Henri de Lubac, The Downside Review 83, no. 270 (1965): 78.

Jeanrond, Werner G. Text and Interpretation as Categories of Theological Thinking. Translated by Thomas J. Wilson. New York: Crossroad, 1988. Reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005.

———. Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance. New York: Crossroad, 1991.

John Paul II. Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003). In Acta Apostolicae Sedis 95 (2003): 433- 475.

Jungmann, Josef Andreas. “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy.” In Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. Edited by Herbert Vorgrimler. Translated by L. Adolphus, K. Smyth and R. Strachan. New York: Herder and Herder, 1967.

662 Kähler, Martin. Der sogenannte historische Jesus und der geschichtliche biblische Christus. Zweite Auflage. Leipzig: Georg Böhme, 1896.

Kikawada, Isaac M., and Arthur Quinn. Before Abraham Was: The Unity of Genesis 1-11. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989.

Kluback, William. Review of Henri de Lubac, La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore [2 vols]. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15 no. 3 (1984): 192-195.

Kluge, Friedrich. Etymologisches Wörterbuch der Deutschen Sprache, 21. Auflage. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1975.

Komonchak, Joseph A. “Theology and Culture at Mid-Century: The Example of Henri de Lubac.” Theological Studies 51 (1990): 579-602.

Kovacs, Joe. “Is oil catastrophe fulfillment of Genesis prophecy? Video suggests biblical tie with U.S. treatment of Israel, rig explosion.” World Net Daily News (June 23, 2010), http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=170373.

Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962.

Ladd, George E. "Faith and History." Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society 6 (1963): 86-91.

Lagrange, Marie-Joseph. La méthode historique. Édition Augmentée. Paris: Lecoffre, 1903.

———. Le Judaïsme avant Jésus Christ. Paris: J. Gabalda et fils, 1931.

Lammi, Walter. Gadamer and the Question of the Divine. New York: Continuum, 2008.

Langevin, Paul-Émile. Review of Henri de Lubac, S.J., La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, Tome I: de Joachim à Schelling. Science and Spirit, 34 no. 2 (1982): 236-8.

Latourelle, René. Theology of Revelation. Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1966.

Lawn, Chris. Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: Continuum, 2006.

Leo XIII. Providentissimus Deus. 18 Nov. 1893. In Acta Apostolicae Sedis 26 (1894).

Levering, Matthew. Participatory Biblical Exegesis: A Theology of Biblical Interpretation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008.

Liddell, Henry George, and Robert Scott. A Greek-English Lexicon. Revised by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940.

663

Lindsay, Austin J. “De Lubac’s Images of the Church: A Study of Christianity in Dialogue.” Ph.D. diss., The Catholic University of America, 1974.

Lonergan, Bernard. Method in Theology. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973.

Loverde, Paul S. "Bought with a Price: Pornography and the Attack on the Living Temple of God" (30 Nov. 2006). Arlington, VA: Catholic Diocese of Arlington, 2006.

Löwy, Michael, and Claudia Pompan. “Marxism and Christianity in Latin America.” Latin American Perspectives 20, no. 4 (Autumn 1993): 28-42.

Lusseau, Henri, and Marcel Collomb. Manuel d’études bibliques. Paris: Pierre Téqui, 1936.

Makita, Etsuro. Gadamer-Bibliographie (1922-1994). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.

McKenzie, John L. “A Chapter in the History of Spiritual Exegesis: de Lubac’s Histoire et Esprit.” Theological Studies 12 (1951): 365-381.

McPartlan, Paul. “Henri de LubacEvangeliser.” Priests & People (August-September 1992): 344.

———. “Mysticism and the Eucharistic Motif.” In The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.

———. “‘You will be changed into me’: Unity and Limits in de Lubac’s Thought.” One in Christ 30 (1994): 50-60.

Mendelssohn, Moses. Phädon. Berlin: Friedrich Nicolai, 1767.

Miller, Robert D., II. “Many Roads Lead Eastward: Overtures to Catholic Biblical Theology.” Paper presented at the conference “Historical Critical Method and Scripture, the Soul of Theology” at Mount Saint Mary’s University, Emmitsburg, MD, June 23, 2006.

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