This past Tuesday evening, Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP—Dominican priest, cofounder of the bluegrass band the Hillbilly Thomists, and the first American rector of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome (colloquially the “Angelicum”)—delivered the inaugural Aquinas Lecture on a vision for Catholic theology in the twenty-first century. The event, a collaboration between the Angelicum and First Things, took place at the elegant Union League Club in midtown Manhattan, but—in a fitting reflection of divine grace—the doors were swung wide open to the public without cost.
Fr. White’s talk to this packed room was, to a degree, exactly what you’d expect from a well-respected Catholic and theologian reflecting on Catholic theology; this great “science of God”—theos-logos—should, he remarked at the outset, “seek to explain the meaning of life in reference to God and the Incarnation.” Later in the talk, echoing Gaudium et Spes 22, he said that when theologians point to Christ, they get to the truth of both God and man, and that, conversely, the eclipse of Christ is the eclipse of both God and man.
But what I found especially interesting was that, in articulating a vision for precisely how to do theology today, Fr. White both encouraged and embodied an admirable capaciousness of mind—an approach that boldly confronts a deep theological fault line in the Church today.
The presentation was structured around five key propositions:
- Engage intellectually with the Creed.
- Be against—and for—elements of secular liberalism.
- Be actively engaged intellectually with non-Christian religions.
- Defend the arts and humanities.
- Emphasize the centrality of the sacramental order.
Fr. White wisely explicated principles 1, 4, and 5—the public contemplation of God by means of creedal truths (especially in light of the 1700th anniversary of Nicaea), the need for greater progress in the field of artistic beauty, the groundedness of theology in the sacramental life, above all the Eucharistic Presence—but they were, again, fairly straightforward ideas that few faithful Catholics would take issue with.
Propositions 2 and 3, however, stepped into thornier territory—yet stepped securely. On the second proposition, Fr. White candidly dissected the dangers of the modern secular order—its bracketing of transcendent values, its loss of ultimate meaning, its diminishment of human freedom and intellect—but likewise stressed that not all of it is misguided. Citing the thought of Aquinas, the enshrining of religious freedom in Vatican II’s Dignitatis Humanae, and especially the example of John Henry Newman (who had carefully critiqued and positively construed secular liberalism) Fr. White gestured toward the great goods of the modern world—some of the same goods that the Catholic tradition has cultivated from its own internal sources. Whereas some traditionalist Catholics have construed Dignitatis Humane and all that comes after it as one big mistake, Fr. White thinks with the Church: Catholic theology in this century, as in the last, must affirm and harness the good in the liberal order of the day, even as it critiques it.
With the third proposition, he offered two examples of non-Christian religions with which Catholic theology should be in stronger dialogue: Hinduism and Islam. These religions, he pointed out, are not only huge—there are about as many Hindus and Muslims as there are believing Christians in the world—but also gaining in influence. How will Catholics respond?
Again, whereas certain traditionalists paint interreligious dialogue as a failed experiment of Vatican II, denigrating Nostra Aetate as an importation of religious indifferentism, Fr. White seems to double down on it: we ought to “cultivate a culture of interreligious Logos,” of “reciprocal friendship,” of “communion in shared goods where they can be found.” He still adamantly underscored the ultimate truth of the Incarnation.
Indeed, Fr. White closed his talk with a powerful story: A missionary in India exposed the Blessed Sacrament to passersby on the street, inviting them to come in and worship. A homeless Hindu man, partially paralyzed from a stroke, would come into the chapel regularly to do just that. When the priest gently asked him why, he responded, “They tell me it is God, and I try to believe it.” That, Fr. White said, is our task: to point to God. Nevertheless, Catholic theology, he emphasized, ought to explore those ideas in non-Christian traditions “convergent” to its own.
But it wasn’t only these propositions that were striking; it was also the way in which Fr. White drinks widely from the Catholic intellectual and spiritual tradition. He didn’t just lean on Thomas Aquinas; he also quoted positively Karl Rahner’s Theological Investigations; he referenced Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s line that influenced Flannery O’Connor, the “Hillbilly Thomist”—“Everything that rises must converge”—and nodded in the direction of an evolutionary explanation of human biology. And he hardly comes across as a dry rationalist: a little pious old lady, he added in the Q&A, can have a more intimate knowledge of God than the “egghead” theologian, and the saints “speak the future of the Church through the instinct of love.”
In proposing these paths in this way, Fr. White seems to straddle, as I said above, a deep theological fault line in the Church. On one far side are the traditionalists who resist modernism, the Nouvelle théologie school of theology, and in extreme cases, the Vatican II documents (saying they went too far); on the other side are more modern Catholics who resist traditionalism, a rigid Scholasticism, and in more extreme cases, the same documents of Vatican II (saying they didn’t go far enough).
Ruling out either anti-Vatican II extreme—those who want to back to Vatican I and those who want to press on to Vatican III—the question remains: Whither Catholic theology? Should it return to its Scholastic roots, or attend carefully to the signs of the times?
The only way past this bifurcation in this century, as Fr. White himself demonstrates, is to see beyond it. Indeed, one might argue that he is leaning, in an even more profound way, on Thomas Aquinas, who was himself both a deep and broad thinker: he drew on the deep wells of Catholic tradition, but also interacted generously with Jewish, Muslim, and pagan scholars of the ancient and medieval worlds.
Perhaps the words and example of Fr. Thomas Joseph White will be a step toward a rapprochement of these two schools too long set against each other: the forming of a united theological front with a bright ecclesial future.
• Related at CWR: “‘We cannot love what do not know’: An interview with Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P.” (Oct. 3, 2017) by Carl E. Olson
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About “stronger dialogue [with] Islam” and “How will Catholics respond?”
Four points:
FIRST, a basic proposition might be that it is simply incorrect to posit some kind of symmetry between Islamic belief and Faith in the incarnate person of Jesus Christ. Instead, the accurate symmetry is not between the two scriptures, the Qur’an and the Bible, but rather between the Qur’an (“the word made book”) and the incarnate Jesus Christ (“the Word made flesh”).
SECOND, therefore, might a better starting point be between the clarified Natural Law as differentiated and understood in Christian culture and as apart from religion, and some elements of the Natural Law (the “fitrah”) which within Islamic culture are then bundled inseparably with the package-deal Qur’an?
But, to premise Natural Law/fitrah as involving an inborn and universal orientation toward God, and (further) as involving free will in “the image and likeness of God” seems to posit a second autonomy apart from the inviolable autonomy of Allah who alone is great. And this second autonomy is by definition: blasphemy. End of dialogue?
THIRD, especially when the post-Enlightenment West (not to be confused with the Catholic Faith) has drifted off into free-wheeling rationalism and brainstem individualism, and worse.
So, at the theological level, how to (1) recognize the inborn piety of individual followers of Islam who still believe in God (rooted in the universal Natural Law, however imperfectly understood), and (2) differentiate Christianity and the perennial Catholic Church from post-Christian Western rationalism, and (3) encourage followers of Islam to rethink their 9th-century rejection of the Mutazilites and the further path of coherence between inborn and irreducible faith and the included divine gift of reason?
FOURTH, Pope Benedict XVI addressed Rationalism (of the post-Christian West) and Fideism (under a totally inscrutable Allah/Islamic determinism) in his Regensburg Lecture of 2006. The Muslim world erupted into street riots, and the Western world simply yawned.
About the West, the prophet Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) got it just about right: “If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, and hear what he had to say, and then make fun of it.”
And about Islam, needed first is elementary education—that the Triune One is not the Qur’anic “Father, the Son…and Mary “(!). As a start point for dialogue, the Trinity cannot remain misinterpreted, through the lingering lens of early Arabia, as just another pagan triad.
SUMMARY: The dialogue flounders if it begins as between two or more different-but-more-or-less symmetrical and equivalent “religions.” As such, are non-Christian religions really “convergent” (White’s premise) with faith in the uniquely incarnate person of Jesus Christ?
This is an excellent article that makes me envious of not having been able to hear Father White speak. Peter, thank you for your comment, which demonstrates a profound understanding of Islamic teachings and the challenges of comparing Christianity and Islam.
I had the opportunity to live in the Middle East for eight years. Although I resided in Abu Dhabi, I traveled extensively throughout the GCC and North Africa. During this time, I had many opportunities to discuss Christianity with numerous scholarly Muslims. My ecumenical focus was generally on where our beliefs converged rather than diverged. This approach required shifting the conversation to more fundamental discussions of defining truth(s). For example, instead of starting with the Trinity, I focused on the reality of God the Father and His relationship with His children, the purpose and value of prayer, what constitutes scripture, the difference between faith and belief, the definition of obedience, the appropriateness of radicalism versus complete faithfulness, and how we best function in a world of differing beliefs. This approach leads to building a collegial fraternity by concentrating on more fundamental truths, with the objective of following the Holy Spirit and knowing when to testify of the eternal truths of Jesus Christ’s teachings and His salvific role as our Lord and Savior through His sacrifice on the cross and His resurrection.
Whether other religions offer beautiful and good things that can complement ours, one can simply answer that “He alone guided him; there was no foreign god with him” (Dt 32:12). When Jesus saved you with the cross, he had no help from Buddha or anyone else. Rather, they made it heavier for him, and now they are taking advantage of it.
Sounds like he’s not a rad trad!! That’s going to drive people here crazy. Good. Maybe it will challenge their thinking. He happens to be in my humble opinion the leading Catholic theologian today.
Your comment reflects not much understanding of what traditionalists have had to say, especially about such things like the Eighth Commandment and presumption.
Becklo raises a viable entree to Islamic conciliation via Aquinas. Islam, in accord with the prophet Muhammad hold to their belief in a single god, monotheism, revealed by God to Muhammad and referenced in the Qur’an. Reason, as such diametrically in opposition to that revelation was later developed primarily by three Arab Muslim philosophers, Ibn Sina [9th century possibly Persian], Al Farabi [9th century Baghdad school] Ibn Rushd [12th century Andalusia Spain] came to the conclusion that the existence of God is accessible to reason, the source found in their study of Aristotle and the active intellect [energeia or energeia dynamis]. The term agent intellect was the act of the soul in reasoning, the passive intellect is acted upon and receives knowledge.
From this understanding they postulated the existence of God in the immovable agent intellect of nous [Gk for intellect]. Consequently Ibn Rushd developed the concept of the universal intellect shared by all men [adopted in the West, opposed by Aquinas, and condemned beginning with Archbishop of Paris Sentier]. Nevertheless reason was brought into the Islamic world in contrast to simple revelation of truth. The Mullah’s in Spain condemned Ibn Rushed and exiled him to Morocco. Ibn Rushd is widely quoted by Aquinas in the Summa, a testament to Rushd’s quality of thought.
There is in this rather glorious past of Arabic philosophy [it was Holy Roman emperor Frederick II who invited Arabic philosophers to the royal court in Palermo which, was consequent to the establishment of the University of Naples where St Thomas Aquinas was introduced to Aristotle] an entree to the arguments of reason regarding their concept of God, and argument for validity of reasoned moral doctrine based on natural law, the revelation of Christ.
In relation to Fr White’s “third proposition, [in which] he offered two examples of non-Christian religions with which Catholic theology should be in stronger dialogue: Hinduism and Islam”, Ibn Rushd [Averroes] recommended Islam’s openness to the West both intellectually and commercially. This golden moment of possible relational dialogue and cultural economic exchange was a major reason why the mullahs exiled the philosopher to Morocco.
The middle way?
Not sure if you’re responding to me. Although there is no middle way, meaning accommodation of faith in Christ for sake of improving relations. It is however better to have a rational relationship with Islam that would curtail violence and foster conversion to Christ.
I first encountered Fr. White when, even as a layman, I judged Balthasar’s more speculative ideas about the Incarnation and Trinitarian kenosis as introducing privations into the Godhead, and venturing beyond the “de fide” doctrine of divine simplicity. Fr. White’s constructive criticism of same, as well as Matthew Levering’s, confirmed my concerns.
Against even some “Communio” folks’ stale narrative dichotomy of the subjective heart of ressourcement vs. the objective mind of Scholasticism, Fr. White, Levering, and Matthew Minerd, et.al., are wonderfully representative of the need for rapprochement, as the author necessarily proposes.
I am not bad-mouthing the author or the article, but I have to say, “Bah, so what.” to the whole subject of theology. The Faith does not change from year to year, and whatever needs to be “uncovered” or “explained” has already been addressed in the last 2000 years, probably in the first 100. (A good bit of theology since then has basically been used to devise new heresies, but I digress.)
What matters most now in the Catholic Church is not whether some priest has the right theology, but whether parents are actually raising their children and the people sitting in the pew know basic Christianity – which most of them don’t. When 9 out of 10 Catholics can’t name all Ten Commandments, don’t help their neighbor, and think that abortion/homosexuality/drunkenness is “cool”, we have far bigger problems than the imaginary problems modern theologians work on.
I think this needs to be said over and over again in the Catholic Church until people grasp what’s really important at this moment in history, and the emphasis is shifted to the important things that are basically being ignored in so many quarters.
And interesting comment, as theology (from Greek—theos ‘god’ + -logia) is simply the study (words) of God (Theos). When you talk about “basic Christianity” or the Ten Commandments or morality, you are talking, to some real and important degree, about theological truth. A couple of quotes to consider:
• St. Augustine: “Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore, seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” (Homilies on the Gospel of John, Tractate XXIX. Chapter VII. 14–18)
• St. Thomas Aquinas: “There are two kinds of theology. One follows the reasonable course of inferring divine truths from meanings governing the physical world: it is thus that philosophers, claiming for fundamental philosophy, or metaphysics, the title of the divine science, have discussed theological truths. The other, while appreciating that at present when we are wayfarers we cannot see for ourselves the supreme evidence of divine truths, already begins through infused faith to take after and share in God’s knowledge by cleaving to His fundamental truth for its own sake.” (Exposition of the De Trinitate, 2, 2.) And: “Theology deserves to be called the highest wisdom, for everything is viewed in light of the first cause.” (Summa Contra Gentes, 2, 4.)
• Thomas Merton: “Theology is the act of the believing person reflecting upon his belief and studying it methodically in order to reach a deeper understanding of God’s revelation and to surrender himself more fully and more intelligently to God’s manifest will and plan of salvation in the contemporary world. […] Theology is the intelligence of God that is the fruit of loving inquiring, and investigating faith. … Theology in the true sense starts not merely with certain formal authoritative propositions about God but from this personal relationship. The task of theology is not merely to improve our scientific understanding of dogmas but to deepen and enlighten our personal relationship with God in the Church.” — Thomas Merton, “Seven Words”, from Love and Living (1979).
• Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger: “Theology is based upon a new beginning in thought which is not the product of our own reflection but has its origin in the encounter with a Word which always precedes us. We call the act of accepting this new beginning “conversion.” Because there is no theology without faith, there can be no theology without conversion.” — Joseph Ratzinger, The Nature and Mission of Theology, trans. by Adrian Walker (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1995), 57.
Thank you, Carl, I know you are replying in a spirit of helpfulness. There are several definitions of theology, a couple of them that I would actually agree are good things.
But, there is also theology that is speculative, beyond man’s ability to know with certainty, and unhelpful when it becomes a personal or “corporate” dogma, so to speak. Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not, but it becomes “required” in the minds of its proponents.
I think this also needs to be said: Speculative theology is a loaded gun wielded by the orthodox and heretics alike. Any time somebody comes up with a “new” or “better” interpretation of an ancient belief, it is far more likely to be heresy than any kind of insight.
Learning about the Faith is always good, but there comes a point when you simply can’t know certain things and just have to be sastified with Faith.
I understand your points Carl, but I tend to agree with Fred on this. After leaving the business world I taught in Catholic schools in the 1990’s. After eight years of Catholic education high School freshmen did not know the faith (including the commandments). After twelve years of Catholic education College students did not know the Catholic Faith.
I believe Saint Anselm’s definition of theology was “Theology is Faith Seeking Understanding.” This definition presumes that one knows the faith before”doing” theology. But Catholics do not know the faith, and many Mass going Catholics reject much of the moral content of the faith. I would say that what we need today is more preaching and teaching on the basic elements of the faith.
I will concede that theologians, like other professionals, will write books and articles in theological journals. But the audience for these is other professionals. The typical Mass going Catholic gets his “theology” from the Sunday homily, which I would agree is not much even in the way of basics.
I am a great admirer of Father Thomas White and have read several of his books, including his massive work on the Trinity. I have seen him speak in person. However, I am not as optimistic as he is that a dialogue with Islam is possible at this time. I recommend reading Robert R. Reilly’s “The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis”. Reilly points out that Islam jettisoned philosophy and theology in the 11th century because everything had already been resolved by the will of Allah. All that is left is a rigid jurisprudence (what is forbidden, what is permitted, etc.) This makes dialogue a very formidable task.
Moreover, Islam’s persecution of Christians in Nigeria (over 52K killed since 2009) and elsewhere must be boldly called out by the Church. I often pray that our Trinitarian God of love reveal to Islamists that He is a God of love, peace, reconciliation, healing, and mercy. They must come to understand that it is antithetical to His nature to force people to believe in Him, especially through violence.
The real issue is whether the Catholics engaging the world are strong, faithful Catholics well educated in the faith so as to be able to defend it in public if necessary. Weak, lukewarm, fair weather Catholics poorly educated in the faith are more likely to cave into the world. This was a major problem for the Israelites in the Old Testament. They kept caving into idolatry and the ways of the world that they lived in. Even King Solomon caved into his foreign wives and had his heart turned away from God(see 1 Kings 10-11). St. Paul had to correct those in the church at Corinth who were puffed up by their knowledge. Who is evangelizing whom? In which direction is the conversion taking place?
“Rigid scholasticism”? It did indeed follow the signs of the times in early modernity, providing answers like the wonderful sociology of Suarez and Bellarmine, the Church’s answer to the secular absolutism of the ancien regime and English parliamentarianism.
The only way to dialogue with other religions and philosophies is the way Aquinas did, which is as much like the current dialogue with falsehood as night versus day. No doubt, the resolution of the current confusion will involve learning lessons from the confrontation with falsehood, like Trent after the Protestant revolt. I doubt whether the final result will please followers of the Nouvelle Theologie.
The work of theologians like Fr. White is valuable for the life of the Church. Yet, we are a Church called by Christ not to “theologize” but to evangelize. Looking around, I would have to conclude that our Catholic Church does a very poor job in equipping its adherents with all the tools they need to evangelize.