Footnotes: Ressourcement Theology, Aggiornamento and the Hermeneutics of Tradtion

{1} This essay is dedicated to the memory of cardinal Henri de Lubac, S.J., who died on September 4, 1991.

{2} “Take . . . the success from a religious point of view of such authors as Péguy or Claudel. Is it not extremely significant?” H. de Lubac, Catholicisme (1st ed. Paris: Cerf, 1938). [For an English translation from the 4th French ed., see Catholicism, trans. by L. Sheppard (New York: Meridian, 1963), 176.] Hans Urs von Balthasar, a Swiss priest who received his theological education at Fourvière, valued the writings of Péguy and Claudel so highly that he devoted considerable time to translating them into German. For an acknowledgement of his debt to these poets, see his essays “In Retrospect,” trans. by Kenneth Batinovich, and “Another Ten Years,” trans. by John Saward in The Analogy of Beauty, ed. John Riches (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1986), 210-11 and 233, respectively.

{3} See Mark T. Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970, trans. by N. D. Smith (Paramus, NJ: Paulist, 1970), 18. Schoof notes that the initiative for creative theological development passed from the German linguistic zone to France about 1930 and returned to Germany around 1950.

{4} Limitations of space make it impossible to discuss serveral important but less prominent representatives of this movement such as Jean Leclercq, O.S.B. and the Lyons Jesuits Gaston Fessard, Pierre Chaillet, and Yves de Montcheuil. For a good introduction to Montcheuil’s life and thought, see H. de Lubac, Three Jesuits Speak , trans. by K. Whitehead (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1987). For a biography and bibliography of Fessard, see hisÉglise de France prends garde de perdre la Foi! (Paris: Julliard, 1979).

{5} Though it is common to limit the term la nouvelle théologie to those associated with Fourvière, the Jesuit theologate outside of Lyons, this is arbitrarily narrow since the term was actually coined by Msgr. Pietro Parente in his 1942 Osservatore Romano article attacking M.D. Chenu, O.P. and Louis Charlier, O.P. of Le Saulchoir. It was years later that the term was applied to the Lyons Jesuits by R. Garrigou-Lagrange in “La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle?” Angelicum 23 (1946): 126-45.

{6} At Rome, de Lubac had been made out to be the sinister ringleader of “the School of Fourvière.” De Lubac takes every opportunity to debunk this “myth.” See his Mémoire sur l’occasion de mes écrits (Namur: Culture et vérité, 1989), 69 and De Lubac: A Theologian Speaks, interview by A. Scola, trans. by S. Maddux (Los Angeles: Twin Circle, 1985), 34-35. Congar likewise calls the notion of a “new theology,” conceived of as an organized school of thought, a “fantastic idea.” See his A History of Theology, trans. by H. Guthrie (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 11.

{7} For a poignant testimony to the theological and personal bonds between the Le Saulchoir and Fourvière theologians in the forties, see M.D. Chenu, Jacques Duquesne interroge le P. Chenu (Paris: Le Centurion, 1975), 130. See also ibid., 130 and de Lubac, Mémoire, 144-5 regarding a joint effort planned by Chenu, Congar, de Lubac and others to publish a six-volume treatise on theology “conceived in another spirit and upon another plan than the manuals then in use” (de Lubac, Mémoire, 144). Humani Generis doomed the project.

{8} The Jesuit theologians of Lyons-Fourvière make this quite clear in their common response to the criticisms of Michel Labourdette, O.P. entitled, “La théologie et ses sources: Réponse aux Etudes critiques de la Revue Thomiste (mai-août, 1946),” Recherches de Science Religieuse 33 (1946): 387-8: “We are aware of numerous diversities among us, often profound, in method as well as thought, and only an error of vision would permit our critic to attribute to all of us, and in an exaggerated matter at that, what he wrongly believes he has discovered in the work of one of us.”

{9} According to de Lubac, Mémoire, 94, all his works as well as the entire Sources chrétiennes collection are based on the presupposition that “the renewal of Christian vitality is linked at least partially to a renewed exploration of the periods and of the works where the Christian tradition is expressed with a particular intensity.” This is as clear and succinct an articulation of the ressourcement mentality as I have ever seen.

{10} Y. Congar, Vrai et fausse réforme dans l’église (Paris: Cerf, 1950), 337.

{11} Ibid., 57 and 335. The idea of “putting a question” to a historical text drawn from the interpreter’s twentieth-century preunderstanding is a common notion in contemporary hermeneutics. “In the human sciences the interest in tradition is motivated in a special way by the present and its interests. The theme and area of research are actually constituted by the motivation of the enquiry. Hence historical research is based on the historical movement in which life itself stands and cannot be understood teleologically in terms of the object into which it is enquiring.” H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. by G. Barden and J. Cumming (New York: Seabury, 1975), 253.

{12} History, human subjectivity, and human solidarity are some of these contemporary yet traditionally Christian preoccupations which ressourcement thinkers believed to have been insufficiently addressed by neo-Scholastic thought. Their dissatisfaction with neo-Thomism will receive further discussion below.

{13} H. Godin and Y. Daniel, France, pays de mission? (Paris: Cerf, 1943) [for an English translation with commentary, see Maisie Ward, France Pagan: The Mission of Abbé Godin (New York, Sheed & Ward, 1949)]. Godin died in 1944.

{14} Congar, Vraie, 48.

{15} Y. Congar, Dialogue between Christians, trans. by P. Loretz (London and Dublin, 1966), 32.

{16} J. Daniélou. “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse,” Études 249 (1946): 1-21. De Lubac,Mémoire, 247. observes that though Daniélou’s article was “quite intelligent (and quite innocent),” it was nevertheless “a little too journalistic (even in the opinion of the author).” This, however, does not prevent this essay from being a valuable testimony to the discontent many French Catholic thinkers were feeling with the theological status quo in the forties.

{17} Daniélou, “Orientations,” 14.

{18} Ibid., 6, 7, and 17.

{19} Congar, Vraie, 338.

{20} M.-D. Chenu, “A conversation with Père Chenu,” Dominicana 50 (1965): 141.

{21} M.-D. Chenu, “Position de la théologie,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 24 (1935): 252 [for an English translation, see Faith and Theology (New York: Macmillan, 1968), summarized in John Auricchio, The Future of Theology (Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House, 1970), 150-7]. Chenu reiterated his position in Le Saulchoir: Une École de la Theéologie (Paris: Etiolles, 1937; repr. in Une école de la théologie: Le Saulchoir, ed. by G. Alberigo, Paris: Cerf, 1985). This was put on the Index in 1942, causing Chenu to lose his position as regent of studies at Le Saulchoir.

{22} Chenu, “Position,” 252. Cf. H. Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Sanctity,” in Word and Redemption (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 49-86.

{23} Daniélou, “Orientations,” 17.

{24} Chenu, “Position,” 244. Cf. R. Draguet, “Méthodes théologiques d’hier et d’aujourd’hui,” La Revue catholique des Idées et des Faits (10 Jan. 1936): 1-7; (7 Feb. 1936); 4-7; (14 Feb. 1936): 13-17 and L. Charlier,Essai sur le problème théologique (Thuillies: Ramgal, 1938).

{25} Daniélou, “Orientations,” 16.

{26} H. Urs von Balthasar, Parole et mystère chez Origène (Paris: Cerf. 1957), 10, for example, notes how Origen teaches us about the “sovereign subjectivity” of the Logos.

{27} É Gilson, review of Augustine et théologie moderne and Le Mystère du surnaturel, by H. de Lubac, in La Croix (18-19 July 1965), quoted by É. Gilson, Letters of Étienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac, trans. by Mary Emily Hamilton (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), 179.

{28} It was Pius XI, according to Congar, Vraie, 337, who had been the first to issue the call “revertimini ad fontes” in speaking of the liturgy. Unfortunately, Congar supplies no precise reference.

{29} C. Péguy, from a preface to the Cahiers de la Quinzaine of 1 March 1904, repr. in his Oeuvres complètes(Paris: N.R.F., n.d.), 12: 186-192 and reproduced in part by Congar, Vraie, 602.

{30} Congar, Vraie, 43 n. 35.

{31} Péguy quoted in Congar, Vraie, 602. The original context of this passage was political, not theological, but its relevance to theology, mutatis mutandis, quickly became apparent to many.

{32} Regarding the meaning of the term “source,” see the Fourvière theologians, “Response,” 395. Cf. Chenu,Duquesne, 123-4: “According to my theological vision, the Tradition is no longer merely a conservatory of defined dogmas, of acquired results, or of decisions made in the past, it is a principle which creates intelligibility, an inexhaustible source of new life.”

{33} Congar, Vraie, 338.

{34}Balthasar, Presence, xi. Cf. Chenu, Duquesne interroge, 63: “I am not a documentalist, I am a historian. What I look for in history is not a documentation, it is an inspiration. What I seek are the indeterminate elements of creative inspiration which remain alive under the weight of the structure.” Cf. also Congar, Vraie, 336-7.

{35} See H. Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac (San Francisco: Communio / Ignatius, 1991). 28-30.

{36} The beginnings of the modern liturgical movement can be traced back to 1832 with the Benedictine restoration at Solesmes under Dom Guéranger. The movement intensified in the twentieth century due to the efforts of, among others, Pius X, the monks of Mt. César near Louvain, and the monks of Maria Laach in Germany led by Dom Odo Casel. See Oliver Rousseau, The Progress of the Liturgy (Westminster, MD: Newman 1951) and L. Bouyer, Liturgical Piety, (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1955).

{37} On the genesis and development of the modern Catholic biblical movement, see Jean Levie, The Bible: Words of God in Words of Men, trans. By S. H. Treman (New York: Kenedy, 1961) and M.-J. Lagrange,Personal Reflections and Memories (New York: Paulist, 1985).

{38} Daniélou, “Orientations,” 12.

{39} I use the terms “Lyons Jesuits” and “Fourvière Jesuits” interchangeably to refer to the same loose association of Jesuits who had some connection with the Jesuit scholasticate of the Lyons province from the time it was located in England from 1920-26 through its history at Fourvière from 1926-1950, and who participated to some extent in the Sources Chrétiennes (SC) or Théologie Collections. These two series were in fact spear-headed by the scholasticate, its faculty, and its alumni.

{40} See Daniélou’s “Orientations,” 9, 10 and 12 as well as his The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1956). See also, de Lubac’s Histoire et Esprit (Paris: Aubier, 1950) and Exégèse Médiévale, 2 parts in 4 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64).

{41} Fourvière theologians, “Réponse,” 394.

{42} Balthasar’s Presence et pensée (1942) showed how the notion of presence, so important in the personalist pastoral theology of his day, was a cornerstone of Gregory of Nyssa’s thought. In similar fashion, de Lubac’s Catholicisme (1938) demonstrated how the categories of human solidarity and history, championed by Marxism, were fundamental to patristic thinking.

{43} Fourvière theologians, “Réponse,” 395.

{44} Ibid., 392.

{45} Sources Chrétiennes: Collection dirigée par H. de Lubac, S.J. et J. Daniélou, S.J. has put out over 320 volumes since it was inaugurated in 1941. “The initial idea for the series was due to Fr. Victor Fontoynont, who had thought of it well before the war.” De Lubac. “Speaks,” 2-3. Fontoynont was Fourvière’s prefect of studies at the time of the series’ founding. For a history of the genesis of this collection, see de Lubac, Mémoire, 95-6 and 311.

{46} Daniélou, “Orientations,” 10. Cf. Congar’s notion of reinterrogating the tradition cited above (Vraie, 57 and 335). For a general overview of the patristic revival of the past two centuries, see Henri Crouzel, “Patrologie et renouveau patristique,” in Bilan de la Théologie du XXe siècle, ed. R. Vander Gucht and H. Vorgrimler, vol. 2,La théologie chrétienne: les grands courants (Paris: Casterman, 1970): 661-83.

{47} A case in point is de Lubac’s introduction to Homélies sur la Genèse by Origen, trans. by L. Doutreleau, SC no. 7 (Paris: Cerf, 1944; repr. 1976) whose vigorous challenge to the prevailing view of Origen as a “mad allegorist” aroused considerable debate. For de Lubac’s reinterpretation of Origen and various scholarly responses to it. see Marcellino D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac and the Recovery of the Traditional Hermeneutic,” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1991). 104-10. and 126-35.

{48} Unsigned preface entitled “Sources Chrétiennes,” in Gregory of Nyssa. Contemplation sur la vie de Moïse, trans. by J. Daniélou. SC no. 1 (Paris: Cerf, 1942). 8.

{49} “As for my theology being drawn exclusively from the Fathers and Scripture, that would not satisfy me at all. . . . It is sufficient moreover merely to open one or another of my books, for example Surnaturel, to see that I in no way turn up my nose at the effort of Scholasticism, particularly St. Thomas who is the author whom I have most frequently studied at length.” De Lubac, Mémoire, 362; see also 311.

{50} The interest of ressourcement thinkers in the medieval period was not limited to Aquinas and the great scholastics. Chenu’s medieval studies ranged far and wide, Leclercq did magnificent work in medieval monasticism, and de Lubac’s most voluminous study of all was Exégèse Médiévale.

{51} The words come from Gilson’s 1951 article entitled “Les recherches historico-critiques et l’avenir de la Scholastique,” cited in Gilson, Letters, 77 n. 1. De Lubac also used this as the epigram at the beginning of Le mystère du surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965) [for an English translation, see The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans. by R. Sheed (NY: Herder and Herder, 1967), viii].

{52} See Alexander Dru, Péguy (New York: Harper, 1956), 113. Summarizing Péguy’s essay “Fortitude and Temperance,” Dru points out that “the forms which the perversion of the traditional doctrine [on the cardinal virtues] took are compared with the teaching of Aquinas and the Fathers, and the comparison reveals the fullness of Péguy’s return to tradition.”

{53} “Pierre Rousselot, S.J., the first to announce the renewal of interest in the Thomism of Saint Thomas that would free us from so many uncertainties.” Gilson, Letters, 16 n. 3, referring to Rousselot’s doctoral dissertation, L’intellectualisme de saint Thomas (1st ed., Paris: Beauchesne, 1909) [for an English translation, see The Intellectualism of St. Thomas, trans. by J. E. O’Mahoney (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1935)].

{54} See Draguet, “Méthodes,” Charlier, Essai, 15-20, and Draguet’s review of the latter in Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (ETL) 16 (1939): 143-5. Cf. Jean François Bonnefoy, O.F.M., “La théologie comme science et l’explication de la foi selon Saint Thomas,” ETL 14 (1937): 421-46 and 600-31; 15 (1938): 491-516. All of these are succinctly summarized in Auricchio, Future, 121-3 and 132-9.

{55} Gilson, Letters. 33 n. 6.

{56} Gilson, Letters, 23-4, from a letter to de Lubac dated 8 July 1956.

{57} Théologie: Études publiées sous la direction de la faculté de théologie S.J. de Lyon-Fourvière. Since Théologie appeared in 1941, over one hundred volumes have been published.

{58} The books were no. 1 and 8 in the Théologie collection, respectively.

{59} De Lubac in Gilson, Letters, 35 n.7.

{60} Aggiornamento, an Italian word made popular by commentators on the Second Vatican Council, was, of course, not employed by our French theologians writing in the forties and fifties. During this period, the most common French term employed to designate the re-appropriation of the Christian tradition in a radically new historical context was “adaptation.” Whatever the terminology, we are here dealing with the fundamental hermeneutical problem of application. See Gadamer, Truth, 274.

{61} See Congar, Vraie, 336-38. Cf. L. Bouyer’s critique of liturgical “archaism” and “archeologism” in Liturgical Piety, 11-2 and 54-6. De Lubac also condemns “archaism” and the quest for an “impossible return to the past” in Catholicism, xiii, 176, and 177.

{62} Balthasar, Présence, viii.

{63} Bouillard, Conversion et grâce, 224. Cf. D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac,” 242-55 on de Lubac’s critique of the obsolete elements in patristic and medieval exegesis.

{64} Congar, Vraie, 337.

{65} Quoted in Dru, Péguy, 69.

{66} In the opening paragraph in his Commentary on Eve on le jaillissement, Péguy writes “Tout le jaillissement dans le germe, tout l’ordre dans l’épi” (“All the fecundity is in the seed, all the order in the fruit.”) This concept of jaillissement is frequently used by the ressourcement theologians. See Dru, Péguy, 47. This is very similar to the concept of tradition put forth by yet another thinker who had profound impact on manyressourcement theologians, viz. Maurice Blondel. See M. Blondel, The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans. by A. Dru and I. Trethowan (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), 267: “Turned lovingly towards the past where its treasure lies, it [Tradition] moves towards the future, where it conquers and illuminates. It has a humble sense of faithfully recovering even what it thus discovers. It does not have to innovate because it possesses its God and its all; but it has always to teach something new because it transforms what is implicit and ‘enjoyed’ into something explicit and known.”

{67} H. de Lubac, “Pour une renaissance ‘catholique,'” a section of the essay “Explication chrétienne de notre temps” (Paris: Orante, 1942). repr. in Théologie dans l’histoire (Paris: Desclée, 1990), 2: 232-49. See also H. de Lubac. Corpus Mysticum (Paris: Aubier, 1944), 271.

{68} Balthasar, Présence, x. Cf. de Lubac, Mémoire, 272: “it is not those who show the most intransigent zeal for Thomism who are the most legitimate heirs of the great Doctor. . . . St. Thomas always proposes to us not only his doctrine, but also his example and . . . the one cannot be understood without the other.”

{69} Suhard, Growth or Decline? 82.

{70} W. Förster, “La vraie et la fausse adaptation,” in Autorité et Liberté (Lausanne, 1920). 183, quoted in Congar, Vraie, 339. This work is the French trans. of W. Förster, ed., Autorität und Freiheit: Betrachtungen zum Kulturproblem der Kirche, 2nd ed. (Munich: Jos. Koesel’schen, 1911). Cf. Balthasar, “In Retrospect,” 196: “With an opening to the world, an aggiornamento, a broadening of the horizons, a translation of the Christian message into a language understandable by the modern world, only half is done. The other halfóof at least equal importanceóis a reflection on the specifically Christian element itself, a purification, a deepening, a centering of its idea, which alone renders us capable of representing it, radiating it, translating it believably in the world.”

{71} Congar, Vraie, 339. Cf. Chenu, Duquesne interroge, 51: “One must understand that culture can only engage the future if it has succeeded in integrating the past.” Cf. de Lubac, Mémoire, 319-20: “To a very great degree, in all the sectors touched by the Council, . . . aggiornamento was made possible by the patristic renewal of the last fifty years.” Likewise, Bouyer, speaking of contemporary theologians, says that the “tradition . . . will receive from them something new only in the measure in which they have exerted themselves to be as faithful as possible to it: faithful to its spirit, that is to say, but persuaded that this spirit cannot be found unless one first limits oneself to receiving all the teaching which only the patient study of the letter can transmit.” L. Bouyer, Le Consolateur: Esprit-Saint et Vie de Grâce (Paris: Cerf, 1980), 7-8, cited and translated by E. Leiva-Merikakis, “Louis Bouyer the Theologian,” Communio 16 (1989): 268.

{72} Ibid., 340.

{73} Congar, Vraie, 334 and 342 calls this “adaptation/innovation,” and points to the Synod of Pistoia and Modernism as two examples of it.

{74} De Lubac, Mémoire, 161. See his stern indictment of post-conciliar abuses along these lines in “The Church in Crisis,” Theology Digest 17 (1969): 312-25; aug. French ed. L’Église dans la crise actuelle (Paris: Cerf, 1969). Cf. L. Bouyer, The Decomposition of Catholicism, trans. by C. Quinn (Chicago: Fransiscan Herald Press, 1969), 50, who speaks of that “foolish capitulation to the spirit of the times” which is no more than the mirror image of integralism. See also ibid., 44.

{75} See de Lubac, Mémoire, 34-5, who felt that this dialogue could only take the form of a confrontation. De Lubac himself helped to pioneer the Catholic quest to understand Buddhism, the mystical atheism of the East, as well as the various atheist humanisms of the West. See for example his Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. by E. Riley (New York: Meridian, 1963) and Aspects du bouddhisme (Paris: Seuil, 1951).

{76} See Bouyer. Decomposition, 44: “Aggiornamento goes hand in hand with the opening out to the world, and surpasses it. What John XXIII wanted, what the Council had tried to beginógropingly, as was inevitable, but in the final analysis, forcefullyówas the aggiornamento of the judicious scribe who searches for the nova et veterain a treasure with which he had become unfamiliar, so occupied was he with keeping it and defending it, like a fierce dragon perched upon his useless hoard.”

{77} De Lubac, Drama, 71-2.

{78} For a detailed history of the controversy surrounding this term, see Auricchio, Future, 257-316.

{79} Nine years after coining the term, Parente lists Chenu, Daniélou, de Lubac, Bouillard, and Teilhard, among others, as authors of the dangerous novelties condemned by Humani Generis in ‘Struttura e significato storicodottrinale dell’enciclica,” in Euntes docente, fasc. 1-2 (1951): 23-45. Garrigou-Lagrange, “La nouvelle théologie,” lists these and others.

{80} H. de Lubac, A Brief Catechesis on Nature and Grace, trans. by R. Arnandez (San Fransisco: Ignatius, 1984), 251.

{81} M. Labourdette et al., Dialogue théologique (Saint-Maximim, Var.: Les Arcades, 1947), 33.

{82} See de Lubac in Gilson, Letters, 35 n. 7, writing in 1957 to an unidentified Thomist theologian: “I am rather astonished that you would make me appear opposed to Saint Thomas from one end to the other, since, at least in most instances and on all basic points, my analyses hardly do more than put Saint Thomas into French.”

{83} Péguy, quoted in Congar, Vraie, 603. On renaissance as revolution and the fundamentally revolutionary quality of Christianity, see de Lubac, Corpus, 271 and Paradoxes of Faith, 89, respectively.

{84} Fourvière theologians, “Réponse,” 390.

{85} De Lubac refers to “the essential texts of Tradition” and the “classics” of the faith in The Splendour of the Church, trans. by M. Mason (Glen Rock, NJ: Paulist, 1963), 7 and 148 respectively.

{86} See, for example, H. de Lubac, Mémoire, 362: “I do not like it very much when I am spoken of in terms of ‘the new theology.’ I have never employed this expression and I detest what it represents. . . . ‘la nouvelle théologie’ is a polemical term (it would be amusing to follow the use of this term down through the centuries) which most of the time signifies nothing, serving only to cast suspicion upon an author.” Cf. de Lubac, Speaks, 35.

{87} Besides the reinterpretation of St. Thomas noted above, the way Daniélou and de Lubac’s work on Origen has modified the prevailing scholarly view of this Alexandrian exegete is also noteworthy. For de Lubac’s role in the rehabilitation of Origen, see D’Ambrosio, “Henri de Lubac,” 126-39.

{88} Palmer, Hermeneutics, 191, my emphasis. For Gadamer’s notion of the “fusion of horizons,” (Horizontverschmelzung), see Truth, 267-74. Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Ricoeur are just a few of those who have seen fit to take up this fruitful concept.

{89} Gadamer, Truth, 256; see also 267-8. In particular, David Tracy has developed this concept. See David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (New York: Crossroad, 1981) and “On Thinking with the Classics,” Criterion 22 (1983): 9-10.

{90} See W. Pannenberg and Richard John Neuhaus, “The Christian West?” First Things 7 (Nov., 1990): 25-26 where the former makes the mistake of postulating two different parties amongst those dissatisfied with neo-Scholasticism, “the ressourcement group that wanted the church to reappropriate the great time of the ancient fathers, and the aggiornamento tendency that wanted to open the church to the contributions of modernity.” Pannenberg believes the former group, having little sympathy for modern developments, “had the dream of reconstituting something like the situation of the early Christian centuries during the patristic period.” As we have seen, the scholars discussed in this essay had no such fantasy. While there were certainly differences before and after the Council amongst those looking for reform in Catholic theology, the issue that divided them was not whether aggiornamento was needed, but rather precisely what was to serve as the guidelines and norms for the aggiornamento process.

{91} See J. Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), esp. 71-81.