Leagon Carlin

The Phenomenological Ressourcement:An Exploration of the Philosophical Foundations and Consequences of the NouvelleThéologie

Leagon Carlin

The movement of the Nouvelle Théologie, emerging developmentally in the mid 1930s, was one of a return to sources. This orientation toward a return to origins and beginnings gave rise to the name that is widely given to the operating principle of the movement: ressourcement. This French term, literally meaning “ a return to sources,” encompasses the goal of the theological movement that would come to define the thinking of the Second Vatican Council, and the Church thereafter. The thinkers who defined this movement, specifically those in France, were profoundly influenced philosophically by the thought of phenomenologists like Maurice Blondel, whose application of the phenomenological method to the Christian life in the Church served as a foundation for the worldview and method of thought found in the ressourcement movement. Further, the phenomenological character of the Nouvelle Théologie is made evident in the thought of the later philosophers on whom this ressourcement was influential. In a special way, the philosophical personalism of Fr. Karol Wojtyla, later Pope John Paul II, is a closely related descendent in the same philosophical lineage stemming from the Nouvelle Théologie.

The Effects, before the Cause

The document which could, perhaps arguably, be called the “culmination” of the worldview of the ressourcement movement is the final and summary document of the Second Vatican Council. Gaudium et Spes, generally titled in English as “The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World,” put forward the framework for the Church’s interaction with the world, Her animating principles when doing the work of Salvation. This document, though the subject of

some criticism from certain voices in the Church from the very beginning, if read with a hermeneutic of continuity, is an extremely moving and faithful treatise on ecclesiology, and one which seems to encapsulate the methods and intentions of the nouvelle théologiens in their treatment of history and tradition, as well as in their central focus on the person in community. The opening paragraph of Gaudium et Spes speaks profoundly and clearly of these themes: The joys and the hopes, the griefs, and the anxieties of the men of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ. Indeed, nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. For theirs is a community composed of men. United in Christ, they are led by the Holy Spirit in their journey to the Kingdom of their Father, and they have welcomed the news of salvation, which is meant for every man. That is why this community realizes that it is truly linked with mankind and its history by the deepest of bonds. 1 Those things which are human, both the good and the bad, are in the ambit of the Church. The centrality here is not simply on “the person,” in some kind of individualistic, relativistic, or autonomous sense, but rather on the person in community. The community of the Church is linked profoundly to the community of the world at large, not merely now, but throughout the whole of history.

Though not established with certainty, the widely accepted understanding is that much of this document was authored by one Karol Wojtyla, a Bishop at the Council, later to become, of course, Pope Saint John Paul II. Whether it can be established that he actually penned the lines above, or any other part of the document, is actually inessential, because from his other work it can be directly established that he would have been of much the same understanding as the sentiments expressed in Gaudium et Spes. By beginning with these points, we are able now to reach back into history even further, back before the Council and its documents, back to the philosophical and theological foundations that lie beneath them. We will be able now to see, in the thinkers who had influence on the Council Fathers, including Karol Wojtyla, a quite clear line of succession in concepts. To accomplish this, we must return to the France of the mid-twentieth century.

1 Gaudium et Spes, §1. VOLUME XV (2022) 49

Phenomenological Foundations

Maurice Blondel, born in 1861, was a French philosopher and devout Catholic whose major work was in the area of a philosophy of action. Blondel was particularly focused on the intersection of the truth of the faith in human experience, specifically the human person in act, and this naturally led him to an application of the phenomenological method to the Christian life. Though his works were heavily criticized at the time of their publication, and though for many decades he was unfairly labelled as a “Modernist,” Blondel has largely been vindicated, and his thought provides an excellent window into much of the work of the ressourcement thinkers.

Blondel placed a particular focus on an understanding of history and tradition, which could both acknowledge the essential place that the Church must occupy in the interpretation of history, due to God’s salvific plan and revelations thereof, while also understanding history in its experiential reality as it is presented to us. His work dealt with what were effectively the two extremes of his time, extrinsicism and historicism, and endeavored to find the unity of the good within both. Extrincisicm “conceived of the Christian revelation as a totality of doctrine given once and for all in its entirety at a given point in history to a Church divinely established as the sole authority responsible for the custody and teaching of this revelation.”2 In this way, extricisicists protected the Church’s role as arbiter of history and the sacrament of salvation, but to the detriment of the good of reality itself. On the other hand, historicism can be defined as seeing history “ as the only truth.” All truth, including that of the Christian faith, “must submit to the judgment of history.” Can the truth claims of Christianity be proven in the real order of history? Historicists claimed the right “to treat the content of Christianity as a pure matter of history.”3 In this way, we see that the historicists sacrificed the right of the Church to self-definition, and to the proper framing of salvation history within the context of Christian revelation, in order to protect the reality of history as it exists in time.

The unifying principle which Blondel established between these two extremes was that of tradition. A proper understanding of tradition serves as a via media of a sort, which can preserve the truth in both

2 William A. Scott, “The Notion of Tradition in Maruice Blondel,” Theological Studies 27, no. 3 (1966): 384. 3 Ibid., 385. 50

extremes while actually presenting a greater fullness than could be found in either position alone: the bond that he chose was that of tradition, the voice of the Church across the centuries, understood in all its fulness of meaning. He saw in tradition the means of reconciling the extremes by showing that both of them had very definite values but that these values had to be expressed in the service of the tradition of the Church. It was in this service that their solidarity was assured without the sacrifice of their relative independence. 4 In Blondel’s definition of tradition, the Church remains the arbiter and interpreter of salvation history, and of history in full, but this protection of truth as revealed doesn’t have to be at odds with reality, with human reason, or with human progress and flourishing.

Establishing first what he does not mean by tradition, Blondel lays out two antitheses. First, “Tradition is not simply a process of recall. It is . . . that but not only that.”5 In this, he points out that it is not enough to look to the past and preserve it simply because it is “what has always been done.” The practices and understandings of the past are not necessarily to be valued as superior solely because they are “old.” Second, “the elements which contribute to the formation of tradition are not totally in the order of the rational, nor is it only truth in the intellectual order which is expressed by it.”6 It is not merely empirical knowledge which can be gained from history; the time and place of events, and the effects born of them, are not the only truths that can be gained by an analysis of tradition. Looking to tradition in history can also tell us about, to paraphrase Gaudium et Spes, the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of ages past.

Having established what is not meant by tradition, Blondel establishes what he means by it positively. “It is a preserving power [which is] at the same time conquering; it discovers and formulates truths which the past lived, without being able to articulate them or define them explicitly; it enriches the intellectual patrimony by minting little by little the total deposit and by making it fructify.”7 So, for Blondel, tradition preserves the past, while at the same time not being

4 Scott, “Tradition in Maurice Blondel,” 385–86. 5 Ibid., 386–87. 6 Ibid., 387. 7 Maurice Blondel, Les Premiers Écrits de Maurice Blondel (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1956), 204. VOLUME XV (2022) 51

controlled by it. The elements of tradition, the sources from which we gather the constituent parts to form the whole, do not define or limit its scope, but rather are united in a greater synthetic reality, which is more than the sum of its parts. Blondel further explains that tradition “knows how to guard from the past not so much the intellectual aspect as the vital reality . . . . Without doubt she bases herself on texts but she also bases herself at the same time and first of all on something other than them, on an experience always in act. ”8 This vital reality is the true reality preserved in tradition, and that vitality is founded in the acting person. Here we begin to see the personalistic bent within Blondel’s phenomenology, specifically the focus on the acting experience of the person in community. This is seen even more clearly in the second quality that Blondel attributes to tradition, namely that of conquering. Tradition, as he says in explaining his understanding of the purpose of its preserving power, is not merely a disparate and pragmatic collection of texts and accounts, but a living and vital synthesis: “tradition is not dominated by the elements from which it fashions itself—facts from the past, Scripture, theological speculation, contemporary needs, the life of the members of the Church as expressed in their actions—but rather makes use of them all as they serve her purpose, which is to produce a living synthesis of them always applicable to the present.”9 This vital synthesis will always be applicable to the present, because, again, tradition is not simply a recollection of past events, a cataloging of practical facts, but a living reality of persons in act, of experiences that still live in the memory of culture and society. In addition, the synthesis that is tradition can be applicable to the present because, in its vital reality, it anticipates the future. As Blondel explains: “As paradoxical as such an affirmation may seem, one can maintain that tradition anticipates the future and disposes herself to illumine it by the same effort that she makes to live in a way that is faithful to the past. ”10 It is precisely in this collection of dual definitions of tradition—as both preserving and conquering; as made up of of elements, while also being a living synthesis which is the arbiter of its parts; as the reality of the past, and the anticipation of the future—it is in this understanding of tradition that we can find the greatest evidence of the influence that Blondel had on the thinkers of the ressourcement.

8 Ibid. 9 Scott, “Tradition in Maurice Blondel,” 387. 10 Blondel, Premiers Écrits, 205. 52

The Foundations Are Built Upon

This notion of tradition and history, enumerated by Blondel, can be found reflected in distinct ways through the thought of many who became influential in the ressourcement movement. This reflection is especially evident in the work of Yves Congar, O.P. For this reason, and in an effort to maintain a feasible scope for this treatment, we will limit our comparison to the work of Congar. In three specific ways, the understanding of tradition which is posited by Blondel is reflected in Congar’s work. The first way concerns the understanding of tradition as a living synthesis of sources, not merely a collection of texts and customs, but a unified and living whole. The second way lies in the understanding of tradition as based on an “experience always in act,” specifically with a view toward the acting person in community. Finally, Blondel’s thought reflected in Congar’s work in their emphasis on the tradition’s anticipation of the future, and applicability to the present.

In Blondel’s work History and Dogma, he speaks to these realities in a way that seems tailor-made for the ressourcement: Turned lovingly towards the past where its treasure lies, it 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.11 Here we see clearly the affection that we are to have for the past, which is not at odds with progress, properly understood. Innovation is unnecessary, though change is not forbidden. Progress and applicability to the present can be achieved without adding anything new, because tradition is a living and synthetic reality, which anticipates the future.

Looking to Congar, we can see the similarities in his own articulation of tradition. The first theme which is recognizable is that of the synthesis of tradition’s sources to a unified whole which is still living and real today. For Congar, the whole purpose of a return to the sources, a ressourcement, is precisely this vital synthesis. In discussing reform in the Church, Congar says: “To return to principles, to ‘go

11 Maurice Blondel, The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans. Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1994), 267–68. VOLUME XV (2022) 53

back to the sources,’ as we say now, means to rethink the situation in which we find ourselves in the light and the spirit of everything that the integrity of tradition teaches us about the meaning of the church.”12 Congar is referring to a rethinking of the situation in which we find ourselves, the present as it is, through the lens of tradition. Here we see both the concept of tradition as an integral whole and tradition as anticipatory and applicable to the future. At the same time, Congar is clear that tradition is not merely a recollection, as Blondel, too, was intent on pointing out, and not simply a designation of superiority in relation to anything that happened in the past: “A ‘return to tradition’ does not necessarily mean binding today’s Catholic to the literal acceptance of a contingent expression of Christian thought or life from some moment in the past.”13 Congar maintains that tradition supersedes its parts, and is in fact a living and not constituent or disparate reality.

In his ecclesiology, Congar makes evident the similar focus on the person acting in community, which is present throughout history. He uses the term solidarity to mean this communal inter-responsibility of each person, in this context discussing the failures, historical and contemporary, of members of the Body of Christ, writing: Solidarity plays out in a way that is both truly collective but also truly personal in this area of historical faults and group behavior. Each person affects all others . . . and contributes to constituting, maintaining, or transforming a situation where human weaknesses affect all the members of the group.”14 Here we can see the centrality of focus on the person in community, on persons with mutual responsibility for others in the community who still remaining distinct in themselves.

Congar acknowledged the influence of Blondel on his own concept of tradition when writing about the subject himself in his work The Meaning of Tradition. By way of praise for Blondel’s concept of tradition, Congar begins by saying: “Maurice Blondel, a lay philosopher whose charity made him particularly attuned to the Catholic spirit, entered the discussion [on the subject of tradition] by writing a series of three articles, the third of which remains one of the

12 Yves Congar, True and False Reform in the Church (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2011), 295. 13 Ibid., 294. 14 Ibid., 113.

finest descriptions of tradition that exist.”15 It is in this third article, “History and Dogma, ” that Blondel lays out the framework of tradition as a via media between the extremes of Extrinsicism and Historicism, with which we began this exploration. Congar goes on to say of Blondel that he showed that, while it depends on the historical attestation, the Christian faith is not bound by it. Christianity has another source at its disposal, that of the ever-present experience of reality . . . . This experience itself is not shared by a few isolated individuals, but by a whole people, that is, the Church; and taken as a coherent whole, it is an authentic means of reference.16

As previously discussed, Blondel’s understanding of tradition preserves the essential self-determination and freedom from constraint of the Church, while allowing for the importance of the attestation of historical fact. This “ever-present experience of reality” is the same concept of the person in act as the first basis for tradition, and the fact that this experience of reality is not limited to the experience of individuals, but to a whole people is the step that establishes the acting person in community. This reality, Congar concludes, “is actually effected by a living synthesis in which all the forces of the Christian spirit play their part: speculation, ethics, history—and this is tradition.”17

The Effects, Revisited

Blondel tells us that “ whoever lives and thinks as a Christian really works for this [synthesis of tradition], whether it be the saint who perpetuates Jesus among us, the scholar who goes back to the pure sources of Revelation, or the philosopher who strives to open the way to the future, and to prepare for the unending birth of the Spirit in newness. ”18 The participants in this work of synthesis, described here by Blondel, were all present in different capacities for the work of the Second Vatican Council. There were saints, scholars, and philosophers, all gathered together to call on the help of the Holy Spirit in establishing the way forward for the Church in the age to

15 Yves Congar, “The Meaning of Tradition,” in The Twentieth Century Encyclopedia of Catholicism (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1964), 26. 16 Ibid., 27. 17 Ibid. 18 Blondel, Letter on Apologetics, 268. VOLUME XV (2022) 55

come. In their work, these men drew from many fonts, and they returned to the sources. Congar once remarked that “if it were necessary for us to characterize in one word the theological approach of the Council, we would evoke the ideal of knowledge proposed by Maurice Blondel, which protested against what he rather enigmatically called ‘monophorism,’ that is to say a reified (chosiste) conception of knowledge.”19 Blondel’s understanding of the phenomenon of tradition as being based on experience in act found its way, through Congar and others, into the discussion, and consequently the documents of the Council.

While it would be absurd to imply that the philosophical and theological work of Karol Wojtyla was a result of the Council, especially considering the fact that he was one of the Council Fathers and contributed greatly to the work of the Council, it remains true that he was influenced by the same sources as the theologians of the ressourcement, and though he, as an academic philosopher and not a theologian, was not in earnest a member of the movement, he nonetheless can be said to have been affected by the thought of these men. It is also clear that he was instrumental in bringing these ideas to fruition in the documents of the Council, the most notable being Gaudium et Spes, as discussed above.

Wojtyla’s own opinion of Blondel is summed up in a statement he made in the year 2000, addressed to those gathered for a symposium on the work of this French philosopher: “At the root of Maurice Blondel’s philosophy is a keen perception of the drama of the separation of faith and reason and an intrepid desire to overcome this separation, which is contrary to the nature of things. The philosopher of Aix is thus an eminent representative of Christian philosophy, understood as rational speculation, in vital union with faith, in a twofold fidelity to the demands of intellectual research and to the Magisterium.”20 This twofold fidelity is the animating principle underlying the whole of Blondel’s understanding of tradition: to be faithful both to the demands of right religion, the truth as put forth by

19 Michael A. Conway, “Maurice Blondel and Ressourcement,” in Ressourcement: A Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. Gabriel Flynn and Paul D. Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 14. 20 John Paul II, “To the International Conference on Blondel between L’Action and the Trilogy” (November 18, 2000). www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2000/octdec/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20001118_blondel.html.

Magisterial authority, as well as to the rigor and reason of historical pursuit.

In his phenomenology, we again see the comparison of Blondel to Wojtyla. Blondel, in October of 1886, at the age of 25, wrote: “I propose to study action, because it seems to me that the Gospel attributes to action alone the power to manifest love and to attain God! Action is the abundance of the heart.”21 One can almost imagine a young Karol Wojtyla expressing the same sentiment as he decided to move from the study of the Polish language to the study of philosophy, motivated by the same fascination with human experience and the acting person. Blondel’s first major work was entitled l’Action, and Wojtyla’s seminal work of philosophy was entitled The Acting Person or Person and Act (depending on the translation). This mutual concern with action is seen in the method with which both thinkers approach the world and the Christian life, and it is a fitting companion to the theological method of the nouvelle théologiens.

Phenomenological Ressourcement

“And so the various members contribute to the health of the body under the direction of the head,” Blondel writes, “which alone concerts and stimulates progress, in the unity of a consciousness which is divinely assisted.”22 The “twofold fidelity” of Maurice Blondel shows us that it is indeed possible to unite faith and reason, as would later be affirmed in encyclical form by Pope Saint John Paul II in Fides et Ratio. In his study of action, and his definition of tradition as a living synthesis, Blondel has reaffirmed the role that each member of the Body of Christ plays in this process of synthesis. The acting person in community, which is at the heart of Blondel’s philosophical method, and that of like-minded phenomenologists, is the first principle of tradition so defined. The influence of this understanding of tradition, as we have established, can be seen distinctly present in the work of the theologians of the ressourcement, and by their influence, in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. There is no progress without tradition—a living synthetic reality, lovingly sourced from the knowledge and practice of history, and not bound or controlled by the contingent expression of a particular time but rather preserving and conquering its parts to become a unified whole. In this time of tumult and transition, as the Church still reels from the sexual abuse scandal

21 Blondel, Letter on Apologetics, 33. 22 Ibid., 268. VOLUME XV (2022) 57

of recent memory and with a financial scandal blowing in on the wind, the words of Maurice Blondel—written at a different time of confusion within the Church but with the power to inspire the great thinkers of the Nouvelle Théologie to return to the sources and in them discover what was already known—still resonate: I want to speak of the contemporary state of mind. A great renewal is taking place at the present time: it will be apparent that it is a question of adopting a whole moral attitude, that it is not only in the domain of thought that our salvation is decided, but above all in the secret recesses of the heart, that the time of heresies and even schisms is over, that not to be entirely for the Church is to be against it. . . . Truth is no longer adequatio rei et intellectus and no one lives on clear ideas any longer. But there remains the truth, and the truth which remains is living and active; it is adequatio mentis et vitae. 23

23 Ibid., 33. 58