International Journal of Systematic Theology Volume 7 Number 4 October 2005

The Future of the Past: The Contemporary

Significance of the Nouvelle Théologie
A.N. WILLIAMS*

Abstract: The nouvelle théologie was a noticeably diverse movement, but if it

had a core it was not in opposition to Thomism, or in a claim that patristic
sources were to be privileged in theology. Rather, it was in a serious examination
of all historical theological resources that both recognized their diversity and
partiality but also sought to find in them resources for the renewal of theology.
In contrast to the situation into which the nouvelle théologie developed, the
danger for theology today is not a captivity to a particular historical source, but
a refusal to engage seriously with any historical material, because it is seen as
irrelevant, or positively harmful, to the theological task for various reasons. The
chastened traditionalism of the nouvell théologie might thus be seen to have
something to say to our own day, as well as its own.

The nouvelle théologie was provocative in its time and remains so, although the
precise character of its provocation has shifted with the passage of time. Some of
those associated with the phrase, such as Yves Congar and Henri de Lubac, distanced
themselves from it in more or less emphatic terms. In part these rejections of the
label could be viewed as no more than the prudential protestations of those whose
work had been criticized and whose opponents coined the term to designate what
they were attacking, for in its original context, nouvelle théologie was a term of
disapprobation, and several of those associated with it suffered some form of
censure.1 Against this backdrop of hostility, furthered by what was taken to be the
criticism of the French theology in the encyclical Humani Generis of 1950, it is

* Corpus Christi College, Cambridge CB2 1RH, UK.

1 It is far from clear that these censures of the work of individuals can be taken as any
kind of censure of what I am here designating as the movement. Moreover, although
some figures (such as de Lubac) were advised by superiors to keep a low profile for a
time, this does not mean there was any kind of explicit censure emanating from Rome.
Even the encyclical Humani generis, which was widely supposed to have denounced the
aims of the movement, does not actually identify any figure or work associated with it
as worthy of condemnation. However in this case, the smoke of suspicion became in the
minds of many an indication of some actual fire of censure.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
and 350 Main Street Malden, MA 02148, USA.
348 A.N. Williams

scarcely surprising that thinkers like Congar and de Lubac should have distanced
themselves from the term itself, but equally, the fact of such linguistic distancing
should not blind us to the powerful consonances among the thinkers who are
sometimes so designated, nor the continuing significance of their thought.
Some objections to the term were more substantive than sheerly prudential,
however: that those designated by the term had never constituted themselves as any
kind of group, did not espouse any common system, and perhaps most significantly,
that what any of them was about was precisely not ‘new’. If we are to speak of the
nouvelle théologie, let alone designate it as a movement of some sort, we must do
so with some delicacy, therefore, but these considerations do not in themselves
invalidate using the term altogether, for the significance of this theology subsists,
not solely in the value of the contributions of individuals, but in the broader trends
observable across the work they collectively produced. If it is an exaggeration to
speak of a movement in any formal sense, we may still speak of one in the sense of
a common sensibility and vision, not a system so much as a spirit.2
For it is clear is that in the early to middle decades of the last century there
arose a group of mostly Francophone theologians who shared an interest in the
theological past and the way in which that past relates to present issues, and that
these concerns did in their time represent a fresh approach to theology, as they
continue to suggest new directions in ours. So who were these ‘new theologians’?
Because we are looking at a broad tendency rather than anything formally
constituted, we find no general agreement about who exactly formed part of it, but
most would associate with the term above all the names of Yves Congar, Jean
Daniélou and Henri de Lubac – ironically, since Daniélou and de Lubac were among
the most vociferous objectors to the term nouvelle théologie. Henri Bouillard, Marie-
Dominique Chenu, Hans-Urs von Balthasar and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin are also
sometimes included, though Teilhard’s work does not exhibit the same drive to
engage with the theological tradition that is evident in the work of the others. Beyond
these, there are figures who, while not generally regarded as being part of the group,
expressed strong sympathy with the work and theological goals of those more
intimately involved; here we might name the Thomists Étienne Gilson and Jacques
Maritain, as well as Louis Bouyer,3 a noted historian of spirituality. Those in the
core group were centred around two houses of study belonging to religious orders
which had long been associated with scholarly rigour: the Jesuit scholasticum in
Fourvière, near Lyon, and the Dominican house of studies of Le Saulchoir in
Belgium.

2 Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 16. Even this way of putting the matter could be
considered contentious, for the notion of an esprit commun goes back to the early critique
of Marie-Michel Labourdette; see ‘La Théologie et ses sources’, Revue Thomiste 46
(1946), pp. 353–91; see esp. pp. 354–5.
3 Not to be confused with Charles Boyer, who was one of the movement’s detractors.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 349

Some accounts of the period emphasize the tension between these two orders,
portraying the Jesuits as opposed to the dominance of neo-Thomism in contemporary
theological education, and a leading Dominican, Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, as
one of the attackers of these Jesuits. However to portray the conflict that surrounded
the nouvelle théologie as the latest instalment of a hoary squabble between rival
religious orders is obviously misguided, for two of the scholars associated with the
movement and whose work was censured were the Dominicans Congar and Chenu,
the latter known to even the casual student of Aquinas as the author of a
groundbreaking study of Thomas’ work. If the nouvelle théologie is in any sense a
movement, therefore, it cannot simply be characterized as anti-Thomist, much less
as some sort of Jesuit ambush on Thomism, nor as a Dominican attempt to assert
the dominance of a certain kind of neo-scholasticism.
It would nevertheless be fair to say, that there is a certain commonality between
what the Jesuits of Fourvière were dissatisfied with, and what Bouillard’s and
Chenu’s work on Aquinas sought to correct: a monolithic neo-Thomism which had
become as remote from contemporary concerns and the needs of the twentieth-
century church as it was arguably distant from the spirit of Thomas himself.4 If
Chenu’s work helped to rescue Thomas from a reverent embalmment in neo-
scholasticism, the Jesuits posed the question of the relation of Thomas’ work to the
study of the theology which preceded his, and in so doing, raised more general
questions about the development of doctrine, the interpretation of the Christian past
and its possibilities for modern retrieval. These concerns might sound innocuous
enough today, but in their time, they were taken as a gauntlet thrown down before
the theological establishment. If the nouvelle théologie was not new inasmuch as it
engaged neglected theologies of the past, it was new in its concern to revive interest
in these at a time when they were thought to have become obsolete, and to do so in
a way that not only made them the object of historical inquiry, but proposed them
as a quarry for constructive theology. The protestations against the term nouvelle
théologie are therefore perhaps a little disingenuous, for those who championed what
it stood for surely knew the temper of their time well enough to realize they were
swimming against the stream, even if they might have been surprised at the
vehemence of the actual reaction.
Although the earliest signs of trouble were the censures of Congar in 1934 and
Chenu in 1937, the first hints of the enduring significance of the nouvelle théologie
are perhaps most evident in the publication of Bouillard’s thesis on Aquinas.5
Bouillard’s work not only challenged conventional readings of Aquinas on the issues
of conversion and grace, but also suggested it was possible for the unchanging truths

4 Daniélou’s article, ‘Les Oriéntations présentes de la pensée religieuse’, Études 79 (1946),

pp. 5–21, stressed the need for contemporary theology to respond to the needs of the
times. A similar concern emerges frequently in the work of Congar.
5 Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grâce chez S. Thomas d’Aquin, Théologie 1 (Paris:
Editions Montaigne, 1944).

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

350 A.N. Williams

of theology to take various forms in different times. What was at stake in this part
of the debate was therefore both the uniquely authoritative status of one brand of
Thomism, based on a particular reading of Aquinas, as well as the more general
advocacy of a degree of plasticity in theological expression. Bouillard’s work
unleashed a storm of attacks, one of which, that of Marie-Michel Labourdette,
broadened the target beyond Bouillard himself in a way that usefully – for us –
pinpoints some areas of the movement’s significance.
On Labourdette’s account, there was a similarity between what Bouillard was
about, the broader purposes of the series of which it was the inaugural volume
(Théologie), and the agenda of the first volumes of the Sources chrétiennes series
launched earlier by Daniélou and de Lubac; in all of these, Labourdette claimed to
see a devaluation of Thomism. Although the all-sufficiency and unsurpassability
of Thomism is no longer an issue, the debate over Bouillard’s work and Sources
chrétiennes devolved on the underlying questions of the exhaustibility of older
theology and the relation of epochs of the Christian theological past to one another,
and these remain pertinent; indeed, they may have become more pressing than they
were in Bouillard’s day. If the theology of one era can simply render earlier ones
obsolete, and if definitive readings of any theology can be – or indeed, have been –
already arrived at, then there is scant reason to continue studying any of them: not
only they, but also their contemporary significance, have already been plumbed.
The most immediate challenge of the nouvelle théologie was simply that it
stirred up interest in the Christian past by making the rich array of older theology
available, notably through the inauguration of Sources chrétiennes. One significance
of the latter was the way in which its editorial decisions constituted a tacit rejection
of certain scholarly orthodoxies. By including texts of lesser-known medievals (the
Victorines, for example), or by rejecting the decisions of earlier editors (as in the
edition of Origen’s De principiis), Sources chrétiennes queried the regnant wisdom
about which authors were worth attending and how they should be interpreted.
Moreover, in publishing both patristic and medieval texts side by side, the scope of
the series implicitly queried the notion of a vast and fundamental divide between
the theological landscape of the Fathers and that of the scholastics. Equally,
though, that range also undermines any possibility of reading the Christian
tradition univocally, for it would clearly be impossible to synthesize such a vast
body of literature spanning different languages, cultures and centuries into a
single homogenous whole whose doctrinal normativity is underwritten by its
very univocity.
The notion of source in the sense of fountain or spring suggests vitality, not
only in that the spring itself is living water, but also in that it gives life to those who
drink from it: the notion is of dynamic engagement rather than the past being used
as a cudgel to squash diversity or novelty – it was of just such an appeal to the
past-as-cudgel of which Garrigou-Lagrange was accused6 and which the thinkers

6 The charge is that of Bruno de Solages. See the article on ‘Nouvelle Théologie’ by
Raymond Winling in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 2nd edn, pp. 668–75, esp. p. 671.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 351

associated with the nouvelle théologie sought to avoid. The purpose of engaging
older theology is not to constrain the parameters of contemporary theological
expression, but to inspire, to provoke theological imagination to new insight. Not
only development and variegation within the ancient and medieval tradition is
presupposed, but flowering beyond it as the very consequence of interaction with it,
such that it becomes impossible to engage with it without its bearing new fruit: the
supposition of this way of reading the past renders impossible its classification
purely as ‘history’.
It should be made clear, however, that although the nouvelle théologie is best
known for its championing of the Fathers and the lesser medievals, it was never the
intention simply to shift the centre of privilege from one group of theologians to
another, or one period to another: the movement no more pled pre-Reformation
theology in preference to later Christian thought than it chose between the Fathers
and the scholastics. De Lubac noted that as originally conceived, Sources chrétiennes
was to have continued past the Middle Ages and to be a source of later theological
traditions as well; but, as he commented ruefully, ‘I was not the Abbé Migne.’7
Though the sheer finitude of the human scholars involved limited the scope of the
series as realized, as envisioned, it was never meant to represent a new form of
partisanship, of devaluing one kind of theology in the misguided attempt to exalt
another.
At one level, the question of whether any particular period has greater normative
status than the others is an ecumenical one, and its appearance makes this an
appropriate point at which to mention this dimension of the nouvelle théologie, an
aspect of its concern with which Congar is particularly associated. It is perhaps this
area in which the promise of the movement was least satisfactorily realized, but
while the failure to continue Sources chrétiennes beyond the Middle Ages seems
due more to limited resources than any deliberate shrinking of vision, the actual
scope of the series seems to signal a preference for pre-Reformation theology – in
other words, seems to represent precisely the kind of myopic periodization which
I’m arguing the nouvelle théologie beckons us to abandon. The advocacy of patristic
thought however represented not so much a determination to esconce theology
in the secure fortress of a bygone era but a wish to prospect for treasure which in
the earlier part of the twentieth century lay buried under the sands of neglect.
Appreciating this point is essential if the contemporary import of the movement is
to be understood, for an in-principle determination in favour of any period, school
or figure necessarily represents a self-deafening to other voices, voices which may
be in more immediate need of attending precisely because of their power to challenge
contemporary commonplaces.
If the presenting problem in the context which nurtured the nouvelle théologie
was the dominance of one kind of medieval theology, then the problem has arisen

7 Henri de Lubac, At the Service of the Church: Henri de Lubac Reflects on the
Circumcumstances That Occasioned His Writings, trans. Anne Elizabeth Englund (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), p. 95, n. 25.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

352 A.N. Williams

just as pointedly in other contexts, on the occasion of other eras: notably, of a

sentimental view of patristic theology which accords it an intellectual and moral
authority which is all but unsurpassable – and of course, some of the Reformers have
been granted a similar status within their traditions. Perhaps most insidious of all,
however, is the naive progressivism which assumes the later is always more
sophisticated, more correct and above all, more relevant, than whatever came before
it. The issue here is not whether any figure or group of figures merits some degree
of authoritative status – a good case can be made for any of the eras and theologians
just mentioned – but rather, what theology loses by not listening to the ensemble of
voices from the past, in dismissing the potential fresh springs of theological life
on merely programmatic grounds. Of those associated with the French theology,
Daniélou and de Lubac probably seem most in danger of privileging a single period
(the patristic), yet their reasons for doing so lay not in the authoritative status of its
theology, but its dynamism; thus, for de Lubac, the Fathers were the ‘pre-eminent
witnesses of Christian novelty’;8 (de Lubac himself, incidentally, professed an
abiding love for Aquinas’ theology).9 The significance of the nouvelle théologie in
its own time, as in ours, is that it advocated both for a broad view of the Christian
tradition, and more specifically, for those eras currently suffering from neglect. If it
still presses the merits of patristic and medieval theology in our time, that cannot
be because these eras trump all others – a determination alien to the spirit of the
movement – but because they are now marginalized for different reasons.
The notion that any one period or any one theology is uniquely authoritative
necessarily implies a position on the development of doctrine, namely that it halts
at some point. If it is allowed that doctrine develops up until this privileged point,
then it cannot be said to develop legitimately beyond it; later developments must be
taken either as corruptions of older theology, or as new misadventures. In the storm
surrounding the nouvelle théologie, the assertion of the summative character of
Thomism implied an abrupt halt of tradition in the high Middle Ages and correlated
with an assumption of subsequent doctrinal invariability. The question is whether
there is any real middle ground between the relativism of which (rightly or not) the
nouvelle théologie was accused by its detractors, and the doctrinal palaeolithism
which seems the inescapable end of the approach they seemed to advocate.10

8 Henri de Lubac, The Church; Paradox and Mystery, trans James R. Dunne (Shannon:
Ecclesia, 1969), p. 91.
9 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, p. 35. Like de Lubac, what in part attracted
Daniélou to patristic theology was its freshness; it was, as he saw it, ‘actuelle’ (Daniélou,
‘Les Oriéntations présentes de la pensée religieuse’, p. 11). His estimations of scholastic
theology and Thomism tend to be more negative than those of de Lubac, but it is often
not clear whether a particular remark is directed against Thomas’ theology itself or the
penumbra surrounding it in the Middle Ages and later.
10 One of the problems besetting the nouvelle théologie was the tendency of some of its
opponents to liken it to modernism and then to assume that the condemnations of the
latter somehow applied to the former. Whatever the merits and demerits of modernism,

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 353

One immediate consequence of privileging a particular period, school or

individual thinker is the silencing of the diversity of voices and modes of theology,
and openness to this diversity was part of what the nouvelle théologie signified.
Whatever the merits of any particular theology, none could possibly be adequate to
the task of expressing all that might be said of, as Aquinas puts it, God and other
things as they relate to God (ST I.1, 3 ad 2). If diversity bears the seeds of potential
doctrinal chaos, uniformity poses the equally grave risk of imagining the divine
nature and works are containable within human verbal formulae. The lesson of the
nouvelle théologie’s challenge to a fossilized neo-scholasticism is that no theology
can furnish a shield from the risks of speaking of the divine; to speak of the
Unutterable is always to court danger, just as keeping silence can betray the
imperative of doxology, a dilemma which patristic and medieval theologians never
tired of pondering.
The nouvelle théologie not only urged attentiveness to neglected eras, but also
proposed a refreshed way of looking at the past: there was concern to understand it
on its own terms, and up to a point, for its own sake, but there was also concern
to make use of it and so to carry the tradition forward. This constructive mode
of engagement is what is designated by ressourcement, or by the Latin slogan: ad
fontes! In both Latin and French, the connotation of the term has to do with
refreshment; the Latin fons and the French source can designate a fountain or a
spring, a source of living water, while one possible English rendering of the Latin
slogan, ‘back to the sources’, can easily evoke no more than a defensive retreat
motivated by sheerly antiquarian concerns or theological nostalgia. Ressourcement,
in contrast, was not meant to be a return to the sources solely for their own sake,
but for the sake of the revitalization of contemporary theology. Bouillard’s definition
of the twofold aim of the Théologie series expresses the notion well: ‘to go to the
sources of Christian doctrine, to find in it the truth of our life’:11 any truth which is
the truth of our life cannot possess an exclusively historical character.
If the point of engaging the theological tradition in all its diversity was not for
the exponents of the nouvelle théologie sheerly to investigate the past for its own
sake, but to engage with it for constructive purposes, the question arises of how one
goes about doing this, a question which none of the movement’s exponents answered
in an explicit statement of methodology. If the nouvelle théologie might seem to
some today awkwardly to straddle a divide between historical and constructive
theology, then the problem may lie with the way in which the two are being
conceived. At this point, therefore, it might be well to look beyond the parameters
of the movement inself and to introduce some distinctions, which I shall borrow
from Robert Wilken. In a 1992 essay on the nature of historical theology,12 Wilken

the nouvelle théologie differed in its aims, assumptions and preoccupations and it is
unhelpful to lump the two together.
11 De Lubac, At the Service of the Church, p. 31.
12 See R. Wilken, ‘Historical Theology’, in Donald W. Musser and Joseph L. Price, eds, A
New Handbook of Christian Theology (Cambridge: Lutterworth, 1992), pp. 225–30.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

354 A.N. Williams

distinguished between, on the one hand, tracing the development of Christian ideas,
doctrines and beliefs, an enterprise within the field of the history of Christianity
which has close parallels to intellectual and social history and which is often
practised by scholars whose training is in history rather than theology. Alternatively,
historical theology can refer to the ‘theological analysis of the sources of Christian
thought’, with scripture considered as one of those sources alongside the writings
of individual thinkers and official church documents (such as conciliar decrees). In
this second sense, historical theology is a form of systematic theology, one practised
by those trained as theologians, whose concern often lies in ‘drawing out the
implications of classical thinkers for contemporary life and thought’; here Wilken
cites Rahner’s use of Aquinas as an example.
It is historical theology in Wilken’s second sense that the thinkers associated
with the term nouvelle théologie were clearly doing, and it is partly because of the
decline in this activity, which Wilken lamented just over a decade ago, that the
nouvelle théologie remains important: it showed, and shows, the constructive
possibilities and systematic telos, of engaging the Christian tradition. The
significance of ressourcement, therefore, is that it is not in the first instance motivated
by sheerly historical concern, even though some of the most important works of its
exponents are in the first instance contributions to the understanding of the Christian
past on its own terms. One of the nouvelle théologie’s more unlikely advocacies was
of earlier biblical interpretation, notably, Daniélou’s study of typology in patristic
exegesis, and de Lubac’s two-volume study of medieval exegesis.13 These examined
forms of interpretation that had been either maligned or ignored since the rise of the
historical critical method and in doing so sympathetically, suggested they were at
least worthy of serious attention – but neither work directly suggests such forms of
exegesis could be revived, and their import is therefore apparently historical rather
than constructive.
I say ‘apparently’ because even the attempt to reread the past represents a
challenging of regnant assumptions which ultimately has ramifications for
constructive theology. If it is the case, for example, that Aquinas can only be read
as the determinative codifier of the prior tradition who for all time set dogmatic
formulations in stone, leaving no ambiguities or open questions – or even room for
further improvement – then constructive theology would indeed be an unnecessary
discipline. Many contemporary Thomists would find this a strange way of reading
Aquinas, but the approach is not without analogues today. It was Chenu’s work,
more than any other, which opened the door to a broader view of Aquinas, one major
significance of which was simply making room for dialogue with his theology, rather
than endlessly engaging in a ‘theology of repetition’.

13 Jean Daniélou, From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Biblical Typology of the Fathers,
trans. Wulfstan Hibberd (London: Burns & Oates, 1960); Henri de Lubac, Medieval
Exegesis, vol. 1, trans. Mark Sebanc; vol. 2, trans. E.M. Maceirowski, Retrieval and
Renewal: Ressourcement in Catholic Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988 and
2000).

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 355

Just so, the work of Daniélou and de Lubac on patristic and medieval exegesis,
if not spelling out how a modern reader of the Bible might make constructive use
of earlier techniques, nevertheless shows the intellectual strength, and in many
respects, the honesty of such approaches, in a way which makes it much more
difficult simply to dismiss them as ‘pre-modern’ or ‘pre-critical’. If the French
scholarship of the last century did not provide an instruction manual for applying
such methods today, it nevertheless presses the question of the relation of biblical
exegesis to constructive theology and may prompt modern theologians to query
the hermeneutical assumptions of the historical critical method, as well as its current
hegemony as an approach to biblical texts. Such a goal was very much what
Daniélou had in mind: his work on the history of interpretation arose out of
the conviction that there had been a widening rift between biblical exegesis and
systematic theology, a rift that only impoverished systematics.14 Part of Daniélou’s
concern, then, was to recover an exegesis that could be of use to contemporary
theology; he linked the unity of theology and exegesis in the patristic period to the
understanding of the prophetic and figurative character of the Old Testament.15 The
implication of his thought is that the historical critical method may not exhaust
the approaches to the Bible that are legitimate and fruitful for theologians. The
current rift between biblical studies and theology may be attributable to the sheer
incompatibility of their aims, the one directed as it is to the quest for the ‘original’
meaning of texts, determined on the basis of what we can now piece together
of their historical context, the other towards the texts’ potential to speak to very
different communities and social contexts from those in which they originated, a
divergence which typological and allegorical readings avoid.
If the nouvelle théologie declined to divide the patristic from the medieval
periods, either from each other or from later epochs, if it refused to separate dogmatic
from spiritual or biblical inquiry, these catholicities signalled a tolerance for
both methodological variegation and a fruitful connotative richness in the use of
theological language. One provocative suggestion of de Lubac’s was the idea
expressed in Corpus mysticum that the progression from patristic to scholastic
theology represented a devaluation of the power of the symbolic, for which the
patristic period was notable,16 a concern similar to Daniélou’s advocacy of figurative
readings of the Old Testament.17 This tolerance for symbol and trope does not
distinguish patristic from medieval theology, of course, for Aquinas insists in the
opening article of the larger Summa on the metaphorical character of much of
scripture, and the propriety of sacred doctrine’s following the lead of the Bible in

14 Orientations, cited in Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri
de Lubac, p. 7.
15 Daniélou, ‘Les Oriéntations présentes de la pensée religieuse’, p. 9.
16 This is the general thesis of ‘Du symbole à la dialectique’, in Corpus mysticum:
l’eucharistie et l’église au moyen âge, 2nd edn, Théologie 3 (Paris: Aubier, 1949), pp.
248–77.
17 Daniélou, ‘Les Oriéntations présentes de la pensée religieuse’, p. 9.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

356 A.N. Williams

such usage and it is likewise Aquinas who furnishes the tradition with an account
of the uses of analogy in theology (ST I.1 9–10 and I.13).18 However, in insisting
on the need, not just for clarity and precision, but also evocation and allusion,
the nouvelle théologie may provide the contemporary theologian with a salutary
reminder that the language of theology can never be confined within the standard
modes of academic discourse and philosophy. Some modern theologians have of
course stressed the metaphorical character of theological language, but have done
so to the end of effectively dismissing the authority of succh theology, declaring
its language, to be, qua metaphorical, readily revokable.19 Without delegitimating
approaches to discourse that stress the plain sense of words (whether in certain
schools of biblical exegesis or in Anglo-American analytic philosophy) or the need
for the precision of technical vocabularies, the nouvelle théologie reminds the
modern theologian that the mode of theological discourse is confined neither to the
technical, nor the commonsensical; it is neither solely narrative or dramatic, but must
aspire also to the lyric if it is to speak truly of the mystery that transcends all others,
and can therefore never be incapsulated, but only evoked. Yet these metaphors, being
the tradents of the church’s self-understanding, cannot be written out of the
theological script; every generation must wrestle with them anew.20
The sensibility that informs all the thinkers associated with the nouvelle
théologie (and which in part legitimizes reference to it as a ‘movement’ at all) is
perhaps best summarized as a conviction of the essential unity of theology. That
unity posits a temporal seamlessness, the continuity of patristic with medieval
theology, for example, as well as the power of both to speak to contemporary
concerns; a disciplinary continuity, in virtue of which biblical interpretation is not
taken to be divorced from systematic theology, which in turn is not regarded as
remote from philosophy, nor any of these as alien from spiritual concerns; and a
methodological unity, in virtue of which a variety of techniques and styles, ancient
and modern, avail the contemporary theologian. The theology of the patristic and
medieval periods itself exhibits such a temper: if the Fathers sometimes polemicized
against Greek philosophy in a tone rarely found in the work of the high medievals,
their carping did not prevent them from freely exploiting philosophical categories
and arguing with pagan intellectuals on their own terms. If the medievals felt no
need to justify their appeal to ancient philosophy, neither were they embarrassed by

18 De Lubac recognizes as much when he contrasts the eucharistic theology of Bonaventure

and Aquinas, deeming the former a stopping-place in the course of a ‘fatal evolution’,
and the latter, a point of departure; see de Lubac, ‘Du symbole à la dialectique’, p. 277.
19 This is effectively the position of Sallie McFague in Metaphorical Theology: Models of
God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982).
20 The via media suggested by the nouvelle théologie represents a resolution of the ‘logical
conflict’ to which the Oxford Poetry of 1927 pointed: ‘between the denotary and the
connotary sense of words; between, that is to say, an asceticism tending to kill language
by stripping words of all association and a hedonism tending to kill language by
dissipating their sense under a multiplicity of associations’. Cited in William Empson,
Seven Types of Ambiguity (London: Penguin, 1995 rpt), p. 271.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 357

their appeal to the Bible. In the work of all these writers, the strands of dogmatic,
biblical, speculative and spiritual theology are intertwined.
If one accepts that these unities manifested in patristic and medieval theology
may be worth emulating, one is still left with the question, to which I earlier alluded,
of how modern theologians might go about it. If the French thinkers of the last
century declined to provide programmatic guidelines for the application of their
insights, their practice of theology may still indicate approaches that are ultimately
unproductive, some of which they may not themselves have anticipated. One way
of engaging the past is that of the more doctrinnaire neo-Thomist, which amounts
to a theology of repetition. This approach correlates with a certain estimation of the
authority of earlier thinkers. On this account, doctrine would either not be taken as
developing at all, or else, having developed up to a certain point, as having reached
a summative and unsurpassable form. If such a stance is taken, not just in relation
to a single figure, as in the case of Thomas, but in relation to a school or a group of
thinkers (the Fathers, for example), then a further assumption must be made, namely
that of a certain homogeneity in the thought of this group. Any theology of repetition,
therefore, presupposes both a notion of authority and a theory of development
of doctrine, as well as, in some cases, a judgement regarding the univocity of
theology. The problems attaching to these determinations themselves indicate the
impracticality of pursuing such a procedure, quite aside from any weariness the
notion itself might evoke.
In turning away from neo-scholasticism, the nouvelle théologie necessarily
escaped the unwitting promotion of a theology of repetition, for in advocating for
one sort of tradition, it broke with another. This revisionist stance does not in itself
signify any decisive rejection of theological nostalgia, however, for it is perfectly
compatible with a theology of replacement, which rather than denying development
by reiterating the theology of a bygone era, acknowledges development, but
regarding it as unfortunate, seeks to substitute for modern theology that of a past
golden age. One might seek to retrieve a lost vision for a variety of reasons, but any
retrieval might easily become a form of resuscitating the past as an end in itself. The
significance of ressourcement is that it proposes renewal through some form of
dialogue, such that the past represents not an end, but a beginning. The nouvelle
théologie avoided becoming a theology of replacement in part because of its
insistence on engagement with contemporary concerns, such as the needs of modern
ordinands (as in the work of Chenu), or the lay apostolate (as in the work of Congar),
but more fundamentally, because of its insistence on the tradition as, not an end, but
a point of departure. One of de Lubac’s reasons for resisting the suggestion that the
nouvelle théologie was new was that it was ‘traditionnelle et dialogale’.21 This
linking of tradition and dialogue means that the appeal to the former cannot be qua
static authority. Dialogue moreover implies a willingness to listen to a voice other

21 Cited in H. U. von Balthasar and G. Chantraine, Le Cardinal Henri de Lubac, l’homme

et son oeuvre (Paris: Editions Lethielleux, 1983), p. 22.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

358 A.N. Williams

than one’s own, and that in turn implies at least some diversity of voices. If the
nouvelle théologie does not constitute a system, it does represent a coherent synthesis
of views regarding the variegated nature of the Christian tradition and the dynamism
of the way in which one engages with it. If being traditionnelle made the nouvelle
théologie not novel, in de Lubac’s view, being dialogale must nevertheless make it
in some sense new.
Now it might be argued that however necessary it might have been in the first
half of the last century to spell out such a relation to the past, it is no longer necessary
now. Thomism of any form, let alone that of an arid neo-scholasticism, no longer
maintains an ironclad grip on contemporary theology, and while some still speak
of ‘the Fathers’ as if they were theologically unanimous, contemporary Western
theologians who bother to engage with patristic sources do not generally appeal to
them as such. This shift of attitudes does not render the insight, the impetus or the
goal of the nouvelle théologie any less potent in our time, however. If once the danger
lay in a woodenly authoritarian appeal to the Christian theological past, in our time
the danger lies rather in a more or less complete relativization of its significance, in
some instances amounting to vehement denial that it might have any contemporary
import. Such a danger is implicit in the approach of those who regard the intellectual
assumptions and categories of older theology as rendering impossible or futile the
employment of its insights or conceptualities in contemporary theology: call this the
‘irrelevance approach’. A more adamant version of this line of thought would hold
that the social context of older theology so thoroughly embeds it in the web of
oppression in structurally unjust societies as to invalidate any attempt to apply its
insights to contemporary constructive theology. The absence of women’s voices, or
the control of theological expression by an educated elite who generally belonged
to a hierarchically-ordered church, for example, is taken to indicate that pre-
Reformation theology can only be explored as an artifact, via a hermeneutic of
suspicion – call this approach ‘the past as poison’.
These kinds of denial of the contemporary import of older theology emerges
from one or another school of self-avowedly Christian thought, but one can reach
the same conclusion, to keep the past firmly in the past, on the basis of entirely
secular assumptions. On one such view, the history of Christianity belongs to
historians, whose task is to study it without the partisan bias of religious convictions
or theological intent. While this approach seems neutral with respect to the
constructive import of the Christian tradition, it is often espoused by those whose
disciplinary fervour leads them to fulminate against or any form of theological
investigation, and to the extent that the advocates of this approach exert a formative
influence on academic culture, they effectively serve to create a climate in which
any form of ressourcement becomes markedly difficult, if not impossible; call
this the ‘secular–historical’ approach. A slightly less vociferous form of such
historicizing conviction, while not expressed as polemic against attempts to connect
historical to constructive theology, insists so relentlessly on the necessity for locating
theology in its original social and political setting that any attempt to read older
theological texts simply as theology is indefinitely postponed; call this the

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 359

‘contextualization approach’. These four ways of disestablishing the theological

power of the Christian past obviously differ in their motivations and broadly
correlate with divergent conceptions of the subject area as a whole which are
sometimes designated as the ‘theological’ and the ‘religious studies’ approaches, but
the outcome is exactly the same: the invalidation of the constructive significance
of older Christian theology. In a world informed by such assumptions, the sheer
advocacy of the past as a source, and as a dialogue partner for contemporary
theology, signals the continuing significance of the nouvelle théologie. The case was
stated by de Lubac:
Not only must we guard against thinking of progress in terms of innovation; we
must also remember that we are a long way from having either fully listed or
explored the wealth laid down for us throughout the past. That past did not
constitute our ‘pre-theological’ stage, and likewise the future will not see us the
possessors of a completed theology . . . which leaves our successors nothing to
do but repeat our formulations of it. However great the number and value of
the theological tasks completed, there will be no closed circuit of doctrine which
puts an end to discussion and reflexion alike and discourages the raising of new
questions.22
Elsewhere, I fleetingly characterized the diversity of theological opinions in the
Christian tradition using the Chaucerian image of a ‘parlement of foules’, a noisy
gathering of birds, not of a feather, but of all shapes and sizes, each with a voice
demanding a hearing, none of which finally silences the others.23 The analogy
suggests cacophony, and cacophonous the Christian tradition in some respects is:
at times polemical, sarcastic, unproductively and sometimes dishonestly warring
against itself and against intellectual fairness and truth. If we are to reject a merely
authoritarian understanding of tradition along with theologies of repetition and
replacement, on the one hand, yet on the other, avoid the various ways of
disenfranchising the theological past, whether secular or Christian, how are we to
avoid cacophony and glib relativism on the other?
Part of the answer to this dilemma is old, and lies in the possibility of discerning
between legitimate diversity and antithetical divergence, and between dogma and
theologoumena, along with the recognition that the area designated by ‘dogma’
will always and necessarily be much smaller than that describable as legitimate
theologoumena.24 Theologoumena, in turn, may be probed by their systematic

22 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, trans. Michael Mason (London: Sheed & Ward,
1956), p. 11.
23 A.N. Williams, ‘The Parlement of Foules and the Communion of Saints: Jenson’s
Appropriation of Patristic and Medieval Theology’, in Colin Gunton, ed., Trinity, Time
and Church: A Response to the Theology of Robert Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
2000).
24 Labourdette raised these issues of potential relativism in his 1946 article, ‘La Théologie
et ses sources’ (see esp. p. 364). Significantly, he did not accuse any of the thinkers he

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

360 A.N. Williams

compatibility, both with each other and with the body of dogma. Here is part of the
significance of the nouvelle théologie’s insistence on the unity of theology: although
there are few instances of actual systematic theologies before the high Middle Ages,
the conviction that historical inquiry has systematic import signals the propriety of
testing theologoumena at the bar of systematic coherence, although such testing by
no means need result in the shrinkage of the body of theologoumena. The notion
that tradition need be monolithic rests on the determination that its significance lies
primarily in its legislative power: the ‘safe’ theology of the past offers a haven from
contemporary questions. On this account, there could be no genuine ressourcement,
because this return to the past could represent nothing other than a theology of
repetition or replacement. No, if a source of new life is to be found in dialogue with
the past, its vitality must surely be related in some measure to its diversity, because
that diversity implies a multiplicity of theological trajectories to be explored. The
nouvelle théologie stands as a reminder that the Christian tradition has always been
variegated and its variformity is one of its strengths.
Welcoming this diversity is not a matter of tolerating battling or diametrically
opposed theologoumena, much less the denial of the dogmatic status of some key
doctrines, but rather, of a willingness to entertain alternative ways of approaching
theological problems and issues, recognizing that each may represent no more than
a partial answer, or indeed, no more than a provocative suggestion, as worthy of
further elaboration as it might be of correction. Thus de Lubac maintained that
attachment to tradition should never lead to hardness of heart or lack of feeling, nor
would it lead to confusing doctrinal firmness with narrow-mindedness; the mystery
of faith, he insisted, is not an ideology,25 an approach that precludes any use of the
past as a cudgel. Recognition of the diversity of the tradition means one cannot
appeal to it as the antidote to development, or as a simple substitute for modern
theology. It entails the frank acknowledgement of the great heterogeneity of patristic
and medieval theology, along with the recognition that just as we have not yet
exhausted them, they do not contain convenient answers to every question modern
theologians need to press. Dialogue means taking tradition, not as the means of
ending contemporary disputes, but as a starting-point, and rather than repeating what
has been said, pressing the systematic implications of a position in relation to
contemporary concerns. The import of both accepting that theology develops and
that engagement with the breadth of tradition is a dialogue, means that the only end
of doctrinal questioning and answering lies in the Age to Come, with repose of
doxology.
Let’s return for one last look at the parlement of foules. In Chaucer’s poem, the
noisy avian rivalry for the attentions of a female ends when Nature decrees that it

engaged with having fallen into this trap, but merely asked how it was to be avoided.
The question was fair, given that the thinkers associated with the movement were more
successful in suggesting avenues for exploration than in spelling out how one would
avoid the problems of either idiosyncratic innovation or calcifying repristination.
25 De Lubac, The Splendour of the Church, pp. 184 and 185.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005

The Future of the Past 361

is impossible to adjudicate amongst all these contenders and that female bird must
choose her partner for herself. She however forebears to render an immediate
decision, calling instead for the reconvening of the parlement in a year. Yet this
declining to privilege any one voice, the refusal to bring the discourse to any
conclusive end, far from constituting an anticlimax, prompts the birds for one last
time to raise their voices, this time in a joyously harmonious chorus to welcome
summer:
Wel han they cause for to gladen ofte, Well did they have reason often to
rejoice,
Sith ech of hem recovered hath hys Since each of them has recovered his
make, mate.
Ful blissful mowe they synge when Happily may they sing when they wake:
they wake:
‘Now welcome, somer, with thy ‘Now welcome, summer, with your soft
sonne softe, sun,
That hast thes wintres wedres Which overturns the winter weather
overshake,
And driven away the longe nyghtes And drives the long black nights away!’
blake!’
Here is a vision in which squabbling contention eventually yields, not to the easy
resolution of unanimity, but the harmonious chorus of diversity greeting a new
season, one full of warmth and hope. If that seems too artificially rosy a note to end
upon, let’s note that it is not quite the end. Like many poems, the conclusion of
Chaucer’s returns to where it began, in this case, with a perplexed student trying to
discover the truth about love by – of all things – combing through Cicero. The
dialogue of the birds is a vision to which he is led by a guide who suddenly
materializes to interrupt his furious paging, promising him knowledge he cannot find
in books. But having offered their heart-warming final chorus, the birds recede from
the student’s vision, and so he is left with no choice but to return to the task with
which he began, with the hard study of his books – and so may we. Ad fontes, indeed:
not as a retreat into the past to escape the responsibility of constructing theology
meet for our own time, nor as a flight into constructive theology as a substitute for
rigorous engagement with the sources on their own terms, but as an encouragement
and inspiration in the tasks of rediscovery, dialogue and constructive renewal.

© Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2005