General information

• Study points: 4.00
• Language: English
• Category: seminar - assignment, papers included
• Duration: 26.0 hours 
• Periodicity: Taught next academic year in the first semester
• POC: POC Theology and Religious Studies

Taught by

Kenis Leo

Aims

• Students learn to know and understand a recent theological text, by placing it in its contemporary context and assessing its bearing in the recent history of Catholic theology.
• Students are able  to distinguish the significance of various positions in the development of catholic theology and thus learn to nuance uniform interpretations of the history of theology and of the church.
• Students are able to autonomously investigate, present and write down the point of view of an author in the history of Catholic theology.

Content

The crisis of modernism, which agitated Catholic theology at the turn of the 19th and the 20th centuries, has been traditionally viewed as a conflict between church authorities and a homogeneous group of like-minded theologians, who, according to a certain common strategy, aimed at an adaptation of Catholic thought to modernity. Recent research showed that this view does not correspond with reality. The group of Catholic scholars – theologians, philosophers, historians – who were suspected of modernism, rather consisted of thinkers from different countries, who each in their own way attempted to render Catholic thought relevant to their contemporaries. They had various kinds of contacts, and their exchange of ideas not only implied unanimity, but often also discussion and controversy. The major discussion started after the publication of L’Évangile et l’Église by the biblical scholar Alfred Loisy (1902), which inflamed the controversy over modernism. Loisy engaged in an intensive correspondence on his work with the philosopher Maurice Blondel. After a short time, Blondel wrote a series of articles in the periodical La Quinzaine under the title Histoire et dogme (History and Dogma), in which he took a most critical stance towards Loisy’s view on the interpretation of Scripture. Soon, other like-minded authors got involved in the discussion, particularly the English philosopher Friedrich von Hügel. The dispute dealt with crucial issues such as the relation between Scripture and Tradition, the tension between magisterial teaching and thehistorical-critical method in the interpretation of the Bible, etc.
This seminar provides an intensive reading of Histoire et dogme. The reading of the text is preceded by a presentation of Maurice Blondel and his major discussion partners, Alfred Loisy and Friedrich von Hügel. The presentation of their position in the discussion is accompanied with an investigation in their own vision on the issues at stake.

Course Material

The main literature is presented to the students at the start of the seminar. Particulary, the central text by Maurice Blondel, Histoire et dogme, is read in English translation, History and Dogma. For the study of their specific subject matter, students make use of the available scholarly literature.

Course activities

Every student has the task to study a part of the problematic and give a presentation of it during a seminar session. The sessions include, among other aspects: presentation of the protagonists (their life and work, their position in the modernist crisis), intensive reading of History and Dogma and related texts, study of central concepts that characterize the authors’ further theological orientations. All participants join in the discussion following the presentation. Students make a paper, in which they summarize the results of their research and integrate the outcomes of the discussions during the seminar session.

Evaluation description

Explanation

The evaluation considers three components of the student’s activities: the presentation of the assigned subject; the paper; the student’s participation in discussions during the other sessions.