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21 - Ressourcement Thomism

from Part II - Movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2022

Michael Allen
Affiliation:
Reformed Theological Seminary, Florida
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Summary

Ressourcement Thomism refers to an emergent trend of theologians who seek to reassess the contribution of Thomas Aquinas both within his historical context and in a contemporary context. It is best explained genealogically in relation to other recent theological movements and has distinctive characteristics. In this chapter, I seek first to identify this historical context and characteristics of Ressourcement Thomism and then to illustrate its relevance by examining two typical theological claims found among those associated with the movement. The first of these is the claim that the modern focus on the “immanent and economic trinity” after Karl Rahner is conceptually problematic and that the Thomistic distinction between Trinitarian processions and Trinitarian missions serves as the more feasible one for a reasonable analysis of the way that the mystery of the Trinity is revealed in the economy of salvation. The latter model allows one to acknowledge more perfectly the New Testament revelation of the transcendence and unity of the Trinity and to avoid problematic historicizations of the divine life of God. The second claim is that key figures in modern kenotic theology such as Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar, despite their theological creativity, have failed to preserve a sufficient sense of the distinction of the divine and human natures in Christ. Aquinas’s Chalcedonian and dyotheletist Christology provides one with ways of thinking about how the crucifixion of God reveals the mystery of the Trinity in and through the sufferings of Christ without the problematic projection of human characteristics of the Lord onto the inner life of the Trinity, as constitutive of the inner life of the Trinity. In both these respects, Ressourcement Thomism as a theological movement suggests ways that historical theology that is concerned with the contribution of patristic and medieval sources can lead to a renewal of and creative engagement in modern theology.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Emery, Gilles (2010), The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (trans. F. Murphy; Oxford: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Feingold, Lawrence (2010), The Natural Desire to See God according to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters, 2nd ed. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press).Google Scholar
Hütter, Reinhard, and Levering, Matthew, eds. (2010), Ressourcement Thomism: Sacred Doctrine, the Sacraments & the Moral Life (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press).Google Scholar
Levering, Matthew (1994), Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell).Google Scholar
MacIntyre, Alasdair (1997), After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, 3rd ed. (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press).Google Scholar
Marshall, Bruce (2010), “The Unity of the Triune God: Reviving and Ancient Question,” The Thomist, 74, 132.Google Scholar
White, Thomas Joseph, ed. (2015), The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Thomas Joseph (2022), The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press).Google Scholar

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