The theology of transcendental Thomism in the 20th-century is a fascinating course of study among Catholics of the 19th and 20th-century. They more meaningfully sought to engage tradition and culture at large. The impetus of the Enlightenment, naturalism, and secularism drove attitudes of modern thought that affected philosophers and theologians who wanted to bring into fuller meaning the church’s understanding of its positions of teaching and theology. There was a succession of individuals who developed methods of reason who relied upon well-known philosophers Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, and various others. They combined preceded contributions to the overall theological and philosophical discourse to further deepen Church views about modernity, modern philosophy, critical issues, supernatural transcendentalism, and existentialism.
Advocates of Neo-Scholasticism wanted to reconcile theology and naturalism with the Enlightenment. The philosophical inclinations among seventeenth and eighteenth-century intellectuals of Western civilization gave a footing to Immanuel Kant to allow for a “coming of age” mindset throughout society. The Enlightenment brought an intolerance to knowledge developed by external means other than human reason. Consequently, the Enlightenment-era ushered into society’s misgivings and skepticism about external sources of authority and claims concerning religious doctrines. To counter this suspicion toward antipathy that has taken root within Western society, theologians and philosophers made numerous inroads to innovate new and explanatory forms of religious and existential thought.
Roman Catholic theology held to traditions and theology that contradict the mood of secular society that were aligned with modernity and, consequentially, naturalism and rationalism. As an answer to the Enlightenment, Neo-Scholasticism in the 19th-century directed its efforts after a rationalistic approach to theology to account for the effects of the Enlightenment upon the Roman Catholic Church. The advances of Neo-Scholastic advocates in the formation and defense of their theology drew traditional convictions about religious claims and supernatural revelation away from individuals and communities to reform or abandon traditions and beliefs that were a detriment to the Church. Neo-Scholasticism embraced elements of the Enlightenment to oppose it, and it adopted naturalism and rationalism to fight its philosophical effect upon people.
As the Enlightenment and Neo-Scholasticism had a corrosive effect on the faith of believers, a new theology (nouvelle théologie) emerged to counter human-centered reason with a Thomistic polemic. It was a different form of reason that applied the faculties of realism, as originated from the Divine, which produces love and faith. Both substantiate belief and credibility as fact concerning the origin and sources of truth claims believed and validated. Moreover, modern philosophy had no way of overcoming the epistemological concern of believers and their human spirit pressing for the realism of absolute transcendence. Human spirit pre-disposed to spiritual encounter with the unlimited being who orients them is interpreted as pure actuality. As pure act, God, as the unlimited being, gives concrete objects their being plus the knowledge of their existence and activity. As an apologetic, in defense of Catholic tradition and further reconciling its theology with the Enlightenment, Neo-Scholasticism produced a natural and supernatural duality. This separation translated to unintended consequences that had a negative bearing on the faith and belief of people.
Karl Rahner (1904-1984) was a prolific author, lecturer, theologian, and philosopher guided by a transcendental Thomist tradition. He was a German Jesuit priest and one of the most influential Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th-century. He brought considerable reflection to the discourse against the Enlightenment era by advocating Thomistic realism, where human self-consciousness and self-transcendence are ultimately situated and existentially determined by God. As Rahner’s theology developed, his work centered around Christology as God’s work in the world through the Spirit and the Word. While Catholics will espouse the primacy of sacred Scripture, as opposed to sola scriptura, Rahner makes no use of it within the Livingston text to give weight or authority to his voice and epistemological perspectives. Namely, human reason and intellect produce imagination that strives toward an infinity that transcends the world. Experiential conditions drive presuppositions of metaphysical reality, and events upon the human spirit are reminiscent of Schleiermacher’s views about human religious experience. There are clear distinctions, but their views are close enough to make comparisons to recognize what is unique concerning Rahner’s theology. Ultimately, Rahner seeks to show that metaphysical knowledge of God and Christian revelation are existential.
Rahner’s theology of transcendental Thomism led to the formation of a theological model linked to his Christology and anthropology. By the presence of Being to itself and beings as a plurality of actuality, religious experience to Rahner historically spans humanity’s consciousness as participants of Creation. This is transcendental Thomism, or more specifically, the ontological structure of reality and the classic Christian doctrines of God, Trinity, Creation, and Incarnation (i.e., the ontology of Karl Rahner). As the Word is God’s self-communication that entails Creation while Christ symbolizes God, Christianity is posited as a symbolization of God’s grace and presence universally manifest.
“With Rahner, persons through their decisions make a decision for or against the transcendence that is God. A decision for that transcendence is an implicit affirmation of God and God’s grace that is explicitly symbolized and thematized by the Church. God’s saving will and offer of grace is universal; therefore, God’s grace is implicitly present everywhere though it is categorically and explicitly symbolized in salvation history and in the Church” (Livingston, 213).
Some of the criticisms of Rahner’s theology and metaphysical ontology have to do with inattention to historical Christian revelation. Whether by Barthian tradition about the absence of the written Word within Rahner’s rationale on the metaphysics of existence or philosophical objections as they concern the relation between historical language and experience.
Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) was another transcendental Thomist who was unique concerning human freedom along the Molinist line of thinking. Luis De Molina (1535-1600) was a Spanish Jesuit theologian and priest who defended human liberty by Divine grace. Lonergan integrated both divine transcendence and human freedom that guided his further philosophical and theological work. He is known for an explanation of falling in love with God. That is, religious conversion as coming to a totality of love where it is an efficacious grounding of all self-transcendence. As the knowledge of God appears at religious conversion (self-transcendence), it appears in the pursuit of truth, human values, and virtues as they link together in love, personal knowledge, and desire.
Edward Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) was a Belgian Roman Catholic theologian of the Dominican order who was viewed by many as a liberal Catholic. He was known for his contributions to the discourse of Catholic theology involving phenomenology and sacramental theology. Some criticized his writings concerning phenomenology as a New Theology that pronounced a subjectivism which caused deconstructed faith of believers on a large scale. For example, the presence of Christ in the Eucharist sacrament becomes contested as a phenomenological encounter where the appearance of Christ’s body and blood is what it means to its subjects (people) and not the actual objective truth of the thing. Where appearances invoke emotion and perception as a philosophical difference that helped highlight Nouelle Théologie’s influence upon him. Edward Schillebeeckx’s later historical approach to Catholic theology moved beyond phenomenology to situate itself as theologies of Christological correlation.
As with various others of the Catholic faith, those of the Thomistic tradition and beyond made continuing efforts to adapt, renew, and make itself more relevant in the face of modernity and secularized culture. Along the way, based upon history, tradition, philosophical interpretation, literary analysis, political pressures, and cultural changes, Thomists became relegated to a narrower set of theological adherents through compromise to Liberalism. A great multitude has since left the Catholic Church because of the destructive theologies that influential Liberal academics have pushed. It was concerned about what culture thinks of the Church and truth as revealed by God through Scripture and the Holy Spirit among believers in Christ.
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