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Continuity Underlying Discontinuity: Schillebeeckx’s Philosophical Background

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Philip Kennedy OP
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It is occasionally said of Edward Schillebeeckx that he is a difficult theologian to understand because in the last analysis he does not have a theology! Instead, he is thought to have produced two, three, or more, quite distinct theologies, whose characteristics depend on the kinds of philosophical equipment he has marshalled in order to give conceptual embodiment to his theological convictions.

Over the past five decades, Schillebeeckx has published about four hundred and seventy theological studies. A perusal of these divulges that at different stages his writings have freely borrowed philosophical ideas from such diverse contexts as phenomenology, existentialism, Anglo-American-Scandinavian analytical philosophy, structural linguistics, semiotics, neo-Marxist critical theories of society, and twentieth-century revivals of Thomism—a list by no means exhaustive.

A survey of his publications further uncovers that for a period of about nine years, from 1963 to 1974, he did not write a single book. These years, particularly from 1966 onwards, were devoted to a determined study of hermeneutics and biblical exegesis as a preparation for interpreting Christian faith in a new way. In 1974, at the end of this incubatory period, he published Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, the monograph in which he effectively gave notice that he had radically changed his theological method. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, he had employed a method which took classical theological theories and texts as its point of departure. With the book Jesus, however, references to patristic, medieval, and papal documents have to a large extent been put aside in favour of an avowedly hermeneutical method, which is dependent on a bountiful array of exegetical data and which seeks to set past and contemporary human experiences in a mutually critical and interpretative relationship with each other.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 70 , Issue 828 , June 1989 , pp. 264 - 277
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Studies which were issued as books were in fact collections of previously published articles. See Schoof, Ted, ‘… een bijna Icoortsachtige aandrang …,’ in Meedenkm met Edward Schillebeeckx. (Baarn: H. Ndissen, 1983), 11–39Google Scholar, especially 24.

2 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology (New York: Seabury Press and London: Collins, 1979)Google Scholar. Originally published as Jezus, net verhaal van een levende (Bloemendaal: H. Ndissen, 1974)Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., 618.

4 The literal meaning of ‘praxis’ in Schillebeeckx's later theology is ‘actual conduct’. See, for example, Jesus, An Experiment in Christology, 60.

5 See Edward Schillebeeckx in ‘Edward Schillebeeckx en Leo Apostel in gesprek: (A) TheistischeSpiritualiteit’, Tijdsehrift voor Geestelyk Leven, Extra Number (April, 1988), 9.

6 Hick, John, Faith and Knowledge (2nd Edition; London: Macmillan, 1988), 23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See School, T.M., A Survey of Catholic Theology: 1800–1970 (New York: Paulist Newman Press, 1970), 68Google Scholar.

8 For the first in a series of articles, see De Petter, D. M., ‘Impliciete Intuitie’, Tijfschrift voor Philosophie, 1:1 (February, 1939), 84–105Google Scholar.

9 See Edward Schillebeeckx in God is New Each Moment: Edward Schillebeeckx in conversation with Huub Oosterhuis and Piet Hoogeveen (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1983), 13–14.

10 Revelation and Theology (Vol 1, 1967; this edition, London: Sheed & Ward, 1987), 83Google Scholar.

11 Colloquium voor O.P. Studium Albertinum (Unpublished manuscript; Albertinum, Nijmegen, November, 1968)Google Scholar, 1–7, especially p. 1.

12 In Les Catholiques Hollandais (Edited by Hillenaar, H. and Peters, H.; Brouwer: Desclee, 1969), 15Google Scholar.

13 Outlined in Petter, D.M. De, Naar het Metafysische (Antwerp/Utrecht: Uitgeverij, 1972)Google Scholar.

14 Schillebeeckx refers explicitly to ‘the primacy of praxis’ in his book. Cod Among Us: The Gospel Proclaimed (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 99Google Scholar.

15 Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 747.

16 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Jesus in Our Western Culture (London: SCM Press, 1987), 63–64Google Scholar.

17 See Schillebeeckx, Edward, ‘Questions on Christian Salvation of and for Man’, in Toward Vatican III: The Work that Needs to be Done (Edited by Tracy, David with Kung, Hans and Metz, Johann B.; New York: The Seabury Press, 1978), 27–34Google Scholar, especially 37; Ministry: The Case for Change (London: SCM Press, 1981), 101.

18 Schoof, A Survey of Catholic Theology, 149.

19 See Schillebeeckx, Edward, The Understanding of Faith (first published, 1974; this edition, London: Sheed & Ward, 1981), 102–155Google Scholar.

20 Ibid., 14–44.

21 Adorno's influence is acknowledged in Schillebeeckx, Edward, God, the Future of Man (1969; this edition, London: Sheed & Ward, 1977), 205Google Scholar, n.8.

22 See Bowden, John, Jesus, The Unanswered Questions (London: SCM Press, 1988), 189–190Google Scholar.

23 Schillebeeckx, Edward, Christ: The Christian Experience in the Modern World (London: SCM Press, 1980), 818Google Scholar.

24 See Schillebeeckx, God the Future of Man, passim.

25 Hulsbosch, A., ‘Jezus Christus, Gekend als Mens, Beleden als Zoon Gods’, Tijdsehrift voor Theologie 6:3 (1966), 250–273Google Scholar.

26 On Hulsbosch's impetus for a new approach to christology see Schoof, Mark, ‘Dutch Catholic Theology: A New Approach to Christology”, Cross Currents, 22:4 (1973), 415–427Google Scholar.

27 See Duquoc, Christian, Liberation et Progressisme (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1987), 37, n.6Google Scholar.

28 For a recent attempt see Schillebeeckx, Edward, ‘De levensweg van Jezus, beleden als de Christus’, in Retigie als Levende Ervaring (edited by Marcel Messing; Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1988), 136–149Google Scholar.

29 Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 583.

30 See McCarthy, Vincent A., Quest for a Philosophical Jesus: Christianity and Philosophy in Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Schelling (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1986), ix–xvGoogle Scholar.

31 See Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 585–594.

32 See Siebert, Rudolf J., The Critical Theory of Religion: The Frankfurt School (Berlin: Mouton Publishers, 1985), 476–477Google Scholar).

33 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, la, I, 7, ad primum. Quoted by Schillebeeckx, for example, in his works: God and Man, 1965 (this edition, London: Sheed & Ward, 1979), 39Google Scholar; ‘Active Silence about God’, Theology, 71:577 (July, 1968), 302Google Scholar; The Mission of the Church, 1973 (this edition, London: Sheed & Ward, 1981), 144Google Scholar. For a later allusion to Aquinas’ text see, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 630.

34 See, especially, Schillebeeckx, The Understanding of Faith, 65.

35 Schillebeeckx, Edward. ‘The Magisterium and Ideology’, in Authority in the Church and the Schillebeeckx Case (edited by Swidler, Leonard and Fransen, Piet F.; New York: Crossroad, 1982), 5–17Google Scholar, especially p. 7.

36 God Among Us, 61. See as well, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, 669.

37 God and Man, 175–177; The Understanding of Faith, 19, 41–42, 59, 82–83, 95, 97. 150. 168. n. 12.