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George Tyrrell and the Development of Doctrine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Aidan Nichols OP
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Early last summer, when he was in Peru, Cardinal Ratzinger disclosed that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was preparing a document on the ‘central issues of the Modernist crisis’. He enumerated these as the nature of doctrine, principles in the interpreting of the Bible, and the role of philosophy in theology.

If we want to get those thorny ‘central issues’ into historical perspective, how should we go about it? If one belongs to the Englishspeaking world, there is, arguably, no better way than to explore the thought of the Modernist George Tyrrell, who was born 125 years ago this year. However severe may be our final assessment of him, it is a fact that the questions Tyrrell raised were those of a theological genius, and we cannot ignore them or brush them away. To understand his thought we must trace its history—his ideas of what theology should be developed dramatically in the course of his life. And if we want to get to grips with what was really distinctive about his thought—where he was addressing himself to the ‘central issues’ which Cardinal Ratzinger has recently listed—then we must consider especially what he had to say about the notion of doctrinal development. His ideas of what theology should be formed, so to speak, a series of photographic lenses through which he peered at his favourite subject: the continuity and discontinuity of Christian tradition.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 67 , Issue 800 , December 1986 , pp. 515 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © 1986 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 For Tyrrell's life, see Petre, M.D., Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell (London 1912Google Scholar; two volumes). Cited hereafter as ALGT.

2 The Faith of Millions. A Selection of Past Essays (London 1901Google Scholar: ‘First Series’, ‘Second Series’). Here cited as FMI and FMII.

3 J. Crehan, ‘Tyrrell in his Workshop’, The Month 2, 3 (N.S., 1970, p. 111.

4 Schultenover, D.J. S.J., George Tyrrell. In Search of Catholicism (Shepherdstown 1981), p. 32Google Scholar.

5 Letter of 6.12.1907 to von Hügel, cited in ALGT II. p. 45. A less manipulative view of St Thomas is found in Tyrrell‘s early essay 'Aquinas Resuscitatus’, American Catholic Quarterly Review 16 (1891). pp. 673–690Google Scholar.

6 ALGT I. p. 99: c.f. D.G. Schultenover, George Tyrrell op. cit. pp. 44–45.

7 Tyrrell, G., ‘AChange of Tactics’, The Month 86 (February 1896), pp. 215–227Google Scholar, reprinted in MI, pp. 1–21. Tyrrell's adoption of Ward's programme is found in his review of the latter's The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman (London 1897)Google Scholar, and entitled ‘Wiseman: his Aims and Methods’, The Month 91 (February 1898), pp. 142–150Google Scholar. Reprinted in FMI, pp. 22–39.

8 See their correspondence as excerpted in Petre, M.D. (ed.), Yon Hügel and Tyrrell, The Story of a Friendship (London 1937)Google Scholar.

9 Originally published in The Weekly Register 100 (16 December 1899), pp. 461–473. Reprinted in Petre, M.D. (ed.), Essays on Faith and Immortality (London 1914), pp. 158–171Google Scholar.

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11 Through Scylla and Charybdis (London 1907), p. 86Google Scholar. ‘The Relation of Theology to Devotion’ was originally printed in The Month 94 (November 1899), pp. 461–473. Reprinted in FMI pp. 228–252, and Through Scylla and Charybdis (op. cit., cited henceforth as TSC), pp. 85–105.

12 TSC p. 104.

13 Ibid. p. 105.

14 Lex Orandi (London 1903), pp. 57ff. There is an echo here of Wiseman's appeal to the orbis terrarum in his 1839 Dublin Review article on Donatists and Puseyites. But whereas Wiseman appealed to the doctrinal judgement of the universal episcopate, Tyrrell appealed to the mystical sense of the plebs sancta Dei.

15 Ibid. p. 153. That popular devotion plays a major part in the historical ascertaining of orthodoxy need not be doubted. See e.g. Chadwick, H., ‘Eucharist and Christology in the Nestorian controversy’, Journal of Theological Studies (N.S. 2, 2; 1951), pp. 145–164CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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27 TSC passim.

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30 ‘Ecclesiastical development in the reign of the Queen’, The Times 2.1.1897.

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34 ED p. 382.

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47 Ibid. pp. 9–10.

48 Ibid. pp. 139–154.

49 Ibid. p. 10.

50 Ibid. p. 11

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52 Cf. Gardeil, A, Le donné révéélé et la théologie (Paris 1909; 1932), p. 358Google Scholar.

53 Geffré, C., Le Christianisme au risque de l'interprétation (Paris 1983).Google Scholar