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George Tyrrell: Precursor of Process Theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Extract

In the current turmoil over the reality and identity of God, process theology has offered itself as having the most acceptable alternative to ‘classical theism’ and ‘substance philosophy’ with which, it is said, traditional Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, has aligned itself. As an indirect child of Bergsonian philosophy, though, process theology is not new. And when it is recalled that Bergson not only influenced Whitehead, before the latter exchanged Cambridge for Harvard, but also the leaders of avant-garde Catholicism at the turn of the century, it will be seen that contemporary process theologians have some interesting relatives. Those of Bergson's progeny who have been born through Whitehead and Hartshorne tend to be North American and Protestant; but his other children are European and largely Catholic. The purpose of this essay, then, is to examine the ideas of one of these, George Tyrrell, with the intention of tracing out the similarities that exist between his theology and that advanced by contemporary process theologians. To look for precise coincidence between the positions would be foolish, but to find close parallels would be instructive. It would confirm the view that currently a convergence is taking place between the Protestant avant-garde and its Catholic counterpart, for very frequently the latter is merely reiterating ideas which George Tyrrell had already articulated and for which he was excommunicated in 1908.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1973

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References

page 71 note 1 The most lucid account of this position is given by Pittenger, W. N., Process Thought and Christian Faith (Nisbet, Welwyn; Herts., 1968)Google Scholar. See also his articles entitled Attributes of God in the Light of Process Thought’, Expository Times, LXXXI (Oct. 1969), 2123Google Scholar; Reconception of Christian Faith in the Light of Process Thought’, Princeton Seminary Bulletin, LXI (Winter 1968), 2937Google Scholar; Process Theology Revisited’, Theology Today, XXVII, no. 2 (July 1970), 212Google Scholar. In addition, useful essays are to be found in Encounter, XXIX (Spring 1968), 125–82, the whole issue being given to this subject. See also Ferré's, N. F. S. two articles ‘Beyond Substance and Process’, Theology Today, XXIV (July 1967), 160–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and God Without Theism’, Theology Today, XXII (Oct. 1965), 372–79Google Scholar; Brown, D., ‘Recent Process Theology’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XXXV (March 1967), 2841CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gilkey, L. B., ‘Theology in Process: Schubert Ogden's Developing Theology’, Interpretation, XXI (Oct. 1967), 447–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kaufman's, G. two articles ‘God's Purpose and World History,’ Perspective, IX (Spring 1968), 928Google Scholar, and On the Meaning of “Act of God”’, Harvard Theological Review, LXI (April 1968), 175201Google Scholar; Ogden, Schubert, ‘Beyond Supernaturalism’, Religion in Life XXIII (19631964), 718Google Scholar; and Silbey, J. R., ‘Rudolph Otto as a Percursor of Process Theology’, Encounter XXX (Summer 1969), 223–39.Google Scholar

page 71 note 2 Ogden, Schubert, The Reality of God and Other Essays (Harper and Row, New York, 1966), 1617.Google Scholar

page 71 note 3 Despite the present interest in Catholic Modernism, Tyrrell's role as a process thinker has not really been explored. For a bibliography of writings on Modernism up to 1929, with a brief summary of the more important books see Riviére, Jean, Le Modemisme dans I'Église: Étude d'histoire religieuse contemporaine (Libraire Letouzey et Ané, Paris, 1929), xiiixxixGoogle Scholar. In 1940 Riviére extended this bibliography in his article La Crise Moderniste devant l'opinion d'aujourd'hui’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses, XX, no. I (Jan.-April 1940), 140–82Google Scholar. Subsequently this has been updated by Aubert, Roger in his article entitled ‘Recent Literature in the Modernist Movement’, Concilium, vol. 17: Historical Investigations, ed. Aubert, R. (Paulist Press, New York, 1966), 91108.Google Scholar

page 72 note 1 This relationship has been well pointed up by Robertson, John C., ‘Rahner and Ogden: Man's Knowledge of God’, Harvard Theological Review, LXIII, no. 3 (July 1970), 13771408.Google Scholar

page 72 note 2 Pittenger, Norman, ‘A Contemporary Trend in North American Theology: Process-thought and Christian Faith’, The Expository Times, LXXVI (Oct. 1964-Sept. 1965), 268–73.Google Scholar

page 73 note 1 A good account and critique of Hartshorne's position has been given by McDonald, H. D., ‘Monopolar Theism and the Ontological Argument’, Harvard Theological Review, LVIII, no. 4 (Oct. 1965), 387416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 73 note 2 Ferré, , ‘God Without Theism,’ 375.Google Scholar

page 74 note 1 For an account, see Hocedez, Edgar, Histoire de la théologie au xix siècle (3 vols.; Desclée de Brouwer, Paris, 1947), III, 13319.Google Scholar

page 74 note 2 See, for example, Tyrrell, George, Lex Orandi, or Prayer and Creed (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1903), 67; ‘Vita Nuova’, Month, c 11 (Oct. 1903), 30.Google Scholar

page 74 note 3 Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology (2 vols.; Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1951 and 1957), I, 2265.Google Scholar

page 74 note 4 This statement occurred in a letter which has been preserved by Petrie, M. D., Life of George Tyrrell, 1884–1909, vol. 2 of Autobiography and Life of George Tyrrell (Edward Arnold, London, 1912), II, 414.Google Scholar

page 74 note 5 This type of contention has, of course, been popularised more recently by Robinson, John in his Honest to God (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1963)Google Scholar. His Exploration into God (Stanford Univ. Press, Stanford 1967)Google Scholar has dealt more extensively with the theme.

page 75 note 1 It is in and through nature that God communicates to man. Nature ‘becomes the organ of divinity, the channel of communication between spirit and spirit—not merely symbolising but effecting what it symbolises’. Consequently ‘Nature is the instrument of our healing as of our hurt’ (Tyrrell, Lex Orandi, 161).

page 75 note 2 For Tyrrell's comments on Bergson, see George Tyrrell's Letters, ed. by Petrie, M. D. (T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1920), 140Google Scholar. Despite his efforts to retain a measure of independence from other thinkers, it is plain that his position overlapped Bergson's at important points. Thus Tyrrell argued that Truth must ever be in motion and must also grow with the growth of the mind which contains it. He defined truth as the correspondence between subject and predicate, between our experience of reality and our explanation of it. Our explanations must ever be in process, it seems, because reality is. See Tyrrell, George, ‘Théologie et Religion’, Annales de Philosophic Chrétienne (March 1900), 625–41Google Scholar. Von Hiigel took a similar position arguing that reality must be perceived intuitively through concrete forms rather than rationally from a static reservoir above. von Hügel, Friedrich, ‘Experience and Transcendence’, Dublin Review, CXXXVIII (April 1906), 357.Google Scholar

page 76 note 1 Tyrrell, George, ‘Revelation as Experience’, Petre Papers, British Museum, MSS 52369.Google Scholar

page 76 note 2 cf. the discussion on Tertullian's use of the term in Quasten, Johannes, Patrology (3 vols.; The Newman Press, Westminster, 1950), II, 266.Google Scholar

page 76 note 3 cf. the chapter entitled ‘The Strange Witness of Unbelief’ in Ogden, Reality of God, 120–43.

page 76 note 4 Baillie, John, The Interpretation of Religion: An Introductory Study of Theological Principles (Eyre and Spottiswoode, London, 1958)Google Scholar. Tyrrell claimed, however, that neither Kant nor the Liberal Protestants were his teachers in this matter. He argued instead that his subjective methodology was derived from Ignatius of Loyola.

page 77 note 1 To von Hügel, Tyrrell wrote, saying that the ‘notion of the Incarnation as a “visibilising” of what goes on invisibly in every Conscience has always been a great help to me’. Von Hügel and Tyrrell Correspondence, British Museum, Add. MSS 44927. The letter is dated 12th November 1900. Thus the incarnation becomes symbolic of God's immanence in all men. When ‘we freely yield ourselves to the solicitations of the Spirit we yield ourselves to the Personality that was incarnate in Jesus and so, to less intense degree, the incarnation is re-enacted“ (Tyrrell, George, Christianity at the Crossroads [Longmans, Green and Co., London 1909], 190)Google Scholar. Tyrrell's position has been reduplicated by current process theology. Thus, Pittenger writes, ‘the ‘incarnation” of God in Jesus Christ is focally but not exclusively true of him. He is indeed crucial and definitive but what is seen there is pervasively true of the whole cosmos. … This is why Schubert Ogden in Christ Without Myth finds himself more in sympathy with Buri than with Bultmann’ (Pittenger, ‘A Contemporary Trend…’, 271).

page 78 note 1 The essay has an interesting history. It was first published as The Relation of Theology to Devotion’, Month, XCIV (Nov. 1899), 461–73Google Scholar. It was reprinted under the same title in his The Faith of the Millions (2 vols.; Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1901), I, 228–52Google Scholar. In the volume entitled Through Scylla and Charybdis or the Old Theology and the New (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1907)Google Scholar it appeared as ‘Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi’ (85–105). It was then translated into French as ‘Théologie et Religion’ for Annales de Philosophie Chretienne as noted above. The mileage which Tyrrell obtained from this essay is indicative of the importance he attached to it.

page 78 note 2 This statement needs qualification. It is an accurate description of his stance between January 1904 and the end of 1906. But in the last year of his theological life he became disenchanted with unqualified Liberalism and attempted to balance this with the view that Scripture does, in some sense, represent a depositum of‘sound words’.

page 79 note 1 See his important essay Mysteries a Necessity of Life’, Month, C (Dec. 1902), 568–80Google Scholar. This essay was reprinted in his Through Scylla and Charybdis, 155–90. See also his articles, The True and False Mysticism’, American Ecclesiastical Review, XXI (Oct. 1899), 399403Google Scholar, and The True and False Mysticism’, American Ecclesiastical Review, XXI (Nov. 1899), 472–89Google Scholar, and The True and False Mysticism’, American Ecclesiastical Review XXI (Dec. 1899), 607–17Google Scholar. They are grouped together and reprinted in Faith of the Millions, I, 273–344.

page 79 note 2 Tyrrell, George, Christianity at the Crossroads (Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1909), 215.Google Scholar

page 80 note 1 Monroe, Ruth, Schools of Psychoanalytical Thought (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York, 1955), 2728.Google Scholar

page 80 note 2 For discussion and critique of psychoanalytical method see Salter, Andrew, The Case Against Psychoanalysis (Citadel Press, London, 1963)Google Scholar; Outler, A. C., Psychotherapy and the Christian Message (Harper, New York, 1954)Google Scholar and Fine, R., Freud: A Critical Revaluation of His Theories (David McKay, New York, 1962).Google Scholar

page 81 note 1 Tyrrell's approach differed considerably from that of Blondel. Blondel, he said, ‘reaches by a methodical research what I stumble on by luck, or, at least, by instinct’ (Petre, Autobiography and Life, II, 92). Yet Tyrrell remarked that he was delighted to discover on reading L' Action that he was a Blondelian. Blondel's timidity, though, aggravated him. See Marlé, René, Au cæur de la crise moderniste: Le dossier d' une controverse inédit (Éditions Montaigne, Paris, 1960), 22Google Scholar; Petre, , Autobiography and Life, II, 187.Google Scholar

page 81 note 2 For Blondel's conception of action see Valensin, Auguste, ‘Maurice Blondel: A Study of his Achievement’, Dublin Review, CCXXIV (First Quarter, 1950), 94Google Scholar; Gilbert, Katherine, Maurice Blondel's Philosophy of Action (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1924), 47Google Scholar; Bouillard, Henri, ‘The Thought of Maurice Blondel: A Synoptic Vision’, International Philosophical Quarterly, III, no. 3 (Sept. 1963), 394Google Scholar. A good summary of Blondel's overall position is given by Reardon, G. M. G., ‘A Christian in Philosophy: Maurice Blondel’, Theology, LXI, no. 459 (Sept. 1958) 366–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 81 note 3 Evidence for this is to be found in a number of passages of which the following will serve as an example. A man's real beliefs, Tyrrell had argued, are primarily subconscious. Then he added that ‘a man might have a great faith in the Church, in the people of God, in the unformulated ideas, sentiments and tendencies at work in the great body of the faithful, and constituting the Christian and Catholic “Spirit”, and yet regard the Church's consciously formulated ideas and intentions about herself as more or less untrue to her deepest nature, that he might refuse to believe her own account of herself as against his instinctive conviction of her true character’ (Tyrrell, George, A Much Abused Letter [Longmans, Green and Co., London, 1906], 56Google Scholar; cf. Tyrrell, Letters, 32).

page 83 note 1 Brunner, Emil, The Mediator: A Study of the Central Doctrine of the Christian Faith (The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1947), 103–4.Google Scholar