Old and new Thomists

Bruce Holsinger gives this summary of the conflict between “traditional” Thomists and the advocates of nouvelle theologie during the early decades of the 20th century: “What infuriated . . . the [traditionalist] neo-Thomists about the nouvelle theologie was what they perceived as its historical relativism, which in turn derived from its guiding spirit of ressourcement , the more general movement withhin the Church to recover lost of little-known patristic and medieval theological traditions and make them newly vital to religious life in the present . . . . Even seemingly innocent editorial projects, such as the Sources chretiennes (initiated in 1942), threatened to undermine the centrality of Thomas Aquinas and scholastic theology to the spiritual and intellectual mission of the Church, which was to seek the ‘time-transcending truth’ in the harmonizing discourse of the Summa . Thus, according to this logic, every edition of the works of figures such as, say, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, or Gertrude of Helfta, while perfectly fine in its own right, represented the erosion of the unquestionable truth of the Angelic Doctor’s theological foundation.”

Holsinger suggests that defenders of nouvelle theologie joined with Bataille in undermining the absolute authority of Aquinas (or, more accurately, of one interpretation of Thomas) in Catholic theology.