Showing papers on "Jansenism published in 2008"

Not everything is grace: Aquinas's notion of 'pure nature' and the Christian integralism of Henri De Lubac and of radical orthodoxy

Abstract: Henri de Lubac argues that, in early modern times, a pernicious concept began to become commonplace in Roman Catholic theology: this concept is 'pure nature.' Pure nature is human nature, considered without reference to grace or to the supernatural destiny of personal union with God. Further, de Lubac argues that Catholic theology, in assimilating this idea, has departed from the sound tradition represented by St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas. He holds that the notion of pure nature leads inevitably to the self-exclusion of Christianity from the affairs of the world-when, in fact, the light of the Gospel ought to be shed on all aspects of human existence. This dissertation tests de Lubac's thesis concerning the history of the idea of pure nature, showing that this notion is not, in fact, a modern novelty. This study examines the role of the idea of pure nature in the Bible and early Church, in the theology of Thomas Aquinas, in the early modern Jansenist controversy, in the theology of Henri de Lubac, and in the theology of the contemporary Radical Orthodoxy movement, paying particular attention to the historical circumstances which made the repudiation of 'pure nature' attractive. Today, some theologians follow de Lubac in contending that Catholic doctrine must eschew the idea of pure nature in order to resist secularism and maintain Christianity's relevance to all aspects of human life. This dissertation contends that the idea of pure nature is not only traditional, but necessary for Christian theology. It argues that a Christian 'integralism' which refuses to prescind from grace when considering nature can do justice neither to nature nor to grace.

Suffering Saints: Jansenists and Convulsionnaires in France, 1640-1799

Abstract: Introduction - Jansenism in France Who Were the Jansenists? What Was Jansenism? Sunrise Over Port-Royal, 1600-1661 Sunset Over Port-Royal, 1661-1711 Jansenism Enters the Political Arena, 1713-1750 Jansenism Loses Its Raison d'etra, 1751-1799 The Shaking of Jansenism: Miracle Cures and the Convulsionnaires, 1727-1740 Crucifying Jansenism: Grande Secours and the Death of Convulsionism, 1741-1799 Jansenism and Convulsionism, 1650-2000: An Historiographic Essay Conclusion - The Impact of Jansenism in France Index.

Saint Cicero and the Jesuits: The Influence of the Liberal Arts on the Adoption of Moral Probabilism

Abstract: Contents: Introduction Early Jesuit ministries 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?': Jesuit ethics before the revolution of probabilism 'Christian virtue and excellence in Ciceronian eloquence': the Jesuit literary Renaissance and adoption of probabilism The genealogy of Jesuit probabilism Probabilism as the spiritual Sodom: Jansenist attack against Jesuit ethics Conclusion Bibliography Index.

The Changing Theological Context of Economic Analysis since the Eighteenth Century

Abstract: Economic analysis (as we understand the term today) first appeared in France at the end of the seventeenth century as a consequence of Jansenist theodicy. Throughout the eighteenth century, political economy (the study of wealth, and not to be confused with economic analysis) was supposed to be compatible with Christian belief and of service to Newtonian natural theology. This changed suddenly in 1798. Thomas Robert Malthus's first Essay inaugurated “economics” (the study of scarcity), seemingly incompatible with the Christian religion. Richard Whately's distinction between “scientific” and “religious” knowledge protected each from the other for a while. But Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory seemed to destroy that distinction, and so to discredit religion and theology. A variety of strategies for relating economics to theology has been adopted since that time by those economists who wish to remain religious believers.

The Silence of God in the Modern Catholic Novel: Graham Greene and French Catholic Novelists Adopting a Pascalian Deus Absconditus Perspective on Faith, Truth and Reason

Abstract: Introduction This paper examines the narrative representation of God in Graham Greene's Catholic novels. On the basis of examples mainly taken from the novel The Power and the Glory (1940) I aim to show that Graham Greene's God is basically a silent God, and that this representation of God is decisive for the modernity of his Catholic works. Greene's Catholic novels are often, somewhat misleadingly, connected with the literary Catholic revival (1), a term used too inclusively not only about the original current of traditional Catholic literature emerging in France in the 1880s (2), but also about the French Catholic novel of the interwar and post war period. This broad use of the term has the unfortunate effect of creating the impression that all Catholic literature written in this period is essentially traditional and static, thus concealing possible historical, theological and aesthetic changes. This paper adopts the perspective of change in one specific field of investigation, namely the narrative representation of God. I argue that an important rupture can be observed within this field between the traditional, early revival novel (1880-1914) and a more modern Catholic novel in the interwar and post war period, and that this rupture is closely related to the narrative representation of God. Whereas the early French revival novel constructs a present and communicating God, the new Catholic novel emerging after the First World War constructs an absent and silent God. These two distinct representations of God are constructed by different uses of specific narrative techniques such as characterization, plot, narrative voice and focalisation. In France this new type of Catholic novel is developed by major novelists such as Francois Mauriac, Julien Green and Georges Bernanos, and my purpose is to show that Graham Greene belongs to this group of modern novelists. I shall also try to point out some interesting parallels between the silent God in the modern Catholic novel and the hidden God in the Jansenist philosopher Blaise Pascal's apology for the Christian faith, Pensees, from 1670. My purpose is not to claim that Graham Greene shares Pascal's Jansenist views in general, but to show that he may be inspired by central aspects of Pascal's Pensees: the consistent use of the human perspective of the individual believer, to whom God necessarily appears as hidden. The present and speaking God in the early Catholic revival novel In order to show the novelty of Graham Greene's novels, I shall begin by presenting two examples of the narrative representation of God in the early revival novel. The first example is Leon Bloy's novel La femme pauvre (1897). The setting is the artistic circles of the reactionary Catholic revival movement. The heroine Clotilde is surrounded by flamboyant writers and artists who make vehement speeches against the French anticlerical republic and celebrate the saints, the miracles, the ideal Catholic community of the golden Middle Ages and the necessity to imitate the poverty, humiliation and suffering of Christ. Clotilde embodies all these religious ideas. She is a stock character endowed with the attributes of the traditional female saint: the face of a saint, a pious life in poverty borne with humble nobleness, a disposition to suffer, and mystical gifts resulting in recurrent mystical experiences, presentiments, dreams and visions. The initial prophecy made by an Orthodox missionary that one day she will be consumed by flames (3) is a central leitmotif. One example is when Clotilde wakes up surrounded by flames (her bed curtains have caught fire) after a dream of premonition in which she sees her benefactor being stabbed to death and her future husband Leopold burning to death in flames (La femme pauvre, 236-38). These predictions are not mere words or imagined inner experiences of the characters, since the predicted events actually happen at the reality level of the novel. …

Le contraddizioni della modernità : apologetica cattolica e lumi nel settecento

Abstract: The vivid confrontation with the Enlightenment was an essential aspect of the relationship beween Catholicism and modernity. The essay deals with the different and often contradictory aspects of this confrontation analysing the actions of the catholic hierarchy and the many apologetic works published in Italy and France during the XVIII century. Jesuits and Jansenists, enlightened catholics and harsh polemists, in the years of the Encyclopedie, Voltaire, Rousseau and the French Revolution, faced the great arguments of metaphysics, ethics, natural law and the fundamentals of society. On the one hand they were opposed to the Enlightenment 'system', on the other they devised a 'christian philosophy' and a 'political theology' which would influence the catholic culture up to the present day.