Sources of Revelation and Theology: Some Cartographic Observations of Jesuit and Jesuit-Adjacent Treatments of the De Locis Theologicis
The present essay is an expanded version of a paper that I delivered at a recent conference dedicated to theological manuals in the Jesuit tradition. A final, revised form of the paper, to be published elsewhere, will also include a full footnote apparatus. It is presented here in its draft, oral form. For a full listing of various texts on To Be a Thomist in which the De locis theologicis is discussed, click here.
The subject of my talk today will be primarily concerned with the development of the treatise De locis theologicis in Latin Catholic theology, with an overview of its reception in 19th and 20th century Jesuit theological manuals. I will not be proposing anything definitive or profound. My concern is primarily to provide some preliminary reflections and mapping regarding a theological treatise that does not receive much attention. I will return to the particularities of the initial De locis theologicis by Melchior Cano in a bit. However, we should probably ask ourselves an initial question: why is this treatise so often overlooked, even by contemporary scholastic thinkers?
There are at least three reasons for this, and a few brief remarks on each will help us to begin our intellectual cartography work. First of all, there is a certain bias that I have encountered either directly or indirectly from those whose bent is primarily scholastic and, above all, Thomist. Melchior Cano is viewed—not without reason—as a thinker with significant humanist tendencies whose methods, especially when focused on questions of authority and authoritative sources, are not purely homogeneous with a “scientific” theology.
A second reason for the relative neglect of this theological treatise is more specifically linked to contemporary Thomist culture. Broadly speaking, the methods of contemporary Thomistic scholarship are primarily concerned with the historical Thomas himself. In the Francophone world, there is a helpful adjective that captures this particular methodological scruple: Thomasien. The term is meant to contrast Thomas (with his influences, questions, specific answers, methodologies, etc.) to both the later Thomists (as particular thinkers, with their own particular times and concerns) and also to the notion of a kind of ahistorical “Thomism,” floating above time and supposedly engaged in by the major figures of the particular Thomist “school.” Given the generally “Thomasian” focus of much contemporary Thomistic scholarship (on which I focus here because Thomism remains by far the primary line of scholastic thought in the Latin Church during the post-Conciliar period), a work like Cano’s De locis theologicis poses quite unique problems, for it presents itself as a completely new treatise to be fitted into the structure of theology. Those whose methods are strictly historical rightly observe: Cano’s questions were not Thomas’s questions.
Thirdly and finally, even for those who hold that a living theology must take into account the gains of various thinkers, the De locis is admittedly an early attempt to articulate a theological methodology that pays particular attention to the role of authoritative sources in shaping theological argumentation. Therefore, the work remains somewhat simplistic compared with contemporary methods of positive theological studies. And, even where one wishes to learn from Cano, it is often best to learn from within a tradition of inquiry, where an intellectual culture—including a theological-intellectual culture—is transmitted from masters to learners. Few today, however, substantively engage with the De locis when dealing with questions related to the nature of positive theology, even though the developments of methodical positive theology is significantly, though not exclusively, linked to Cano and those who in some way adopted his treatise.
Because I do not believe that one can justify this state of affairs by saying, “We don’t do that sort of thing today,” as though contemporary academic theological praxis and trends were the norm of Catholic theology, I believe it is useful to return to those authors who considered the methodological treatment of the sources of theology and to ask, “What can we gain from engaging such thinkers as legitimate sources to be considered alongside more contemporary authors?” Only a kind of chronolatry would tempt us to exempt them precisely because of their age. In this talk, I will provide some very basic “orientation” for such a recovery by considering: (1) the basic aims and structure of Cano’s own text; (2) the general reception of this text in the scholastic curriculum of the 19th and 20th centuries; (3) specific observations regarding how Jesuit and Jesuit-adjacent authors during this time received the text into their overall courses or treatises in theology.
Melchior Cano’s De Locis Theologicis
If anyone knows anything about the 16th century Dominican Melchior Cano, it is that he penned a treatise De locis theologicis. Beyond, perhaps, a cursory knowledge of the ten loci of theology—Scripture, Apostolic Traditions, the Church, Councils, the Papal Magisterium, Fathers, Scholastic theologians (and canonists), natural reason, the authority of philosophers (and jurists), and history (and human traditions)—little else is typically discussed in mainstream theological culture when his work is mentioned. More broadly, he is remembered as a humanist, though generally, in my experience, claims to this end tend to remain quite general and second-hand.
The treatise De locis theologicis, posthumously published in Salamanca in 1563, was Cano’s attempt to provide a systematic treatment of theological methodology. (Although one might interpret the De locis as merely addressing questions of sources and their relation to theological data, I believe that the content of bk. 12 at least attempts to sketch a global methodology for theology.) Recognizing that much of early modern theology lacked the depth of earlier theologizing, Cano nonetheless saw his era as possessing the unique strength of focusing on questions of methodology more explicitly than had earlier times: “Certainly, after those earlier men, the later ones can scarcely claim anything for themselves in the discovery of new things. But if they lay claim to order, arrangement, and clarity, they seem in some way to rightfully assert these as their own. Therefore, by reading both, the theologian will undoubtedly render scholastic disputation more complete.” As a point of observation in intellectual history, this is a quite defensible claim regarding the distinct strengths of the “ancients” and the “moderns.”
Although the term “locus theologicus” had a prehistory in Protestant treatises gathering together various specific doctrinal positions (e.g., Melanchton’s Loci communes rerum theologicarum), Cano’s use of the term is drawn from classical logic and is focused upon the methodological implications of the sources of theological speculation. Effectively arising from the traditions of the Ciceronian and Aristotelian Topica (mediated through the De invention dialectica of Rudolphos Agricola), he sought to provide a methodological treatment of the various “places” (loci, τόποι) where the principles of argumentation could be found, offering in outline form the theological tasks necessary for stabilizing the truth content in each locus so that it might be sufficiently critiqued for scientific use. The work remained unfinished, especially in its closing books dedicated to specific applications concerning the use of Scripture (bk. 13) and in contemporary polemics (bk. 14). However, the methodological implications of the work and its own explicit treatment of general method (bk. 12) have been variously accused of leading to problems in modern Catholic theology: the sedimenting of the much-decried “conclusion theology” which would pick up its labor where the premises of faith leave off; the replacement of discursive reasoning with positive-theological erudition; a theological model that would readily be reduced to the manual form of “proof from scripture, proof from tradition, proof from reason”; the provision of methods for determining what the Church teaches but not theological methodology; and the treatment of the data of faith in a purely propositional way to be methodologically uncovered from the gangue of history. Admittedly, each critique has some basis in fact, but the adjudication of that matter is outside the scope of the present paper.
The text was taken up in detail by a number of Dominican authors in particular in the 17th and 18th centuries (though members of other orders also penned related treatises), and with the gradual development of the theological handbook or “manual” format for theological education, the treatise was incorporated by various authors as part of a general methodological introduction to scholastic theology. Although, as we will discuss in the next section, the work underwent certain alterations that would shift its focus from theological methodology, it would nonetheless retain a place in some 19th-century Dominican treatises, in particular in the monograph-length treatise De locis theologicis of Joachim Joseph Berthier, OP.
The Travails of Treatises
Nonetheless, the De locis gradually came to be subsumed within other theological works and to be truncated in its content and inflected away from theological methodology. In order to understand this general trend, two points can be observed. The first, as argued by Gardeil, was a kind of restructuring from methodology to “dogmatic ontology” or presupposed dogmatic foundations for methodology. Thus, rather than asking questions concerning the use of scriptural data in theology, one increasingly turned attention to the nature of Scripture, its inspiration, its inerrancy, etc. The same could be said for Tradition and magisterial authority. These topics, uniquely situated in relation to the major controversies of the Reformation, led to an apologetically motivated shift from a methodologically inflected study of the ten loci of theology to a doctrinally focused study of the nature and properties of Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. Gardeil connects this shift of focus to Bellarmine’s De controversiis. Whatever might be the case for this point of intellectual genealogy, one already senses here in Gardeil’s account a shift we will encounter regularly in examples below, namely, from loci theologici to fontes revelationis, from dialectical places for finding principles of theological argumentation to the dual sources of revelation and the means for reconnecting with that revelation. Even if related, these two topics are not identical.
Of equal structural importance, however, is a second factor, namely the particular destiny of the various treatises De ecclesia in priestly formation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In seminary formation at the turn of the century, these treatises were most often taught within the context of fundamental theology. At the beginning of seminary studies, students would often be presented with some combination of treatises entitled De revelatione or De vera religione as a kind of propaedeutic to theological formation, ensuring a kind of “apologetic” foundation for all later theological discussions of revealed truths. Although taking various forms, in general these treatises attempted to provide an extrinsic, rational justification for the revealed message, thereby establishing the rational credibility of the supernatural truths of faith. The emergence of this particular genre of treatise is not surprising in view of the reductionist claims of modern epistemological theories that so starkly limited the scope of human that even the rational preambles of faith were excluded, let alone supernatural truth, which would seem heterogeneous with human reason according to nearly all modern epistemological theories.
Now, as is well known, the First Vatican Council marked a kind of terminal point for many 19th-century magisterial responses to epistemic claims raised during classical modernity and the Enlightenment. The Dogmatic Constitution Dei fiius declared the basic outlines of the Catholic teaching concerning the relationship between faith and reason. In the wake of this conciliar text, the apologetic entrée to theology became consolidated, presenting theologians (nearly universally priests) with a theory of how human reason can itself accept and affirm the natural rationality of Christ’s supernatural message, presented by the living Church. It was this final point—the role of the Church in proposing supernatural truth—that gave rise to what was often called the apologetic (or epistemological) treatise De ecclesia. Here too, the context of the First Vatican Council—viewed in light of both Pastor aeternus and the partially debated Schema de ecclesia—remains an important motivating factor. However, even objectively speaking, it is quite natural to move from a discussion of the credibility of a divine message to the question concerning the nature of the divine authority proposing that message today.
Thus, the Tractatus de Ecclesia developed to address these sorts of issues. However, the mystery of the Church involves much more than questions concerning supernatural epistemology. Her nature, properties, constitutive elements, and proper effects, as well as her relationship with other social bodies were all taken into consideration. Thus, under the pressure of these kinds of considerations, the treatises De ecclesia became a mélange of many different theological topics pertaining to ecclesiology, apologetics, and even theological methodology. Theologians of this era were aware of this troublesome situation, and arguably the best among them moved the consideration of the Church to the context of the Tractatus De Verbo Incarnato. (Here, the Jesuits deserve credit, in view of the important shift represented by Billot’s treatment of the topic, given even fuller form by someone like Sebastian Tromp—although I would be remiss were I not to note the explicit adoption of this framework by Journet in his masterly The Church of the Word Incarnate.)
Important though this issue is for understanding the development of ecclesiology in the 20th century, I should like to focus on the surprising fact that theological methodology was included in the De ecclesia treatises from this era. To take an example of this phenomenon, one could consider the Dominican manualists Reginald Schultes (1873–1928) and Jan Vincentius de Groot (1848–1922), who include within their De ecclesia texts quaestiones dedicated to Cano’s various loci. However, more telling—and, I believe, more in line with the logic of placing questions of “sources” within a treatment of Church’s authority—is the phenomenon found in influential seminary manuals such as Adolf Tanqueray’s (1854–1932) Synopsis theologiae dogmaticae or Jean-Marie Hervé’s (1881–1958) Manuale theologiae dogmaticae, where the discussion of ecclesiological questions is followed by a treatise that often replaced the De locis theologicis: De fontibus revelationis. Under the pressure of both post-Tridentine apologetics and the very nature of the epistemic-apologetic questions of the treatise De ecclesia, the theological loci were no longer considered from the perspective of discursive-theological methodology as much as from that of the nature of the kinds of truth proposed by the Church. Thus, the nature of Tradition, the Magisterium, and Scripture itself became the focus of such treatises, and where the Fathers, theologians, sensus fidelium, philosophy, etc. were considered, this was as an adjunct to discussions of the nature of tradition. This codification of the non-methodological treatment of these topics represented a loss for the very spirit of Cano’s De locis and for the development of fundamental theology within scholastic theology.
If one wished to craft a superficial (and incorrect) narrative of “Jesuit” theological manuals from this era, one could easily point to this phenomenon by looking to the fundamental theology volume of the well-known Sacrae theologiae summa published in the 1950s under the auspices of the Jesuit Fathers of Spain. In this text, we find the discussion of fontes, not loci, situated within the context of the theology of “the Church’s Magisterium and its sources.” After a brief discussion of the institution of the Magisterium, the subject of this authority is considered. Thus, the nature of Councils and the Roman-Pontifical authority are considered in themselves (i.e., not from a methodological perspective), along with the nature of the assent to be given to such teachings. Next comes the “sources and criteria of the Church’s Magisterium.” Here, after a discussion of the nature of the deposit of revealed truths, both in itself and in its development, Tradition is said to have primacy among the fontes. Then, quite naturally, the Fathers and later theologians are presented as criteria of Tradition. Whatever is pertinent for theological methodology is in the background of a more fundamental concern to manifest and explain the criteria for discerning the content of Tradition, said to be the primary fons revelationis.
It is only after the Tractatus De ecclesia that the treatment of Scripture appears. Here too, the formal perspective concerns the nature of Scripture, its inspiration, canon, and inerrancy. Questions concerning the meaning of Scripture are wholly subsumed under questions concerning its interpretation: its senses and the dogmatic criteria for discovering this sense. The focus is on the nature of a particular fons revelationis and its discernment. Again: the formal perspective is not theological methodology per se.
As noted above, Gardeil claimed that this shift from methodology to dogmatic and apologetic concerns should be attributed to scholastics such as Robert Bellarmine, due to a concern to demonstrate the nature of Scripture and Tradition, against Protestant denials. It must be admitted, however, that a catalogue of Cano’s own topics concerning Scripture remain quite akin to what can be found in the Spanish Jesuits’ manual: scriptural inerrancy; canonicity; the specific place of the Vulgate for theological use; the extent of divine inspiration. Such questions seem to deal primarily with questions related to the discovery of revealed truth, not the specific consideration of how such data enter into the warp and woof of theological argumentation. If nothing else, the later developments—even within treatises whose structure differ significantly from the De locis theologicis—could understandably be judged to extensively cover much of the same terrain as Cano himself, even if in a different context. In short, the later “deviations” from methodological concerns, decried by Gardeil, were perhaps already present in Cano too.
The question with which I would like to draw this section to a close is: what is the basic cartography of other Jesuit (and Jesuit-adjacent) discussions of the fontes or loci? Do they provide resources for developing a more robust scholastic treatment of theological methodology in relation to its sources? This is the question to which we now turn.
Some Basic “Cartography” Regarding Jesuit Treatises De Locis
A survey of contemporary scholarly literature shows that full engagement with the De locis theologicis remains a desideratum, at least for those who wish to provide a comprehensive methodological account of theology and its sources. Aware, therefore, of the very inchoate nature of these discussions, I propose in this final section simply to provide a basic cartography of some major Jesuit thinkers who treated topics related to the De locis in the 19th and 20th centuries. I will include other texts in a footnote to the final, published version of this talk. However, in the interest of the Ressourcement of Jesuit manuals (which is the aim of the present gathering), I will focus on the main themes that emerge from a consideration of authors from this era in the hopes of providing a very general sketch of the terrain, with the hope that other scholars might then come along to fill out these details in the coming years.
Without a doubt, the Praelectiones theologiae of Giovanni Perrone (1794–1876) deserves particular mention. His treatment of the De Locis clearly seeks to develop Cano’s treatise and retains a strictly methodological section. However, because of the role of the Church as the proximate rule of faith, he felt compelled to begin his De locis with a very lengthy treatise De ecclesia, considered as the first part of an integral whole which falls under the title of De locis.
The content of this first part follows the pattern found in other De ecclesia treatises. Its focus is dogmatic, first treating the Church herself, her institution, ontological constitution, notes, etc. Thereafter the papacy is considered, with a strong focus on primacy and its implications. In short, this is a De ecclesia treatise of the type mentioned earlier, straddling apologetic and dogmatic concerns (albeit incomplete in dogmatic breadth).
In the second part, published in volume three of his Praelectiones, he turns to his treatment of the theological loci (or, also, fontes), organized entirely under the two headings of Scripture and Tradition. The section on Scripture contains various discussions of scriptural interpretation and hermeneutics, in relation to the text itself, and more general hermeneutical questions. In this regard, certain chapters of the work are methodological in nature, providing lengthier treatments of topics that are addressed more briefly in Cano. However, this part also treats questions of canon, inspiration, and versions of Scripture in a way that is akin not only to Cano’s treatise but also to what is found in many other doctrinally-focused treatises in the 19th and 20th century.
The treatment of Tradition begins with an apologetic on behalf of Tradition itself. Thereafter, he considers, as general means for the safe and sure knowledge of primitive tradition, the other loci theologici: the Church’s Magisterium, the acts of the Councils (especially ecumenical ones), the Acts of the Martyrs, The Sacred Liturgy, the Church’s own praxis in the public and solemn administration of the sacraments, as well as in religious worship, the Fathers, the Scholastic Theologians, heretics, and ecclesiastical history. More specific means are also included, such as early inscriptions and other historical monuments as well. It bears mentioning that the entire context here is less so theological methodology than a kind of epistemology for knowing the truths of faith falling under Tradition, understood broadly as apostolic or ecclesiastical. This is at least what is conveyed by the structure of the text itself. Hence, one finds oneself in the midst of an epistemology of faith, not necessarily the methods for the use of the data of faith in discursive theology. The impression given is that Scripture and Tradition are reservoirs for propositions (either speculative or practical), that then can immediately function in theological discursion.
He also includes a third portion dedicated to “the analogy of reason and faith.” It is organized by considering the use of reason before faith, with the act of faith, and after the act of faith. Effectively, these three sections respectively treat: (1) the preambles of faith, rational credibility, and the abuse of reason prior to faith; (2) the relationship between faith and reason in the assent of faith; and (3) the validity of theological investigation, along with the errors of Protestant and rationalist views concerning faith (presented as being interconnected).
Thereafter, the text concludes with a brief discussion of theological methodology spanning approximately twenty pages. In it, he considers the various divisions and tasks of theology, the methods of theology (as analytic and synthetic or as discovering or demonstrating), and then the instruments or means for doing theology. Among the latter, he includes the intrinsic means offered by Scripture and Tradition, encompassing not only the loci theologici but also various auxiliary sciences (scriptural criticism, hermeneutics, linguistics, archaeology, the history of dogmas, various ecclesiastical monuments, patristics, etc.). Likewise, there are the extrinsic means drawn from human subjects, at least from those who have mastered them: logic, metaphysics, psychology, physics, mathematics, astronomy, geology, physiology, philology, sculpture, painting, poetry, archaeology, history, political science, and both civil and ecclesiastical law… The theologian is, without a doubt, “an impossible man,” as Lacordaire once declared!
Perrone deserves this length of treatment, even in a mere outline, in order to clarify what is structurally present in his text. It still retains some of the “deflection” caused by the concerns of post-Tridentine apologetics, as well as the particular apologetics marshaled against modern epistemological challenges. Nonetheless, as will be seen in most of the authors considered in this section, two questions of “supernatural epistemology” are regularly conflated during this period: the sources of revelation; and the dialectical places from which one might derive principles for confecting theological argumentation. Along with the interweaving of the apologetic concerns De revelatione, De vera religione, and De ecclesia, this also represents an intermingling of concerns De fontes revelationis and De locis theologicis. Even if important, each is unique, so one must remain attentive to the strands making up the tapestry of each treatise.
The influential De Traditione of Johannes-Baptist Franzelin (1816–1886) deserves mention, even though it does not claim to fulfill the aspirations of the De locis. The text exercised authority for future generations in the treatment of Tradition, most often included within treatises De ecclesia, De locis, De fontibus, etc. Merely observing the highest level of structure, we see a reversal of Perrone’s ordering, which had followed Cano’s placement of Scripture at the head of the loci theologici. For Franzelin, Tradition must be considered first, as it has a temporal priority to Scripture and the determination of the canon, and when “tradition” is understood as “ecclesiastical preaching” of the revealed message, it also becomes the supreme norm for the interpretation of Scripture itself. In the treatment of tradition he does also briefly consider the questions of dogmatic development as well as the problem of dogmatic corruption. On the whole, the treatment of scripture is not methodological, but rather is concerned with the nature of Scripture itself (with particular focus on the nature of inspiration and its defense), as well as with apologetic concerns to be expected in the wake of Trent. This is not surprising, as the text does not present itself as being a methodological treatise.
Similar to Perrone, the text concludes with a discussion of the relationship between faith and reason, the nature of the act of faith and some treatment of its relation with the Church’s proposal of truths, the reason for the supernatural revelation of natural truths, and the relationship between the knowledge of faith and other disciplines as well as in theology.
Elements of this threefold structure would be broadly found in the Theologiae dogmaticae compendium of Hugo Hurter (1832–1914). His text, following upon an initial treatise dedicated to the apologetic question of rational credibility, he would take up the remnants of the De locis theologicis, wholly transformed to answer the question De fontibus revelationis. Thus, the entire role of the Fathers, theologians, and even the consent of the faithful are concerned with proving that a given truth can be numbered as belonging to Tradition. Tradition is given primacy both chronologically and logically in relation to Scripture, and the latter is treated in a way that does not take up the questions of method except insofar as the reading of scripture is related to the Church’s teaching authority. Theological method is not present, except perhaps by way of implication here and there. The text then proceeds to take up the De ecclesia, primarily focusing on the constitution of the Church, and this treatise is followed by one dedicated to the genesis and rule of faith, along the general lines of what is found in Perrone and Franzelin.
In a work like the De religione et ecclesia of Camillo Mazzella (1833–1900), the apologetic and inchoate ecclesiological dimensions have completely occluded the methodological aspects of the De locis. Thus, for the purposes of the present talk, his work is not relevant.
Christian Pesch (1835–1925), in the propaedeutic volume of his Praelectiones Dogmaticae, retains methodological elements of the De locis theologicis, though within the framework of the treatise structure that had been inherited from his earlier 19th-century forebears. Thus, after a prologue concerning theology and its history, he takes up the question of divine revelation itself, under the heading Christ the Divine Legate. Next comes the De Ecclesia Christi, with many of the standard concerns regarding the Church herself, though he concludes with a discussion of the Magisterium and its role in proposing the truths of faith. And it is within this context of the magisterium that the task of the theologian is defined. In the opening paragraphs of his De locis theologicis, the reader is presented with a close collaboration between theologians and magisterial authority. Moreover, the writings (“monuments”) of the Fathers and theologians primarily function as a kind of continual written record of the one faith in each age of the Church. Thus, there are two loci theologici: Scripture which is “fashioned by God”; and Tradition understood in a very broad sense as the various instruments by means of which the doctrine of Tradition is handed down. It is under this guise that he treats the fathers and later theologians. He notes that he has treated the councils and Popes in the De ecclesia, and he sets aside most questions concerning history, various monuments, and philosophy.
Before bringing this very high-level survey to a close, I would like to consider also two authors who could be considered adjacent to the Jesuits of this era, namely Matthias Scheeben (1835–1888), who was trained at the Gregorianum during the rectorship of Perrone, and Konstantin von Schaezler (1827–1880) who was a Jesuit for his initial formation up to the time of his priesthood and rejoined the Society (although apparently he died with plans to leave the Society yet again).
Schaezler’s posthumous Introductio in S. Theologiam Dogmaticam ad Mentem D. Thomae Aquinatis, published under the editorship of Dominican Fr. Thomas Esser, bears the mark of his complex personal history. Not afraid to side at times with thinkers like Suarez, nonetheless, the text also expresses the atmosphere of the early Leonine era, which in fact only officially began in the Church during Schaezler’s final year of life. It was a text that served as a regular reference point for Gardeil’s own attempts to reestablish the De locis theologicis as a purely methodological treatise.
The structure of the text is clearly methodological. From the outset, it is concerned with the nature of Theology, and even where the text addresses some of the questions concerning matters of faith and reason treated near the end of Perrone, Franzelin, and Hurter, its overall structure remains focused on theology rather than on Tradition, the Magisterium, and related topics. Immediately after these relatively brief opening sections concerning the nature and necessity of theology, he turns immediately to a treatise bearing the noteworthy title, De fontibus theologiae. This structural choice is very important, even where he maintains some of the non-methodological weaknesses that are found in Cano’s own treatise. His concern is not with the fontes revelationis but, rather, with the fontibus—thereafter referred to as loci—of theological reasoning. The distinction might seem minor, but it highlights something interesting regarding the nature of the datum under consideration, namely that it pertains to discursive theology, not as a means for retrieving De fide truths from the deposit of Tradition.
The first loci are “divine sources of theology (de fontibus divinis theologiae),” together with their infallible rule for proposing these truths: the written word of God; the word of God as handed on (De verbo Dei tradito), and the Church’s infallible Magisterium (and the sensus fidelium). Within each of these sections, he discusses both the nature of each locus and the criteria by which its data is determined, with some (very general) sensitivity to dogmatic development. The second major division of loci are those which remain proper to theology as supernatural, though remaining only probable in nature. Here is where the authority of the Fathers, as well as that of the later theologians is discussed, with particular attention given to the special place of Thomas Aquinas. Thirdly, there are those natural loci which are not proper to theology but, rather, are merely connected to it and which, likewise, have only a probable authority within theological speculation. These are treated only briefly. Following this section De fontibus theologiae, Schaezler then discusses the systematic layout of theology (in a semi-Thomist way that bears witness to the curriculum of his day), the relationship between theology and piety, and provides a very brief history of theology (opening with a similarly brief philosophy of history).
Two points must be noted in this Tractatus de fontibus theologiae. First, the very title highlights a significant difference of focus: this is not concerned with providing rules for the recovery of Tradition but, rather, with the basic considerations necessary for articulating the use of sources in theological speculation. Moreover, the internal structure of the treatise is revealing. Schaezler divides the loci according to their certainty, thereby returning to a general order that can be found, in nuce, in Thomas Aquinas himself. At present, I only know of his significant influence on Gardeil. However, it would be worthwhile to investigate whether he also exercised any influence on that portion of the Jesuit world that chose to follow Thomas rather than Suarez et al. during the 20th century).
Finally, let us turn to Scheeben as another Jesuit-adjacent thinker, representing a different way of receiving the Latin theological tradition in his day—perhaps more akin to the outlook of the trends found in someone like Perrone, but with his own distinctive emphases. His Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics opens with a lengthy treatment of “theological epistemology,” divided across six chapters (in two sub-volumes in the present English translation). These are further divided into two separate parts, the first being concerned with the objective principles of theological knowledge and the second being concerned with theological knowledge itself. (In fact, the sixth book deals with faith and, then, theological discursion.) Although there are points of applied method of interest in the second part of this book, what is structurally most interesting for our purposes is found in the first.
The opening context for the entire first book is divine revelation in itself. This is an important point to note, especially in contrast to the trend of treating revelation extrinsically, that is, as subject to rational credibility, in the form of an apologetic treatise De revelatione. Rather, his focus is on revelation as such—both natural revelation (of naturally knowable religious and moral truths) and, more specifically, on supernatural revelation and its own internal progress through salvation history. As in other works by Scheeben, a clear emphasis on the implications of the supernaturality of revealed truth is present as a structural principle from the beginning of his Handbook. Although, when viewed from the perspective of, for example, Perronne, he could be interpreted as echoing certain structural principles akin to the manuals of the mid-century in which questions of extrinsic apologetics were treated after revealed truth itself.
Now, he does not present a kind of generic supernatural revelation, as might be affirmed by a Christian body lacking an ecclesiological focus. Rather, it is a revelation whose character is fundamentally ecclesial in its initial preaching, establishment, transmission, continued application and reception. In other words, what in many authors takes the form of a more or less lengthy De ecclesia appears in Scheeben in the form of a chapter on the Church’s teaching apostolate.
It is arguable, I believe, that Scheeben has thus developed a clarified form of the particular choice made by many authors who considered the loci theologici as fontes revelationis. The formal focus of this book, from the outset, is upon revelation itself and its objective transmission. In fact, this guides the next three chapters, each of which arguably do little more than elaborate the closing topics of the second chapter dedicated to apostolic preaching. These chapters treat the apostolic deposit (considered as written and oral, both being the primary source of faith), then ecclesial Tradition (as a channel of faith and theological knowledge), and finally ecclesiastical determinations as the rule of faith. Through the entire development of these sections, the focus remains upon revelation, revealed truth, and its proposition. Thus, as was the case with a number of the Jesuit authors above (though, arguably, here much more structurally clarified), written Tradition and more general ecclesial Tradition is considered in relation to revealed Truth itself, and the Fathers and later theologians are regarded as monuments to ecclesial Tradition.
The closing, fifth chapter of this first part takes up the ecclesial rule of faith, arguably treating a variety of topics presupposed throughout the preceding chapter. Here, Scheeben takes up the nature and proposal of explicit dogmatic judgments by various ecclesial authorities (the Pope, universal and local Councils, Roman Congregations, both solemnly or in the form of various censures), as well as the topic of dogmatic development. This arrangement allows him, in chapter four, to introduce a notion of transmission that would be conveyed by the explicit, dogmatic proposition of truths discussed in the fifth chapter. Nonetheless, it perhaps has the drawback of waiting to fully explicate the ecclesial character of the assent of faith, something presumed throughout the structure of the entire series of preceding chapters.
At the time of delivering this paper, it is not entirely clear to me what is the source of this structural arrangement: (1) Distant echoes of the romantic tendency to privilege multi-form living tradition over explicit and stable dogmatic form? (2) An uneven incorporation of the modern form of the treatises De revelatione, De locis theologicis filtered into De fontes revelationis, and De ecclesia? Or, (3) what I think is probable, it is the effect of his attempt to unify what is, in effect, his own sui generis treatise De fontes revelationis around the structural principle of apostolic preaching, thus requiring him to speak of Ecclesial Tradition as a species of the genus Apostolic Preaching. Thus, the material of the received theological tradition—having this tendency to combine the De locis considered as a De fontibus and the De ecclesia tending to treat the Church in view of her implications as a visible, supernatural society—would be structured primarily around the content of faith, all the while, however, implying much about the theological virtue of faith and its objective-propositional conditions (at least in this final and full era of salvation history, when it is variously proposed by the Church, whether in praxis or dogmatically). Thus, throughout these first five books he inevitably implies an entire theology concerning the nature of the theological virtue of faith itself, by which Apostolic Tradition is received. This represents, if nothing else, a different version of the paradox that so many of these modern treatises—and others too—find themselves involved in, attempting to treat reflexive topics of method at the outset of theology, prior to the direct, ostensive treatment of the truths of revelation themselves.
Conclusion
The present paper cannot claim to be comprehensive in scope, and as is obvious, the methods employed have been largely documentary, rather than detailed and doctrinal with respect to any one of these authors. However, given the lack of contemporary discussion of many of these themes of modern theological history, I believe it was necessary to initiate—I hope—a broader discussion of these questions of method by offering an informed overview of the structural principles manifested in the very layout of some theological texts. The particular authors considered have been limited to one tradition because of the focus of the present conference. As is to be expected within the erudite ferment of the Society of Jesus, especially during the period of Church history under consideration, we find ourselves faced with a living attempt to fashion theological works that do not fear to cast forth into new theological structures, if one might thereby capture some truth which must be apostolically declared in one’s particular day.
From the very beginning in Cano himself, the De locis was viewed from a quintessentially modern angle: the author understood himself to be providing a stable method for the theologian to employ in identifying the principial content of his science in the various “places” where it might be found. Method is the watchword of modernity, marked by a privileging of reflexive questions of epistemology—although the turn toward such concerns can already be found in the fourteenth century, when, by the time of William of Ockham, prologues to commentaries on Peter Lombard’s Sentences had become lengthy treatments of the epistemology of theological reflection. If we are to paint with a broad brush—one that I am personally borrowing, in this case, from Dr. Timothy Noone, who made this observation orally—the epistemic turn of modernity is nothing other than the philosophical reflection of a gradual prise de conscience already unfolding within late medieval theology.
If a reflexive, critical realism is arguably the condition for a mature philosophical account of being, under the unique conditions of human cognitional objectivity, something similar must be said for theological investigation as well. Cano articulated—if only in outline—the implications of this point. However, the particularities of the data of theology, along with those of its radical subjective light (the theological virtue of faith), introduce far greater complexities, for here the data are such that ecclesial authority and divinely assisted historical factuality play roles uniquely important in comparison with philosophical rationality. Thus, it is not surprising that modern attempts to grapple with these issues have become mired in a whole host of topics: the epistemic conditions of faith in relation to reason; the nature of the Church as the one who proposes the data of faith; the very nature of the revealed deposit and its sources; the status of theology in relation to faith; and so on.
For my own part, I am convinced that it is almost certainly an error to place such topics at the head of theology, before learning how to labor in the fields of revealed truth concerning the Trinity and the economy of salvation. One must contemplate divine realities before reflecting on one’s thought about those realities. Otherwise, one risks foisting a foreign methodology upon the datum of theological reflection. A sound epistemology recognizes the fact that each kind of datum requires its own methodological nuances. As Gilson shows very well in his The Unity of Philosophical Experience, the application of foreign methods to philosophical data has led to many a shipwreck in philosophy. Doubtlessly, something similar could be said for theology.
Naturally, of course, questions of method will emerge amid theological labor, and a sound pedagogy will address them as they arise. Nonetheless, reflex knowledge presupposes direct knowledge, and this means it is methodologically best to acquire the practice of discursive theology from a living tradition in the Church—ideally in concrete human form, from true masters—just as one is formed in the Christian life by one’s parents, more deeply in the spiritual life by spiritual masters, in moral matters by exemplars, and in other disciplines by the received tutelage of a tradition embodied in a living teacher. The supernatural datum of theology especially requires this, for it is a datum received—from the Church and from those she commends, both dead and living—as exemplars who steward the mystery of faith.
Thus, whatever might be said about the gradual dawning of methodological awareness concerning the discursive-theological task of attaining an intellectus fidei, a full and complete account of theological methodology can only be articulated by someone long initiated into that labor as a whole, at least to the extent that discursive theological wisdom has been developed in a given era. It comes objectively last: the owl of Minerva flies only at dusk. Yet the dusk of one day also foretells the dawn of the next, and so it is the task of each generation to inculcate such points of method for the next, all the while reminding those who learn to theologize that, in objective fullness, “critical theory,” methodology, or whatever else one might wish to call it, comes objectively last—after the ostensive work of theology, as a living ecclesial discipline.
We should not, however, cast blame upon the figures considered in this paper, as though they were merely the dross of modern sins of the mind. Questions of method are very important, and as inheritors of developed theological traditions, they had abundant data on which to draw, even if they placed the De locis (under its various guises as De ecclesia, De fontes revelationis, etc.) at the head of their theological teaching. They testify to a genuine need of the supernaturalized intellect—a need already reflected in the natural demand for grammar, dialectics, scientific methodology, poetics, rhetoric, symbolic logic, and hermeneutics. So too, in the supernatural order, there is something akin to a “supernatural logic,” a methodological prise de conscience, which asks not only about the nature of the sources of revelation but also about the sources of discursive theological argumentation and the nature of theological reasoning itself. It is not surprising that such supernatural logic reflects the same paradox found in the case of “natural” logic: something needs to be said about logic before beginning detailed reflection on particular topics, yet logic itself deals with very abstract entities (i.e., second intentions) that are fashioned the midst of reasoning, thus making its subject matter quite difficult to grasp except after a long life of reflection; something similar, mutatis mutandis, holds true for discursive theology. These great Jesuit (and Jesuit-adjacent) figures belong to the tradition of faithful Catholic attempts to provide some small yet real understanding of the faith—and some account of that very understanding itself. They deserve greater attention in our own day as interlocutors from within the heart of the Church.
