Theological Faith Enlightening Sacred Theology: Renewing Theology by Recovering its Unity as Sacra Doctrina1

The Thomist 74 (2010): 369-405 THEOLOGICAL FAITH ENLIGHTENING SACRED THEOLOGY: RENEWING THEOLOGY BY RECOVERING ITS UNITY AS SACRA DOCTRINA1 REINHARD HOTTER Duke University Divinity School Durham, North Carolina Es ist mit der Wissenschaft iiber Gott die Gefahr verbunden, daR sie unser tiefstes Innere Gott entfremde, anstatt es Ihm zu niihern.2 Ceslaus Maria Schneider Nihil est pauperius et miserius mente quae caret Deo et de Deo philosophatur et disputat.3 John Climacus THE FOLLOWING considerations arise from an indisputable , albeit regrettable fact: the pervasive fragmentation of contemporary Catholic theology and the consequent urgent need of renewal. Such renewal will have to come about by way of recovering theology's inner unity. And the latter requires nothing less than allowing theology's soul- supernatural, divine faith-to inform again the whole body of theology. The authority of America's foremost Catholic theologian, the late Avery 1 An earlier version of this essay was presented on 17 October 2009, at the first "Thomistic Circles" Conference on "Thomism and the Renewal of Theology" at the new Academic Center of the Dominican House of Studies, Washington, D.C. 2 "The science of God is accompanied by the danger that its pursuit estranges our innermost self from God instead of bringing it closer to Him." 3 "There is nothing more miserable and desolate than a mind bereft of God that speaks of and philosophizes about God." 369 370 REINHARD HUTTER Cardinal Dulles, S.J., shall suffice as a warrant for the way I characterize the present state of Catholic theology. In his important essay, "Wisdom as the Source of Unity for Theology," published shortly before his death, he observes: Over the past fifty years we have all heard the repeated complaint, amounting sometimes to a lamentation, that theology has lost its unity. Like Humpty Dumpty it has suffered a great fall, and all the pope's theologians have not succeeded in putting it together again. Theology is splintered into subdisciplines that insist on their own autonomy without regard for one another. Biblical studies go in one direction, historical scholarship goes in another, ethics in a third, and spirituality in a fourth. In addition to this fragmentation of disciplines, there is a growing breach between past and present. The classic statements of the faith are studied historically, in relation to the circumstances in which they arose. If their contemporary relevance is not denied, they are reinterpreted for today in ways that preserve little if anything of their original content. The Magisterium, which has traditionally been the guardian of theological orthodoxy, is simply ignored by some theologians and bitterly criticized by others. Dogmatic theology, which seeks to ground itself in official Catholic teaching, is shunned as being servile and unprogressive.... Each theologian is expected to be creative and is encouraged to say something novel and surprising. A theologian who reaffirms the tradition and fails to challenge the received doctrine is considered timid and retrograde.4 Cardinal Dulles' analysis is true in every respect. Furthermore, his constructive proposal is as salient as it is salutary in retrieving Thomas's three kinds of wisdom as the source of unity for theology: philosophical wisdom, theological wisdom, and infused wisdom. While philosophical wisdom arises from the natural capacity of the human intellect to investigate the structures of reality, infused wisdom, the immediate gift of the Holy Spirit, enables the believer to form right judgments by means of a divinely given connaturality. Theological wisdom, finally, considers all reality in light of revelation and is thus constitutive 4 Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., "Wisdom as the Source of Unity in Theology," in Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering, eds., Wisdom and Holiness, Science and Scholarship: Essays in Honor ofMatthew L. Lamb (Naples, Fl.: Sapientia Press, 2007), 59-71, at 59£. FAITH ENLIGHTENING SACRED THEOLOGY 371 of theology as sacra doctrina.5 In the following, I wish to build upon Dulles's proposal by expanding it in one important regard: the crucial connection between theological wisdom and the infused, supernatural virtue of faith. Such an attempt is not as farfetched as it might at first seem. The most recent magisterial teaching-Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical Spe salvi-encourages a genuine recovery of the...