Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism by Gabriel Daly (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 637 books it includes non-German works. Horst might have included George Wilson's Corporate Human .Activity and Divine .Assistance in the Process of InfalUble Definition: The Leading Dominican Theologians from 1450 to 1650 (unpublished dissertation at the Pontifical Gregorian University, 1963). F. X. Bantle is misspelled in most places as F. X. Bantele. This work is an important contribution. In unfolding the past, it unlocks future possibilities of a more developed teaching on infallibility. PETER CHIRICO, S.S. St. Thomas Center Bothell, Washington Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism. By GABRIEL DALY. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Pp. xii + 254. $37.50. In the last ten years especially, but in general ever since the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, considerable re-thinking has come about of the whole idea of a " modernist " crisis in Catholic thought at the beginning of this century. Much of this re-thinking has centered about the person and work of Alfred Loisy. Even before the council, the French scholar Emile Poulat had begun a serious reappraisal of Loisy, but after the council others-especially from the English-speaking world-joined this reappraisal with increasingly positive evaluations. Periodical literature of the last decade is replete with reconsiderations of Loisy as exegete, apologist, theologian, philosopher of religion. In these essays many of what were once generally accepted opinions of both Loisy and modernism have been reversed or at least appreciably revised. However, with Gabriel Daly's Transcendence and Immanence: A Study in Catholic Modernism and Integralism, revisionist history takes a new tack and in a formidable way. If all the attention given Loisy has made him the acclaimed though unwilling figurehead of modernism, Daly now promotes a rival claimant to that title. Daly assigns to Maurice Blondel the role of standard bearer of the modernist cause. Moreover, Daly's thesis is no brief essay or monograph on one figure but a comprehensive historical survey encompassing all the prominent figures in a conceptual schema that amounts to a daring thesis. As the title of the book suggests, Daly sees the modernist controversy as a battle between opposing methods for doing theology. Daly uses the word "transcendence" to characterize the object-oriented, supernatural 638 BOOK REVIEWS perspective from which the late nineteenth-century scholastics did their theol.ogy. Daly labels these theologians "integralists '' because their theological method made for a highly conceptual, systematic, and integrated view of theology and philosophy. Daly employs the term "immanence" to characterize the subject-oriented, historical, and existential approach to theology employed by the modernists. It is in this latter method that Daly sees the paramount significance of Maurice Blondel and the analogy that relates all the other modernist figures. Blondel's 1893 doctoral thesis, l'Action, is seen as the opening blast, the first signal of a general movement, and the most substantial statement of the immanentist theme. And thus the outline of the book: Chapter 1 is a description of Roman (i.e., the ecclesiastically approved and established) fundamental theology in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Chapter 2 is a description of "the Blondelian challenge" to that theology. Chapter 3 portrays Loisy's work as the more radical statement of the immanentist thesis. Chapter 4 is a specific comparison of Loisy and Blondel on the question of the relation between history and dogma. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 review, seriatim, the immanentist theme in Laberthonniere, von Hugel, and Tyrrell. Chapters 8 and 9 narrate the integralist response to this challenge in two phases : before and after the encyclical Pascendi. Chapter 10 presents Daly's conclusions. Daly has written a highly intelligent and eminently readable book. Daly's scholarship is thorough and one of the most valuable aspects of the book is the detail with which he has researched his thesis as regards the integralists. In Daly's description of the Roman seminaries and faculties (Billot, Perrone, etc.) and the detailed description he gives us of representative figures however obscure (Lemius, Matiussi), we gain a much clearer picture of the integralists. The book's two appendices both help further to "flesh out" our image of the integralist position. One treats of Joseph Lemius, the...