Desire Divided: Nature and Grace in the Neo-Thomism of Pierre Rousselot
- Format:
- Dissertation
- Year:
- 2008
- University:
- Harvard Divinity School
- University URL:
- Thesis type:
- Doctoral Dissertation
- Place published:
- Cambridge, Mass.
- Language:
- Abstract:
This study explores the early work of the French neo-Thomist Pierre Rousselot, S.J. (1878–1915). Rousselot was a theologian of major significance in twentieth-century Catholic thought. Henri de Lubac, Joseph Maréchal, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar all express an indebtedness to his thought. Among his many philosophical and theological contributions, Rousselot set the stage for la nouvelle théologie, a highly controversial and widely influential movement within Catholic theology that insisted in new and radical ways on the intimate integration of nature and grace.
Specifically, this study explicates Rousselot's understanding of the relationship between nature and grace in Thomas Aquinas. Rousselot offers his interpretation of Thomas primarily in his major thesis of 1908, L'Intellectualisme de saint Thomas. Rousselot focuses on Thomas's doctrine of the intelligent creature's “natural desire to see God” [desiderium naturale visionis Dei], especially as Thomas presents it in the Summa contra Gentiles and the Compendium theologiae.
As this study demonstrates, Rousselot's reading of Thomas is a tacit response to the philosophical apologetics of Maurice Blondel (1861–1949). Blondel's treatise of 1893 L'Action had exercised considerable influence in Rousselot's day. Rousselot tries to show that Thomas's metaphysical approach to “intelligence” [intellectus] anticipates Blondel's teaching on the openness or receptivity of human existence to a saving God and eternal life. Yet Rousselot also endeavors to prove, in contrast to Blondel's philosophy, that Thomas safeguards the natural power of reason to know reality apart from faith and grace. Rousselot thus effects a delicate balance in Thomas between the intellect's innate dynamism toward God, on the one hand, and the natural integrity of its rational operations here on earth, on the other.
This study seeks to contribute both to the recent scholarship on twentieth-century Thomism as well as to how to read Thomas today. Rousselot draws upon nineteenth-century neo-Scholasticism and the heritage of classic Thomist commentary (namely Cajetan and Suárez) while at the same time paves the way for la nouvelle théologie. Rousselot's work not only reveals an interesting and fruitful moment in the history of Thomism but also offers insights into how Thomas himself conceives the relationship between nature and grace.
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- Number of Pages:
- 269