My favorite modern Catholic theologians
Posted on March 14, 2008 by Halden
These are the modern Catholic theologians that I most enjoy reading, not necessarily the ones I think are the most important, influential, etc.
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Herbert McCabe
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Hans Urs von Balthasar
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Johann Baptist Metz
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Henri de Lubac
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Joseph Ratzinger
Other rankings or choices?
Filed under: Roman Catholicism
The only one I’ve read is de Lubac. I’ve always wanted to read Balthasar, anyone want to recommend a starting point? (I don’t want to hijack your post Halden, but I’m really curious).
Actually, I’d recommend his small book Love Alone is Credible. It’s great. You may have to force your way through the first couple chapters, though.
Karl Rahner. Pick up any volume of the Theological Investigations and you’ll find something well worth your time.
Étienne Gilson. I’ve only read a little of him, but there will be much more of him in my future.
John Henry Newman. Skip his early church studies and development thesis (important and interesting as they are) and go to his sermons, especially the Oxford University Sermons. And if you’re brave, The Grammar of Assent has more importance now, thanks to the linguistic turn and rise of Positivism and Pragmatism, than when it was written.
I am very much enjoying McCabe. It’s sort’ve like reading a Catholic version of Stan Hauerwas.
I like Yves Congar, especially his books on the Holy Spirit and on Sacred Tradition. I wish more of his writings were available in English.
I want to like von Balthasar, but my mind glazes over a lot of his stuff. This is old age setting in, no doubt. But I will keep trying. I agree that *Love Alone is Credible* is an excellent book with which to begin. I also think his book on the papacy is outstanding.
I am very, very grateful for Ratzinger’s clarity and conciseness. He is a pleasure to read.
And I like Louis Bouyer.
There are a lot of Catholic theologians out there, but I find most of them beyond my sympathies. Robert Jenson once quipped that he liked to attend meetings of the Catholic Theological Society in order to keep up with the latest trends in liberal Protestantism.
But Matthew Levering has caught my attention. I hope to read his *Sacrifice and Community* soon.
I’d say Ratzinger, Newman, de Lubac and Bouyer in no particular order. Bouyer’s book “The Christian Mystery” is a must read. Thanks to you, I have a burgeoning interest in both von Balthasar and McCabe.
Not one liberation theologian?
Thanks Halden. I will work my way to that soon. I’m actually quite busy with de Lubac right now; I’m considering an independent study that is sort of about Christian humanism, a topic for another day.
Would we could Jean-Luc Marion as a modern day Catholic theologian? I suppose that is a kind of blurring of a few lines.
For Balthasar, I recommend The Threefold Garland. It’s a devotional work, but it’s got everything in it.
Here would be my list:
1) McCabe,
2) Nicholas Lash
3) de Lubac
4) Congar
5) Rahner
6/7) von Balthasar/Ratzinger
8) Gustavo Gutiérrez
Balthasar has dropped a bit in the last year or so, but remains in the top five. I find that in both Balthasar and Ratzinger it is more difficult to move from doxology to praxis. To give just one example: part two of Deus Caritas Est.
Obviously Balthasar has dropped out of my top five.
One will see that when you read de Lubac, Ratzinger, Balthasar, Giussani, etc., they all quote Romano Guardini. Guardini is just amazing.
I’m working on Jacques Dupuis’ Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism and it is pretty good.
Levering is doing some nice work. The folks at JP Institute are doing very well as well.
Scott,
What about Luigi Giussani? I think there’s where you can see orthodoxy and orthodpraxy at the same time. That’s just me.
Here are a few more: Lonergan, Cornelius Ernst, Fergus Kerr, Noel Dermot O’Donoghue and Wojtyla (especially his great, under appreciated The Acting Person). I’d like to also give a shout out to Alan Ecclestone, though he is technically an Anglo-Catholic. His Staircase for Silence is glorious and deserves more readers.
I would have listed Lash as well but Scott beat me to it.
I’ll post mine since they’re not here yet: Gehard Lohfink, Leonardo Boff, and Stephan Bevans. And I haven’t read JH Newman but I think I’d like him.
Peter Kreeft…I’m a protestant…I don’t know much about Catholic theologians…
Apolonio,
thank you for mentioning Fr. Giussani, who had a great impact on both Joseph Ratzinger and Hans Urs von Balthasar. But I don’t think of Giussani mainly as a theologian (despite his work on American Protestantism) as much as a lover of wisdom made flesh, Jesus Christ. I was weary and cynical of reading theology when I first read Fr. Giussani. But he taught me how to live the Christianity that Balthasar and others had described so beautifully. As you say, Apolonio, orthodoxy and orthopraxy are just one thing for Fr. Giussani.
Oscar Romero? Perhaps not a modern day theologian, in a strict academic sense of I-write-tome-upon-tome, but certainly the man as a pastoral theologian is tremendously important. And one could easily argue that his weekly homilies were and still are tremendously important theological works - never mind his martyrdom. (After all, 3 of the 5 on Halden’s list are dead as well, so I think the manner of Romero’s life and death make his work all the more important.)
Considering the way the Catholic church seems to be moving - towards change by the laity, rather than the Vatican - I’d also mention Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza or Elizabeth Johnson.
Giusanni, of course! It is strange I do not see him as a theologian. I hold him in higher regard. Fred is correct as to his influence on Balthasar and Ratzinger. I think what Ratzinger in particular gained from Giussani, who he claims changed his life, was a way to move toward praxis. Similarly, I think this gap in Balthasar has something to do with his Community of St. John not really taking off. Don Giusanni channeled his efforts differently, more creatively, that is, more charismatically.
I also agree about the greatness of Fergus Kerr. There is something about the Blackfrairs of Oxford. Lonergan is need of a retrieval. Richard Gallardetz is a great lay theologian who has done a lot of valuable work on ecclesiology and theology of ministry.
I also pretty much agree with the take Guardini
Fred,
I did not mean Giussani as a theologian. I was trying to respond to Scott’s objection on the separation of orthopraxy and orthodoxy.
Do you know in what way Giussani influenced Balthasar or the other way around? Or where I can find that? I do know that whenever Giussani had some idea he would go to Ratzinger for clarification. One example is the Mystery and the creature coinciding.
Also, ditto on how the movement is where I have found the place where my ressourcement theology can be realized in my life.
Apolonio,
When Balthasar founded Communio in various countries, Don Gius had friends to help do so in Italy (many of them also published in those pages). One of those friends who founded the Italian edition of Communio, Angelo Scola recorded an interview with Balthasar, Test Everything, which is a remarkable witness to the sympathy between Balthasar and Giussani. Certainly, Fr. Giussani looms largely in Balthasar’s writings about lay groups, especially movements (though they have their points of departure also, perhaps). I should say, Balthasar also dedicated a book to Fr. Giussani: Engagement with God (heh. I see that Ignatius is publishing it this year, so it will be available in English again).
I like the idea of Giusanni going to Ratzinger for doxology and Ratzinger looking to Giussani for praxis. Isn’t this about the gifts of the Spirit? Of course, it is not as if without Giussani Ratzinger would be clueless about praxis and vice-versa, I do not want to overstate the case. There is something to be said, however, for choosing what Don Gius chose, living with others. To me, this also seems to be the difference between Augustine and Aqunias and why, in the rare case I have to, I go with Augustine.
I’ll be a voice crying in the wilderness here, and say that my favourite is Schillebeeckx. But I haven’t started reading McCabe yet…
Fred,
Thanks. I was looking for Giussani’s influence on Balthasar’s *thought*. I have not read Balthasar’s books on the layman or movements though. It never really interested me. Maybe some day.
Scott,
Well, Ratzinger and Giussani never really disagreed though. They just had two different vocations. And it does seem to me that Ratzinger knows a lot about orthopraxy; it’s just that his vocation allowed him to emphasize on orthodoxy. I also think that the fact that the Pope’s general audiences has a lot to do with people, saints, show that grace and truth must be incarnated. In other words, orthopraxy is none other than being a witness. It is not “how can I act?” or “what should I do?” but rather, one thing is necessary: who are You that looks at me this way? That is, Destiny. Anyway, that’s another debate.
It is cool that the Pope hangs out with Memores Domini from C-L though :)
David, I demand that you repent at once from naming Elizavbeth Schussledr-Fieoreza as a favorite Carholic theologian. For shame!
Apolonio:
While the Holy Father, as you say, “knows a lot about orthopraxy”, despite his catecheses on the saints, etc., his theology is not one that necessarily leads directly to a praxis in the contemporary world, like, say, McCabe’s. It kind of strikes me, as does part 2 of Deus Caritas Est, as being kind of a sentimental longing for the past and not an intense call to engage contemporary concerns, though part 1 remains a brilliant theological synthesis and meditation on love. I think this kind of imbalance is typical of Ratzinger’s theology. To wit: knowing a lot about orthopraxy is different from developing a theology that organically leads to it. His deep and on-going suspicion of liberation theology strikes me as painting with a broom, as there are, properly speaking theologies of liberation that must be judged according to their own merits, or lack thereof. His displeasure with the incredible contribution of Jacques DuPuis, especially at the end of his life was a bit much for me, particularly given the Holy Father’s repeated rejection of proselytism. His recently composed Good Friday prayer for the Jews for the 1962 Missal shows a tin ear. Why not just use the 1970 prayer in its editio typica and avoid all the messiness and charges, both from within and without the Church of anti-Judaism, thus reopening a healing wound?
I, too, like Schillebeeckx. He is far too often misinterpreted and misunderstood, not that he isn’t provocative. His book The Church with a Human Face remains irreplaceable in any study of the theology and development of ministry in the Church. Too much of the Roman Catholic understanding of ministry and especially of orders is ahistorical. While I find it a interesting dialectical attempt to understand Jesus Christ, like Haight’s book, I cannot endorse his Christology, though I still see it as a contribution.
Apolonio,
when approaching a man who was formed as a Jesuit (and who led the Spiritual Exercises many times even after his break with the Jesuits), as Balthasar was, I doubt that his *thought* can be separated from his work on formation (One of the great things about Walter Ong’s book on Gerard Manley Hopkins is that Ong a Jesuit explores the impact of the Exercises on Hopkins another Jesuit). I don’t even know how one can pretend to speak of Balthasar’s praxis while ignoring this major thread of his *thought*: Engagement with the World, Tragedy under Grace, Theology in History, Bernanos, The Laity and the Life of the Counsels. Go ask W. for info on Balthasar’s reflections on event, presence, etc. in the Trilogy and elsewhere.
As much as it saddens me that folks reduce Balthasar to an impotent doxa, glory, beauty, it shouldn’t really surprise me. Balthasar said himself that the understanding of his work would depend on the prior reception of Adrienne von Speyr’s. Now, Speyr didn’t participate in academic theological discourse (her profession was medical doctor), but her commentary on Scripture and her writings on the spiritual life vigorously engage the intellect and not simply sentiment. Also, it should go without saying that one can’t read Balthasar or Speyr and hope to get anywhere without a profound attitude of prayer. What was written in prayer has to be read that way.
Yes, Fr. Giussani taught me how to live Christianity. But Balthasar taught me what to look for and himself embraced the richness of human experience (which theologians still ignore as irrelevant to *thought*: fiction, poetry, the writings of saints, drama, music, opera, etc). It wasn’t his fault that I presupposed that everything he said was mainly theoretical: that was in me and merely reading Balthasar couldn’t cure me.
And Balthasar lived out his life not with the assurance of an academic or clerical benefice but in exile and as the spiritual director of Speyr and the community she founded (sexist is too mild a word to describe the notion that it was mainly founded upon Balthasar’s theology).
** End Rant **
:)
I second Richard Gallardetz and Gerhard Lohfink, and many of the others named so far (esp. Metz!).
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Bill Cavanaugh or Jon Sobrino.
I also read Nicholas Healy’s Church, World, and Christian Life not too long ago and was really impressed with it.
I appreciate the McCabe posts lately. Was not familiar with him, and I think I need to seek him out.
Don’t know if these count as “modern” as that’s quite strange word these days, but I really like these - in addition to those you’ve listed:
Hans Kung, Nicholas Lash, Gustavo Gutierrez, and Leonardo Boff and, just so Michael at Catholic Anarchy will be happy, I’ll list William Cavanaugh although I’m not sure if he counts as “modern” (depending, again, on what “modern” really means).
“Yes, Fr. Giussani taught me how to live Christianity. But Balthasar taught me what to look for and himself embraced the richness of human experience (which theologians still ignore as irrelevant to *thought*: fiction, poetry, the writings of saints, drama, music, opera, etc). It wasn’t his fault that I presupposed that everything he said was mainly theoretical: that was in me and merely reading Balthasar couldn’t cure me.”
I appreciate this very much. Thanks Fred
Scott,
thanks for forgiving me my crankiness!
As much as I would like to just say thank you, I am only returning the favor. Besides, I am never offended by honesty.
Though I’m not sure that he counts as modern or as a theologian, I love reading GK Chesterton.
I have just found your site from church and pomo - I am a public sector worker from Nothern Ireland from the liberal Protestant tradition with a lay persons interest in theology as a beginner….
1. Hans Kung
2. Rene Girard
3. William Johnston
4. Simone weil
5 Gustavo Gutierrez
Hope you don’t mind a person from a different tradition posting
Oh, Rodney, not to worry. I’m not Catholic either. I just like to read a lot of them.
Hi,
In no particular order: Balthasar, Rahner, McCabe, Newman (does he count as modern?) and I also enjoying reading Fergus Kerr a great deal although most of his stuff doesn’t seem to be in the way of ‘constructive’ theology. I still find him immensely helpful though.
Apolonio: Do you not think Dupuis slipped into a somewhat unorthodox position in ‘Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism’? I think he basically went that little bit further to push him ‘over the edge’, so to speak, in a way that Rahner managed to avoid. Not that he had unorthodox intentions at all, but I think he did slip into a slightly pluralistic theology of religions, incompatible with Catholic doctrine.
And Denys Turner, forgot about him. Following in the tradition of Thomists such as McCabe. Also refreshing for being one of the few theologians around today willing to explicitly defend the proposition that the existence of God is demonstrable through reason!
James Alison and Bill Cavanaugh
David,
I think that there is something wrong with what Dupuis said, but it’s very hard to pin down. I pretty much think that the issue is revelation and experience. I’m still working on my paper though.
Halden, et al.
Where is a good place to start reading McCabe?
Alison avec Girard I know. Although barely literate. Still it’s catching. Thanks for Cavanaugh whom I don’t know but will now check out.
Trouble with McCabe is that he’s way too fond of himself.
Does Auden count as a modern Catholic theologian?
I wish people would take the time to read Lonergan. In time he will reshape everything.
I think Cavanaugh is more important that most people currently acknowledge. His work on the emergence of the state and the false narrative used to justify this emergence and the continued expansion of centralized government power is extremely helpful. I’m thinking of “A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House.”
http://www.jesusradicals.com/library/cavanaugh/Wars_of_Religion.html
His Eucharistic political theology is also very cool. If you haven’t read Cavanaugh, don’t do yourself the disservice of writing him off simply as a student of Hauerwas. He is, but he is also very much his own theologian and brings a significantly different approach to the craft. He also is writing from a more explicit tradition, which can be helpful.
I definitely agree with you about Cavanaugh. He’s also a great home-brewer and quite the hilarious joke-teller. On of the best lines he ever said to me was “Yeah, Eastern Orthodoxy looks good on paper, but just once I’d like to meet an Orthodox Christian who didn’t lose a close, personal friend in the sack of Constantinople.”
Hill, good call on Cavanaugh. Halden, had no idea that he brews his own. I wonder why he doesn’t mention that alongside CSAs, fair trade, etc. Looking forward to his new book. Should be able to get my hands on a copy in the next week or so.
Does Auden count as a modern Catholic theologian?
only if Peguy and Eliot do…
Herbert McCabe
Denys Turner
James Alison
Sebastian Moore
Rene Girard
Nicholas Lash
I also learned more about our faith from Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor, J.F. Powers and Charles Peguy than any professional theologian.
Here, here to Walker Percy. Incredible stuff.
Good call on Sebastian Moore, Alison, and Gerard.