Avery Dulles: Post-Critical Theology

Cardinal Avery Dulles, who died on December 12^th, was a Jesuit and McGinley Professor of Religion and Society at Fordham University in New York.

In later life, Cardinal Dulles embraced what he termed “post-critical theology”.

Basically, “critical theology” is what most conservative Catholics would describe as “liberal”, “progressive”, or “dissenting theology”.

It takes for its starting point the assumption that the task of theologians is to hold to account, and where necessary oppose, an essentially narrow-minded and self-serving Tradition and Magisterium.

In the world of critical theology, the Catholicism of the pre-Vatican 2 period needs to be pretty much replaced by a more contemporary “paradigm”.

Critical theology, accordingly, interprets Vatican 2 from the point of view of the “hermeneutics of rupture”, believing that Vatican 2 marked a radical and irrevocable break with an outmoded past, and brought in a fundamentally new – and vastly better – style of Catholicism.

The opposite of critical theology is “countercritical” theology. The countercritical movement agrees with the analysis that Vatican 2 marked a radical break with the past, but, unlike the critical movement, regards this as an unmitigated disaster.

The countercritical movement is rightly critical of dissident theology, condemning figures such as Schillebeeckx and Küng who have set out – quite openly – to dismantle and then reconstruct Catholicism (in Schillebeeckx’s case along what are clearly neo-Marxist lines).

Unfortunately, the countercritical movement has become so paranoid about theological creativity that it tends to regard any departure from the narrowest norms of 1950s Catholicism as “modernizing”, and to reject theologies propounded by figures such as Karl Rahner, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar who are by no means dissident or “critical”, even if they aren’t necessarily every orthodox Catholic’s cup of tea.

While opposing the critical movement, Cardinal Dulles regarded the countercritical movement as closed-minded, and, like Pope Benedict, preferred to emphasize the “hermeneutic of continuity” – the idea that there exists a fundamental continuity between the pre-Vatican 2 church and the post-Vatican 2 church.

Unlike the proponents of critical theology, he believed that Catholics – including Catholic theologians – should operate on the presumption that Tradition and the teaching of the Magisterium are basically correct.

However, unlike many of the proponents of countercritical theology, he also believed that there’s nothing wrong with exploring areas of Tradition and the Magisterium which have previously been neglected (ressourcement), and with defending and promoting Tradition and Magisterium in new ways and (where appropriate) using new models and styles of theology alongside the old.

Because critical theology is many ways destructive (or, at least deconstructive) of Catholicism in its classical form, and because countercritical theology is too often just a question of quoting the Magisterium (what Rahner termed Denzingertheologie) without any appreciation of how to move the debate forward, the post-critical approach of Avery Dulles (which, I think, reflects the approach of people like Aidan Nichols, OP, and, most significantly, of Joseph Ratzinger when acting qua theologian), seems like the most fruitful way for Catholic theology to go.

Having said all that, I still think that post-critical theology is at its best when it stays close to Aquinas, and, in particular, to the Church Fathers read through a Thomist spectacles.