Ressourcement Theology: A Sourcebook
PATRICIA KELLY
(T&T CLARK, 184 PP, £90)
Tablet bookshop price £89 • tel 020 7799 4064
Henri de Lubac and the Drama of Human Existence
JORDAN HILLEBERT
(UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS, 300 PP, £60)
Tablet bookshop price £54 • tel 020 7799 4064
“Tradition means having a baby, not wearing your grandfather’s hat.” While Pablo Picasso’s gnomic utterance was aimed at those shocked by his unconventional approach to art, it might also have resonated with Henri de Lubac and his ressourcement theology contemporaries. Criticised for introducing unorthodox novelties into theology, they treated the deposit of faith as something alive which changes in its human articulation in response to the new challenges of changing times. The ressourcement theologians of the period prior to the Second Vatican Council had a dynamic view of tradition. They fell foul of the doctrinal authorities of their era both in France and in Rome, accused of peddling “new” (shocking word) theology. Their translation and editing of patristic sources into contemporary French in the Sources Chrétiennes, Unam Sanctam and Théologie series may not seem a major event on the world stage, given what else was happening globally in the 1940s, but the painstaking scholarship behind these translations provoked as much outrage as admiration.
