Abstract
Surprisingly little attention has been paid in the English-speaking academy to Marie-Dominique Chenu and his method. Mary Kate Holman’s book begins to fill this lacuna. H. not only lays out Chenu’s historically conscious and inductive method but also appropriates it to engage his work and develop it.
In fact, her appropriation and development of Chenu’s method is among the book’s greatest strengths. H. argues that Chenu’s “oeuvre is more scattered than the revered systematic theologians of his generation” (2). Accordingly, she does not attempt to systematize his work. Instead, she adopts his historically conscious method to draw out both how his inductive method matures over the course of his life and the resources it provides to theologians looking to respond to the signs of the times. Thus, the book is divided into four chapters, bookended by an introduction and conclusion, with each chapter covering a major period of Chenu’s life and career. H. gives particular attention to the implications of Chenu’s method for ecclesiology, but not in a way that suggests his influence is limited only to that field.
H.’s analysis of Chenu’s published work is supplemented by her careful archival research. This allows her to offer rich accounts of Chenu’s disciplinary proceedings with the Holy Office and how they shaped his thought. Additionally, H. examines how archival sources do or do not account for lacunae in his published work, including topics such as the role of women in the church and society. Throughout H.’s historical theological analysis, several developing and interconnected themes of Chenu’s inductive method that are especially relevant to today’s praxis of theology emerge.
First, H. illustrates Chenu’s allergy to deducing unchanging truths and applying them to an ever-changing world. For instance, she shows that Chenu’s major contribution to la nouvelle théologie was his historically conscious approach to Thomas Aquinas. His teaching and scholarship resisted Neo-Scholasticism’s repetition of the theological conclusions of Thomas and instead focused on how Thomas brought the tradition into dialogue with the intellectual and social currents of his day. In this way Chenu (and H. in her analysis of his work) show that ressourcement is a return not only to Scripture and the early church but also to any classic of the tradition and the way it responds to its own context. H. demonstrates Chenu’s lasting commitment to a historically conscious method through her attention to his theology of doctrinal development and the church’s relationship to mutation (intentionally leaving his French untranslated) in his later years.
Second, H. traces Chenu’s development of the notion of the signs of the times, which had a major impact on the Second Vatican Council. H. shows that this influence was no small feat given Chenu’s marginal role at the Council as a bishop’s personal theological advisor rather than an official peritus. Moreover, she also convincingly argues that Chenu began to develop this idea, even if not naming it as such, in the decade before the Council. While in Paris and Rouen, Chenu developed several insights that can be described in no more appropriate way than as responses to the signs of the times. This explicitly inductive theology, rooted in his historically conscious approach to Thomas, was fostered by his engagement with worker-priests and les petits foyers (“small gatherings of working-class families in one of their homes” [70]). H. shows that his attention to the realities of their life developed his appreciation for the importance of novelty in the life of the church as it seeks to live into the Gospel in a changing world. Further, she argues, this shaped his understanding of mission in the years leading up to the Council.
Third, H. shows how Chenu’s theology of mission developed from one seeking a New Christendom to one of agential presence in a changing world. H. insightfully unpacks this shift’s importance for theological (especially ecclesiological) method. She argues that, for Chenu like the Council, the church is missionary in nature. In line with a Thomistic understanding of the goodness of creation, the church, as the people of God, is called to read the signs of the times and recognize the “‘toothing stones’ [‘pierres d’attente’] for the Reign of God” (122) as co-creators of the reign. Thus, H. argues, Chenu’s method is one that demands that the church be attentive and responsive to mutation in the world. H. shows that in Chenu’s own life this involved learning from Latin American liberation theology and base communities.
H. notes that a survey of Chenu’s entire corpus is beyond the scope of her project. Though technically true, such a caveat risks undercutting the contribution she makes. Upon reading the book, one walks away with a sense that they have gotten to know something of the person of Chenu as well as the significance of his method. While not a stated aim of the work, H. makes the case that Chenu’s method should be considered alongside other major twentieth-century figures in theological method.