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Tradition as ‘Formative Environment’: Congar and Christian Formation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2024
Abstract
Although the theology of Tradition of the Dominican Yves Congar was highly influential in drafting the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum at the Second Vatican Council, postconciliar debates neglected some of the most original aspects of this theology. This article proposes a retrieval of the notion of Tradition as ‘milieu éducatif’, advanced by the theologian in Tradition and Traditions, as a valuable resource for contemporary discussions on Christian formation. It intends to highlight how Congar connected the theological realities of revelation and its transmission by the Church with the concrete practice of Christian life. This notion is, then, put in conversation with contemporary Christian thinkers who have reflected on the practical aspects of Christian formation, chiefly James K.A. Smith. This dialogue aims to show the relevance of Congar’s notion to current discussions. While the theology of Tradition exposed by the French Dominican can be completed and specified by current proposals, it can also offer a new theological depth to those proposals.
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References
1 For instance, Medi Ann Volpe, Rethinking Christian Identity: Doctrine and Discipleship (Oxford: Willey-Blackwell, 2013). In this work, the author discusses the accounts of Christian formation and identity of three other contemporary theologians: Rowan Williams, Kathryn Tanner, and John Milbank.
2 Between 1959 and 1965, Congar wrote abundantly on the subject of Tradition. His main work on this topic is the two-volume book La Tradition et les traditions, which we quote here in its latest French version, published not long ago: Yves Congar, La Tradition et Les Traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010). McMillan published the first English version of this text in one volume in 1967. During these years, Congar also wrote some articles about Tradition, which summarized contemporary discussions and engaged with them. He participated actively in the conciliar debates that led to drafting the numbers on Tradition in Dei Verbum. See his recent biography: Étienne Fouilloux, Yves Congar 1904-1995 (Paris: Editions Salvator, 2020), pp. 225–78. Also, the doctoral thesis of Andrew Chase, Tradition in the Theology of Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger (Rome: Gregorian & Biblical Press, 2019), pp. 81–98.
3 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 132.
4 Cultural Liturgies is composed of three books: Desiring the Kingdom (2009), Imagining the Kingdom (2013), and Awaiting the Kingdom (2017). Here we will focus on the first book: James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).
5 James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), p. 11.
6 Smith references already several of these authors in the preface, pp. 11–12. The appropriation by MacIntyre of the Aristotelian and Thomistic notion of habitus is explored in pp. 55–57. The Augustinian theme of our ultimate love as a defining feature is central for the first chapter, mostly on pp. 46–52. Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu are discussed in chapters 1 and 2 of the second book, James K.A. Smith, Imagining the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013).
7 James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), p. 18.
8 Ibid., pp. 55–57.
9 Ibid., p. 24.
10 Ibid., pp. 46–52.
11 Ibid., pp. 166–67.
12 Ibid., p. 153.
13 Ibid., p. 153, footnote.
14 Ibid., p. 90.
15 One of the main supporters of the dogmatic proclamation, the Italian priest Giuseppe Filograssi, wrote a lengthy article discussing this question. Giuseppe Filograssi, ‘Traditio Divino-Apostolica et Assumptio B.V.M.’, Gregorianum, 30 (1949), 443–89.
16 In this period, the theologians Edmond Ortigues and Josef Geiselmann proposed a reading of the decree of the Council of Trent about the transmission of revelation by Scripture and unwritten traditions (Decretum de libris sacris et de traditionibus recipiendis, Sessio IV, 8 April 1546 – DH 1501), which would allow for a Catholic notion of the sufficiency of the Scripture. A summary of these discussions can be found in Jacob Schmutz, ‘Edmond Ortigues, théologien entre deux conciles’, Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions, 173 (2016), 51–71, and in an article by Congar himself, Yves Congar, ‘Traditions apostoliques non écrites et suffisance de l’Écriture’, Istina, (1959/3), 279–306.
17 A doctoral thesis published in 1954 presents a synthetic version of this debate in Catholic theology since the so-called ‘modernist crises’ at the beginning of the twentieth century. Lúcio da Veiga Coutinho, ‘Tradition et histoire dans la controverse moderniste’, Analecta Gregoriana 73 (Rome: Éditions de l’Université Grégorienne, 1954).
18 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 132.
19 Cf. Giovanni Perrone, Praelectiones Theologicae (Roma: Typis Collegii Urbani, 1840–1842), v. Iib, p. 293. Perrone’s influence on Catholic theology in the nineteenth century has been highlighted by Charles Michael Shea, ‘Faith, Reason, and Ecclesiastical Authority in Giovanni Perrone’s Praelectiones Theologicae’, Gregorianum, 95 (2014), 159–77 and Charles Michael Shea, ‘Giovanni Perrone’s Theological Curriculum and the First Vatican Council’, Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 110 (2015), 789–816.
20 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 15.
21 Ibid., p. 76.
22 Ibid., pp. 75–76.
23 Ibid., pp. 65–74.
24 Ibid., pp. 111–36.
25 Cf. Alain Nisus, ‘La genèse d’une ecclésiologie de communion dans l’œuvre de Yves Congar’, Vrin, 94 (2010/2), 309–34, where the author analyses the development of this notion in Congar’s works.
26 Yves Congar, Sainte Eglise. Études et Approches Ecclésiologiques (Paris: Cerf, 1964), p. 460, quoted in Alain Nisus, ‘La genèse d’une ecclésiologie de communion dans l’œuvre de Yves Congar’, Vrin, 94 (2010/2), 309–34, 312.
27 Nisus notes several times when Congar writes this expression: Alain Nisus, ‘La genèse d’une ecclésiologie de communion dans l’œuvre de Yves Congar’, Vrin, 94 (2010/2), 309–34, 316.
28 Cf. Yves Congar, ‘L’ecclésiologie, de la Révolution française au Concile du Vatican, sous le signe de l’affirmation de l’autorité’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses, 34 (1960), 77–114.
29 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 130.
30 Ibid., p. 131.
31 Ibid., p. 21.
32 Cf. Ibid., pp. 131–36.
33 Ibid., p. 130.
34 Ibid., p. 133.
35 Ibid., p. 134.
36 Ibid., p. 131.
37 Ibid., p. 134.
38 Ibid., pp. 117–21, pp. 183–91.
39 Ibid., p. 190.
40 Ibid., p. 117.
41 Ibid., p. 120.
42 Ibid., p. 117.
43 Ibid., p. 120.
44 The French philosopher Maurice Blondel proposed an original view of Tradition in response to Alfred Loisy’s biblical criticism in three articles published in 1904 and gathered in a book in 1904. For a recent French edition, see Maurice Blondel, ‘Histoire et dogme’, in Œuvres Complètes, ed. Maurice Blondel (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), pp. 387–409. Congar discusses this text in Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, pp. 123–29.
45 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 207.
46 Cf. Yves Congar, ‘Tradition et Sacra Doctrina chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin’, Église et Tradition, ed. Johannes Betz and Heirich Fries (Le-Puy-Lyon: Xavier Mappus, 1963), pp. 157–94, pp. 188–89.
47 Cf. Alain Nisus, ‘La genèse d’une ecclésiologie de communion dans l’œuvre de Yves Congar’, Vrin, 94 (2010/2), 309–34, 313.
48 Yves Congar, ‘Traditions apostoliques non écrites et suffisance de l’Écriture’, Istina (1959/3), 279–306.
49 He offers a lengthy comment on Blondel’s 1904 History and Dogma in Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, pp. 123–30.
50 Cf. Andrew Meszaros, ‘Haec Tradition Proficit: Congar’s Reception of Newman in Dei Verbum, Section 8’, New Blackfriars, 92 (2011), 247–54.
51 Congar often quotes the German theologian. The Dominican is partly responsible for retrieving Möhler’s ecclesiology at the end of the 30s. Cf. Étienne Fouilloux, ‘Le moment Möhler de la théologie française (1938-1939)’, Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, 105 (2021/4), 677–703. Congar will admit that his reading of Möhler was essential for forming his views on Tradition. Cf. Yves Congar, ‘Preface’, in Church and World in the Plan of God: Aspects of History and Eschatology in the Thought of Pere Congar, O.P, ed. Charles MacDonald (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1982), p. vii, quoted in Andrew Meszaros, The Prophetic Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), p. 15. In his 1825 book The Unity of the Church, Möhler refers already to the Tradition as kirchliche Erziehung, ‘ecclesiastical education’. Johann Adam Möhler, Die Einheit in der Kirche (Tübingen: bei Heinrich Laupp, 1825), p. 57.
52 See Yves Congar, ‘Tradition et Sacra Doctrina chez Saint Thomas d’Aquin’, in Église et Tradition, ed. Johannes Betz and Heirich Fries (Le-Puy-Lyon: Xavier Mappus, 1963), pp. 157–94, p. 189. The second volume of Tradition and Traditions begins with a reference to this article: Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 15.
53 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III pars, q. 42, a. 4.
54 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, pp. 133–34.
55 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II pars, q. 106, a. 1.
56 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 248.
57 Tracey Rowland, Culture and the Thomist Tradition – After Vatican II (London: Routledge, 2003), p. 122.
58 Congar remarks that the reality delivered by liturgical practices always surpasses our understanding of it. Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, pp. 190–91.
59 Cf. Thomas Guarino, Foundations of Systematic Theology (New York: T&T Clark International, 2005), pp. 145–52. The theologian traces the origin of this distinction, its embrace by Congar and other contemporary theologians, and the more cautious approach to it of more recent theological texts, including the ITC document we quoted.
60 Cf. Vincent Holzer, ‘Le renouvellement du Principe Dogmatique en Théologie Contemporaine’, Recherches de Science Religieuse, 94 (2006/1), 99–128, specially p. 111, where the author refers specifically to Congar.
61 International Theological Commission, ‘The Interpretation of Dogma’, III, 3. Text available in <https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_1989_interpretazione-dogmi_en.html> [accessed 07 December 2023].
62 Yves Congar, La Tradition et les traditions (Paris: Cerf, 2010), v. II, p. 122.
63 Ibid., p. 206.
64 Lewis Ayres, ‘Totius Traditionis Mirabile Sacramentum: Toward a Theology of Tradition in the Light of Dei Verbum’, in Dogma and Ecumenism: Vatican II and Karl Barth’s ‘Ad Limina Apostolorum’, ed. Matthew Levering, Bruce L. McCormack, and Thomas Joseph White (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), pp. 54–80, p. 54.