Transforming Our Human Forms into Christ's: The Theomorphic Anthropology of Aidan Nichols

By Reverend Paul Engoulou Nsong

Are you puzzled by the nature and system of Aidan Nicholss theological contribution? Are you looking for a way to renew your appreciation for Nicholss theological activity? Do you want to clarify your understanding of Nicholss anthropological view? Father Engoulou Paul discusses these and many others interesting matters in this book.
He carefully analyzes the different layers on which Nichols posits his philosophical and theological principles of order. He explains historically each foundational step from which Nichols draws his public doctrine of man and God. He arrives at the conclusion that man arrives at a self-knowledge and the knowledge of God, to the extent that he makes use of practical, liturgical, and rational concepts and forms embedded in Philosophy, theology, and visual art.
Designed to be primarily a scholarly treatment of Gods evidences into personal, communal nature of man, and the meaning of his life-work, this book is also a critical treatment of secularism and its attendants: liberalism, relativism and positivism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Oct 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477279670

Reverend Paul Engoulou Nsong

Rev. Paul ENGOULOU NSONG, S.T.D., is a priest of the Archdiocese of Yaounde, Cameroon/ West Africa, obtained his Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy and in Theology from the Catholic University of Central Africa. He went on to pursue further theological studies in Chicago and received his master and doctorate from the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, Mundelein, Illinois, USA. Rev. Engoulou served pastorally in the Archdiocese of Yaounde and Chicago – in Chicago, he was resident and presider at Saint Cecilia Catholic Church, Mount Prospect, Illinois – in Yaounde, he is Pastor and Professor of Systematic Theology.

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TRANSFORMING

OUR HUMAN FORMS

INTO CHRIST’S

SKU-000590418_TEXT.pdf

The Theomorphic Anthropology of Aidan Nichols

REVEREND PAUL ENGOULOU NSONG

SKU-000590418_TEXT.pdf

Imprimatur

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

Archbishop of Chicago

Nihil Obstat

Rev. Emery A. de Gaál

Rev. Edward T. Oakes, S.J.

censores deputati

[Permission to publish is an official declaration of ecclesiastical authority that the material is free from doctrinal and moral error in accord with Canon 823. No legal responsibility is assumed by the grant of this permission.]

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© 2012 by Reverend Paul Engoulou Nsong. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 10/17/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7968-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7966-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4772-7967-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012919125

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Contents

PREFACE

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE General Considerations

CHAPTER ONE About the Theologian

1.1 The Anglican Background

1.2 The Conversion to Catholicism

1.3 The Priesthood and Ministerial Works

1.4 The Academic Work and the Theological Developments

CHAPTER TWO The Theological Method of Aidan Nichols

2. 1 The Historical Theologian

2.2 Aidan Nichols’s Use of Analogies

2.2.1 The Analogy of Being

2.2.1. The Transcendentals at the Service of Analogy of Being

2.2.2 The Analogy of Beauty

PART TWO The Intellectual Background of Aidan Nichols’s Anthropology

CHAPTER ONE Aidan Nichols and Thomism

1.1 Thomas Aquinas

1.1.1 The Philosophy of Being

1.1.2 The Doctrine of Image

1.1.3 The Case for Theomorphic Anthropology

1.1.4 Thomistic Influences on Nichols’s Anthropology

1.2 Gilbert Keith Chesterton

1.3 Matthias Joseph Scheeben

1.3.1 A Revival of Neo-Scholasticism

1.3.2 Scheeben’s Supernatural Anthropology

CHAPTER TWO Aidan Nichols and Ressourcement

2.1 Hans Urs von Balthasar

2.1.1 The Predicates of Balthasar’s Theomorphic Anthropology

2.1.2 Balthasar on the Divine Image in Man

2.1.3 The Embodiment of Divine Fullness: Jesus Christ

2.1.3 Balthasarian Influences on Aidan Nichols’s Theomorphic Anthropology

2.2 Joseph Ratzinger

2.2.1 The Ratzingerian Predicates to Nichols’s Theomorphic Anthropology

2.2.2 The Liturgical Assessment of the Imago Dei

2.2.3 Elements of Influence on Aidan Nichols’s Anthropology

2.3 Yves Congar

CHAPTER THREE Aidan Nichols and Eastern Orthodoxy

3.1 Maximus the Confessor

3.2 Sergei Bulgakov

3.3 Nikolai Afanas’ev

PART THREE The Exploration of Aidan Nichols’s Anthropology

CHAPTER ONE Man, the Cultural Animal

1.1 Man: the Laborer or Worker

1.2 Man: the Artist

1.3 The Theomorphic Anthropology of Israel

1.3.1 Man as Icon of God in the Temple of the World

1.3.2 The God-shaped Anthropology of Israel

1.3.3 The Prophetical Theomorphic Anthropology

1.4 Natural Theology within the Context of Theomorphic Anthropology

1.5 Christ, the Image of God

CHAPTER TWO Man, the Liturgical Animal

2.1 Liturgical Horizontalism

2.2 The Recovery of the Vertical Dimension or the Sense of Transcendence

2.3 The Social Meaning of Liturgy

CHAPTER THREE Man, the Rational Animal

3.1 The Philosophical Issue in Theology: Against ‘pure reason’ or ‘absolute reason’

3. 2 The Revival of Thomas Aquinas’s Ontology of Participation

3.3 The Connectiveness of Morality and Metaphysics

3.4 The Furtherance of Supernatural and Natural Values in Christian Anthropology

Conclusion

Bibliography

ENDNOTES

PREFACE

The faith that Christianity developed in Western Europe is in jeopardy as the West witnesses the rise of all kinds of anthropological and philosophical ideologies about the human person. This philosophical and anthropological crisis, because of its negative effects on the Christian dynamism of salvation and doctrine, threatens the relevance of the Christian assumptions about the supernatural end of the human person and the importance of transcendent and religious values. In response to this crisis, theologians and philosophers of the East and West have worked out treatises and presented arguments that have never been singled out as systematically as it is in Aidan Nichols’s anthropology. On account of this achievement, we find it beneficial to investigate the intellectual achievements of the Dominican theologian, one of the most prolific theological writers in the English language. It is his conviction that, to overcome this modern anthropological crisis, modernity and postmodernity are in need of a Christian humanism that draws its inspiration from the biblical and intellectual heritage of both the Western and Eastern churches. So, he proposes a theomorphic anthropology; a version of anthropology that conveys the idea that God can appear in the form of a human and can be made known through His natural creation by both conceptual and practical reasoning. His anthropology also warns against a version of Christianity too influenced by subjective epistemologies of self-esteem. In contrast, he advocates an anthropology that is based on an effective witness of the forms, within which Jesus Christ is the perfect form. Though the main purpose of this dissertation is to present the contributions of the historical theologian Aidan Nichols to Christian anthropology, it seeks to outline the long history of God’s search for man and the difficulty man experiences in keeping himself aware of the divine image in which he was created. Finally, it seeks to construct a modern Christian humanism that exhibits a way for men and women of faith today to meet the challenges of secular humanism and of ideologies such as liberalism, existentialism and relativism.

To my Parents

Paul Bernardin Engoulou and Ngo Bikele Catherine

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CCC:   Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997.

DH:   Denzinger Hünermann, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, 40th ed., Freiburg Brisgoviae: Herder, 2005.

GS:   Gaudium et Spes (Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World)

LG:   Lumen Gentium (Dogmatic Constitution on the Church)

SC:   Sacrosanctum Concilium (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy)

UR:   Unitatis Redintegratio (Decree on Ecumenism)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A joyful and pleasant thing it is to be thankful. (Ps. 147: 16)

I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. (Eph. 1:16)

The writer wishes to express his deep appreciation and gratitude to His Excellency, the Most Reverend Victor Tonyé Bakot; Archbishop of Yaoundé and to His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, for the opportunity of graduate study in theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

He wishes here to express his heartfelt gratitude to Monsignor Dennis Lyle, Rector and President and to the Faculty members of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary, especially to Father Emery de Gaál for his untiring interest and careful supervision of this work and to Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J., both for the careful reading of the manuscript and their valuable suggestions.

Words of gratitude are also due to Father Mike Olivero, the staff and the Catholic community of Saint Cecilia Church in Mt. Prospect/IL, USA, to Patricia Hackett, Joan Metzger, Sister Mary Michelle Hackett, Mary Alfus, Patricia Meschler, Michael Nicholas, Steve Scheifers, Eveline Madem, Francis Zender, Jill Wosineski, Edith Pena and Zayda Rivera, who through their generosity have made this work possible.

And, but not least, he is also indebted to his parents Paul and Catherine Engoulou and the Engoulou, Bikele and Mba families, particularly Judith Egolo Mmamba, Assomo Engoulou Elisabeth Jutta, and friends especially His Excellency, the Most Reverend Joseph Befe Ateba, Bishop of Kribi.

INTRODUCTION

The Concept of form is, I venture, flexible enough to allow of multiple transpositions: it may refer to a substance or to the relations integral to that substance, or to its concrete condition, or to the nature of its ideal fulfillment.¹

Humanity’s creative capacity for defining the meaning of being human has never been more unsettled than in our day as it witnesses worldwide the production of numerous ideologies on man’s nature, his conditioning in the world and his destiny. Also, never before as now have discourses on man been infused with existential, humanist, determinist and material considerations and with preoccupations that have failed to render adequately the presupposition found in traditional ontology and metaphysics, namely a single and unitary doctrine of man. Historically, this inability to adhere to a single and unitary vision of man is caused most importantly by ideas first formulated in the Enlightenment period in the eighteenth century when the scientific method, democratic theories of politics, and reflections on the Rights of Man began to receive their clearest articulation both in thought and in action during the French and the American Revolutions.²

From that period onward, humanity has witnessed many anthropological revolutions in the fields of biology, culture, economics, politics, society, environment and religion. At the beginning, these various scientific, social, and religious revolutions were welcomed, since they aimed at deciphering the enigma of man. As time continued, however suspicions, rejections, observations and questions were raised against the methods and achievements of these revolutions with regard to their profound and unsettling anthropological ramifications.

For example, in the area of theological and religious anthropology, the results speak for themselves as there is paradoxically a deepening of the anthropological crisis and a radicalization of the dichotomies of nature and supernature, body and soul, matter and spirit. Also, humanity assists in an unnatural emphasis placed on the bipolarization of human sexuality in male and female; a functional fragmentation of body, soul, mind, will and spirit; the downplaying of the reality of sin and grace; a particularization and separation of the human origin from the rest of creation; and an immanentization of humankind’s destiny.³

To make the matters more difficult, the Catholic Magisterium, which like everyone else embraced with optimism the advances made by these biological, behavioral and sociological sciences, nevertheless refuses to give up its claims of superior plausibility. On the one hand, the Second Vatican Council encourages theologians to appropriate these secular findings by declaring:

Appropriate use must be made not only of theological principles, but also of the findings of the secular sciences, especially psychology and sociology . . . Advances in biology, psychology, and social sciences not only lead man to greater self-awareness, but provide him with the technical means of molding lives of whole peoples as well.⁴

On the other hand, because of certain threads running through these secular anthropologies that oppose Christian achievements and values, the Magisterium provides direct sanctions against them. The same Council declares:

There is no doubt that modern scientific and technical progress can lead to a certain phenomenism and agnosticism, this happens when scientific methods of investigation, which of themselselves are incapable of penetrating to the deepest nature of things, are unjustifiably taken as the supreme norm for arriving at truth. There is a further danger that in his excessive confidence in modern inventions man may think he is sufficient unto himself and give up the search for higher values.⁵

The problem is that the primary trust that the Second Vatican Council put in modern scientific and technical progress is fading as these revolutions lead modern man to a certain phenomenism (confidence and belief in perceptible realities) and agnosticism.⁶

With the achievements of these modern inventions, humanity assists in the surge of a secular world based on human self-sufficient values that reject Christian ethics, humanism and revelation. Surprisingly, as valuable as the insights of sciences—such as biology, sociology, psychology, history, and cultural anthropology—are to undertake the unraveling enigma of man, they do not provide satisfactory answers to the existential questions of humanity. On account of their results and undertakings, a humanocentric or naturalist anthropology versus theocentric anthropology is on the rise. We live now in a secular world that totally denigrates the goodness and sacramentality of creation and forgets that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God.

The inability of these modern sciences to formulate an integral vision of man that takes into account both human learning and divine revelation into one program of life comes from the fact that they ignore the theological implications of the concept of God’s image. These disciplines study man, each from its own special point of view, while ignoring the light of Christ and the Bible. They are more concerned with particulars, subjective descriptions and analyses of human life, and faculties than with articulating and formulating a total vision of humanity that rings true to human experience and, simultaneously is faithful to, and reflective of, the gospel revelation.

Moreover, these same disciplines give priority to existentialist and determinist questions over the biblical and experiential comprehension of humanity. There is nothing wrong in acknowledging our creation as biologically and socially complex. What is objectionable is the failure of these sciences to recognize that the whole human person is affected by the broken relationship with God that sin causes and needs to be restablished in the divine relationship by objective and subjective forms that the Creator has communicated to him.

Christian voices from both the East and the West propose comprehensive views of approaching these objective and subjective forms of the divine. These views could help overcome the current anthropological crisis and solve the problems affecting secular anthropologies. This overall sympathetic reading of classical anthropology in both the Western Catholic and Eastern traditions of Christianity presents contributions that may be different in formulations but remain almost identical in their contents.⁷ In the West, this reading mainly focuses on exploring resources and conceptual notions of human nature and on exploring concepts such as body, spirit, and soul. It addresses issues and limitations pertaining equally to human fragility and destiny such as sin, fall, election and predestination. Also, it investigates human conditioning in society such as the State, Church and family. Though one cannot doubt the originality and the contributions that bring these classical readings in the field of anthropology, they remain features of on abstract anthropology since they deal with the human subject mostly at the level of concepts.

In the East, there is another approach, one which is more aesthetical and liturgical than conceptual, the so-called the theology or anthropology of the form. Undoubtely that is the approach that Nichols’s anthropology follows. The witness of Aidan Nichols in anthropology, the subject of this work, bears traces of the Western conceptual anthropological features. Nichols’s version of anthropology, which he calls theomorphic, goes beyond simple conceptual data. His theomorphic anthropology points ultimately to the human vocation to be the actualized images of the Holy Spirit as the human spirit uses practical reason and creativity in arts, in agriculture and in cultures. His account of anthropology is more nourished by the image-form than the image-idea or concept pattern. It concedes special attention to prophets, kings, wise men and women of the Bible as engraced instruments to communicate and express God’s image. His version of anthropology is more biblical than philosophical in content and formulation because it primarily points, relates and gives priviledge to the biblical witness in both Testaments, among which the form of Jesus Christ in the New Testament stands as the fulfillment of the Old.⁸ Also, Nichols’s version of anthropology draws its inspiration and richness from the elements and techniques of the theology of art, aesthetics, and images in the Christian narrative and traditions of both the East and West Churches.

On account of such inspiration and appropriation, some critics of Nichols’s anthropology might consider it a mere compilation, without much originality and without an internal consistency. The first aim of this book is to disprove that view by showing its internal consistency. It is to show that as a historical thinker and writer, Nichols is also a systematic writer and thinker in anthropology. On the one hand, though his systematic presentation of anthropology does not seem to be ordered, his writings are forceful in forecasting and articulating the creative insights of the theologians and writers who have shaped and not damaged the Tradition.⁹ He makes use of these past witnesses in order to engage a conversation with today’s man. The use of valuable resources of the past brings an enormous value and importance to his theology as an expression of the historicity of the gospel story.¹⁰

On the other hand, even if for some Nichols’s failure to write systematically is an issue, his corpus of anthropology should not be treated merely as a source to draw from, but as a foundational framework and guiding force of rapprochement between Thomism and Ressourcement, Eastern and Western Christianities, notably the Orthodox and Catholic Churches. His version of anthropology, because it highlights the common elements with regard to the doctrine of man in the patrimony of the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, is an important contribution to the dialogue of charity that is wished for by the Second Vatican Council in its promotion of the ecumenical movement.¹¹

Secondly, besides Nichols’s intention to bring together the eastern and western anthropologies, this book also aims at outlining Nichols’s interest in overcoming the disease of the West’s rational theology which we will call here the theoretical concept of revelation.¹² He says:

Sometimes, indeed, the impression has been given in modern theology that exploration of the tradition of meaning in the Christian Church’s life and the relating of that tradition to secular experience may not begin at all until we have put down our pens at the close of a treatise on revelation . . . . Salvation in itself, God’s gracious healing and exaltation of humanity to share in his own life is no more a way of thinking and knowing than is love or lexicography.13

He continues in the same line when he says:

If our Catholicism has become at once too wordy and too fixated on ‘structures’, then the therapy it needs is to turn from problems to presence, for in any case, it is only by virtue of the saving presences, and their pressure on our minds and hearts, that problems in this context can be solved at all.¹⁴

The purpose of this book is to support Nichols’s sustaining vision of the value, coherence and distinctiveness of the reality of the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the face of man-made messianisms.¹⁵ Usually understood in its dogmatic affirmation as a reflection on the reality of God-man, the reality of the incarnation has lost its persuasive force because of the rise of the man-made or anthropological messianisms in modern society. Nichols says: The incarnation raises the Old Testament aesthetic ontology of man’s image of God to a new intensity. The Word Incarnate serves as a visual language for God as an incomparable power to that of the prophets [ancients or moderns].¹⁶

As a contemporary historian and theologian who devotes most of his writings to promoting or making known the great theologians of the past, such as Thomas Aquinas, Matthias Scheeben, Maximus the Confessor and the twentieth-century theologians such as Joseph Ratzinger, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, Nikolai Afanas’ev, and Sergei Bulgakov, Nichols in his theomorphic anthropology wants to engage pre-modernity, modernity, and postmodernity in order to irradiate the richness and the depth of both traditions and to offer the light for the next generations of Christians and theologians. His Catholic sensibility, his capacity to bridge a surprising range of schools of thought, as well as theological topics and his integration or association of revelation with anthropology are invaluable recipes to challenge the current state of secularism and Christian self-secularization in modern Europe.

We assume in this book that, on the basis of these evidences found in Nichols’s vast and multifaceted theological activities, there is a possibility and probability that his response to the western anthropological crisis could be framed in a more coherent schema. Our aim is to show that Nichols writes his grand theological mosaic as a historical theologian with a systematical mind. On that account, he can be used as the theological witness or paradigm from which we engage the recovery of an orthodox Christian anthropology.

Preparing to provide this overall presentation of Nichols’s theomorphic anthropology several questions arise: How does Nichols’s human person manifest the image and likeness of God? What are the theological contents of his theomorphic anthropology? Is Nichols’s historical reading in anthropology the best guide to the biblical and historical ideas of humanity at our disposal? What are the reasons and the relevance of insisting on a theomorphic anthropology? Is his appropriation of Western and Eastern theologians faithful?

To respond to these various questions, we divided the book into four parts. Each part is divided into respective chapters in which the major idea of the part is discussed. The first part falls under the heading of general considerations. It prepares and introduces the reader to see that from his earliest social, religious and theological writings onward, Nichols was always interested in the aesthetics; an interest that is hidden in his theological composition from 1980 until today.

Part two proceeds with the investigation of the intellectual background of Nichols’s anthropology. Part three intergrates these influences in Nichols’s own anthropology. Nichols is a scholar of international repute, particularly celebrated as an authority of the theology of these ancient and modern Catholic and Orthodox minds: Thomas Aquinas, Maximus the Confessor, Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Yves Congar, Joseph Ratzinger, Sergei Bulgakov, and Nikolai Afanas’ev. As authoritative voice of their theologies, Nichols also draws in certain strands of their theologies with which he is sympathetic. So, it happens with their theomorphic anthropologies.

Rather than a chronological presentation of the theology of forms of these theologians, this book according to its theme is a systematic and historical assessment of their revelatory features that aims at showing an internal consistency in the writings of Nichols. To this effect, we run a correspondence between the parts dealing with influences and contributions as such: Thomism/Rationality, Ressourcement/Culture, and Eastern Orthodoxy/Liturgy.

As far as the couplet Thomism and Rationality is concerned, it exhibits a deep sensibility by Nichols for the foundational significance of Thomism as encapsulated in Thomas Aquinas (Philosophy and Anthropology), in Gilbert Keith Chesterton (Metaphysical realism as the commonality of social life), and in Joseph Matthias Scheeben (Lyrical Scholasticism: marriage between Scholasticism’s system and Romanticism’s preference for lyricism).¹⁷ Our treatment of Nichols’s association with Thomism is a careful reading of Thomism that takes into account the full scope of public, private, and experiential dimensions of life. Nichols is influenced by both rationality and visual arts characterized by an emphasis on emotion and experience. Nichols reports that his encounter with Thomistic rationalism opens him to the possibility of metaphysical and religious knowledge.¹⁸ Nevertheless, he shows his distate for fundamental Thomism, that of the strict observance.

As far as the couplet Ressourcement and Culture is, there is a correlation between a cultural form and the divine form. First of all, since man is essentially a culture-producing being and can create God in his own image, any talk about divine form must involve a cultural dimension. Secondly, since cult and culture are from the same root, colere in Latin—to till the earth—to develop, the phenomenon of culture points to clearly defined perceptions of deity in the world.¹⁹ Using significant representatives of Ressourcement (Balthasar,