Resources on the Catholic, Jesuit Tradition

Ultimate Questions / Resources on Catholic, Jesuit Tradition / Faculty Reflections

1. What are distinctives of a Catholic approach to theology/philosophy?

Grant Kaplan (Professor, Theological Studies)

To my mind there are three distinctive features of a Catholic approach to theology and philosophy:

1.   As declared in several ecumenical councils, truths cannot contradict; what is true in philosophy cannot be false in theology, and vice versa. The same principle is extended to science and theology. The earth cannot be round to science and flat to religion. Evolution cannot be true in the bible and false in Sunday school, or theology class. This principle may be so obvious as to sound like common sense, but it is in fact under assault, both from certain secular camps, and certain religious camps. As an instructor of introductory courses, I try to encourage readings and conversations that show how what Bernard Lonergan, S.J. calls “the pure and unrestricted desire to know” animates the greatest thinkers in the Catholic theological tradition—Augustine, Anselm, etc.

2.  The faith is incarnational. Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. Belief in the Incarnation in many ways can be understood as extending the Jewish notion in Genesis 1 that God made humanity in God’s image and likeness. Image and likeness were later translated into the faculties of intellect and will, meaning that when we use our reason in the most optimal way, we become more God-like, and when we use our will to love, the same occurs. By becoming human, i.e., by the divine taking on human form, one could also apply the corresponding principle: whatever humanizes divinizes. If being human means being more than “an ape with rosy cheeks,” then whatever manifests the depth of our humanity (in the good sense of depth), tells us something about God. This makes it entirely appropriate to use memoir, fiction, poetry, music, film, social science, natural science, visual art, and other human media that lie outside the discipline of theology and philosophy.

3.  The faith is traditional, in the verbal sense of the word, as tradere—to hand down. It is not presentist. The best answers to our questions likely come from a generation different from our own. One can certainly use present authors, but if one presents no authors or texts from past centuries, one is likely falling into the sin of presentism. Catholic philosophy and theology do not merely present a set of theses or conclusions; they also self-consciously partake in living, trans-generational conversations. ¾ of the readings in my class this semester come from authors who have been dead for at least 700 years. I can’t think of a better way of showing the relevance of Catholic theology.

2. What are distinctives of a Catholic approach to theology?

Elizabeth Block (Associate Professor, Theological Studies)

Recently, I have opted to begin all of my Theology courses (and for me, these are primarily Christian Ethics courses) with this passage from Cardinal Avery Dulles’ The Craft of Theology, which captures for me what it means to do the work of theology:

The questions confronting the present-day theologian arise from apparent gaps or contradictions in the normative sources, or from the deficiencies perceived in the past theological syntheses, or from objections arising out of contemporary experience or knowledge. Theology, then, can never be static. It must deal with new questions put to the Church by the course of events and by the circumstances of life in the world. Continual creativity is needed to implant the faith in new cultures and to keep the teaching of the Church abreast of the growth of secular knowledge. New questions demand new answers, but the answers of theology must always grow out of the Church’s heritage of faith.

Theology begins with wonder and with unanswered questions.

The first chapter of Dulles’ book, the above passage included, strikes an important balance between creativity and tradition, constructive innovations and loyalty to the church’s heritage, the revitalization of the church with new ideas and continuity. Doing Catholic theology requires a constant negotiation between these poles, a willingness to engage the tradition but also bringing new information, questions, and experiences to bear on that living, evolving tradition. Defining “tradition” is beyond the scope of this short essay, but it is wider than just a set of credal propositions; it is a living relationship with members of a faith community in the present, engaged with the past from which we have come and the future into which we are moving.

Doing Catholic theology means wrestling with uniquely Catholic beliefs—in the magisterium, in the real presence in the Eucharist, in the importance of liturgy and sacrament, in the paradigmatic lives of the saints—but also engagement with the broader Christian tradition and other traditions. It requires being attentive to revelation in new and unexpected places. It necessitates a humility on the part of the theologian, recognizing that we come to the truths of the faith slowly and with difficulty.

3. What distinctives do I want to convey in a CORE 1600 Ultimate Questions: Theology course at Saint Louis University?

Dan Finucane (Associate Professor, Theological Studies)

In this introductory, core course, I hope to invite and challenge students to engage the Jesuit, Catholic mission of Saint Louis University.  That mission’s goal of “the pursuit of truth for the greater glory of God and for the service of humanity” is an invitation to students from all faith traditions and no religious commitments to join in examining our university as a vital resource for scholarship, cooperation, and service.

This course offers key themes and resources that encourage each student to develop their own worldview and potential as a leader.  Methodologically, I see this task as inherently interdisciplinary in its sources and impact. 

Students who arrive in our classes have chosen to study at SLU.  Have they chosen to see their work rooted theologically?  Our task is to raise that question and the other foundational questions that flow from it.  Our “God Talk” course engages theological issues through a method of examining stories.  It “centers around the genre of historical and autobiographical narrative as a way of getting at the ultimate questions at the heart of theology and religion.”  We hope to challenge and inform students, inviting each student’s reflection on their own story as it unfolds in view of real challenges.

Early in the course I address the plurality of perspectives that will enrich our class’s approach.  Typically, different religious backgrounds are represented in the room, as well as the varying levels of engagement and commitment of individuals to traditions they may be familiar with and/or been raised in or explored on their own.  In this context support for honest questioning is vital.

I often encounter students who are concerned that they are taking a theology course among fellow students who already have a strong background and formal education in the field, “who know all this stuff.”  My advice is, “treat this like a course” (study just as you would for a course in history or literature).  I tell them that many others with such worries about a lack of background have done well.

Other students may wonder, because they have had a lot of theology before arriving here, that the material will just repeat what they have brought with them, that they will not find anything new.   I assure them that there will be new resources and perspectives at a university level that will probe even familiar questions in a deeper, sophisticated way. 

With all students, I challenge them to take up issues that people from a wide range of perspectives and contexts have wrestled with throughout human history – questions that human beings can spend their entire lives engaging, always finding more to probe and understand.

At the start of the course, to lay foundations for content and resources, I invite them to be consider the night of wrestling described in Genesis 32, as a paradigm for doing theology.  Like Jacob, we may stretch to find a grip on who and what we face.  We may limp afterwards.  We may be blessed through the experience.

4. A Few Thoughts on the Distinctiveness of a Catholic Approach

Randy Rosenberg (Associate Professor, Theological Studies; Dean, Philosophy & Letters)

A Catholic approach privileges the use of analogy to speak meaningfully about God without reducing God to the human. Analogy expresses a kind of similarity-in-difference. As the Fourth Lateran Council expressed: within every similarity there is an ever-greater dissimilarity. Mindful of the goodness of the created order, analogical thinking emphasizes creaturely participation in meaning, truth, goodness, and love, which is the very meaning, truth, goodness, and love of the One who created the universe. Though it privileges the goodness of the human quest, a constitutive dimension of analogical thinking is also that of dissimilarity or negation. Hence, God is good, but not in the same way that creatures are good. God is the source of goodness, but to regard God as just another good in the great chain of goods would be to lose the ineffable core of the mystery of God.  The moment of dissimilarity – the negative dialectic within the analogy – preserves the radical mystery of God.

A Catholic approach is integrative. It espouses the interrelation of Trinity - Incarnation - Church - Sacrament - World. The radical mystery referred to above is, in the Catholic tradition, the Triune Mystery of Father, Son, and Spirit. The Eternal Word of the Son becomes incarnate in Jesus. The Church then embodies the missions of the Son and the Spirit in history – expressed in a privileged way through its sacramental life. But the seeds of Divine Wisdom have been sown throughout the world from the beginning, so Christians should also expect to find the truth, goodness, and beauty of God outside of the visible boundaries of the Church, which opens up deep ecumenical and interreligious possibilities.

In light of this theological framework, a Catholic approach offers a distinctive vision of integral humanism and integral ecology for reflection on the meaning of human flourishing in a personal, social, cultural, and cosmic context. The most recent document illustrative of this vision is Pope Francis’ Laudato Si – an encyclical emphasizing that “everything is interrelated” (120). Integral humanism summons us to “solidarity” and a “preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters” (158).

5. In what ways can distinctives of Ignatian spirituality be incorporated into undergraduate classes in theology and philosophy?

S. Jessica Kerber, aci (Faculty, Ignatian Service Minor)

I consider teaching undergraduate theology to be one of the greatest pastoral possibilities, not because I get to speak about God to students, but because we enter together into some of the deeper questions and explore the possibilities offered by a theological perspective. Ignatian pedagogy helps us not just to teach theology, but to do theology with our students.

When I introduce Ignatian Spirituality in order to give my class a sense of why every student, despite their religious backgrounds, is asked to take a theology course and how they should expect all of their courses at this Jesuit University to consider the reality of our world and the implication of our lives in it, I do not first offer them an image of Jesus Christ or St. Ignatius, but rather a time-lapsed image of a dancer. Ignatian Spirituality is about movement (interior movements that are caused by developments in a relationship…something all of our students can relate to, even if they have not experienced it in prayer). They need to learn how to listen within and to access that interior world if they are going to do theology. I find that before engaging in theological reflection, they first need to experience that they are capable of listening to their own life. (When asked to spend 30 minutes unplugged and by themselves and to write about the experience, many express their tremendous struggle, and that it is the first time they have ever done so!)

Once they know that they can indeed listen within, then we can teach them how to reflect theologically upon their own experience. 

Experience is at the heart of Ignatian Pedagogy. It is experience that makes us re-examine previously held ideas, experience that raises questions. In undergraduate theology, our students will not be awed by the doctrine of the incarnation, but they are awed as we dig into the question of what it means to be human based on their own experience, followed by some readings about theological anthropology that strike a chord and help them to further name their own experience. Then we can talk about the illogical logic of love of the Incarnation, that an Infinite God would become a limited, vulnerable human being, human like we are human.

In the Ignatian tradition, such a reflection will have social, relational, or even vocational consequences. It is not the end goal, but part of the pedagogical cycle as we learn to live well. For example, one student reflected upon a relationship throughout the whole semester, and I think learned something about what it means to love. Another understood why they felt the desire to change majors due to the experiences that meant the most to them through their university years. Our students do not enter an obligatory theology course thinking that they could gain some direction for their life. Yet hopefully they are surprised.

Doing theology, as Bishop Tagle says, is risky business. Using Ignatian Pedagogy gives us and our students a framework for taking that risk.

6. In what ways can distinctives of Ignatian spirituality be incorporated into undergraduate classes in philosophy? 

John W. Peck, SJ (Assistant Professor, Philosophy)

PHIL 1700: The Examined Life asks students to “[e]xamine their actions and vocations in dialogue with the Catholic, Jesuit tradition” (SLO 1). The actions human beings take and the life paths we choose are explicable partly in terms of our emotions. As Aristotle says, “To feel delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions” (EN 1105a7).  

Attention to emotions is a hallmark of Ignatian spirituality. During St. Ignatius’s convalescence after Pamplona, he allowed his mind to wander. Although sometimes he dreamt of the exploits of Amadís de Gaula, at other times thoughts of imitating Francis and Dominic captivated him. Whereas daydreams of the former sort left him sad, the those of the latter imparted lasting joy. In hindsight, Ignatius saw that he was able to grasp the difference because God had begun to teach him the art of discerning spirits.

St. Ignatius ascribes to a sacramental worldview according to which God saves human beings by means of creatures. Ignatius was convinced that, as parts of creation, emotions can serve as instruments whereby God directs human beings to salvation. According to Ignatius, the crucial question about a particular emotion is not “Is it pleasant or unpleasant?” but “Does it point the way to a more abundant life in God?” If, having given quarter to a certain emotion, I perceive myself growing in faith, more eager to serve the poor, or more sorrowful for sin, the Holy Spirit likely stirred that emotion in me. In contrast, if an emotion abandons me to self-obsession or discouragement, “the enemy of our human nature” probably conjured it. I ought to examine why I was vulnerable to the enemy’s sway and ask God for strength not to entertain such emotions when I’m next in a similar spot.

How may PHIL 1700 help students foster an Ignatian habit of discernment about their emotional lives? A few of the course’s required texts distinguish among emotions based on where they lead. For example, in Republic III Socrates claims that the emotions music elicits forge character. A child raised on a steady of diet of music in the mixed Lydian mode, i.e., “the wailing mode,” will be disposed to excessive fear. As a result, in the event a powerful army threatens the Kallipolis, he will be more likely to surrender the city than to fight. In contrast, a person raised on music in the Dorian mode is “courageous in warlike deeds and every violent work, and who in failure or when going to face wounds or death or falling into some other disaster, in the face of all these things stands up firmly and patiently against chance” (399b). Although students are initially skeptical about claims that music’s emotional power shapes character, and thus behavior, it’s not hard to convince them Plato is on to something. I then invite them to think about the emotions that other cultural forces, e.g., social media, stir in them and how those emotions impinge on their flourishing.

Reading Book II of Nicomachean Ethics, students consider Aristotle’s claim that emotions (pathē) are feelings accompanied by pleasure or pain (1105b25). Insofar as virtue concerns emotions, it is characteristic of virtue “to feel [pleasure and pain] at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right aim, and in the right way…” (1106b22-34). What is the criterion of “right,” however? For Aristotle, the better question is “Who is the criterion?” for to feel pleasure and pain at the right times, with reference to the right objects, etc., is just to feel as the phronimos feels. In connection with EN II, one might ask each student to identify an ethical exemplar in her life and create an emotional profile of the exemplar. Such a profile would include answers to questions like the following: What saddens your phronimos? At what does she rejoice? Does she ever hide his emotions? Whom does he most respect? How does he channel his anger?

Aristotle’s analysis of akrasia (EN VII) may also help students distinguish emotions that aid their flourishing from those that hinder it. Although the akratic person grasps ethical principles, vicious pathē thwart him from applying them here and now. (E.g., a student knows that excessive drinking leads to stupidity tonight and self-loathing tomorrow, but spirits at tonight’s party are high…) In connection with EN VII, one may ask students to pen an essay prompted by a question like this: “Suppose a friend confides that his emotions are at war with moral principles to which he is committed. How would you advise him to achieve an integrated life?”

Finally, if one wanted to discern emotions with the help of a Catholic thinker, then Augustine’s description of his divided will in Confessions VIII provides abundant material.