Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange OP (1877-1964) was a French Dominican priest and a leading Catholic theologian during the first half of the twentieth-century. Though not particularly devout during his youth, he had a conversion during his studies to become a doctor and entered the Order of Preachers. During his early years as a priest and professor he witnessed the anti-clerical laws in France and the modernist crisis within the Catholic Church. His superiors assigned him to teach at the Dominican house of studies in Le Saulchoir, Belgium, and then at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Committed to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and the neo-scholastic method, he wrote extensively on a wide range of theological subjects and was known for his trenchant opposition to modernism and certain aspects of the so-called nouvelle théologie. Perhaps he is best remembered, however, for his widely read writings on the spiritual life. In them, he combined the teachings and guidance of St. Thomas Aquinas with those of St. John of the Cross. St. John Paul II was one of his students and he has continued to marshal admirers, such as the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre.
In this interview, Matthew Minerd discusses Garrigou-Lagrange and recommends some of his writings.
Matthew Minerd is a Ruthenian Catholic, husband, father, and a professor of philosophy and moral theology at Ss. Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary in Pittsburgh, PA. His academic work has appeared in the journals Nova et Vetera, The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, Saint Anselm Journal, Lex Naturalis, Downside Review, The Review of Metaphysics, and Maritain Studies, as well as in volumes published by the American Maritain Association through the Catholic University of America Press. He has served as author, translator, and/or editor for volumes published by The Catholic University of America Press, Emmaus Academic, Cluny Media, and Ascension Press. He has published academic articles and book chapters related to Maritain and is the Secretary of the American Maritain Association. For more information on his work, visit matthewminerd.com
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What were the main events in the life of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange? He lived from 1877 to 1964 and so straddles the period between Vatican I and Vatican II.
He went through his training in a Dominican studium around the turn of the century and obtained his lectorate there. Then, he studied at the Sorbonne for several years.
He was at the Sorbonne at the same time as Jacques Maritain. He recalled how this young follower of the vitalist philosopher, Henri Bergson, talked about Bergson. He thought that Maritain, with this big shock of hair, was a Slav.
Due to the exigencies of priestly life, he did not complete a degree at the Sorbonne. He was called to teach philosophy at the Dominican house of studies in Le Saulchoir. Within a year-and-a-half, there was a staffing issue, and he had to switch over and fill the position as professor of dogmatic theology.
During that time, he wrote several texts. This coincided with the modernist crisis and the aftermath of the encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis. These texts put him on the radar of the Master General, who transferred him to Rome to teach at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum). He remained there for almost fifty years.
In his teaching, he would often read Billuart, one of the later commentators, and then explicate the text of Thomas, article by article.
He taught a course on fundamental theology, especially on Revelation, and a famous course on spiritual theology. The latter was very well attended, with the main hall of the Angelicum full, even during the 1950s, when he was an old man. He also taught a philosophy class on metaphysics. By all accounts, he was well-received as a lecturer.
He was involved in the controversies that followed immediately after the modernist crisis. He was a consultor for the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office (now the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith) and Congregation for Rites. He was involved as a consultor, for example, in the naming of St. John of the Cross a doctor of the Church. Then, during the 1940s, he was involved in the so-called nouvelle théologie crisis, a controversy over the nature of theological method.
He also directed a host of dissertations. Each year, he would direct four or five licentiate or doctoral theses, although these were shorter back then than they are now.
In the early 60s, his faculties began to decline. Apparently, he was aware of this happening and, by all accounts, accepted it in a very holy manner.
" His Thomism did not aim to situate Aquinas historically, to understand the context of his thought, but to engage new questions that have arisen since the thirteenth-century."
You have translated several of Garrigou-Lagrange’s works and collections of his articles. What drew you to this passion project? It happened by accident. My dissertation director, Timothy Noone, whom I hold in great veneration, did not always answer emails quickly. I had sent him two chapters of my dissertation and, while waiting for a response, started to read Garrigou-Lagrange’s Le sens du mystère et le clair-obsur intellectuel (English edition). It struck me deeply.
I had been influenced by Maritain and was aware that the two had been very close to each other. Even amid their significant differences over politics, Maritain retained a veneration for Garrigou-Lagrange. However, I had never realized how indebted Maritain was to him. Even Yves Simon and my own quasi-teacher, John Deely, were indebted to that line of Thomism. Moreover, the spirit of the book did not quite match what I heard about Garrigou-Lagrange as a rigid, retrograde conservative who taught in Rome and was always on the hunt for heresy.
I became interested in him and started to translate the book. The other translations have followed from that decision, which occurred by accident.
Over the last couple of decades two Dominicans have written intellectual biographies of Garrigou-Lagrange. One is Richard Peddicord’s The Sacred Monster of Thomism. The other is Aidan Nichols’s Reason with Piety: Garrigou-Lagrange in the Service of Catholic Thought. Are these good studies of his life and thought? Overall, they are good introductions, though there are always things missing in any introduction.
A full biography is still to be written. Maybe the dust with some of the controversies he got involved in in the 1940s needs to settle. The bad feeling toward him is finally dissipating.
Peddicord gives a general overview of how Garrigou-Lagrange became a Dominican, the influence of his teacher, Ambroise Gardeil OP, and some of the controversies he was involved in, such as those with Maritain and with Marie-Dominique Chenu OP.
He had wanted Chenu, his student, to be his protege at the Angelicum. However, Chenu was more interested in historical studies and reworking studies at the Salchoir. Eventually, this put them at loggerheads. Etienne Fouilloux’s recently translated Le Saulchoir en procès (Le Saulchoir on Trial) tells that story.
Though many have supposed Garrigou-Lagrange outdated, there has been a revival of interest in his works over the last couple of decades. Does he merit this renewed interest if he is outdated? I am convinced that he does. This is not because he is an old friend and master, from whom I have learnt so much and whom I wish to defend.
Temperamentally, as even Maritain noted, Garrigou-Lagrange was very much a Roman professor. In many ways, he was detached from the flow of the world. This coheres with the conservative side of his temperament.
Though more exploratory when younger, he also evinced a living Thomism, much in the manner of Maritain, Charles Journet, or his younger colleagues at the Revue Thomiste during the forties, such as Michel Labourdette, Marie-Joseph Nicolas, and Jean-Hervé Nicolas. His Thomism did not aim to situate Aquinas historically, to understand the context of his thought, but to engage new questions that have arisen since the thirteenth-century. Engaging with the writings of the later Thomists inculcates such a habit of mind.
He differs though from Maritain and Journet in that he is more concerned with defending the positions of the Dominican school. This, combined with his conservative temperament and involvement in the modernist crisis, do make him a little dated. However, every writer from the past is dated in that sense.
Still, there is a living Thomism in his writings. This comes across whenever, as is mostly the case, he is not simply on the defensive. He engages questions. For example, his On Divine Revelation is not a mere manual. All of a sudden, over and over throughout the volumes, in a footnote that spans a page and a half, he will think through a problem he has been reading about. This inculcates the muscle memory for carrying out an engaged Thomism, like that of Maritain.
There is the historical camp of Thomists, such as Étienne Gilson, and the camp of living Thomism that is still tapped into the older scholastic debates. Garrigou-Lagrange and Maritain belong to the latter.
"Maritain noted that his lack of engagement with political questions gave him less depth in them and made them his weakest area."
You have mentioned that Garrigou-Lagrange was conservative by temperament and outlook. He supported what various right-wing figures: Action Francaise, Franco during the Spanish Civil War, and Pétain's Vichy regime. As heads of state, Franco and Pétain each committed morally reproachable actions. Can we put his support for these right-wing figures down to questionable theses in his political thought? That is a good question. In his political thought, he does not come across in the same way as, say, Cardinal Billot, who taught at the Gregorianum. There is a political rigidity to Billot’s critiques of liberalism or conception of the proper relations between Church and state.
Nevertheless, French monarchism does influence Garrigou-Lagrange. Occasionally, it comes through in his writings. For example, he argues that when divine Revelation is proposed to the state, the state must basically accept it. He is a creature of his time and the nineteenth-century reaction to liberalism. He is influenced by papal interventions against Lammenais and follows the papal encyclicals that span from Leo XIII to Pius XI.
That said, not everyone that read that magisterium supported Franco. Nor have I ever come across a single anti-Semitic comment in his remarks on Pétain. His support of the Vichy regime was very much a Catholic reaction against the French Revolution and the Republic (especially the turn-of-the-century anti-clericalism). Many French Catholics supported Pétain for a while, until they realized what was going on. This does not exonerate Garrigou-Lagrange, but it does situate him in the historical context.
Maritain noted that his lack of engagement with political questions gave him less depth in them and made them his weakest area.
However, you get the sense that his support for such figures does not follow from any principle, other than how political authority should respond to the rational credibility of the faith, once it has been proposed sufficiently.
Cardinal Billot turned over his red hat because he disagreed with Pius XI’s condemnation of Action Française. Some say that he did so to save face and did not want to submit to Pius XI on this matter. Garrigou-Lagrange, on the other hand, submitted, albeit with incredible pain. This comes through in one of his essays. He critiques Action Française in the most indirect way, without mentioning it by name. It was difficult for him to do so because, from what I understand, his sister was very involved in it.
Nevertheless, I do not detect any fascist stream in him but simply poor political decisions, particularly during the occupation of France. His support of the Vichy regime was an overreaction to the experience of the anti-clericalism of the beginning of the century, but he was not alone in that. Many Catholics were still licking their wounds from the anti-clerical measures.
Many do not know how radical and severe the anti-clerical measures were. Congregations were turned out of the country. The whole school system was taken away from the Church and replaced by that of a lay state. Garrigou-Lagrange did his formation in Belgium because the Dominicans had been pushed out of France and could not have a house of studies there.
Garrigou-Lagrange was a disciple of St. Thomas and, as you have noticed, belongs to a certain tradition of Thomism. Are there deficiencies in Garrigou-Lagrange's reading and application of St. Thomas' thought? Occasionally, the later baroque thinkers addressed questions that were perhaps misplaced. In addressing the nature of theology, John of St. Thomas, for example, displaces some of St. Thomas’s more classical lines because of the way in which he responds to Suárez. The neo-scholastics, therefore, inherit a poorly posed question and this plays out sometimes in some of their positions.
This is not a universal phenomenon, and much wisdom can be drawn from the Baroque debates. However, it does create the genre of hyper-commentary, even though the neo-scholastic tradition is not just commenting. Its format for the disputation is different from that of the baroque period and there had been developments within the magisterium. Nevertheless, St. Thomas is still the base text of the genre.
At any rate, the “neo-scholastics” do risk talking about the doctrines of certain people solely within an interpretive framework wholly structured by scholastic discussions and debates. They start asking questions that are not about the data or the reality in question but because these are the standard questions that are asked. This closes the conversation and the way in which reality can manifest itself to you.
This may have been the reason why, as he got older, Garrigou-Lagrange sometimes found it difficult to read others sympathetically. He was more charitable than people make him out to be and never comes across as nasty. However, he sometimes does not give others a sympathetic reading because they are not posing the question in the same way as the neo-scholastics.
The neo-scholastics were also insensitive to certain influences on Thomas. By stressing Aristotelianism, which is essential to Thomas, they ended up crowding out all the non-Aristotelian elements, such as Neo-Platonism. They either reinterpreted those elements in Aristotelian terms or did not give them their due. Similarly, they did not always give due importance to St. Thomas’s commentaries on Sacred Scripture.
Garrigou-Lagrange’s main teacher was another important early-twentieth-century Dominican theologian, Ambroise Gardeil. He is remembered mainly for his contributions to fundamental and spiritual theology. How did Gardeil influence Garrigou-Lagrange? First as his professor but probably most profoundly with his style of thought, which runs throughout Garrigou-Lagrange’s work.
Garrigou-Lagrange aimed to mimic Gardeil's propensity to find the essential principles operative in a given question. For example, in a set of articles, St. Thomas might all of sudden lay out a principle that guides the whole inquiry and from which everything else follows nice and clearly. The theologian's task is to call attention to those main principles rather than get entangled in every nook and cranny of a debate.
In an encomium following Gardeil’s passing, Garrigou-Lagrange compared these principles to mountain peaks on the ridge: once you see them, the rest of the ridge makes sense.
Garrigou-Lagrange is concerned with theology as a form of discursive wisdom. That is the main lesson he receives from Gardeil.
There was also some crosspollination on the questions of credibility and the nature of apologetics—subjects on which they both wrote—even though Gardeil may not have always agreed at the time with his student on the nature of theological conclusions and their definability as De fide truths.
In one of his books on mystical theology, Garrigou-Lagrange, who generally cites his master very warmly, cites a criticism of him, without making much of it, and explains the position of the commentators.
Interestingly, Gardeil was the inspiration for both Garrigou-Lagrange and Chenu. Chenu saw in Gardeil’s work on theological sources opportunities for the renewal of positive or historical theology, though he may have painted Gardeil in his own light. This is the line he wished to pursue.
This group of Dominicans is an interesting crew. It comes downstream from Gardeil and his teachers, such as Marie-Benoît Schwalm.
Garrigou-Lagrange began his career under Pius X and in the midst of the modernist crisis. Some might even claim that anti-modernism is one of the main concerns of Garrigou-Lagrange’s writings. What did Garrigou-Lagrange mean by ‘modernism’ and did such a trend exist? Several debates were ongoing at the time of the modernist crisis. One was on biblical exegesis and the positions of Alfred Loisy. Another was on the mind's capacity to know God with demonstrative and scientific certainty and not simply with the probabilistic assertion of a first cause. This was the issue that Garrigou-Lagrange addresses whenever he moves into a philosophical mode. This preamble for the possibility of faith was incredibly important for him.
Hence, he entered into debates over epistemology and metaphysics with certain figures. He was motivated by the condemnation of these positions in Pascendi Dominici gregisand the syllabus attached to it, Lamentabili sane exitu. He was concerned with natural theology: metaphysical knowledge of God as the first cause of being.
He is also most known for his views on dogmatic development. Although some believe that it figures everywhere in his work, it only featured in a strong way at the beginning and end of his career.
Regardless of whether his critique was aimed directly at George Tyrrell, Sabatier, or someone else, he opposed their general theory of dogma and doctrinal development. This theory construes faith as a religious sentiment that is present most powerfully in Catholicism but which all humans have, insofar as God is moving each soul to know him. It holds that dogma and, in some authors, dogmatic development are simply a mythical symbolism that tries to put God’s ineffable mystery into words. Wherever Garrigou-Lagrange gets a scent of such a theory, he recalls how it was condemned explicitly in Pascendi.
Early in his career, he wrote a book that, in the English translation, is entitled Thomistic Common Sense. The word ‘Thomistic’ should not be in the title because the book is about common sense: pre-philosophical rationality. Moreover, it is not just a defence of a certain epistemology. It is about dogmatic development. He addresses this question on account of the modernist crisis.
In the 30s, he takes up the issue again because he was vexed by Maurice Blondel, with whom he exchanged many warm letters, and finds himself a loggerheads with him. However, he had always critiqued Blondel in public. His opposition to the vitalistic theory of dogmatic development—which sees faith as a nameless sense of the mystery of God and his Revelation—is what led to the nouvelle théologie crisis between 1946 and 1949/1950 and toHumani generis. (To be clear, this theory is only more or less implicit in certain figures, and it is not point-for-point something that can be directly taken from Blondel, though certain epigones of his might have fashioned it from a combination of Kantianism, Bergsonianism, Hegelianism, and Blondellianism.)
A recently published collection, The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie, contains translations by you and Dr. Jon Kirwan, gathering essays by several Thomists, mainly from the 1940s, on what was called the nouvelle théologie. The second part of the volume contains various contributions by Garrigou-Lagrange, including his much cited article “Where is the New Theology Headed?” (« La nouvelle théologie, où va-t-elle? »). Though Garrigou-Lagrange did not coin the name, nouvelle théologie, he was the one to make it stick. Was there such a movement? A part of me could say that there was no such movement, and another part would say, in jest, that its members did defend themselves as a group.
During the 1930s, a series of questions about dogma and Revelation had been brewing. From 1937 onward, they made the Holy Office of the Index itchy. A privately circulated work by Chenu and a book by Louis Charlier on the nature of theological science were put on the index. The official arms of Rome and the universities were on edge about this.
The best account of what actually transpired is given in one of the chapters in the book. It is by Fr. Michel Labourdette OP. He was the editor of the Revue Thomiste at the time and a generation younger than Garrigou-Lagrange.
Doctrinally, Garrigou-Lagrange and his younger confreres at the Revue Thomiste in Toulouse were in complete agreement. Maritain, who was then the ambassador for France before the Holy See, also acted as an ambassador between Garrigou-Lagrange and the younger Dominicans. He was trying to soften the debate.
The Jesuits had begun to publish their important series of patristic and early post-patristic writings: Sources chrétiennes. This series included a translation of those writings with notes. The notes of the early volumes had an anti-scholastic bias. On top of this, an associated editorial staff had begun another series: Théologie. Early volumes included Hans Urs von Balthasar’s study on Maximus the Confessor, Jean Daniélou’s on Gregory of Nyssa, and Henri de Lubac’s on Origen and his bookCorpus Mysticum, an important study on the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church.
Reading these books, Fr. Labourdette noted that they shared an underlying anti-scholasticism. Hence, when Fr. Jean Daniélou published in 1946 an article on the new directions within theology, Labourdette reviewed it with an article of his own on theology and its sources. His main concern was with the anti-scholastic bias that was indeed there to some extent. Furthermore, one of the texts in the Théologie series—Fr. Henri Bouillard’s Conversion and Grace in St. Thomas Aquinas, caught the eye of Labourdette and, above all, Garrigou-Lagrange. In the final chapter, Bouillard asserted that a theology that is not up to date is effectively a dead theology. That line bothered Garrigou-Lagrange as much as Bouillard’s specific account of doctrinal development.
For Bouillard, the truths of the faith are pre-cognitional, pre-notional assertions that the mind forms. Though perceived, they are not conceptually articulable. Over the course of history, the Church and its theologians settle on certain historically situated concepts to express that assertion. For a Thomist, Bouillard’s theory of doctrinal development separates our judgments from their concepts: an assertion from its actual objective content. That put Garrigou-Lagrange’s teeth on edge and precipitated the debate.
Garrigou-Lagrange did address some other issues, such as the questions surrounding nature and grace that had been raised by Henri de Lubac’s Surnaturel. It is clear from the documentary evidence, however, that as a consultor of the Holy Office, Garrigou-Lagrange felt that the general concerns about Sources chrétiennes and Théologie could not be addressed. He did believe though that Bouillard should be condemned for reviving the modernist theory of dogmatic development.
The affair unfolded over four or five years and became very heated. All the Jesuits involved (de Lubac, Daniélou, Fessard, Bouillard, and some others) were removed from their teaching positions and some of their books removed from the Jesuit house of studies. This was done at the initiative of the Jesuits themselves. Then, Pius XII promulgated his encyclical Humani generis in the aftermath.
Some have claimed Garrigou-Lagrange was the ghostwriter of Humani generis but I am not convinced that he was. The encyclical uses certain terms and expressions that Garrigou-Lagrange would not have. It talks of “the principle of sufficient reason,” for instance, whereas he always used a different Latin (and cognate French) expression to refer to that principle. The editor or drafter is someone else. Garrigou-Lagrange was, nonetheless, involved with the Holy Office in the run-up to Humani generis, which quelched and drove underground the questions about theological methodology that had been brewing all the way back to the nineteenth century and during the first half of the twentieth century. These questions resurfaced at Vatican II.
The nouvelle théologie debate set the immediate context for Vatican II and the mind of the people who influenced it most. The more conservative members of that group were progressive in a certain regard, but conservative in others. Eventually, they founded the journal Communio, whose contributors see themselves as their heirs.
Following Vatican II, Garrigou-Lagrange was unjustly associated with the traditionalist movement in the West, though I can see why this happened. His article, “Where is the New Theology Headed?”, became part of the mythology of Western traditionalism. However, when traditionalists speak of him, they do not tend to focus on his works on spirituality or natural theology. In their mind, that article was the flipside of the nouvelle théologie.
Dr. Kirwan and I wanted to name this collection of essays Dialogue Delayed as an invitation to revisit this debate eighty years later with a much more even keel and have an honest conversation about each side, warts and all. I admit that there were certain limitations of the scholastic side. They were closed on various matters of methodology. This is obvious to me as a Byzantine Catholic.
Nowadays, those associated with the nouvelle théologie are normally called ressourcement theologians. Could you summarise and assess their main criticism of Garrigou-Lagrange or the neo-scholasticism which he embodied? The authors who write in the neo-scholastic tradition that emerged from Leo XIII’s revival of that tradition are not characterised by a deep engagement with the Fathers of the Church or the development of dogmas. They are more concerned with appropriating St. Thomas and appropriating things to the mind of Thomas. The way they draw on Scripture often has the feel of proof texting rather than an engagement with the soul of theology. There is also a certain lack of engagement with the modern world and thought. Any engagement there is, tends to be critical. This is, at least, a very broad-brush interpretation of some real weaknesses in the movement as an institutionalized whole. Many exceptions could be cited, of course.
The proponents of the nouvelle théologie saw these deficiencies in scholasticism. They advocated instead a return to the sources, one that does not sound triumphalistic; the incorporation of all the theological loci; a critical yet thoughtful and charitable engagement with modernity.
To some degree, their critique was accurate.
Maritain, on the other hand, was different from Garrigou-Lagrance and the Roman theologians in one way. He was deeply engaged with contemporary questions.
Like most neo-scholastics, Garrigou-Lagrange put great stock by natural reason and the importance of proper philosophical analysis for theology. Moreover, like many neo-scholastics, he believed that theological heterodoxy generally resulted from a committal to erroneous philosophical analyses. With which philosophers did he engage critically or which ones were mainly in his cross-hairs? In his books on natural theology, there is some critical engagement with classic texts of modern philosophy, such as the works of Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Herbert Spencer, or Henri Bergson. Nowadays, Bergson is considered a second-tier figure and known mainly on account of his influence on some phenomenologists, but at the turn of the century he was a very important and influential French vitalist.
Garrigou-Lagrange also engaged critically with the French Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel. Blessed Antonio Rosmini also comes up now and again on account of his teaching on faith and reason, which was condemned during the nineteenth century.
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