Renewing Theology: Ignatian Spirituality and Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis

by J. Matthew Ashley

Overview

This comprehensive study investigates the role that Ignatian spirituality has played in the renewal of academic theology using three prominent Jesuits as case studies.

Over several centuries, spirituality has come to define a field of concerns and themes increasingly treated separately from those of academic theology, as if the latter had little relation to the former. This raises the question for us today: How is spirituality related to the practice of theology? In Renewing Theology, J. Matthew Ashley provides an answer by turning to Ignatian spirituality and three prominent twentieth-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—that is, Pope Francis.

Ashley begins his investigation by considering the historical origins of the widening separation between spirituality and academic theology in the Christian West. He provides an initial overview of Ignatian spirituality, focusing on the openness and multidimensionality of Ignatius of Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, presented here as a text in which the conditions of modernity that defined its author’s world are present, at least incipiently. Ashley then offers three case studies in order to show how each Jesuit—Rahner, Ellacuría, and Pope Francis—responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality. Their theologies, Ashley suggests, evince a particular clarity and force when the Ignatian spirituality that animates them is foregrounded. Providing new and productive avenues into understanding the theologies of these three individuals, this sophisticated and enlightening book will interest scholars and students of systematic theology, as well as readers who are interested in the future of theology and spirituality in a fragmented age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780268203177
Publisher:	University of Notre Dame Press
Publication date:	07/15/2022
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	1,020,254
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.94(d)

About the Author

J. Matthew Ashley is associate professor of systematic theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author and editor of a number of books, including Take Lord and Receive All My Memory: Toward an Anamnestic Mysticism.

Read an Excerpt

How do we reestablish a living relationship between academic theology and the lives of Christians in the world outside the university gates? How do we reopen that vital circulation between the three elements that Friedrich von Hügel listed as integral to any living religion: the intellectual element, the historical-institutional element, and the “mystical-volitional” element, in which “religion is rather felt than seen or reasoned about, is loved and lived rather than analyzed, is action and power, rather than external fact or external verification.” Since the Enlightenment, theologians have tended to focus their energy on bringing the first two elements (intellectual and historical-institutional) into contact. Their worthy aim was to counter the growing suspicion that religion, particularly as communicated through historical traditions and lived out in concrete social institutions, simply cannot have an “intellectual element,” that at the end of the day irrationality or mere opinion rules the minds of believers. Without denying the importance of that challenge, the conviction that guides this book is that it must be met along with the second, and that means by tapping the “mystical-volitional” element of religion. The two tasks are not opposed, or even unconnected. Far from threatening to render faith even more “subjective” and “irrational,” an appeal to the experience of the divine, as articulated in spiritual and/or mystical traditions delineates an important locus from which to defend the cognitive integrity and relevance of religious faith.

Thus, this is a book on spirituality and theology. In modernity, it is the genre of spirituality that has largely taken over the task of proposing “an art of living.” Its separation from theology has been bemoaned for at least seventy years, and many contemporary theologians have continued to insist on the need to reintegrate spirituality into the practice and results of theology. Yet, it is not easy to see how this reintegration will happen, since the division is not just a terminological one that can be overcome at the whim of the academic wordsmith. Rather, as I argue below, the division between spirituality and theology flows from, reflects, and reinforces the social and cultural conditions of modernity. It cannot be overcome by theory alone, but by a new praxis, both of doing theology and of practicing spirituality, an ecclesial praxis that is both individual and social-political. As a propaedeutic to this more sweeping and challenging task, this book undertakes an analysis of how spiritual traditions can have, and indeed have had, an impact on the work of academic theology.

This task is more manageable. For one thing, we have at our disposal the fruits of over a century of sustained historical scholarship focused on Christianity’s spiritual traditions. We have critical editions and excellent secondary works that introduce those past masters who strove to lure men and women into theology as a radically transformative and deeply satisfying way of life. We can and should learn from them, for the works of the Spirit are at once life-givingly new, and yet also best perceived from the vantage of the long history of that Spirit’s presence in and to history.

It is in part this critical retrieval of spiritual traditions, along with the great interest in spirituality in both academy and surrounding culture today, that have made us so aware over the past several decades of the need to reestablish a living circulation between spirituality and academic theology. Yet the need both to reconfigure the practice and contents of academic theology, and also to reintegrate spirituality and academic theology have been felt for much longer, even if it was not named in these precise terms.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Poverty of Academic Theology

1. Haven in a Heartless World or Well of Vision: Modernity and the Origins of Spirituality

2. Ignatian Spirituality: An Overview

3. Ignatian Spirituality and the Limits of Modernity

4. Karl Rahner: Theology in a Secularized World

5. Ignacio Ellacuría: Theology Under the Standard of Christ

6. Pope Francis: Theology as an Instrument of Consolation

7. Conclusion: Ignatius and the Theologians

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

Renewing Theology makes the very persuasive case that academic theology and spirituality need one another and can indeed be connected in ways that are profoundly satisfying. At stake is nothing less than a healing of the Christian imagination through the forging of a more constructive relationship between our spirituality and our theology.” —Thomas Massaro, SJ, author of Mercy in Action

“J. Matthew Ashley does an excellent job of explaining the theological contributions of these three thinkers in the light of the way the Ignatian tradition has influenced their thought.” —Brian O. McDermott, SJ, author of Word Become Flesh

"J. Matthew Ashley investigates Ignatian spirituality and three prominent 20th-century theologians who embraced its spiritual resources: Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuria, and Jorge Mario Bergoglio—that is, Pope Francis. Ashley offers case studies to show how each Jesuit responded to the challenges of modernity in a way that is uniquely nourished and illuminated by themes constitutive of Ignatian spirituality." —American Catholic Studies Newsletter

"A splendid exhibition of the profound harmonies to be found between the needs of the modern world, the mission of theology and the spirituality of Ignatius." —The Way

"A beautiful and inspiring argument about the importance of meeting God—a personal relationship. . . . this book will be very useful as a textbook and for scholarly researchers." —Catholic Library World

From the Publisher