Developments in the Low Countries: The Interpretations of Original Sin of Schoonenberg and Schillebeeckx

Rightly, when considering the doctrine of original sin, neither Edward Schillebeeckx nor Piet Schoonenberg jump immediately to mind as expositors of the traditional form of the doctrine. If one were to accuse Schillebeeckx of ignoring original sin completely, it would not be entirely unfair: in his published works, he certainly never addresses the topic at any length, and what references there are, are scattered and diffuse. Schoonenberg did at least give the topic a little more attention, but his approach represents a significant departure from the traditional approach to the question, and has, not unreasonably, been accused of failing to answer some of the core questions that motivate the doctrine. Nonetheless, to a contemporary discussion of the question of original sin, they each raise important questions that must be answered for the doctrine to remain credible.1 Both Schoonenberg and Schillebeeckx spent the main part of their careers at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands (now Radboud University), and while both were heavily inspired by the nouvelle théologie movement, they had different approaches and were seemingly not the greatest of friends.2 The slightly older Schoonenberg was educated by the Jesuits and then entered the Society of Jesus in 1930. His doctorate, awarded in 1948, was a response to the developments of French ressourcement theology on the articulation of faith. He then worked in Jesuit formation houses and the Higher Institute for Catechetics in Nijmegen. He was eventually appointed to a chair in dogmatics in the university in 1964, where he remained until retirement in 1976. Aside from the work on original sin I will consider below, his main theological contribution was in Christology, where he developed a ‘Spirit Christology’. His approach to both attracted more than a little controversy. Schillebeeckx was also educated by the Society of Jesus, but in 1934 chose instead to enter the Dominicans. His formation in the nouvelle théologie came at Le Saulchoir in Paris under Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar, with the former being the man to whom he attributed the greatest influence on his thought throughout his career. His doctoral work was published in 1952, with the title De sacramentele heilseconomie (‘The sacramental economy of salvation’),3 and after teaching for a time in Leuven, he was appointed professor of dogmatics and the history of theology at Nijmegen from 1958, where he remained until his retirement in 1983. Perhaps his most famous (or, in some quarters, infamous!) works are his re-reading of the sacraments in Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, and his Christological trilogy— Jesus, Christ, and Church—where he engages hermeneutics and critical theory in aid of Christology and ecclesiology.4 As I have noted already, Schillebeeckx never wrote specifically on original sin, or even substantially on adjacent topics such as theological anthropology or creation.5 His influence on the Second Vatican Council through his role advising the Dutch bishops (though not as a council peritus) is also noteworthy, as are the series of inquisitions he faced from Vatican authorities. Some similarity between Schoonenberg and Schillebeeckx should be expected. As well as sharing a number of common influences in the ressourcement movement, they wrote in the same context: the rapid secularisation and decline of the Church in the Netherlands in the second half of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, both here and elsewhere in their work, the conclusions these circumstances brought them to are not the same. In this paper, after a brief note on the so-called ‘New Catechism’ produced by the Dutch bishops with the Higher Institute for Catechetics, I will review Schoonenberg's articulation of the doctrine, and highlight some of its strengths and weaknesses. I then turn to Schillebeeckx's use of the doctrine within his theological project, and identify the implicit place and context to it shown by this usage. Finally, I turn to some of the later, incompletely developed aspects of Schillebeeckx's work, where he begins to question further the received understanding. From these pointers, I briefly outline key directions from these two thinkers for the contemporary reconsideration of this idea. Given the context in which both of these theologians wrote, before considering their individual contributions, the description of the doctrine presented by the Dutch bishops in the so-called ‘New Catechism’ should also be noted.6 The intention was, as the editors describe it in the foreword, to produce a ‘new type of catechism… suitable to the present day’, inspired by the optimism and sense of renewal in the Catholic Church in the Netherlands after the Second Vatican Council.7 It is possibly true to say that there was expectation of radical change in the Church in the Netherlands, including on mandatory celibacy for priests and the ordination of women, in the Dutch Church at this time more than anywhere else. The New Catechism was prepared in this spirit by the catechetical institute at Nijmegen, and while no individual author is named, it has been suggested that it is the work of the Jesuit Willem Bless, who was director of the institute from 1954 to 1969.8 The reaction to this text was strong.9 A critical letter published in the newspaper De Tijd in December 1966 claimed that ‘several dogmas are interpreted in a sense that differs completely from the way the Church has understood and still understands them, and this notwithstanding the explicit condemnation of Vatican I’; the dogmas seen as defectively understood include original sin.10 In his article defending the New Catechism, Schoonenberg argues that the critics are failing to engage with necessary hermeneutical work to understand dogma in the contemporary situation. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that the New Catechism provides only that interpretation, and not its foundations, though he suggests this is not improper for the type of book it is.11 When it comes to original sin, the New Catechism rejects the idea that the tendency towards sin in humanity can be treated as ‘retarded development’ or ‘immaturity’,12 before developing a sense of original sin from the early chapters of Genesis and Romans 5. In this discussion, there is a clear suggestion that the interpretation of original sin should be teleological more than protological, both in the understanding of the goodness of creation and the reality of sin and corruption within it.13 Furthermore, it clearly defends human culpability for sin. Such sin is presented as collective, and the importance of its contagious character is highlighted along with its ubiquity through the human race.14 The text also challenges the idea that original sin is transmitted ‘merely by way of generation, but from all sides, along all the ways in which people have contact with one another’, finally calling it ‘the sin of the world’.15 This conception of sin is kept, throughout the discussion in the text, alongside the parallel, yet superior, ‘attractive power of grace’. Much of the language and way of thinking used in this discussion of original sin has clear similarities to the work of Schoonenberg.16 Originally published as De macht der zonde (‘The power of sin’) in 1962, Man and Sin is, at least in English, one of Schoonenberg's best known works.17 It is an attempt at a theology of sin, although to get its full measure, it should stand alongside his God's World in the Making, which fills in some of structure of his overall project.18 The four chapters of Man and Sin address, respectively, the essence of sin, its consequences, ‘the sin of the world’, and original sin. In the spirit of the nouvelle théologie, there is an attempt to return to sources to understand what traditional doctrines mean in the modern world, and to this end, Schoonenberg's initial starting point in each chapter is the biblical text. He is concerned to locate sin as historical event. He charts the development of the concept through the history of theology, the relation of sin and freedom, the scholastic distinction of mortal and venial sins, and the distinction between sin and so-called ‘physical evil’. As Christa Betty has noted, throughout Schoonenberg is more concerned with and more engaged in the biblical texts than the magisterial ones.19 The first major problem that Schoonenberg identifies in traditional descriptions of sin is that attention is too narrowly turned to the individual. That is to say, according to Schoonenberg, classical approaches to sin focus alone on the individual sinner, not giving sufficient attention to the context in which the sin occurred, nor the activity of multiple individuals in that milieu. He suggests that the magisterium gives only a sense of solidarity between sinners in the ‘mysterious bond’ of original sin through the first father of humanity, and nothing in the more immediate of family, community, and world.20 Seeing the importance of this relation between sinners for the understanding of sin in his day, Schoonenberg's first substantial proposal is in his presentation of ‘the sin of the world’. Here, Schoonenberg begins with the biblical concept of ‘the world’, in the sense that the idea is used in the Pauline and especially the Johannine literature. Sin has dominion over the world, not through direct power but by virtue of prevalence. Alongside this, Schoonenberg notes how initially in the biblical accounts the individual sinner and the group to whom they belong (family, tribe, nation…) cannot easily be separated, meaning there is solidarity in successive generations in sin, and in good.21 In the prophets, he argues that we begin to see the development of a protest against shared responsibility, perhaps in part in response to the breakdown of the bonds of the community by This not a of solidarity but an of the of the individual who the In this, ‘the sin of a community, the sin of the world, is more than the of the individual and is more than sharing or Furthermore, sin not only along through but it also in the same way influence which has its on of the of the Schoonenberg this ‘the by He to that this is not a on but a of how not some The human not within and it can be no on that the a can are by the of This is by the of for and for Schoonenberg a of and of and as the way in which the of one he for the of works, but not it has an on the of a human individual not but only This can be the the individual to it is or or it a to to completely, can be to the individual towards a more the of in part in the then the individual the to the of this, it for the individual to a in their in such Schoonenberg it to to them, even their to sin. this he to how historical such as and each contact by which a his or to is, or a his or relation to on of being human and especially on of the humanity of God's there is no of God's in which the and human being not have a on the the in the of original man the in a of for the has and his fills the to Schoonenberg's problem with the classical of the doctrine of original sin is it in of on the question of the of completely and that humanity did not from one it is clear that Schoonenberg not consider such a starting point for theology to If he that his proposal is with the historical of and as the only first of humanity, but that his proposal is on their of the of humanity, he more In this he to his conception of the sin of the as an Schoonenberg's for the of the dogma to its is which is the of the doctrine. has the Church according to as an The question one of especially of in Romans 5. As Schoonenberg the that between the and the with response to is As I have Schoonenberg's to the doctrine of original sin is at least by a to locate it with to history and its the history of sin. In this he the history of sin to have been in classical It is not to all sin through to it should be at a more immediate In of this, Schoonenberg that being by the sin of the the human such that they are by the same of the of the same the same of in relation to the as the traditional of original sin the In he the traditional distinction between original sin and the The importance of this in the that it is not with the and he to this by how both and are of also at least in part by the in their creation of the The questions of and are significant to understand how Schoonenberg his to the classical one the by the Council of that is the of of original sin, Schoonenberg is to consider how the of the sin of the can be understood to be He suggests that is seen as an of original sin, then that the only by which a human being comes the is through it can also be that it is only through that a comes the by the sin of the He suggests that this also has the of the of that from the approach here and the of the When it comes to the of original sin, Schoonenberg acknowledges that the classical has a clear If all are from and then all of in their the for is he it is to see how original sin can be by virtue of being in the world, all human are within the of the sin of the that is what original sin, then it is clear that all human in human Schoonenberg's I to note a He gives significant attention to the biblical the by major theologians of the and to the magisterial teaching on original sin. it is never explicit how Schoonenberg his of the of original sin to be an of the of authorities. He clearly that what he the sin of the can be from biblical but he not locate it in the accounts that have been used to locate the doctrine of original sin, Genesis and Romans important though he to it is the language the of the that is his starting This is not to say that there is clear in Genesis or Romans to Schoonenberg's that he not Schoonenberg's use of the magisterium is also He perhaps even on the importance of the magisterium and the of theology to it that one accuse of to from the of being to Nonetheless, he what he the of the magisterial teaching to and how he that should be interpreted in the he this as a against which to his it to be this way the magisterium is, for Schoonenberg a of the of his It is to his work and not to a at the and little Perhaps the most significant in Schoonenberg's here is one who is throughout the work before the there he the importance of the of the that he from his Jesuit Schoonenberg this book has some of his it has been by his This through Schoonenberg's work, perhaps more than the to locate sin it is the of the towards its that his articulation of original sin. Schoonenberg not at the but at the end, that sin and should be in their meaning against that then are we to of Schoonenberg's understanding of original As the similarities of language it was clearly in the Netherlands immediately after its to be by the New certainly to be in two of the key of his His that the doctrine, as and within the classical understanding of sin, to engage with the of sin in cannot be the never an but also in its and its The of this history of sin with the history of and the response to it Schoonenberg gives through his of the of Christ, is also Furthermore, the of to present the doctrine in a way that is alongside the that we cannot the early chapters of Genesis as history in of of the of the human cannot be is too theological in texts to them as to there is in his work to a full presentation of his on original sin as I have for Furthermore, his to change between different texts in which he references the doctrine. to in the early he to the doctrine and it to that it should be for the contemporary Schillebeeckx to his than a he begins to it is no In the early when teaching on original sin, Schillebeeckx's approach was still in a and not a significant towards the work on the doctrine he would identify as the of that Schillebeeckx is clear that hermeneutical work is I here of how Schillebeeckx original sin to his theological The first two are in an published in its form in his book World and Church in It was prepared in two one as a to of the at Nijmegen in on the of the as a human and one at the of an also at Nijmegen, in In each of these of what one Schillebeeckx to the doctrine of original sin in different In the first Schillebeeckx is what he to be the humanity of the over and the that were perhaps the more to the he was any he that of the human will is a and yet the human being more than this discussion of the between creation and and the theology of Schillebeeckx the of the In this he suggests that in the of the ‘the is the and there is here on of in and through its being in human He this this of can as to and suggests that from a point of there is no it least as the of original he that this is not and that the spirit not have power over from a of the it clearly has a role for Schillebeeckx in the of the human being in the world, as a human power over the of In the second the context is a of the of It that Schillebeeckx is being to the of for a within his Catholic Schillebeeckx's is that the of from human of and as such there can be no to and on that the of of the the way he engages with the question of the of the of the In he rejects as the idea that this can be a of original Schillebeeckx's of not stand to but a Schillebeeckx's conception of original it should be understood as in its on creation the human world, not substantial change in the between This to the of original sin and the more narrowly than Schoonenberg's of it in the context of the of the of the world, and certainly more than the seen in theologians of the early As a I turn to the early when Schillebeeckx had to his hermeneutical with from critical especially as developed in the by and He important and necessary challenges to the work of theology from this and to this work of his is with the human optimism of the critical we that humanity on the of critical theory with its on the of theory and can a history entirely and on its and Schillebeeckx suggests that the doctrine of original sin the He that there is a similarity between the by and the by human of critical is, he an from the historical context of its that must be from the but he in language from there is a of significant historical to the shared of the dogma of original sin and of critical theory that the present is Schillebeeckx suggests that the of of critical theory should be seen in of that an of that original sin, as part of the doctrine of He is to say that the dogma of original sin critical but this when this is within the of understanding of the which has then to be to a of these are substantial to the understanding of original sin, nor they substantial departure from the classical of we see an of how it can be part of a critical approach to When in relation to and to it can the to understand the of the in the of as the of the of his Schillebeeckx was to a book to the he never the the in his for this, there is a brief discussion on original sin, that with some of his works from the towards where Schillebeeckx at on the begin to see this change of approach in the of the idea that human can be treated as a of original sin. is not the of the of some the suggests in ‘the so-called human is that humanity not to its or that and in to he this with the interpretation of the first creation in Genesis as no a human history of and clear the between human and God's for it certainly suggests that Schillebeeckx has to point to the of that in a historical by first he to towards a to his hermeneutics of original sin being a way of to the of on the the idea that creation is not as it should In the towards the book of sacramental Schillebeeckx is to sacraments in Here, he the importance of original sin within the doctrine of and not that of on the of especially with to he no place for and as historical first Schillebeeckx has no in the doctrine of original sin, instead calling for development of dogma It is, he an to the doctrine of and no in the of As part of this discussion, he to Schoonenberg's approach to the sin of the world, not as a as Schoonenberg presented but as a necessary of the of the history of the of human that and this than as a of the traditional doctrine, it some of the that when this approach as Schoonenberg it an answer to a different question than that by the classical references to that with on how the sin of the can be in and by human were by Schillebeeckx in his articulation of in his famous work Christ, though there he more to this the classical Schillebeeckx the brief in these of his with the suggestion that it a change to the of where has been as ‘the of a by In this he original sin has in the present an that the of the human human being who this to a that is a of a of that in the of the of a of The which we are to in a of sin. The of the before we on a are in as it it has in being as a and as a of I with the suggestion that both Schoonenberg and Schillebeeckx were of theologians from work to discussion of the traditional dogma of original sin. Schoonenberg's approach can be as not the problem Schillebeeckx did not at on the I have Schoonenberg's and how this was through the New Catechism, where original sin is to little more than the by the sin of the and how that the in which the individual can on what is not a necessary in his he to this approach as being on the of and and their as the first of he is to with them and any by of them which some in that is some situation. Schillebeeckx's was never He was to the to the doctrine at the time Schoonenberg did but clearly there was of there to of a approach to theology, especially a to in his he to a that be seen as even more to the classical than calling for the doctrine to Nonetheless, even then Schillebeeckx to of that is not as it should which is more and to the human than Schoonenberg's proposal is of The work of both on this question identifies the for a doctrine which fills the that original sin that humanity, and the in which human is not as it should both engage in this in full that the first sin cannot any be attributed to a individual who is first Furthermore, the importance of the history of sin, alongside the history of and community in sin alongside its community in by Schoonenberg, cannot be in any attempt to the shared to sin of all human note is Schillebeeckx's that any must be to the understanding of the human as it not some by the of the world, the importance of that and the to in to understand sin.