Transforming Our Human Forms Into Christ's: The Theomorphic Anthropology of Aidan Nichols
298
Transforming Our Human Forms Into Christ's: The Theomorphic Anthropology of Aidan Nichols
298Hardcover
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781477279663 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 10/19/2012 |
| Pages: | 298 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.81(d) |
| Age Range: | 15 - 17 Years |
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Transforming Our Human Forms into Christ's
The Theomorphic Anthropology of Aidan NicholsBy PAUL ENGOULOU NSONG
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2012 Reverend Paul Engoulou NsongAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4772-7968-7
Chapter One
About the Theologian
The twentieth century, like the late fourth and early-fifth and the thirteenth centuries, can be considered a highpoint of theological development. These centuries have produced great theologians such as Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, Athanasius, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Karl Rahner and Hans Urs von Balthasar, whose ideas and intuitions still inspire generations of Christian thinkers today. The early twenty-first will be noted for these names: Karol Wojtyla, Jo seph Ratzinger and Aidan Nichols. If the first two are well-known internationally as Pontiffs of the Catholic Church, the English Dominican of Cambridge, Father Nichols, who is considered as one of the most prolific writer of theology in the English language today, needs to be introduced to non Anglo-Saxon readers, since his influence is still confined in the Anglo-Saxon world. From Cambridge to Paris through Rome, Melbourne, Edinburgh, Oslo and other cities, Nichols has planted the seeds of his knowledge for the revival and renewal of Christianity, that he sees threatened by postmodernity with its secularism, relativism and by modernity with its rationalism.
1.1 The Anglican Background
John Christopher Aidan Nichols was born in Lytham St. Anne's, Lancashire, in England, on 17, September 1948. In the year of his birth, England was still recovering from the Second World War, a war that damaged and fragmented the unity of Europe. Three years after the capitulation of Germany, the memories of the great struggle of World War II were still present in the lives of the people. In Great Britain there was a national feeling of pride and a patriotic fervor resulting from the victory of the "Allies." In Europe, Great Britain played a major role because for two years it stood alone against the Nazism of Adolf Hitler. This victory led to a national sense of pride and patriotism in Great Britain. It is in this context of a flourishing British spirit that the young Nichols grew up. He says: "As the nostalgia of the older generation for the years of the Second World War indicates, wartime patriotism provided something notably absent in peacetime, a sense not only of solidarity embracing all classes and groups but a truly civic (rather than individual) morality as such." As consequence of this flourishing British spirit, the young Nichols embraced the faith and education of Anglicanism not by conviction. He declares: "I myself was christened as an Anglican and educated at a Broad Church Anglican school named after that alarming dynamic headmaster Thomas Arnold of Rugby. School religion, represented by compulsory monthly church service as well as daily morning assemblies, had no effect on me at all."
His childhood was a lonely spiritual crossing. Unlike other teenagers of his age, whose religious and spiritual education is received from parents, Nichols's spiritual awakening was a personal achievement. He declares: "My parents were only very occasional churchgoers, and my religiosity as a boy was basically pagan in character, a feeling for God in nature, in the sea and the mountains, both of which were close to where I lived." From an early age, Nichols developed an interest in natural beauty, which will later on make him a proponent of the theological aesthetics. He observes:
After a childhood overshadowed by bereavement, this was the necessary pagan experience of exulting in the creation, a "Hellenic" moment which everyone must know, in some form or other, who shares the faith of Scripture that the world God has made is, as it comes from him, very good. As I would later learn through reading the religious philosophy of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar, I had had a taste of transcendental, the qualities of being which mirror the attributes of the Creator God.
At early age, Nichols abandoned the Anglican Church because it was less aesthetical and attractive in doctrinal and liturgical expression, and had no deeper roots in history. This diminished interest in aesthetics found in the early Anglicanism pushed Nichols to look at other religious customs whose traditions support aesthetics. Primarly, he turned to the Eastern Orthodox tradition because of their theology of images. He says:
Any dormant sense of Christianity was eventually awaked more by Eastern Orthodoxy than by Anglicanism through a chance visit to the Russian Church in Geneva, in the Bernese Oberland, where for the first time I saw an iconostasis and had an immediate intuition of the Incarnation.
This visit to the Russian Church in Geneva marks a decisive moment in his religious life. For the first time in the words of Nichols, he realizes that iconostasis was revelatory of transcendence and holiness. He realizes that in embodied figures of Christ, our Lady and the saints, the idea that God might appear through the human form. At the Russian Church in Geneva, Nichols experienced the reality of the incarnation, and the ineffability of the divine made contingent.
What Nichols experienced at the Russian Church of Geneva "prompted him, on his own, to start visiting churches in England, and gravitated towards the Anglo-Catholic ones because, he supposes, they were the closest thing to the incarnationalism he glimpsed in Geneva." After years in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, Nichols abandons this ecclesial community to join the Catholic Church on Holy Thursday 1966, because of its aesthetical attractiveness and sense of historical tradition, but also because of the clarity and certitude of its doctrine, the mystical depth in its worship and devotion, its spirituality which could give one guidance, and its courage and comforting ministry for not only in dying but also in living. He says:
Inevitably, then, it was a Catholicism which defined itself over against Anglicanism, the "State Church", a phrase in no way complimentary. This Catholicism was, aesthetically, far from attractive. Its sense of the objectivity of the supernatural mysteries it handled was such that, apparently, it needed no graciousness, no "trimmings." Yet this too, in its own way, was an expression of the glory of God, his kabod, or "weight". The Christian Latin (which, later, I began to learn) of its prayers housed concepts and images to be reflected on and savoured for a lifetime. Of the plainsong, one could at least imagine how it ought to be done. Then, by way of compensation, there were the devotions which were explosions of popular mysticism, the candles and banked flowers of the Forty Hours and May celebrations: the elements of nature brought in to honour their Lord and his human mother, and the prayer for the dead, which never failed to move me, since I was acquiring a certain number of my own. This was a tradition, if not the only one. It had roots in history; it was a memory in action, not least through the sanctoral cycle. It brought one to surmise the dead generations which, nevertheless, lived unto God.
1.2 The Conversion to Catholicism
Nichols was received into the Catholic Church in the spring of 1966 at the age of 17. For him, Catholicism was appealing because of its tradition, its orthodoxy, and universality of its institution. He says: "Speaking as someone brought up in a national Church of England, though I am happy to consider myself perfectly English, I also regard it as a blessing of catholicity to be freed from particularism into the more spacious life of a Church raised up to be an ensign for all nations, a Church where those of every race, colour, and culture can feel at home, in the Father's house." Nichols did not join the Eastern Orthodox tradition for the same reasons that he abandoned Anglicanism, namely its lack of aesthetical attraction but because the Eastern Orthodox ecclesiastical doctrine failed to move beyond national particularisms and the phenomenon of Orthodox nationalism. He says:
To a Catholic mind, the Church of Pentecost is a Church of all nations in the sense of ecclesia ex gentibus, a Church taken from all nations, gathering them with, to be sure, their own human and spiritual gifts into a universal community in the image of the divine Triunity where the difference between Father, Son and Spirit only subverses their relations of communion. The Church of Pentecost is not an ecclesia in gentibus, a church distributed among nations in the sense of parceled out among them, accommodating herself completely to their structures and leaving their sense of autonomous identity undisturbed as it is the case with Orthodox Churches.
As already said, Nichols's quest for an authentic, rich, beautiful, true and experiential Christianity impelled him to become a Catholic. For someone who was brought up in the Church of England, with its anti-Romanism, it was an act of major importance and personal courage. Coming from the Anglican faith, his instruction or catechesis took a year and half just to be introduced to the basic principles and teachings of Catholicism. The solid formation he gained during this time of catechesis helps us to understand his emphasis on the revival of doctrine consciousness for lay people and priests. When he was received into the Catholic Church, the liturgy was not, just as it may seem today, "a simple functional activity to affirm people in their secular identities or the aspects of decent living that are available through secular agencies, but a special evangelical force able to lift people up to something beyond their secular consciousness." The liturgy at that time was a vehicle of the sacred and evangelical force that must lift up the life of believers. Already, this early awareness is present in Nichols's later concerns for liturgical beauty and orthodoxy. This is illustrated in his description of the rite of baptism. He declares:
In those days that involved conditional Baptism, in case the clergyman had failed to use the Trinitarian formula, or as in the christenings of royal princes, one clergyman had pronounced the formula and another poured the water, neither of which was likely to have been my infant lot. It also entailed the profession of a lengthy counter-Reformation creed with much abjuration of errors most of which had passed me by. That did not prevent my reciting it with considerable gusto.
After his reception into the Catholic Church, Nichols studied Modern History at Oxford University as an undergraduate. There, he developed the skills necessary for his career as historian of Church, both the East and the West. At Oxford University, he earned a bachelor's degree in Modern History in 1970, and that same year, he entered the Dominican Order. He made his first vows into the hands of the Dominican Father Ian Hislop. He continued his studies at Oxford University where he earned a master's degree in Modern History in 1974. He was ordained a priest in 1976. In 1977, he received his Diploma in Theology with Distinction in New Testament at Oxford University. The same year, a Sacrae Theologiae Lectoratus was conferred to him by the English Dominican Studium of Oxford.
1.3 The Priesthood and Ministerial Works
Nichols began an intense career of lectureship and ministry after his ordination. He moved to Edinburgh University as a Catholic chaplain from 1977 to 1983. He devoted part of his time to research and was awarded a Ph.D in 1986 on the following dissertation: The Ecclesiology of Nikolai N. Afanas'ev. Patristic ressourcement and ecumenical prospect in the Russian tradition. Between 1983 and 1991 he was a lecturer in Dogmatics and Ecumenics at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome. There at the Angelicum, he was assigned to lecture on Anglicanism, ecumenism and modern history because of his background as an Anglican and his curriculum studiorum. He says:
What I did know quite well, by the time I was professed and ordained Dominican and sent to Rome to teach at the Roman College of the Order, the Angelicum, or to give it its full name the Pontifical University of St Thomas in the City, was the history of England, since I'd read Modern History when an undergraduate at Oxford, and in those days perhaps even now the syllabus had changed hardly at all since the late Victorian period when the School of Modern History was established. Though Oxford dated Modern History as the beginning with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, the lion's share of the curriculum was devoted to English history, from the Anglo-Saxon invasion until the Second World War. So when I was asked by the founder of Angelicum's so-called 'ecumenical section' if I could contribute a course on Anglicanism, I at least felt able to offer some lectures offering an historical approach to the subject, and these became my book The Panther and Hind, sub-titled A Theological History of Anglicanism.
He fulfilled the requirements of the Congregation of Catholic Education when he was teaching at Angelicum. For the work done in various fields, the University of Saint Thomas Aquinas awarded him the degree of Sacra Theologia Licentiate in 1990. In 1991, he moved back to England, more precisely to Cambridge priory, where he began as Assistant Catholic Chaplain until 1995. Besides the ministry of chaplaincy, he was accredited as an affiliated university lecturer at Cambridge University and was the Robert Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture at Providence College (Rhode Island) in 1998. From 1998 to 2004, he was the prior of St. Michael and All Angels Dominican community at Blackfriars, Cambridge. In 2003, the Master of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) conferred on him the the highest canonical degree in theology of the Dominican Order, the Sacrae Theologiae Magister (Master of Sacred Theology). From 2006 to 2008, he served as the first John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at Oxford University, the first lectureship of Catholic theology at the University since the Reformation. He lives presently at the Dominican priory in Cambridge, where he continues to work on countless topics in theology particularly in systematic theology, sacramental, liturgy, ecclesiology, ecumenism, and Scripture.
1.4 The Academic Work and the Theological Developments
At the heart of Aidan Nichols's theological dynamism, there is a sense of fidelity to the teachings of the Catholic Magisterium and the Sensus Fidelium. He asserts: "To be a theologian, one must share the common fides quae, the faith of the people of God. A theologian is not an ecclesiastical Übermensch, but is equally bound, in all his events, by the Church's rule of faith. He is dependent on the Church, not necessarily financially, or even sociologically, but always epistemologically."
Nichols's theological writings aim at showing how divine revelation emerges in human experience and thought as manifesting a superabundant fullness of beauty, truth and goodness. His appraisal of these transcendentals has led him to enter into dialogue with Eastern religions whose theologies highly integrated such transcendentals. Similarly, he shows interest in the works of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar for the same motives. This interest in the transcendental resembles the theological thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
This interest in the works of Hans Urs von Balthasar has shaped Nichols's theology of forms. Both aim at re-awakening the church by recovering the notions of unity, truth, goodness and beauty inside and outside the Church, the so-called transcendentals. This re-awakening of the Church can be fulfilled by the appropriation of all the great theologies of Christendom. Christianity needs Thomism and the great Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, like Bulgakov and Lossky, to meet the needs of today's world. Nichols's interest in the works of Balthasar helps him to appreciate the intrinsic good of aesthetical dimensions of other cultures. In an interview given in July, 1998, when asked about the status of Radical Orthodoxy and its claims to recover Christianity, Nichols said:
I think one should also say that the Church has a mission to re-express in light the revelation that certainly comes from outside culture, the notions of truth and goodness and unity and beauty, and to help people to discriminate the way in which these ideas ought to be applied to reality and their experience. As I understand it, this approach is typical of the Great Church, as opposed to the sects. It does not write off the wisdom of pagan sages as misguided. It is able to reaffirm at least some of it, in a new way, in the light of the gospel. So, I would say that the Church has the task to steady the West's hold on a true metaphysics, as well as to proclaim the need for truth that comes from beyond all purely human thinking.
This preoccupation of Nichols makes him an heir of Balthasar's sweeping, symphonic project. Nichols's book The Art of God Incarnate: Theology and Symbol from Genesis to the Twentieth Century published in 1980, marked the beginning of his theological inquiry, and attested to his acquaintance with the thought of the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. From that book, he laid out, like Balthasar, his interest in theological aesthetics. As Nichols himself has acknowledged "Though Balthasar never fulfilled his intention of writing a full-scale study of Christian art, the sign-making that flows from the Church's reception of the gospel, nonetheless the beauty of the liturgy, the Church's supreme sign-system stands in a necessary relationship to theological aesthetics as he conceived it." Nichols's purpose in writing this book was to achieve Balthasar's unfulfilled intention. He asserts:
Now to some extent, an imaginative collapse can only be remedied by an imaginative renaissance. That was the implication of an earlier study, The Art of God Incarnate, whose subtitle was meant to indicate the close relation of Theology and Image in Christian Tradition, through which particular reference to visual images, so vital in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Transforming Our Human Forms into Christ's by PAUL ENGOULOU NSONG Copyright © 2012 by Reverend Paul Engoulou Nsong. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction....................xviiChapter One: About the Theologian....................3
Chapter Two: The Theological Method of Aidan Nichols....................19
Chapter One: Aidan Nichols and Thomism....................43
Chapter Two: Aidan Nichols and Ressourcement....................87
Chapter Three: Aidan Nichols and Eastern Orthodoxy....................143
Chapter One: Man, the Cultural Animal....................161
Chapter Two: Man, the Liturgical Animal....................195
Chapter Three: Man, the Rational Animal....................211
Conclusion....................233
Bibliography....................251