What is theology about? For Saint Thomas Aquinas, it is about God. ‘In sacred doctrine all things are treated sub ratione Dei: either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God as their beginning and end’.Footnote 1 Here, Aquinas echoes a longstanding theme in Christian theology, which, from the Fathers of the Church onward, understood itself as an intellectual, loving contemplation of God and His works. Yet, contemporary theologians dedicate most of their time not to contemplation or speculation, but to historical analysis. In treating different subjects, theological work must engage a wide range of documents, employing exegetical and historical methods to determine their proper sense. It would seem, then, that in the contemporary context, theology has become less a science about God and more a study of historical documents and doctrinal formulations—objects to be known, compared, and analyzed. In light of this shift, we are justified in asking anew: What is theology about?
This article examines how four French Dominicans responded to this very question in the early twentieth century. Antoine Lemonnyer, Mannès Jacquin, Marie-Benoît Schwalm, and Ambroise Gardeil were all professors at Le Saulchoir, the renowned House of Studies of the Dominican province of France. In the first decade of the 20th century—a time of intense upheaval due to the Modernist crisis, which profoundly affected Catholicism, particularly in France—these scholars addressed the question of the nature and method of theology and its relationship with historical studies, through a series of publications.
This article argues that the responses offered by these four theologians remain relevant today. They articulated a vision of theology that is fundamentally speculative yet open to the contributions of historical studies—a synthesis made possible by the Thomistic commitments that shaped the formation of the Saulchoir Dominicans of that era. Their response is particularly significant for those engaged in a Thomistic theology that acknowledges the historical shape of contemporary theological thought. The first section provides an overview of the early 20th-century theological context, while the second section examines the writings of each of these authors in greater detail. Finally, the third section identifies common patterns in their contributions and draws four conclusions for contemporary theological work.
1. Context: history and speculation in theology in the early twentieth century
The notion that theology should adopt a more historical and less speculative approach is not a recent development. As early as the sixteenth century, the dominant Scholastic method in European universities faced challenges from both Renaissance Humanists and Protestant Reformers. These critics accused mainstream theologians of relying too heavily on philosophy—particularly Aristotelian thought—while neglecting direct engagement with Scripture and the writings of the early Fathers.Footnote 2
The response to this criticism was not one of outright rejection. Rather, in the centuries that followed, notable Catholic theologians such as Melchor Cano and Denis Petau recognized the importance of historical erudition in theology and produced works that reflected this awareness.Footnote 3 From the sixteenth century onward, Catholic theologians proposed a distinction between speculative and positive theology as two distinct yet complementary approaches. The former sought to present doctrine systematically through the philosophical elaboration of revealed truths, while the latter focused on studying the sources in which doctrine is found.Footnote 4
However, within this framework, positive theology remained subordinate to speculative theology. In the Aristotelian conception of science that shaped Scholastic thought, an argumentative discipline such as theology should proceed from principles to conclusions through reasoning.Footnote 5 While the study of sources could provide theology with its principles, only the speculative dimension properly constitutes science. This articulation is illustrated in the Louvain theologian Johannes Wiggers’s commentary on the first part of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.Footnote 6 According to Wiggers, revealed doctrine can be divided into three parts: faith, positive theology, and scholastic theology. By analogy with natural knowledge, faith corresponds to the habit of natural principles, positive theology to doctrina principiorum, as it provides clearer knowledge of principles that are not immediately evident, and scholastic theology alone corresponds to the habit of science, which proceeds by demonstration from first principles to conclusions.
Consequently, positive theology functioned as a preparatory stage in theological work. Its role was often reduced to provide apologetic arguments in defense of Catholic doctrines, drawing on Scripture, the Church Fathers, and historical sources. However, the emergence of a new approach to history in the nineteenth century posed a significant challenge to this perspective.
In that century, German Protestant theology adopted a thoroughly historical perspective.Footnote 7 The historical criticism practiced in German universities challenged not only the conclusions of traditional Christian theology but also the very premises on which it was founded, such as the divine authority of Scripture and tradition. Meanwhile the broader academic conception of science underwent a radical shift. History, once considered secondary, became an esteemed discipline, while the classical metaphysics underpinning speculative theology was increasingly marginalized in the post-Kantian intellectual context. As a result, theology with a historical orientation—once dismissed as unscientific—became the form of theological inquiry most aligned with the modern scientific ethos.Footnote 8 In the positivist intellectual climate of the time, factual evidence achieved through historical studies was often regarded as more reliable than speculative theological conclusions.
Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century these developments remained largely confined to Protestant thought and had little direct influence on the general orientation of Catholic theology. However, in the last quarter of the century, the political and intellectual climate of France under the Third Republic provided an ideal setting for an open confrontation between Catholic theology and historicist thought. At that time, France remained one of the most significant Catholic nations in Europe. Yet, under the new republican government, its institutions of higher education adopted a thoroughly secular approach to the study of religion, incorporating the historical criticism that had already become widespread in Germany.Footnote 9
In 1880, for instance, the prestigious Collège de France inaugurated a chair of Comparative History of Religions under the direction of Albert Réville, a liberal Protestant. In 1886, the École Pratique des Hautes Études opened a section dedicated to Religious Sciences. French theological circles could no longer ignore the debates over the historicity of the Bible and Christian doctrine, prompting figures such as Maurice d’Hulst, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, and Louis Duchesne to orient their theological work in a historical direction.Footnote 10
In this context, a speech delivered by Eudoxe Mignot in 1901 sets the stage for later debates on the nature of theology, in which the Saulchoir Dominicans would take part.Footnote 11 Addressing the faculty of the Institut Catholique de Toulouse, the Archbishop of Albi lamented that ‘Catholic theology has not yet attained that degree of precision already reached by less important sciences’.Footnote 12 He attributed this state of affairs to theology’s failure to adopt the scientific methods characteristic of modern disciplines, instead remaining committed to a deductive and speculative approach. Mignot called for a full integration of positive and historical methods, arguing that the theological fields that had embraced these approaches had made clearer progress than dogmatic theology.Footnote 13 By stressing the dependence of dogmatic theology on the human sciences, he proposed a methodological shift in which positive theology would take precedence and serve as foundation for speculative theology.Footnote 14
The push for a more historically oriented theological method gained momentum in France during the first decade of the twentieth century, becoming one of the central issues of the Modernist crisis.Footnote 15 In fact, just two years after Mignot’s speech, Alfred Loisy, in the introduction to his controversial work, The Gospel and the Church, declared that his book aimed solely ‘to catch the point of view of history’.Footnote 16 The reactions to his work made explicit the underlying question: Could theology be conceived in an predominantly historical form? It is this very question that the Saulchoir Dominicans, whose thought we examine here, sought to address.
2. The Saulchoir Dominicans and their response
In 1865, following the separation of the Dominican provinces of Toulouse and France, the latter established its center of studies in Flavigny. The shifting tides of French political life forced the school to relocate multiple times: first to Corbara in Corsica, then back to Flavigny, and finally, after the expulsion of religious orders from France in 1903, to Tournai in Belgium. There, the Dominicans settled in an ancient Cistercian abbey named Le Saulchoir, which would eventually lend its name to the now-renowned theological school.Footnote 17 Since 1894, Father Ambroise Gardeil (1859–1931) had served as Regent of Studies, guiding the school through these turbulent times while fostering a distinct theological orientation—one later celebrated by Marie-Dominique Chenu and described as a ‘third way’ between Modernism and strict anti-Modernism.Footnote 18
Such a characterization of the Saulchoir at the beginning of the century as holding a middle position, however, requires some qualification. It is true that, unlike the more polemical voices of the anti-Modernist reaction, the Saulchoir Dominicans refrained from strident denunciations and controversies. Their approach to the study of philosophical and theological sciences also diverged from their confrères in Toulouse, which eventually led to the foundation of the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, conceived as an alternative to Toulouse’s Revue Thomiste.Footnote 19 Moreover, under Gardeil’s direction, the Saulchoir exhibited a remarkable openness to historical studies. He encouraged this engagement by sending younger professors, such as Antoine Lemmonnyer (1872–1932) and Mannès Jacquin (1872–1956), to specialize in exegetical and historical disciplines. Lemmonnyer pursued his studies under Marie-Joseph Lagrange in Jerusalem, while Jacquin trained under Alfred Cauchie, founder of the Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, in Louvain.
However, in their fundamental philosophical and theological commitments, the Saulchoir Dominicans of that period remained thoroughly Thomistic, with no indication of adopting a mediating position. This is particularly evident in their critical engagement with contemporary philosophical trends. Gardeil devotes a substantial section of Le donné révélé et la théologie, which will be discussed below, to critiquing these tendencies. Marie-Benoît Schwalm (1860–1908), likewise, engaged in a controversy with Maurice Blondel over the apologetical method of immanence that Blondel advocated.Footnote 20 The Saulchoir Dominicans, thus, remained firmly rooted in Thomistic principles. At the same time, they sought to integrate historical studies within this framework—a pursuit that becomes clear in the articles we will now analyze.
Antoine Lemonnyer—then professor of Sacred Scripture at the Saulchoir—offered his contribution to the debate in two articles written for the Revue du clergé français in 1903. In the first of these texts,Footnote 21 Lemonnyer distinguishes two types of historical pursuits related to theological matters: positive theology and historical theology. The former is a theological discipline that studies a supernatural object within the framework of the Catholic faith. Lemonnyer assigns to it a ‘very determined and limited task’: to furnish speculative theology with a systematic catalogue of religious truths contained in the Word of God, along with their justification—’a sort of ‘Denzinger’s Enchiridion, but more complete and elaborate’.Footnote 22 Historical theology, on the other hand, proceeds by a purely rational examination of the historical documents of Christianity. Despite its name, it is not, properly speaking, theology.Footnote 23 However, these historical studies can contribute to the defense of theological science, as well as to its progress.Footnote 24 Historical theology is not governed by theological presuppositions, although believers engaged in it must follow certain rules: they may abstract the supernatural but not deny it; they should not claim that the historical method exhausts knowledge of a supernatural object; they must draw no conclusions contrary to faith, nor dictate theological outcomes.Footnote 25
Two reservations regarding Archbishop Mignot’s position expressed by Lemonnyer in his second article clarify the subordinate role the Dominican professor assigns to positive theology.Footnote 26 First, Lemonnyer raises concerns about Mignot’s assertion that speculative theology is ‘conditioned’ by critical studies of its sources.Footnote 27 While he acknowledges that historical study addresses a real scientific need, he argues it is a preliminary step rather than part of ‘theology proper’, a term he reserves for ‘the scientific explanation of content’, namely, speculative theology.Footnote 28 Second, Lemonnyer proposes an addition to Mignot’s definition of the object of positive theology. While the Archbishop had described it as ‘revealed truths, as found in Scripture and Church Tradition’, Lemonnyer adds ‘and as proposed by the Church’.Footnote 29 His goal is to underscore that the immediate rule of faith is ‘the Word of God proposed by the Church’Footnote 30 and that the historical function of theology is ‘the justification of current Catholic dogmas, and especially their historical claims, supported by history’.Footnote 31
These articles demonstrate that Lemonnyer remained within the paradigm where historical studies serve only a preliminary function, and positive theology is seen primarily as an apologetical tool. However, he grants a greater role to historical studies, which, while remaining outside the theological field, serve as an aid to theology. In this paradoxical position, Lemonnyer denies the theological character of what he terms historical theology but recognizes it as more useful than positive theology, which he considers inherently theological. This stance stems from Lemonnyer’s conception of theology as ‘nothing else than the rational interpretation of the dogmas taught by the Church’.Footnote 32 As a scientific discipline, theology is supernatural, deductive, and has divine reality as its object. Within this framework, the Dominican struggles to find a meaningful role for positive theology. In contrast, the study of history, methodologically separated from theology, retains an autonomy that can yield valuable insights for theological studies.
In 1903, the same year of Lemonnyer’s intervention, Ambroise Gardeil began a series of five articles published in the Revue Thomiste addressing the calls for reform in Catholic theology through the incorporation of historical methods.Footnote 33 In the first of these articles, Gardeil rejects the idea that theology should be founded upon critical historical methods. He asserts that theology does not depend on history, but on tradition, which surpasses its historical attestations and remains a living reality within the Church:
The true documentation of Catholic theology is the full, fresh, living Tradition, often predating the document, which is only its vestige, into which the theology of the first ages plunged, and to which it never ceased to refer, in order to live, right up to the time of its full flowering in the thirteenth century and beyondFootnote 34
Consequently, ‘critical methods and documentary information (…) cannot be regarded as the necessary foundations of this science (theology)’.Footnote 35 So, what is the role of history in theology? According to Gardeil, historical investigations in theology should not adopt a ‘progressive’ method that seeks to derive what Catholic teaching ought to be based solely on critically recovered sources. Instead, it should embrace a ‘regressive’ approach, starting with the present teaching of the Church—understood as the culmination of a development within tradition—and tracing this teaching back to its origins.Footnote 36
In the two subsequent articles, Gardeil highlights Aquinas’s theological method as a model for the contemporary theologian.Footnote 37 Finally, the Dominican directly addresses Loisy’s concept of the relativity of dogmatic formulas on both philosophical and theological grounds.Footnote 38 Gardeil concedes a certain relativity in our dogmatic expressions due to the conditions of human knowledge and the divine nature of theological objects but maintains that dogmatic formulas provide a proportionate understanding of revealed realities through analogy.
The intention behind the first two interventions, in response to Mignot’s speech, was to safeguard the supernatural character of theology. Both Lemonnyer and Gardeil saw this character as being threatened by the call for reforming the discipline on historical grounds. While they affirmed the utility and defended the autonomy of historical studies, they rejected the idea of grounding the scientific value of theology in its dependence on history. Once this point was established, the later interventions of Jacquin and Schwalm would attempt to propose a more integrated role for history within theological studies.
In the first issue of the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, Mannès Jacquin wrote a note discussing the various terms used for historical studies related to theological matters.Footnote 39 Distancing himself from Lemonnyer, he refrains from applying the term théologie to purely historical studies, instead referring to them as the history of Christian doctrines.Footnote 40 For the theological discipline, he uses ‘positive theology’ and ‘historical theology’ interchangeably.Footnote 41 More interestingly, he provides a justification for the usefulness and desirability of these studies, noting that the Church is a composite reality encompassing both divine and human elements. While rationalists err by confining the Church to her human aspect, this element nonetheless exists and can be studied in its own right.Footnote 42 Jacquin identifies the object of positive theology as ‘tradition’, defined as ‘a divine fact, the living and infallible transmission of a revealed doctrine under the action of a superior cause’.Footnote 43 This supernatural character of the object of positive theology implies for Jacquin—just as for Lemonnyer—a prominent role for the ecclesiastical magisterium in its methodology and conclusions.Footnote 44
The most significant contribution of Jacquin lies in settling the terminological question by applying the word theology exclusively to those studies that are supernatural in nature. He allows for a place for history within theology by recognizing a human aspect of the Church which can be historically considered. However, this aspect remains subordinate to the decisive divine element within the Church, which retains primacy.
In 1908, Schwalm offers his contribution to the discussion. He achieves a more comprehensive account of the task of positive theology by emphasizing the social dimension of revelation and its transmission within the Church.Footnote 45 Since the Church is a social reality, her study requires attention not only to the metaphysical principles upon which she is founded but also to the factors driving her concrete existence. This necessitates both a ‘metaphysics of the supernatural’ and a ‘sociology of the supernatural’, functions that Schwalm assigns respectively to speculative and positive theology.Footnote 46 Schwalm applies this twofold consideration to the issue of dogmatic progress, another central theological topic during the Modernist crisis.Footnote 47 Only a consideration that is both speculative and positive can properly address this subject. While speculative theology can outline the principles of this progress, only positive theology can trace its concrete manifestations.Footnote 48 Schwalm asserts that a mere speculative treatment of this issue would be incomplete.
When Lemonnyer wrote his response to Archbishop Mignot’s discourse in 1903, the Modernist crisis was just beginning, with the publication of Loisy’s The Gospel and the Church in November 1902.Footnote 49 By the time Jacquin and Schwalm wrote their texts, the crisis was nearing its conclusion, following the decree Lamentabili sane exitu (3 July 1907) and the encyclical letter Pascendi Dominici Gregis (8 September 1907).Footnote 50 Throughout the five years of controversy, the related questions of history and tradition emerged with renewed urgency, influencing Jacquin’s and Schwalm’s approaches. Furthermore, these later articles present a more developed understanding of the Church as a divine/human reality. This more sophisticated ecclesiological perspective seems to have enabled Jacquin and Schwalm to articulate speculative and positive theology in a manner that, while affirming the primacy of speculative theology, did not reduce the latter to a position of mere subordination or instrumentality.
Gardeil revisited the issue in a series of conferences delivered at the Institut Catholique de Paris during the fall term of the 1908-1909 academic year, later published as Le Donnée révélé et la théologie.Footnote 51 Drawing on the works of his confrères,Footnote 52 Gardeil’s conferences focus on three interconnected realities, whose homogeneity he seeks to demonstrate: revealed datum (donné révélé), dogmatic formulation, and theological science. He distinguishes each of these to emphasize their unity: the revealed datum resides in the deposit of revelation itself, divinely given both in expression and content in accordance with the doctrine of biblical inspiration. Dogmatic formulation represents the Church’s articulation of these truths of faith, while theology is their scientific study. Gardeil argues that there is no discontinuity or distortion in the transitions from datum to dogma and from dogma to theology.Footnote 53
Gardeil’s argumentative strategy often involves refining traditional positions to counter Modernist critiques in three main ways. First, he distances himself from certain theological views that Modernist thinkers mistakenly attribute to traditional Catholic theology, such as an ‘anthropomorphic theory of revelation’.Footnote 54 He accuses the Modernists of attacking not Catholic theology but a counterfeit version of it, confected for polemical purposes. Second, he uses what he views as sound explicative theories while seeking to enhance them. Examples include his approach to notion of common sense in explaining dogmatic languageFootnote 55 and his assessment of the metaphor of organic growth for describing dogmatic development.Footnote 56 Finally, Gardeil introduces distinctions not only among datum, dogma, and theology but also between theological science and the various theological systems constructed upon these principles.Footnote 57 He argues that these latter systems do not possess the same level of homogeneity with revealed truth as theology itself does. Through these distinctions, Gardeil helps to untwine fundamental concepts whose ambiguity had been a central source of confusion during the Modernist controversy.
For Gardeil, theology is true knowledge of God. In the first chapter of Le Donné Révélé, he provides a philosophical analysis of human assertions and their ability to express absolute truth.Footnote 58 In theology, this capacity is applied directly to God and indirectly to created reality insofar as it is related to God.Footnote 59 While this knowledge is achieved through human faculties, it is supernatural in origin—a participation in divine science.Footnote 60 This science is communicated to us through revelation, accessible in Church teachings and a wide array of documents that constitute Scripture and the various organs of tradition. Hence, the need for positive theology: accuracy and rigor of theological knowledge demand a scientific, historical, critical, literary, and philological study of the revealed datum.Footnote 61 In this context, Gardeil once again outlines his regressive method:
(This method) consists in taking the Church’s contemporary teaching—viewed as both established and divinely assured—as its direct object. Through document-based sciences, this method traces the teaching back to its sources and the various forms it has assumed over time to reach its current, consecrated expression. The goal of this process is to ultimately re-apprehend (ressaisir) the teaching, now enriched by its historical journey, with a deeper understandingFootnote 62
In Le Donné Révélé, Gardeil refines his understanding of the positive function of historical studies within his regressive method, offering a more developed explanation than in his earlier article on the reform of theology. Influenced by the interventions of Jacquin and, above all, Schwalm, Gardeil assigns to historical study the role of enriching our understanding of revelation. In this way, history becomes more seamlessly integrated into a wholly theological enterprise, which, while distinct, remains homogeneous with divine revelation and dogmatic formulation.
3. What is theology about? Four conclusions
Up to this point, we have examined the responses of the Saulchoir Dominicans to the questions concerning the nature, object, and method of theology that emerged in the early twentieth century. In their initial interventions, Lemonnyer and Gardeil sought to safeguard theology’s supernatural and speculative character by asserting its autonomy from historical studies. In a second phase, Jacquin and Schwalm worked to justify the necessity of historical knowledge within theological inquiry. Finally, Gardeil offers a comprehensive theological synthesis, drawing on the contributions of his confrères. In this final section, we will highlight four key conclusions from the work of these Dominicans and their relevance for contemporary theological work.
The first of these conclusions is unmistakably Thomistic: theology is primarily a speculative science, whose object is God Himself. All four Dominican authors we have examined affirmed this principle and rejected any thorough historicization of the discipline. This position aligns with Aquinas’ understanding of Sacra Doctrina in the Summa Theologiae, particularly in the first question, articles four and seven, which address, respectively, the nature of theology and its proper object.Footnote 63 Two implications of this conclusion merit particular attention.
The first implication concerns the human capacity for metaphysical knowledge. Notably, in Le Donné Révélé, Gardeil devotes an extensive first lecture not to a strictly theological matter, but to an analysis of human affirmation and its capacity to apprehend reality. A speculative conception of theology presupposes a realist understanding of human cognition—one more in line with classical Thomism than with post-Kantian epistemology. More recently, Thomas Joseph White, in a chapter devoted to the Dominican theological tradition of the twentieth century, has argued that ‘a Catholic theology that is genuinely open to a contemplation of the transcendent mystery of God must also be a theology that acknowledges the natural capacity of the human mind for God’.Footnote 64 This claim resonates with his older confrères in the Saulchoir Dominican tradition, as it is rooted in the same Thomistic principles.
The second implication of this first conclusion concerns how we conceive the relationship between God and creation. This point was emphasized later by another Saulchoir Dominican, Yves Congar, in La foi et la théologie (1962). Following the Thomistic tradition, Congar affirms that God alone is the proper subject of theology.Footnote 65 He underscores this by contrasting the Christian and Hellenistic perspectives: whereas Greek thought was primarily oriented toward the world—treating theology as the final chapter of cosmology—Christian revelation takes God as its starting point, considering the cosmos and humanity in relation to Him. To affirm that theology’s primary object is God entails a methodological rejection of naturalism, exclusive humanism, or historicism and asserts the ontological priority of God.
A second conclusion, also evident from a Thomistic perspective, is that theology is a supernatural science. Lemonnyer, Jacquin, and Schwalm emphasize this transcendent quality of theology to distinguish it from the historical sciences that study the documents through which divine revelation is transmitted.Footnote 66 Gardeil ends his chapter on theological science by reaffirming this supernatural character.Footnote 67 This understanding, of course, corresponds to Aquinas’ assertion that sacra doctrina transcends mere philosophical inquiry by being founded on divine revelation.Footnote 68
The Saulchoir Dominicans grounded the affirmation of theology’s supernaturality in both its object and the mode by which this object is known. An even stronger case can be made by appealing to Aquinas’ notion of theology as a participation in divine science.Footnote 69 In his commentary on Boethius’ De Trinitate, Aquinas asserts that supernatural theological knowledge involves a ‘participation and assimilation’ in divine science through faith.Footnote 70 Thus, theology is not merely supernatural in its origin but in its very essence, as a created participation in divine reality. Consequently, theology requires not only an attention to ecclesiastical teaching—an aspect the Saulchoir Dominicans emphasized in contrast to the independent historical science favored by Modernism—but also an intellectual and contemplative development of the life of faith. This development is fostered through prayer, contemplation, and communion with God, who is the source of the knowledge in which theology participates.
In this light, we can better understand the third conclusion: theology apprehends its object through a historically situated revelation, attested by historical documents. Our participation in divine science is mediated through these sources. Therefore, without being a historical discipline per se, theology cannot prescind of historical studies. From Lemonnyer to Schwalm, we observe a progression in how the role of historical studies in theology is conceived. For Lemonnyer, these studies are merely preliminary to the proper theological task, as their content appears largely natural, with theological conclusions exerting only an extrinsic control over them.Footnote 71 Jacquin, in turn, integrates historical studies within theology but confines them to the ‘human dimension’ of the Church and revelation. It is Schwalm who fully incorporates positive theology into the theological mystery itself, recognizing the Church’s social nature as integral to the transmission of revelation.
This necessity of external attestations, through which we receive the content of faith—and, consequently, theology—corresponds to Aquinas’ treatment of the origin of faith.Footnote 72 Faith entails an internal assent to an externally proposed revelation of the things we ought to believe (credibilia). Except for the prophets and apostles—to whom revelation was a direct communication from God—this revelation is mediated through Scripture and tradition, handed down to us in the Church. Thus, our participation in divine knowledge requires careful attention to the attestations of revelation—a task proper to positive theology.Footnote 73 Far from being merely rational, this task is intrinsically theological and supernatural, as it is ordered toward the knowledge of God through the hearing of his word.
A final conclusion follows: theologians studying historical documents have different aims than historians. While theology certainly requires an understanding of the historical situation and meaning of a document, its final goal extends further. Theology seeks not merely to interpret the past but to uncover the presence of divine revelation within these historical attestations. All the Saulchoir Dominicans emphasize that a purely historical study is not yet theology, a point that Schwalm underscores forcefully:
The theologian’s observation and criticism consider the monuments of revelation and dogma in the light of faith. Instead of confining himself to analyses and comparisons based on mere reason, like the botanist or the sociologist, the positive theologian examines his documents as the direct expression or authorized commentary of divine testimonyFootnote 74
Two key ideas of Aquinas support this conclusion. The first is the sapiential character of sacra doctrina.Footnote 75 Since theology considers the ‘highest cause of the universe’ through revelation, it holds preeminence over all other sciences, including history. It orders the conclusions of these sciences for a specifically theological purpose: the supernatural knowledge of God. However, in doing so, theology does not diminish or invalidate the legitimate conclusions of history. Aquinas’ second relevant idea is that supernatural truth cannot contradict natural truth.Footnote 76 Therefore, knowledge achieved through historical means will not oppose theology but will, in fact, support it. Thus, the theologian seeks to study the attestations of revelation historically, understanding their meaning in context and according to the author’s intent. But the task of theology does not end there: what it discovers through historical means must ultimately serve the supernatural knowledge of God it seeks.
From these four conclusions, we can form a synthetic view that guides theology in its engagement with historical studies. Theology is fundamentally about God. However, since God revealed Himself in history, the pursuit of divine truth must be mediated through knowledge of the historical attestations that contain or explain divine revelation. This knowledge employs historical methods, but its ultimate goal lies beyond history. As a participation in divine knowledge, theology integrates historical conclusions into a supernatural science and wisdom. Lemonnyer, Jacquin, Schwalm, and Gardeil, drawing from their Thomistic resources, articulated this comprehensive view of theology in a time of theological turmoil. More than a century later, it can continue to illuminate our theological efforts in no less troubled times.
