Contemplation and Incarnation: The Theology of Marie-Dominique Chenu

Jay Newman is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. He
is the author of Biblical Religion and Family Values: A Problem in the
Philosophy of Culture and Competition in Religious Life, Religion vs.
Television: Competitors in Cultural Contex

This dignified academic study offers a comprehensive overview of the
ideas of the French Dominican theologian Marie-Dominique Chenu
(1895–1990). Author Christophe Potworowski of Newman Theological
College in Alberta effectively captures Chenu’s contemplative
spirituality and explains his simultaneous dissatisfaction with
reactionary scholasticism and modernist excesses. In his summary and
exposition, Potworowski concentrates on Chenu’s abiding interest in
the ideas of incarnation and historicity, which are directly related in
his approach to the de-Christianization of his own age. “Chenu
believed that each age in the history of the Church has been given a
special insight into one aspect of the divine mystery. For him, the
insight granted to the twentieth century concerns the mystery of
incarnation as God’s humanization.” The author also provides
biographical material and two useful bibliographies, one being a lengthy
inventory of Chenu’s writings based on Potworowski’s extensive
archival research.

It is not hard to understand Potworowski’s deep respect for Chenu, a
serious, meditative, and learned religious thinker, but at times he
seems almost too respectful, unwilling to explore what many contemporary
students of theology will regard as critical weaknesses in Chenu’s
perspective. Potworowski does acknowledge that, “Chenu’s
insufficient methodological speculation in the task of discernment feels
out of step with the modern concern about the problem of evil.” But
Chenu’s peculiar disengagement from the social and political crises of
his own times is rather more evident in the bibliographical
entries—perhaps especially for the 1930s and 1940s—than in
Potworowski’s generous appraisal of Chenu’s abstract ideas on
Christian witness and the social mission of the church. Thus the reader
may wonder whether Potworowski fully appreciates the paradoxical
dimensions of Chenu’s vision. This volume belongs in the library
collections of universities with graduate programs in religious studies
and all Roman Catholic institutions of higher learning.