1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Loisy, Alfred Firmin

​LOISY, ALFRED FIRMIN (1857–  ), French Catholictheologian, was born at Ambrières in French Lorraine of parentswho, descended from a long line of resident peasantry, tilledthere the soil themselves. The physically delicate boy was putinto the ecclesiastical school of St Dizier, without any intentionof a clerical career; but he decided for the priesthood, and in1874 entered the Grand Seminaire of Chalons-sur-Marne. MgrMeignan, then bishop of Chalons, afterwards cardinal and archbishopof Tours, ordained him priest in 1879. After being curésuccessively of two villages in that diocese, Loisy went in May1881, to study and take a theological degree, to the InstitutCatholique in Paris. Here he was influenced, as to biblicallanguages and textual criticism, by the learned and loyal-mindedAbbé Paulin Martin, and as to a vivid consciousness of the truenature, gravity and urgency of the biblical problems and anAttic sense of form by the historical intuition and the mordantirony of Abbé Louis Duchesne. At the governmental institutions,Professors Oppert and Halévy helped further to train him.He took his theological degree in March 1890, by the oral defenceof forty Latin scholastic theses and by a French dissertation,Histoire du canon de l’ancien testament, published as his firstbook in that year.

Professor now at the Institut Catholique, he published successivelyhis lectures: Histoire du canon du N.T. (1891);Histoire critique du texte et des versions de la Bible (1892); andLes Évangiles synoptiques (1893, 1894). The two latter worksappeared successively in the bi-monthly L’Enseignement biblique,a periodical written throughout and published by himself.But already, on the occasion of the death of Ernest Renan,October 1892, the attempts made to clear up the main principlesand results of biblical science, first by Mgr d’Hulst, rector ofthe Institut Catholique, in his article “La Question biblique”(Le Correspondant, Jan. 25th, 1893), and then by Loisy himself,in his paper “La Question biblique et l’inspiration des Écritures”(L’Enseignement biblique, Nov.-Dec. 1893), promptly led to serioustrouble. The latter article was immediately followed by Loisy’sdismissal, without further explanation, from the InstitutCatholique. And a few days later Pope Leo XIII. publishedhis encyclical Providentissimus Deus, which indeed directlycondemned not Abbé Loisy’s but Mgr d’Hulst’s position, yetrendered the continued publication of consistently criticalwork so difficult that Loisy himself suppressed his Enseignementat the end of 1893. Five further instalments of his Synoptiqueswere published after this, bringing the work down to the Confessionof Peter inclusively.

Loisy next became chaplain to a Dominican convent andgirls’ school at Neuilly-sur-Seine (Oct. 1894–Oct. 1899), and here matured his apologetic method, resuming in 1898 the publication of longer articles, under the pseudonyms of Desprès and Firmin in the Revue du clergé français, and of Jacques Simon in the lay Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses. In the former review, a striking paper upon development of doctrine (Dec. 1st, 1898) headed a series of studies apparently taken from an already extant large apologetic work. In October 1899 he resigned his chaplaincy for reasons of health, and settled at Bellevue, somewhat farther away from Paris. His notable paper, “La Religion d’Israël” (Revue du clergé français, Oct. 15th, 1900), the first of a series intended to correct and replace Renan’s presentation of that great subject, was promptly censured by Cardinal Richard, archbishop of Paris; and though scholarly and zealous ecclesiastics, such as the Jesuit Père Durand and Monseigneur Mignot, archbishop of Albi, defended the general method and several conclusions of the article, the aged cardinal never rested henceforward till he had secured a papal condemnation also. At the end of 1900 Loisy secured a government lectureship at the École des Hautes Études Pratiques, and delivered there in succession courses on the Babylonian myths and the first chapters of Genesis; the Gospel parables; the narrative of the ministry in the synoptic Gospels; and the Passion narratives in the same. The first course was published in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses; and here also appeared instalments of his commentary on St John’s Gospel, his critically important Notes sur la Genèse, and a Chronique biblique unmatched in its mastery of its numberless subjects and its fearless yet delicate penetration.

It was, however, two less erudite little books that brought him a European literary reputation and the culmination of his ecclesiastical troubles. L’Évangile et l’église appeared in November 1902 (Eng. trans., 1903). Its introduction and six chapters present with rare lucidity the earliest conceptions of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Son of God, the Church, Christian dogma and Catholic worship; and together form a severely critico-historical yet strongly Catholic answer to Harnack’s still largely pietistic Wesen des Christentums. It develops throughout the principles that “what is essential in Jesus’ Gospel is what occupies the first and largest place in His authentic teaching, the ideas for ​which He fought and died, and not only that idea which we mayconsider to be still a living force to day”; that “it is supremelyarbitrary to decree that Christianity must be essentially whatthe Gospel did not borrow from Judaism, as though what theGospel owes to Judaism were necessarily of secondary worth”;that “whether we trust or distrust tradition, we know Christ onlyby means of, athwart and within the Christian tradition”;that “the essence of Christianity resides in the fulness and totalityof its life”; and that “the adaptation of the Gospel to thechanging conditions of humanity is to-day a more pressing needthan ever.” The second edition was enlarged by a preliminarychapter on the sources of the Gospels, and by a third sectionfor the Son of God chapter. The little book promptly arousedwidespread interest, some cordial sympathy and much vehementopposition; whilst its large companion the Études évangéliques,containing the course on the parables and four sections of hiscoming commentary on the Fourth Gospel, passed almost unnoticed.On the 21st of January 1903 Cardinal Richard publiclycondemned the book, as not furnished with an imprimatur, andas calculated gravely to trouble the faith of the faithful in thefundamental Catholic dogmas. On the 2nd of February Loisywrote to the archbishop: “I condemn, as a matter of course, allthe errors which men have been able to deduce from my book,by placing themselves in interpreting it at a point of viewentirely different from that which I had to occupy in composingit.” The pope refused to interfere directly, and the nuncio,Mgr Lorenzelli, failed in securing more than ten public adhesionsto the cardinal’s condemnation from among the eighty bishops ofFrance.

Pope Leo had indeed, in a letter to the Franciscan minister-general(November 1898), and in an encyclical to the Frenchclergy (September 1899), vigorously emphasized the traditionalistprinciples of his encyclical Providentissimus of 1893; he had even,much to his prompt regret, signed the unfortunate decree of theRoman Inquisition, January 1897, prohibiting all doubt as tothe authenticity of the “Three Heavenly witnesses” passage,1 John v. 7, a text which, in the wake of a line of scholarsfrom Erasmus downwards, Abbé Paulin Martin had, in 1887,exhaustively shown to be no older than the end of the 4thcentury A.D. Yet in October 1902 he established a “Commissionfor the Progress of Biblical Studies,” preponderantly composedof seriously critical scholars; and even one month before hisdeath he still refused to sign a condemnation of Loisy’sÉtudes évangéliques.

Cardinal Sarto became Pope Pius X. on the 4th of August1903. On the 1st of October Loisy published three new books,Autour d’un petit livre, Le Quatrième Évangile and Le Discourssur la Montagne. Autour consists of seven letters, on the originand aim of L’Évangile et l’Église; on the biblical question;the criticism of the Gospels; the Divinity of Christ; the Church’sfoundation and authority; the origin and authority of dogma,and on the institution of the sacraments. The second and third,addressed respectively to a cardinal (Perraud) and a bishop (LeCamus), are polemical or ironical in tone; the others are allwritten to friends in a warm, expansive mood; the fourth letterespecially, appropriated to Mgr Mignot, attains a grand elevationof thought and depth of mystical conviction. Le QuatrièmeÉvangile, one thousand large pages long, is possibly over-confidentin its detailed application of the allegorical method; yet itconstitutes a rarely perfect sympathetic reproduction of a greatmystical believer’s imperishable intuitions. Le Discours surla Montagne is a fragment of a coming enlarged commentaryon the synoptic Gospels. On the 23rd of December the popeordered the publication of a decree of the Congregation of theIndex, incorporating a decree of the Inquisition, condemningLoisy’s Religion d’Israël, L’Évangile et l’Église, Études évangéliques,Autour d’un petit livre and Le Quatrième Évangile. The pope’ssecretary of state had on the 19th December, in a letter toCardinal Richard, recounted the causes of the condemnation inthe identical terms used by the latter himself when condemningthe Religion d’Israël three years before. On the 12th of January1904 Loisy wrote to Cardinal Merry del Val that he receivedthe condemnation with respect, and condemned whatever mightbe reprehensible in his books, whilst reserving the rights of hisconscience and his opinions as an historian, opinions doubtlessimperfect, as no one was more ready to admit than himself,but which were the only form under which he was able to representto himself the history of the Bible and of religion. Since theHoly See was not satisfied, Loisy sent three further declarationsto Rome; the last, despatched on the 17th of March, wasaddressed to the pope himself, and remained unanswered.And at the end of March Loisy gave up his lectureship, as hedeclared, “on his own initiative, in view of the pacification ofminds in the Catholic Church.” In the July following he movedinto a little house, built for him by his pupil and friend, theAssyriologist François Thureau Dangin, within the latter’spark at Garnay, by Dreux. Here he continued his importantreviews, notably in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses,and published Morceaux d’exégèse (1906), six further sections ofhis synoptic commentary. In April 1907 he returned to hisnative Lorraine, to Ceffonds by Montier-en-Der, and to hisrelatives there.

Five recent Roman decisions are doubtless aimed primarilyat Loisy’s teaching. The Biblical Commission, soon enlargedso as to swamp the original critical members, and which hadbecome the simple mouthpiece of its presiding cardinals, issuedtwo decrees. The first, on the 27th of June 1906, affirmed, withsome significant but unworkable reservations, the Mosaicauthorship of the Pentateuch; and the second (29th of May1907) strenuously maintained the Apostolic Zebedean authorshipof the fourth Gospel, and the strictly historical characterof the events and speeches recorded therein. The Inquisition,by its decree Lamentabili sane (2nd of July 1907), condemnedsixty-five propositions concerning the Church’s magisterium;biblical inspiration and interpretation; the synoptic and fourthGospels; revelation and dogma; Christ’s divinity, humanknowledge and resurrection; and the historical origin andgrowth of the Sacraments, the Church and the Creed. And someforty of these propositions represent, more or less accurately,certain sentences or ideas of Loisy, when torn from their contextand their reasons. The encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis(Sept. 6th, 1907), probably the longest and most argumentativepapal utterance extant, also aims primarily at Loisy, althoughhere the vehemently scholastic redactor’s determination to piecetogether a strictly coherent, complete a priori system of“Modernism” and his self-imposed restriction to medievalcategories of thought as the vehicles for describing essentiallymodern discoveries and requirements of mind, make the identificationof precise authors and passages very difficult. Andon the 21st of November 1907 a papal motu proprio declaredall the decisions of the Biblical Commission, past and future,to be as binding upon the conscience as decrees of the RomanCongregations.

Yet even all this did not deter Loisy from publishing threefurther books. Les Évangiles synoptiques, two large 8vo volumes of1009 and 798 pages, appeared “chez l’auteur, à Ceffonds, Montier-en-Der,Haute-Marne,” in January 1908. An incisive introductiondiscusses the ecclesiastical tradition, modern criticism; thesecond, the first and the third Gospels; the evangelical tradition;the career and the teaching of Jesus; and the literary form,the tradition of the text and the previous commentaries. Thecommentary gives also a careful translation of the texts. Loisyrecognizes two eye-witness documents, as utilized by all threesynoptists, while Matthew and Luke have also incorporatedMark. His chief peculiarity consists in clearly tracing a strongPauline influence, especially in Mark, which there remodelscertain sayings and actions as these were first registered by theeye-witness documents. These doctrinal interpretations introducethe economy of blinding the Jews into the parabolicteaching; the declaration as to the redemptive character of thePassion into the sayings; the sacramental, institutional wordsinto the account of the Last Supper, originally, a solemnly simpleMessianic meal; and the formal night-trial before Caiaphasinto the original Passion-story with its informal, morning ​decision by Caiaphas, and its one solemn condemnation ofJesus, by Pilate. Mark’s narratives of the sepulture by Josephof Arimathea and of the empty tomb are taken as posterior toSt Paul; the narratives of the infancy in Matthew and Luke aslater still. Yet the great bulk of the sayings remain substantiallyauthentic; if the historicity of certain words and acts is hererefused with unusual assurance, that of other sayings and deedsis established with stronger proofs; and the redemptive conceptionof the Passion and the sacramental interpretation of theLast Supper are found to spring up promptly and legitimatelyfrom our Lord’s work and words, to saturate the Pauline andJohannine writings, and even to constitute an element of all threesynoptic Gospels.

Simples Réflexions sur le décret Lamentabili et sur l’encycliquePascendi, 12mo, 277 pages, was published from Ceffonds a fewdays after the commentary. Each proposition of the decree iscarefully tracked to its probable source, and is often found tomodify the latter’s meaning. And the study of the encyclicalconcludes: “Time is the great teacher . . . we would do wrongto despair either of our civilization or of the Church.”

The Church authorities were this time not slow to act. Onthe 14th of February Mgr Amette, the new archbishop of Paris,prohibited his diocesans to read or defend the two books, which“attack and deny several fundamental dogmas of Christianity,”under pain of excommunication. The abbé again declared “itis impossible for me honestly and sincerely to make the act ofabsolute retractation and submission exacted by the sovereignpontiff.” And the Holy Office, on the 7th of March, pronouncedthe major excommunication against him. At the end of MarchLoisy published Quelques Lettres (December 1903–February 1908),which conclude: “At bottom I have remained in my last writingson the same line as in the earlier ones. I have aimed at establishingprincipally the historical position of the various questions,and secondarily the necessity for reforming more or less thetraditional concepts.”

Three chief causes appear jointly to have produced M. Loisy’svery absolute condemnation. Any frank recognition of theabbé’s even general principles involves the abandonment ofthe identification of theology with scholasticism or even withspecifically ancient thought in general. The abbé’s centralposition, that our Lord himself held the proximateness of Hissecond coming, involves the loss by churchmen of the prestigeof directly divine power, since Church and Sacraments, thoughstill the true fruits and vehicles of his life, death and spirit,cannot thus be immediately founded by the earthly Jesus himself.And the Church policy, as old as the times of Constantine,to crush utterly the man who brings more problems and pressurethan the bulk of traditional Christians can, at the time, eitherdigest or resist with a fair discrimination, seemed to theauthorities the one means to save the very difficult situation.