J. Matthew Ashley’s Renewing Theology: Ignatian Spirituality and Karl Rahner, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis, begins with the “the poverty of academic theology” and, indeed, “the university as a whole as it grapples with the question of whether or not a tradition that is now at least nine centuries old has a future” (xii). Renewing Theology is the fruit of Ashley’s decades-long reflection upon the intersection St. Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises and Catholic theology, beginning in print with his Theological Studies article on Ellacuría published in 2000. Between its covers is a wise, well-argued, and felicitously written study, which argues that “far from threatening to render faith even more ‘subjective’ and ‘irrational,’ an appeal to the experience of the divine, as articulated in spiritual and/or mystical traditions, delineates an important locus from which to defend the cognitive integrity and relevance of religious faith” (xiii).
Beginning with the origins of “spirituality,” Ashley pursues his argument through case studies of three Jesuit thinkers, arguing that each—in distinct but not unrelated ways—theologizes from the context of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Their theologies and their reception of Ignatian spirituality are mutually informing. Ashley effectively demonstrates this thesis, in the end deriving a convincing set of general features of Ignatian theology (302–304).
Chapter 1 on “spirituality” successfully demonstrates by genealogy that the term is a product of modernity. Therefore, “spirituality” reflects the ambiguities of our modern age, with its emphasis on the individual and a specific constellation, if not bricolage, of practices drawn from a wider tradition, or set of traditions. Spirituality’s occupational hazard, then, is to serve merely as a “haven in a heartless world” (Christopher Lasch)—by which Ashley means an internal defense system against, or coping mechanism for, the acids of modernity. At its best, spirituality serves as a “well of vision” (Origen) that fuels the imagination for creative purposes.
Chapter 2 offers an excellent orientation to the debates around the interpretation and reception of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. Ashley’s argument helps readers perceive Ignatian spirituality as modern in a particular sense: a synthesis of medieval strands of thought and practice to support Christian discipleship in modernity. In the Exercises’ conviction that God speaks deep in the human soul, one can see modernity’s emphasis on the primacy of the individual. And yet, Ignatian “contemplation of place” is an imaginative practice of loosening modern restriction of time to the linear. For Ignatius, patristic theology was a starting point for placing ascetic discipline in the service of a mysticism that cracked open the self and the world to perceive God at work. The Exercises’ open-ended character means that early modern and neo-scholastic Jesuits could emphasize their ascetic aspect, which shares important features with spirituality as a “haven.” In response, Rahner and others reemphasize the mystical aspect, which resonates with spirituality as a “well of vision.” Here one might say that Ignatian spirituality stands on modernity’s precipice, positioning an exercitant for a summit, but susceptible to plummets of various kinds.
One of the great virtues of Renewing Theology is Ashley’s ability to contextualize both the theological and spiritual development of the three figures it studies, demonstrating the interplay of theological insight and Ignatian spirituality in the context of a larger set of intellectual, cultural, and historical factors. Rather than wielders of abstract theories, Rahner is a post-war German, Ellacuría a Salvadoran martyr, and Bergoglio an Argentinian during post-Juan Perón vicissitudes. Ashley helps us to see in their theologies what we otherwise would not. For one example, foregrounding Week Two of Spiritual Exercises, with its emphasis on encounter with the gospel Jesus and the “Two Standards” meditation, Ellacuría is better able to theologize discernment as an ecclesial act—the very communal discernment he was living in the Salvadoran university—more fully than Rahner (205). For another, a collection of Pope Francis’s cryptic statements on divine mercy and justice come into view when we consider the unity of the Spiritual Exercises’ first and second weeks. Without coming to terms with God’s mercy in Week One (i.e., accepting oneself as a sinner under the mercy of God), the action toward justice spurred by the encounter with Christ in Week Two cannot fully succeed because one cannot abandon oneself to the divine will (283). In other words, without digesting mercy, one is continuously in one’s own way.
Rahner’s and Ellacuría’s efforts to develop a theological “system” that responds to modernity contrasts with Pope Francis’s more ad hoc approach. Ashley concludes that this difference is a function of the latter’s distance from formal academic theology (250). Doubtless their writing styles reflect different occupations, but one wonders if the emphasis on “system” is more substantive than professional. For even academic theologians of different persuasions prescind from developing a system. Yves Congar, who said that “tradition” took the place of “system” in his own theology, is an example, as is Ashley’s own theological oeuvre.
In moving from case-studies to general “features” of Ignatian theology, Ashley furthers Avery Dulles’ 1991 sketch of Jesuit theology. Dulles claims that “if one were to look for a common bond among Jesuit theologians, it would be found not so much in theology itself as in spirituality” (“Jesuits and Theology: Yesterday and Today,” (525)). Ashley grants the breadth of theological perspective among Jesuits, yet identifies seven “family resemblances” that surface among Ignatian theologies. In theory, then, these features would be found among lay theologians also shaped by the Exercises. For Ashley theology and spirituality are more closely knit together, which results in a rather different list of marks than Dulles’s six.
Renewing Theology is an important contribution to understanding Ignatian theology, more the intersection of theology and spirituality, but even more to the renewal of theology in our time. A wide reading by graduate students and theologians may just help us to see fresh ways of theologizing.
Timothy R. Gabrielli serves as Gudorf Chair in Catholic Intellectual Traditions and associate professor of theology in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Dayton in Ohio.
Timothy Gabrielli
Date Of Review:
September 10, 2024