History and Dogma: How Doctrine Grows
A passage that sums up Maurice Blondel’s thinking about how Christian teachings develop as they spread through time and space. French text with English translation.
Maurice Blondel
The philosopher Maurice Blondel (1861-1949) had an enormous, not to say determining influence on 20th-century Catholic theology. His doctoral thesis, l'Action (1893), gave central place to the human will in action and provided a philosophical justification for acceptance of the supernatural. His essays dealing specifically with Christianity and its presentation sought a middle path between "extrinsicism" (nowadays we would say integrism) and historicism (or modernism, if you like); they have much in common with what J.H. Newman had to say about the development of dogma.
