The theology of witness: A critical exposition of George Tyrrell's pastoral theology

Revisiting the Modernist Martyr,‘ George Tyrrell, a century after his death is self-evidently problematic. This work draws upon ten years of personal experience, living and teaching in Stonyhurst, Tyrrell‘s former Jesuit College, and two decades of researching his thought. It is not unreasonable to assert, following the lead of Gabriel Daly, that it is practically impossible to approach modernism without personal bias and ideology. Ironically highlighting the dangers of such an undertaking, Hilaire Belloc cautions, that history should be written not from the Bar, but from the Bench.‘ Moreover, it must show a willingness to submit to what Matthew Arnold called the despotism of fact.‘ In addition, contemporary historians and systematic theologians accentuate the importance of hermeneutical considerations of authors, texts and receivers .... At the turn of the twentieth century Tyrrell articulated a challenge to those who would take the church out of history and place it in some ideal realm. Drawing upon Lonergan, some argue that the church had locked itself into a classicist understanding of culture as a normative ideal that it possessed and others must obtain. Tyrrell played a leading role in instigating the shift from classicism to historical consciousness. ...