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This chapter concentrates on new departures in the realm of Catholic theology and philosophy in the age of fascism, communism and world war. In a concentrated effort to overcome the stifling effects of neo‐Thomist scholasticism, the latter a by‐product of the crisis of modernism within the Catholic Church, progressive Catholic thinkers promoted a return to the sources (ressourcement), which allowed them to revalidate the original dynamism characteristic of Thomism. At first careful to introduce new theologies in traditional garb, the cataclysm of fascism and world war liberated the energies of progressive thinkers and cast aside their inhibitions. A theology of the laity, for example, finally saw the light of day, no longer needing to hide behind murky definitions of the Church as the ‘mystical body of Christ.’ Brief summaries of Jacques Maritain's Christian humanism, Emmanuel Mounier's personalism and the theology of labor by Marie‐Dominique Chenu round off this chapter.

Comparing Newman's earlier translation of Athanasius's anti-Arian works in A Library of the Fathers (1842–44) with his ‘free’ translation of Select Treatises (1881), this chapter charts the increasingly ‘Latin’ ways in which Newman came to read Alexandrian theology. It begins by showing that in Rome in 1846–47, Newman was challenged to make his reading of the Fathers accord specifically with the theology of the Roman schools. But Newman engaged with scholastic theology only from the 1860s, so that by the 1870s his theological style coincided with the interests of the new Pope, Leo XIII. In ‘Causes of Arianism’ (1872), Origen is seen through Aquinas's eyes. In his freer translation of Athanasius, moreover, it is not so much Thomas Aquinas but the neo-Thomism of the teachers of Leo XIII whom Newman read back into Athanasius.

This introductory chapter characterizes the nouvelle théologie leading up to Vatican II as a movement of ressourcement of the Tradition, interested in recovering a sacramental ontology that maintained the co-inherence of sign and reality. In connection with a number of different theological topics, the nouvelle theologians were interested in reaffirming historical realities of the created order as divinely ordained sacramental means leading to eternal mysteries. Thus, the movement's protest against the scholasticism of neo-Thomism did not signal a desire to replay the Modernist Crisis, but rather a desire to return to mystery. With Catholics and Protestants being common heirs to problems arising from the separation between nature and the supernatural, nouvelle théologie offers great potential for ecumenism. The chapter provides a historical overview of the various controversies surrounding nouvelle théologie and concludes with an outline of the remainder of the book.

This chapter argues that, for all his debt to the ressourcement theology that he learned at the Jesuit theologate in Lyon, Hans Urs von Balthasar is in fact quite nuanced in his appropriation of the theology of that school, especially of Henri de Lubac's theology of the supernatural. Indeed, he is not just nuanced but also often critical of de Lubac. Even more, for all of his important work in patristics, Balthasar can be quite critical of the project of the church fathers to bring Platonism and the worldview of the Bible into harmony. In both these areas, Balthasar finds himself much more in agreement with the insights of contemporary neo‐Thomism than is usually recognized by contemporary scholarship.

Over many centuries, under many regimes of Christian power, Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae has suffered the misfortunate of becoming an enforced text. Its authority has depended in many cases on misinterpretation. From the beginning, its structural innovations were undone by excerpting and rewriting. With Tridentine Thomism, its fortunes were tied to centralized notions about Roman Catholic orthodoxy. Later still, with neo-Thomism, Thomas’s book was conscripted by a variety of modern disciplines for projects very different from Thomas’s own. Faced with this motley history of reception, a contemporary may be tempted to ask whether the Summa has succeeded or failed. It is more useful to ask whether and how its structure might still work as moral teaching.

The first decades of the twentieth century saw considerable controversy over the role of more traditional Christianity at major universities. Some popular critics warned the public that universities were becoming hostile to old-time religion. Catholic universities, which were outside the mainstream, remained conservative and strengthened defenses against modern thought with neo-Thomist philosophy. The new Methodist universities had some of the most prominent controversies. Vanderbilt University was moving toward more progressive Christian views, but these were opposed by some archconservative Methodists. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching put pressure on schools to be nonsectarian and to sever denominational ties if they were to participate in the attractive faculty retirement program. Syracuse University, a Methodist school under Chancellor James R. Day, is the most revealing case of resistance to this pressure.