French Jesuits, Origen, and Vatican II

This essay attempts to assess the theological significance of French Jesuit investment in the study of Origen. De Lubac and Daniélou read Origen as a vir ecclesiasticus , making him a resource for Vatican II’s new vision of the Church. They saw him as a scriptural thinker rather than a philosopher, and thus revealed him to be a master of spirituality. Origen’s account of the economy of salvation, founded on the Logos enlightening all minds, prompted the Jesuit theologians (heirs of such daring missionaries as Matteo Ricci and Ippolito Desideri) to undertake an interreligious thinking that was ahead of its time. While celebrating the rich syntheses thus created, which greatly broadened the Catholic mind after the crackdown against Modernism, we may find it more fruitful today to trace the significant tensions and ambiguities within the Jesuit reception and in Origen’s own thought, notably the tension between the soil of the Gospel (and of Jewish experience) and the Platonizing thought‐forms that Daniélou attacked and de Lubac cherished

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