A Tribute to David Tracy
In October 1994, I arrived for the first time at Hyde Park as an invitee of my friend Daniel Garber to serve as a visiting professor in the department of philosophy. While I was unfamiliar with many of the names of my new colleagues at the University of Chicago, one name stood out above all of the others: David Tracy. He was often spoken about as one of the most important American theologians (even I knew that), but, above all, David had a titular authority, recognized by most faculty members and students, a sort of great sage above the fray and, in a sense, he was in his own category—more than an intellectual figure and almost a moral authority.
One day, David and I crossed paths in a hallway. His face was calm and inviting, which a modest beard encircled with serenity (the result of modest effort, I would later understand) and an exquisite urbanity (but always with a touch of Irish humor). He shared that his personal intelligence services had informed him that my lectures were generating enthusiasm amongst the students (some of whom were his own). This was my first experience with David’s scale of appreciation: “interesting” meant “bad,” “excellent” “passable,” and only “extraordinary” deserved a “good,” sometimes culminating in “I have never heard anything so decisive,” which meant “we will be able to discuss this seriously.” The most surprising thing was that there was no diplomacy or flattery involved; he really meant it, finding something to be gained from even the most conventional presentations, provided one sometimes understood them better than their own author. This sort of intellectual charity, so rare in the academy, was a testament to how, deep down, the priestly character of the first Catholic cleric to be appointed to the Divinity School prevailed, always.
My proof of this was when David agreed to preface the American translation of Dieu sans l’être. In it he emphasized that, from the outside and to superficial observers, there was much that separated us: he was a member of the steering committee of Concilium, I was editor-in-chief of the French edition of Communio (where he would eventually write), he a “purebred” theologian of the Lonerganian school, a witness to the Second Vatican Council and influenced by Paul Ricoeur, myself a philosopher of the “nouveau philosophie” trained in the school of Heidegger and illuminated by von Balthasar and Ratzinger; he American, me French (even Parisian). While there was ample material for a long polemic highlighting distinction, the opposite resulted. We were, first and foremost, Catholics (he in fact and I potentially). Because we had both experienced that the Church extends so far back and widely, we knew that all differences and orientations were caught up in the same communion of Christ’s charity.
Our weekly (at a minimum) meetings (dinners) revolved around the Fathers, the history of theology and exegesis, scholars we both admired (Bouyer, von Balthasar, Rahner, de Lubac, Barth, etc.) and objections we shared in common (which I will not detail). These conversations extended to the more mundane—to wines, to France vs the United States, to Normandy (where he said the name Tracy came from), to Ireland and the English and their poetry and to Hölderlin and Dante. In this culture without borders, I found the substance characteristic of real theologians—more open than the specialists of other disciplines to the immensity of the given, which amazed me in my bookish and then personal acquaintance with von Balthasar and de Lubac and that I found, unchanged, in him. This friendship and familiarity with the essentials were, and remain, for me an experience of Catholicism that was all the more striking because the environment in which I found myself was structurally Protestant.
Quite quickly, and very often, we came to discuss the situation in France, in particular that of the Church. David came to acknowledge, in fact, that he had also been formed in the school of the nouvelle theologie (Congar, Chenu), liturgy (Bouyer), and patristic ressourcement (Daniélou, de Lubac, Mondésert, etc.) at least as much as Roman neo-Thomism (a point he shared with Küng and von Balthasar). French spirituality (Bérulle, l’Oratoire, Pascal, Fénelon) had also influenced him enough to interest him in the training provided by Msgr. Charles at Basilica of Montmarte: introducing students to theology through the practice of Eucharistic adoration and the editing of a journal (Résurrection, which began at the Centre Richelieu, a chaplaincy of the Sorbonne, just after the War) in a consciously desired and though-out symbiosis, which began in the Fall of 1967. This group of ENS students were, thus, trained under the prestigious and regular tutelage of Cardinal Daniélou and L. Bouyer, and then H. de Lubac and H. Urs von Balthasar were hired to launch the French edition of Communio—alongside other renowned academics and professional theologians. This edition, which was added to a collection of a dozen other journals in other languages organized under the inspiration and direction of von Balthasar, always retained its largely secular orientation and remained open to all of the cultural implications of Catholic theology, aiming to be not just another technical theological journal (there were many excellent ones already), but a journal of Catholic thought that would stand up to everyone’s questions, Christian or not. This discussion, conducted with authors of all disciplines, sometimes non-Catholics or even non-Christians, also included questions of philosophy, the humanities, the arts, cinema (etc.) as well as considerations relevant to Catholic doctrine.
From its beginning, the journal was concerned with advances in French “theory” in all its forms, inclusive of discussions on the reception and interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, which raged from the 1970s – 1990s without ever, we were very careful about this, falling into ideology and polemics. It was, undoubtedly, these characteristics, which were quite original at the time, that attracted David Tracy. I remember giving a lecture on this period in 1994 at Calvert House, in front of David and at the invitation of Thomas Levergood (a student at the time, he attended my seminars in Swift 106), and it began to become clear to me that David was interested in founding something similar to the journal, this time in Hyde Park: to bring into direct discussion the culture of the university and Christian theological thought in a forum that was open and trusting. This project, which was led by Thomas Levergood and immediately supported by the moral and scientific authority of David Tracy, can then be seen as a transposition and continuation of the French project of Communio. As the journal celebrates its fiftieth anniversary, the impressive development of Lumen Christi, now well established at Hyde Park and with connections to many other American universities, it proves the relevance and accuracy of Bishop Charles’s original and unique vision.
Make no mistake, the spontaneous agreement between us, which was beyond circumstances and individuals, responded to the fundamental orientation of David Tracy’s thinking. In his earlier writings—The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (1970), Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology (1975)—the polemic was solely aimed at liberating the field of theological work form its neo-Scholastic framework and opening it to a more comprehensive method. Beginning with The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism (1981) and culminating in Plurality and Ambiguity (1990), the question of authentic pluralism was taken up again from the perspective of hermeneutics, the analogia entis extending to expanding into a multiplied analogy that took into account all dimensions of symbol. The mutual influence between David and Paul Ricoeur, who was his colleague at the Divinity School, allowed David to integrate almost an infinite range of texts and doctrines.
I still vividly remember David’s wide-ranging and fresh conversations ranging from Greek tragedy, English poetry, ancient and contemporary painting, language, non-Christian wisdom and, as always, the thought of the Fathers. They guided my own research in many areas including: divine names, on donation, and extended phenomenology. David’s colleagues and friends (who were almost always the same as his empathy discouraged hostility) all benefited from his insights and discoveries. They all awaited the final synthesis he promised on the Trinity. He promised it all the more because he never stopped gathering the ever-increasing elements to the point that, as he continued to complete it, the construction of the synthesis always seemed to be postponed. Fortunately, he had the wisdom and modesty to publish without waiting for the conclusion of his masterpiece (the example of von Balthasar’s monumental trilogy undoubtedly stayed with him) and two collections of perfectly elaborated material resulted: Fragments: The Existential Situation of Our Time and Filaments: Theological Profiles (Chicago, 2020). While these latest publications do not replace what they were preparing, we can, nevertheless, guess what they were aiming for. At least, that was my impression when I published my book D’ailleurs la Révélation (Paris, 2020; American translation, Stanford, 2024) in the same year. While our efforts, David’s and mine, converged, we were unable to discuss it at length.
But this incompleteness (perhaps temporary, subject to texts that had not yet been published) should not be dismissed as an accident. It corresponds more profoundly to a shift in thinking: David Tracy had been moving toward writing in fragments for years. His original distancing from theological and dogmatic systems, reinforced by his extensive practice of hermeneutics and his growing orientation toward the incomprehensibility of God under the name of the Infinite, had convinced him that the infinite and the incomprehensible can only be approached and spoken of in bursts and fragments. Das Ganze in Fragmente was his implicit, and in fact explicit, motto. Going beyond predicative discourse, and therefore both apophasis and kataphasis, toward praise, and by referring to the mystery that is revealed from it alone, implies that recapitulation remains and must remain suspended.
Final integration belongs to eschatology. This very fact constitutes an essential part of David’s legacy.
EDITORIAL NOTE: Our special thanks go out to Michael Le Chevallier and Daniel Wasserman-Soler of Lumen Christi Institute for putting us in touch with Professor Marion (and for all the wonderful work they do); to Heather Foucault-Camm of the McGrath Institute Science & Religion Initiative for the translation; to Professors Willemien Otten, Russell Johnson, and Erin Keane Scott of the University of Chicago Divinity School for helping us secure the right to use the featured image; and last, but not least, to Professor Marion for taking the time to write this reflection.