Abstract
Among nineteenth-century Protestant theologians were those who sought to deconstruct aspects of the Patristic synthesis in order to “purify” those of the incursions of Hellenism and liberate the authentic Gospel. The Catholic Patristic scholar Joseph Turmel (1859–1943) shared the deconstructive aspect but also tried to delegitimate Christian theology more generally. He did this in major part by resorting to pseudonyms to avoid detection. His series of articles published in 1906 under Antoine Dupin formed part of this agenda. The article explores how Turmel came to adopt this larger strategy, how the Dupin series on the early theology of the Trinity contributed to it, and the multiple efforts to unmask the true author behind the pseudonym. Turmel's aims in this writing and others like it form part of the larger story of Roman Catholic Modernism.
“God’s aim is served not only by those theologians who advance reflection at a decisive point; God may also be served by those who go astray and provoke contradiction or correction.”
1
In the telling of a text, Antoine Dupin’s articles on the Trinity that appeared in the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses in 1906 2 follow the Rule of Three. Central to this telling is the text itself, intentionally controversial and in consequence pseudonymously authored. Secondly, the text has a pre-text, a backstory that is necessary for understanding how the text was intended to be controversial and why it was so intended. This entails some understanding of the context from which it and its actual author emerged. Thirdly, because this text garnered notice, and fulfilled its controversial potential, those who pursued a different theological agenda put serious effort into unmasking the true author behind the pseudonym. Since the context here is Catholic, a variety of control mechanisms existed for containing theological deviation and sanctioning theological deviants. This period saw a proliferation of pseudonymous writings and regular application of control measures to publications and to their authors.
The actual content of Dupin’s articles and the how of their controversial nature occupies center stage in what follows. Before engaging the text, however, something of the background of its author, Abbé Joseph Turmel (1859–1943), who, through writings under his own name, had gained a reputation for Patristic erudition in fin-de-siècle France, will need to be explored. The exposition of Patristic theology of the Trinity reflects an agenda, one that is intentionally subversive rather than constructive, as one would normally expect. That intent has to be accounted for. The detective work undertaken by the guardians of orthodoxy in order to expose Turmel as responsible for the articles was unusually elaborate and is not without its own interest, and serves to underscore the impact the articles were intended to have.
The World Behind the Text
Joseph Turmel came of age during a period of intellectual renewal and, correlatively, intellectual ferment in Catholicism. In 1879, with Aeterni Patris, Leo XIII gave papal legitimation to a Thomisitc revival that had been gathering momentum for some decades. 3 From the encyclical it is clear that the pope intended more than a repristination of Thomas’s philosophy; a bringing it to bear upon modern thought and modern problems was more the goal. The response received from a newly founded Institut Supérieur de Philosophie at Louvain was in line with these hopes: professors there were trained in both scholastic thought and modern sciences and were not at all reluctant to modify Thomistic categories in light of scientific findings. If, for some Thomists, this went too far, at the opposite end of the spectrum could be found those who would not go far enough. Generating a “strict observance” Thomism they were content to restate Thomas’s thought, accompanied by literal commentary, as if this were sufficient to meet modern concerns. 4
Other Catholics judged it necessary to range beyond Thomism. Already in the 1880s and more overtly in the 1890s tendencies for intellectual and structural reform of Catholicism were gathering momentum, attracting adherents, and coming to light in critical biblical scholarship, in historical studies of Christian origins, in apologetic approaches, and in philosophically informed treatments of miracle and dogma. By the early 1900s, these tendencies would be perceived a more coherent movement than was in fact the case, attract the label “Modernism,” and be condemned under that name in 1907 in the form of a syllabus of errors, Lamentabili sane exitu (3 July 1907) 5 and the encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis (8 September) which stigmatized Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies.” 6 Turmel contributed to this revisionist agenda and played a role in shaping perceptions of it. Before engaging his pseudonymous text on the Trinity, Turmel’s relation to these initiatives needs be appreciated.
Educated in a provincial seminary, far from the intellectual epicenter at Paris, Turmel would lack access to the Collège de France, the École Pratique des Hautes Études, the Institut catholique de Paris, in short, to the currents of modern thought that his more fortunate contemporaries enjoyed. Nonetheless, he was able to combine a natural curiosity, a voracious reading capacity, and entry into the faculty library at the seminary to achieve a knowledge base far above the usual fare served up by the Latin manuals then in use in seminaries. 7 At a later stage in his intellectual development, he was able to benefit from periodicals founded during this period of renewal, which provided outlets for his findings.
In 1880, after formation at the major seminary, Turmel was assigned to further studies at the Catholic theological faculty at Angers. During his first year, he was taught dogma by the Jesuit Louis Billot, who would play an important role in the Thomistic revival. 8 More decisive for Turmel’s future, however, was his exposure to critical biblical scholarship with its conclusions at variance with those he had received in seminary. That exposure catalyzed his first doubts about the soundness of Catholic teaching. 9 It would not be the speculative approach to dogma as taught by Billot that would prove to be decisive for Turmel, but a critical historical one.
After ordination to the priesthood in 1882, he was named professor of dogmatic theology at the seminary where he had studied. His contact with Protestant exegetes had undermined his confidence in the bible as “a book dictated from heaven and, accordingly, sacred” and in the exegetical methods practiced by theologians. 10 Continued reading in critical commentaries convinced him that there was a case to be answered. To defend Catholic teaching, he asked for and received permission to read works that were on the Index of Forbidden Books. Turmel’s trajectory thus anticipates those of other figures who became involved in the Modernist controversy: out of a desire to defend the faith against the encroachments of historical criticism, he engaged it only to become convinced by it. 11 Moreover, he became convinced that priest-apologists, in order to elude the scrutiny of the Holy Office, denied in print what they acknowledged in private. Rationalist scholars were not infallible, but they had the merit of being sincere. This conclusion became determinative of Turmel’s future relation with the Church. 12
For a time, he was able to compartmentalize his piety and his intellectual conclusions. However, by 1886 that modus vivendi no longer worked. He acknowledged to himself that he had lost all faith in Christian dogmas. But he resolved nonetheless to continue in the Church, outwardly conforming but inwardly unbelieving. His rationale: the Church had been dishonest with him, having chosen to ignore, even suppress, discordant information, deceitfully teaching falsehoods when it was aware of the facts that were there before it, intimidating those who would publicly reveal them, sanctioning those who had the temerity to do so. Moreover, he would not expose his family to the stigma of an apostate priest. His interest shifted from biblical study to the history of Christian dogmas. Understood not as “articles of faith come from the apostles, who received them from God,” but as “products of human activity . . . never perfect from the beginning,” they are subject to the laws of development. 13 From 1886 that historical development became the predominant object of his studies.
His apostleship of truth took early form in sharing the less unsettling results of critical exegetes with confreres. In 1892, incautious remarks of a clearly heterodox nature made to a seminarian and communicated to superiors resulted in Turmel’s dismissal from the seminary faculty. His situation was attributed to a breakdown from overwork, given the intensity with which he pursued his studies. In due course, like Alfred Loisy after his dismissal from the Paris Institut catholique, Turmel was given a chaplaincy to a community of sisters. Again like Loisy, this afforded him ample leisure to reconnect with sources and continue research. The diligence with which he pursued this is revealed in his comment, “Toward the autumn of 1896 I had read most of the Latin Patrology. I had simultaneously familiarized myself with the principal Greek Fathers of the first four centuries. I had also studied several German books. . . . In the course of my long journeys across the centuries, I constantly kept watch on the evolution of Christian dogmas.” 14
Drawing upon this fund of research he set about committing it to writing, without any clear idea of when or how it would appear. Publication was made possible through the intermediary of a diocesan confrere who conveyed a study by Turmel of original sin to Loisy. This opened up the pages of the Revue d’histoire et de littérature religieuses to Turmel’s productions. Since some of these early articles will figure in the attempts to identify the one responsible for “Dupin’s” articles on the Trinity—as well as others more radical still on Mariology which Turmel published under “Guillaume Herzog”—a brief listing is in order here. The first of Turmel’s writings to actually appear in the RHLR was a series on angelology over 1898–1899. 15 In keeping with his intent to subvert Catholic dogma he insinuated the historically contingent nature of the tradition’s development in this area, rather than its basis in revelation. The following year Turmel took eschatology in the early Church as its subject, 16 followed by the series on original sin originally brought to Loisy’s attention, spanning 1900–1903. 17 The boldness of Turmel’s findings in these articles was not lost on Catholic readers, nor was the extent of his knowledge and reading. The latter earned him the invitation to contribute to the newly launched Bibliotheque de Théologie Historique, published under Jesuit auspices, to which he contributed two volumes on the history of positive theology. 18 Though he tempered his style the goal remained constant: to discredit the theologians with “oblique and prudently measured blows that the uninitiated could interpret as unintentional lack of precision in language.” 19 The subdiscipline of positive theology was congenial to Turmel’s agenda. It focused on the proofs which have served to support religious teaching; the focus is more on the demonstration than on the history of the dogma itself. 20 This enabled Turmel to examine closely interpretation of sources, exposing weaknesses in argumentation or contradictions over time.
Already by the time the first volume of Histoire de la théologie positive was published, Turmel’s extensive contributions to the RHLR had gained him access to other periodicals, notably the Revue du clergé français and the Annales de philosophie chrétienne. But in terms of the controversy that would come to surround the articles on the Trinity by Dupin, a number of articles published in the short-lived (1905–1907) New York Review assumed importance. Their significance may be deferred until the third part of this essay, when the controversy aroused by “Dupin” and “Herzog” will receive treatment.
The World of the Text
Before laying out the structure of the argument developed over the course of the three articles on Trinity, brief consideration of theological approach then dominant in Catholicism will better bring out their controversial nature and the forcefulness of Catholic reaction. In the course of his study on the nature of ecclesial authority in the theology of the Roman School, T. Howland Sanks encapsulates the foundational principles of Louis Billot’s view of the tradition and its development—principles widely shared among Roman Catholic theologians of the time. In the course of transition from “simple faith” to dogma as explicated in later magisterial definition: Any contradictions which may seem to appear between the earlier stages and the final precise explication are to be solved in terms of two principles to which he is willing to reduce the entire discussion: first, that texts of the Fathers or other sources of the tradition can be understood in an orthodox sense, and secondly, that they should be so understood . . . ‘Orthodox sense’ is the preaching of the magisterium at the present time . . .
21
Pohle concedes that, given the enigmatic hints at Trinity scattered through the Old Testament, the Jews could not have obtained “a sufficiently distinct knowledge of the Blessed Trinity to make it appear as an article of faith” with a caveat: “aside from certain specially enlightened individuals, such as Abraham, Moses, Isaias, and David.” 22 In referencing the synoptic passages that narrate the baptism of Jesus, he states that although “the identity of Nature of the three Divine Persons is not expressly enunciated in [those passages], it may, as a matter of course, be presumed.” 23 Here Pohle gives an example of the theological exegesis early rejected by Turmel for its tendency to isolate scriptural texts from their contexts and the hermeneutical practice of reading a later developed dogmatic language back into the biblical and patristic sources. When the Church Fathers used language that lacked the precision of later dogmatic formulations, as a matter of principle, they are to be interpreted in the later sense. 24 The dogmatic synthesis, as here represented by Pohle, Turmel set out in the articles on Trinity to deconstruct, as one takes apart a mechanism. Prior to 1906, in articles published under his own name Turmel had sought to discredit the theologians, necessitating a certain restraint. As “Dupin” the gloves came off and the intent was to engage dogma, to reveal it as “a human, very human, product, obtained as a result of multiple, complicated revisions that lacked any coherence.” 25
Over the course of the three articles on the Trinity, Turmel-Dupin lays out the historical formation of this article of faith in several stages. Laying aside many of the details of his exposition, it may be schematized as follows.
In the initial stage, while the New Testament attests to multiple mentions of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they are mentioned in isolation. At this point, there is as yet no effort to prescribe a connection, to unite them together. They addressed, for example, prayers to the Father who ‘alone’, following the expression of Clement of Rome, ‘was God’; they conferred baptism in the name of Jesus; they declared that at the moment of baptism, the neophytes received the gift of the Holy Spirit; but they did not go farther.
26
The transition from ternary formula to Triad occurs in a third stage during the second century, in the work of learned theology. The appropriation of the Logos theory provided one way forward. It had the advantage of giving the Son as the second member of the ternary formula a distinct personality, distinguishing him from the Father. But with that appropriation from Philo of Alexandria came a conception of Jesus as a being having existed in a celestial state before appearing on earth, but as inferior to the Supreme Being. Philo called his Logos a “second god.” This subordinationist christology is found to be present in writers of this period. Among Justin, Athanagoras, and Irenaeus divinity is present in the Logos in a relative and restricted sense. 28 Another casualty of the Logos theology is the Holy Spirit, compromised as a distinct person because there was no place for him in the theology issued from Philo of Alexandria or in exegesis. Several apologists identify the Spirit and the Logos, viewing those as different names for the same entity. 29 During the second century, then, the Church continued to celebrate its rites in the Trinitarian formula, but among the people without preoccupation with speculations of the learned. The people saw in the three terms only the different manifestations of a unique divine person. Alongside this popular piety the Alexandrian theology worked its metaphysical positions onto the traditional material, emphasizing distinction among the three while diverging on their status.
In a further stage, by the third century, as Dupin continues the narrative, speculative theology had formed two triads, one dominant in the East, the other achieving dominance in the West. The Logos Christology dominated the East, although exceptions could be found in the West. As noted, in that theology, the divinization of the Savior had acquired metaphysical meaning, and sought to reconcile monotheism and the divinity of the Savior. But a divinity who was God only in a secondary and subordinate way. In the East, emphasis fell upon distinction among the three. Where the Logos doctrine did not interpose itself, as in the West, the conciliation of divinity with monotheism took place on other grounds. Since there was only one God, Jesus was understood to be identical with the Supreme Being, and hence God incarnate. At the end of the second century, a Modalist interpretation of the Triad was in vogue at Rome with Pope Victor I (r. 189–198) as its defender. Modalism continued to find advocates in his successors, Zephrynius (r. 199–217) and Callistus I (r. 217–222). With Callistus there is an attempt to introduce the doctrine of the Logos into Modalist doctrine, to find a middle way between the positions of Sabellius and Hippolytus. While his formulation was successful in suppressing the quarrels between the partisans of these two theologians, it was less than successful in achieving a coherent synthesis. It was basically a modified Modalism, which did have the merit of giving a place—albeit modest—to the Logos in the official theology of the Roman church, but only by deforming the concept. 30
At mid-third century there are three Triads taught at Rome: Sabellian, which had received condemnation; Tertullianist, which was suspect; and that of Callistus, which had currency with the orthodox party. While the first two had their defects, they had the advantage of elevating Father, Son and Holy Spirit into the realm of metaphysics. With Callistus “the Son was the human body with which the Supreme Being was clothed in order come among us; the Holy Spirit was the divinity considered in itself and outside of its union with the body of Christ” 31 —a formulation which did better with uncritical masses than with the learned. In the 40 years between Callistus and Pope Dionysius (r. 260–268), the Triad of the Roman church underwent a considerable transformation. The problem needing resolution was that of resolving the Triad with the Monarchy.
Sabellius’s and Tertullian’s theologies each had their strengths, along with their defects. Sabellius’s merit was placing the three terms of the ternary formula in the divine essence, placing them on the same level and strictly maintaining the unity of God. But in doing so does not provide any rationale for Son and Spirit. By contrast, Tertullian clearly explicates the distinction of Father, Son, and Spirit, but at the expense of monotheism.
32
So Dupin argues that Dionysius represents a further development in taking from Tertullian the distinction of the three and from Sabellius the immanence of the three in the divine essence, and connects them. The simultaneous affirmation of the divine unity and the trinity of persons also brought together the modalistic popular theology with the conclusions of the theologians. Hence, Dupin is able to conclude: The Trinity, such as the Church teaches it since Pope Dionysius, is the Sabellian Triad in which has been cast, as a dissolvent, a formula of Tertullian. It is the work, not of a philosopher who investigates, but of a pastor who tries to remain apart from speculations. It carries, to the highest degree, the mark of the Roman spirit.
33
Among nineteenth-century Protestants were those who sought to deconstruct aspects of the Patristic synthesis in order to “purify” those of the incursions of Hellenism and liberate the authentic Gospel. Turmel shares the deconstructive aspect but also seeks to delegitimate Christian theology more generally. Turmel–Dupin’s recital of early Trinitarian theology as a human creation, emerging out of the sentiment of piety to stimulate and foster reasoned reflection, directly assaulted the dogmatic claims of Catholicism. Interestingly, it was not so much Dupin’s reconstruction of Trinitarian development which created a major scandal, but the successor series on Mariology that Turmel published under the pseudonym of Guillaume Herzog. Under concerted efforts to unmask the authorship of both series, striking similarities were uncovered between Dupin and Herzog, and with previous work published by Turmel. To those efforts, notably led by Louis Saltet and Eugène Portalié, we now turn.
The World in Front of the Text
By 1908 the articles that had appeared in the RHLR had catalyzed “la Question Herzog-Dupin.” Saltet had entered the lists with two articles in the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique, augmented and published as La Question Herzog-Dupin, while Portalié collected articles originally appearing in Études as La critique de M. Turmel et « La Question Herzog-Dupin». 34 The intent of both critics was to show the dependencies of the pseudonymous authors on the work of Turmel amounted to shameless plagiarism not only of published works but extended to plagiarism of manuscripts. The case that Saltet and Portalié mounted, using source criticism of texts, not only showed the identity of Dupin and Herzog, but placed Turmel in the awkward position of explaining how such egregious plagiarism could have occurred in the first place, given that the chronology of the appearance of publications established the use of his work in manuscript as well as published form.
Saltet builds his case by first establishing dependence of Herzog on Turmel’s work. Herzog borrows Turmel’s method, “rather special and easily recognizable” as that is set forth in his Histoire de la théologie positive. 35 Moreover, Herzog’s plagiarism extends to wholesale borrowings from Turmel of references, 36 of lifting entire passages and translations, 37 of particular doctrines as Turmel’s rendering of original sin. 38 There is even an identity of style between Turmel and Herzog. 39 The plagiarist has gone beyond the plagiarized, however, in a crucial respect. He has stated openly that “Catholic dogma has not issued from a traditional teaching [as Catholic doctrine claims]: it is the spontaneous and continual creation of piety, of feeling [sentiment].” 40
This same theory is present in Dupin’s writing on the Trinity, with the same conception of positive theology as bringing to light the conflict between the “blind sentiment” of popular piety and the “cultured reason” of learned theology, with the former as dominant. 41 Saltet concludes that Herzog and Dupin are the same person. There remains the issue of dependence on Turmel’s writings. Here, chronology plays a significant role.
The similarities detected by Saltet (and Portalié in his critique) had their basis in Turmel’s use of his own manuscripts. The material on the Trinity and Mariology which Turmel sent to the RHLR and was published under pseudonym had actually been worked up by 1899, but had languished in manuscript form. He had incorporated portions of the work on Marian dogma into his Théologie positive, which saw publication in 1903, but had forgotten doing so at the time he sent off his manuscripts to the Revue. Hence, his critics could, on the basis of multiple dependencies, argue for some sort of relationship. In a similar vein, Turmel utilized his research on the development of the dogma of the Trinity in several articles which appeared in the New York Review over 1905–1906. Here, not only striking similarities in content but also the timing of publication came to play a significant role in putting Turmel in a tight corner.
Content first, then chronology. Saltet goes back to Turmel’s earliest published articles on angelology. From those, he retrieves several stages through which Turmel’s history of angels pass: (1) the data scattered in Scripture, (2) these same data brought together, but in a purely external manner, without reciprocal relation, (3) these same data conserved by the Church, in liturgy, but without speculative elaboration, (4) these same data submitted to a popular and learned elaboration, before (5) the Church, in spite of itself, being obliged to dogmatize. 42 Saltet then goes on to summarize the stages through which Dupin’s account of the Trinity pass, drawing the parallels with angelology’s development. 43
In the matter of chronology a number of articles that Turmel published in the New York Review assumed prominence. 44 Saltet demonstrated that Dupin had merely translated passages of these articles into French, and incorporated them into his own work. Dupin’s article of July–August 1906 in the RHLR 45 exhibited dependencies on Turmel’s NYR piece on Justin which appeared in October 1905—which Saltet termed plagiarism “à la vapeur.” More curiously still, Dupin’s article of July–August also showed crucial borrowings from Turmel’s NYR article on Tatian published in the previous April–May issue. This he termed plagiarism “télégraphique.” Moreover, that same article by Dupin of July–August also showed dependencies on two other NYR articles which only appeared afterward: Athanagoras in September–October 1906 issue and Clement of Alexandria over March–April, May–June, and July–August 1907. This could only have occurred from access to Turmel’s manuscripts, which raised more pressing questions still. 46
Saltet stopped short of openly identifying Turmel with Herzog-Dupin. In his treatment of the Herzog-Dupin Question over the latter half of 1908, Portalié pressed the question of that identity again, citing both a German and an American author who were convinced of Turmel’s complicity by Saltet’s arguments. 47 At that point, Turmel’s denial of authorship of the Herzog-Dupin articles, made to his archbishop and in print, stonewalled critics. 48 However, Saltet’s statement, made in May 1908, that “The Herzog-Dupin Affair is not ended. It is beginning” would turn out to be prophetic. 49
After the controversy raised by Herzog-Dupin, both of those names disappeared from print, to be replaced by a veritable team of pseudonyms. 50 On these multiple fronts, Turmel continued his campaign to discredit Catholic teaching on Scripture, Patristic and Medieval theology, dogma, liturgy, and church discipline. In the early 1920s, a card that Turmel had addressed to Abbé Paul Lejay, one of the editors of the RHLR came to light. It clearly identified Turmel as the author of the notorious Herzog-Dupin articles. It was not until 1928, however, that it was made public. This re-opened the question of larger pseudonymous activity on his part with his archbishop and with Rome. Faced with incontrovertible evidence Turmel was compelled to admit his authorship of the offending articles. He also took responsibility for the other pseudonyms he had fielded since 1910. In November 1930, Turmel incurred excommunication vitandus. Thus concluded what the Revue apologétique had termed “Un épisode actuel du modernisme.” 51
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
