DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT AND WISDOM; ROUSSELOT ON "SYMPATHETIC KNOWING" BY CONNATURALITY

This essay takes its starting point from the position of Aidan Nichols (From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council) that doctrinal development depends on wisdom. A key figure for Nicholsʹs position is Pierre Rousselot, whose idea of sympathetic knowing helps explain how wisdom itself works, namely, as knowledge influenced by love. I focus on Rousselotʹs use of the Thomist concept of connaturality as the underlying basis of sympathetic knowing and offer a modern interpretation of Aquinasʹs Summa theologiae 2a 2ae, q 45, a 2, the key text on connaturality in ethical and mystical experience (being for affection what Summa theologiae la, q 84, a 7 is for cognition). I cite Bernard Lonerganʹs "Newmanʹs Theorem" to show how omitting affection from theological explanation has dominated older interpretations of human intentionality, not only in Aquinas himself but in many of his followers.