1. Alfred Loisy was a critic of traditional views on the interpretation of the Bible, and argued that the methods of modern biblical criticism could aid theology.
19 Facts About Alfred Loisy
1. 2.
Alfred Loisy famously wrote that "Jesus announced the kingdom, and it is the Church that came".
3.
Alfred Loisy was never reconciled with the official church, and from 1909 to 1932 he held the chair of history of religions at the College de France.
4.
Alfred Loisy taught at the Ecole pratique des hautes etudes and at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris, and was made an officer of the Legion of Honour in 1932.
5.
Alfred Loisy was influenced, as to biblical languages and textual criticism, by the Abbe Paulin Martin, and as to a consciousness of the biblical problems and a sense of form by the historical intuition and irony of Abbe Louis Duchesne.
6.
Alfred Loisy took his theological degree in March 1890, by the oral defense of forty Latin scholastic theses and by a French dissertation, Histoire du canon de l'ancien testament, published as his first book in that year.
7.
In November 1893, Alfred Loisy published the last lecture of his course, in which he summed up his position on Biblical criticism in five propositions: the Pentateuch was not the work of Moses, the first five chapters of Genesis were not literal history, the New Testament and the Old Testament did not possess equal historical value, there was a development in scriptural doctrine, and Biblical writings were subject to the same limitations as those by other authors of the ancient world.
8.
In doing so, Alfred Loisy implicitly accepted the eschatology of Johannes Weiss : Jesus thought the coming of the Kingdom was imminent, so there was no point in founding a Church.
9.
Only after his death and resurrection was his original proclamation of the Kingdom transformed into this sense by his disciples, and legitimately so, as Alfred Loisy pointed out against Harnack's conception of Christianity:.
10.
The second part of the quotation echoes Cardinal Newman's theory on the development of Christian doctrine which Alfred Loisy had studied in his time at Neuilly.
11.
On 12 January 1904 Alfred Loisy wrote to the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Merry del Val, that he received the condemnation with respect, and condemned whatever might be reprehensible in his books, whilst reserving the rights of his conscience and his opinions as an historian.
12.
The documents made Alfred Loisy realise that there was no hope for reconciliation of his views with official Catholic doctrine.
13.
Alfred Loisy made a comparative study of the papal documents to show the condemned propositions in his own writings.
14.
Alfred Loisy asserted as true many of his earlier New Testament interpretations, which previously he had formulated in conditional form.
15.
The censure did not deter Alfred Loisy from publishing three further books.
16.
Alfred Loisy recognizes two eye-witness documents, as utilized by all three Gospels.
17.
Alfred Loisy was appointed Chair of History of Religions in the College de France in 1909 and served there until retiring in 1931.
18.
Alfred Loisy developed his studies of early religions and their influence on Christianity.
19.
Alfred Loisy never recanted, and died in 1940 in Ceffonds.