Paradigms Old and New: Twentieth Century Intersections between Kuhnian Revolutions and the Dutch Catholic Faith

The question of how Thomas Kuhn’s work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has been received by the Catholic church is a topic that has garnered small bursts of attention over the last fifty years. Theologians such as Hans Küng and David Tracy have explored the possibility of analogizing paradigm shifts with dogmatic changes in the history of Christianity, while other scholars such as Paul Ricoeur and Matthew Lamb have taken a hermeneutic approach to scriptural paradigm analysis. However, one perspective that has not received scholarly attention belongs to the twentieth century Dutch Catholic theologian Edward Schillebeeckx, who used Kuhnian epistemological theories as the basis for his 1974 statement that Jesus is the “paradigm of humanity.” My paper proposes that Schillebeeckx incorporated scientific models and Kuhnian paradigms into his influential three-volume Christological work as a response to the mid-twentieth-century European cultural milieu. To support this claim, I examine the way Schillebeeckx countered a debate with his colleague at the University of Nijmegen, Ansfried Hulsbosch, who argued for a scientific evolutionary account of the person of Christ. Further, I discuss how Schillebeeckx prepares his readers with a thorough understanding of the ancient Greek concept of paideia and a Platonic understanding of the divine paradeigma prior to introducing Kuhn’s work. I argue that Kuhn’s paradigm becomes integrated into Schillebeeckx’s work through his historical-critical research. In conclusion, by examining Kuhn’s influence on Schillebeeckx’s theological work, I demonstrate the unrecognized way in which Kuhn’s work has influenced the Dutch Catholic church.