Background
Loisy, Alfred Firmln was born in 1857 in Ambrières, Marne.
Loisy, Alfred Firmln was born in 1857 in Ambrières, Marne.
The seminary in Châlons-sur-Marne and the Institut Catholique de Paris.
Ordained priest in 1879. 1881-1889, Professor of Hebrew. 1890-1893. Professor of Scripture, Institut Catholique.
1900-1904, Lecturer,
École Pratique des Hautes Études: 1909-1930, Professor of the History of Religions. Collège de France.
Despite Loisy’s official disclaimer that he was ‘only a poor decipherer of texts’, his initial preoccupation with the critical study of the Bible, and in particular of the four Gospels, led to his conviction that there was a need to revise the traditional teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, and this in turn resulted in the development of his philosophy of religion- Loisy’s view, as propounded primarily in L'Évangile et l’Église (1902). was that the contingent truths about the Jesus of history should be regarded as completely separate from those hel by the Christian community about the Christ o faith. In his later work Let Naissance du christ >0' nisnte (1933), Loisy returned to these views in his specification that the only historical truths about Jesus were that Jesus was a prophet of Galilee in 'he first century AD and that he was crucified during the governorship of Pontius Pilate. The remainder of the Gospel accounts, and any later Editions to the Christian message, were to be assigned to the realm of myth and symbolism. In repudiating historical truths as a basis for Christianity he delivered a devastating criticism of 'he conclusions of the German Protestant theo- °gian Harnack. who had maintained both the desirability and the possibility of cutting through 'he dogmatic accretions of centuries in order to recover the authentic and historical revelation of °od in Jesus Christ. Although Loisy's attack on a major Protestant heologian did not on its own account alarm the a'holic authorities, this was not the case with his Positive contribution to the philosophy of reli- ?i°n. As a continuation of his view that the unstian message was to be regarded as mythical 0r symbolic, he maintained that the teachings of "either the Catholic church, nor any other movement within Christianity, embodied the full and a solute essence of the truths of faith. Far from eing static, these truths were in continuous flux and development, and found their expression in "e life of the Christian community as guided by lhe »oly Spirit. These views aroused considerable controversy, and Loisy’s own account of the dispute was Published in 1903 in Autourd'unpetit livre. The rift e'Ween Loisy and the Catholic Church widened °'ier the next five years: five of his books were P aced on the Index, and in 1908 he himself was CXc°rnmunicated by Pope Pius X. From 1910 an anti-modernist oath was required of all clerical 0rdinands. understanding led him to reject the doctrines as a body of absolute and fixed truth.