Personal Religion in the Apologetic Christology of Leonce de Grandmaison

Jesuit Pere Leonce de Grandmaison (1868--1927) was a leading Catholic apologist in France during the Modernist crisis. In 1908, the year after Pascendi Dominici Gregis was published, he became editor of Etudes; in 1910, he founded Recherches de Science Religieuse. Never losing sight of his lifelong ambition to write a work on Christ, Grandmaison treated in occasional writings the crucial issues raised by Modernists: historical criticism of the Bible, the philosophy of religion, development of dogma, religious psychology, and religious ethnology.;The dissertation aims to show that "personal religion" was the linchpin of Grandmaison's apologetic Christology. Relevant occasional works by Grandmaison are examined, particularly a series of articles in Etudes (1913) entitled "La religion personnelle," an article on Christ in the Dictionnaire apologetique de la Foi catholique (1914), and Grandmaison's chief work, Jesus Christ: sa personnage, son message, ses preuves (1927).;Chapter one gives a biographical introduction and an overview of Grandmaison's formative influences and qualities as an apologist. Chapter two examines the challenges posed by Modernism as Grandmaison saw them. In Grandmaison's eyes, Modernism has rendered Christ inaccessible. Although Modernists strove to understand anew the subjectivity of faith, their misguided approaches and teachings attacked the foundations of Christianity. Chapter three explores how he answered these challenges regarding Catholicism. For Grandmaison, personal religion referred to the commerce of God and believer. Personal religion also referred to the Church that Christ founded, the Catholic Church, which was the true religion of the Spirit. Chapter four examines Grandmaison's Christology vis-a-vis the notion of personal religion, which, in its fundamental sense, is Jesus' relationship to the Father in the Holy Spirit. Grandmaison tried to demonstrate by a direct examination of biblical texts that Jesus was, and knew himself to be, the Son of God.;The dissertation concludes that Grandmaison's apologetic Christology presented a convincing answer to many issues posed by Modernism. Taking their questions seriously, he managed to show how the traditional belief in Jesus as the Son of God could secure the subjectivity of true religion as found in Catholicism.