Ressourcement. It’s a French word that means “resourcing”—or, better, “re-sourcing.” As a term in theology, it calls for renewal based on a return to richer, more original sources, especially the Fathers of the early Church. Born in the Francophone world between the two world wars, ressourcement emerged as one of the great theological movements of twentieth-century Catholicism. It flourished despite suspicions and opposition, and it became an international movement. No history of modern Catholic theology can be told without giving prominent attention to figures who flew the flag of ressourcement.
Re-sourcing required making more texts of the early Church available to a wider audience. In 1942, Jean Daniélou, Claude Mondésert, and Henri de Lubac founded Sources Chrétiennes, a series of new editions of the Church Fathers with facing French translations, which now numbers in the hundreds of volumes. The methods and contents of these works needed to be elaborated upon and explained. To this end, Henri de Lubac wrote his eye-opening Medieval Exegesis: The Four Senses of Scripture (1959–64).
