S chillebeeckx, E dward C ornelis F lorent A lfons (1914–2009)

Abstract

Abstract Edward Schillebeeckx was a Fleming and Dominican friar, professor‐theologian, and an advisor to the Dutch episcopate at the Second Vatican Council. Born in Antwerp on November 12, 1914, the sixth of fourteen children in a middle class family, Schillebeeckx was educated by French‐speaking Jesuits at Turnhout, beginning at age 11. His older brother Louis had joined the Society of Jesus and later influenced Edward toward religious life. Schillebeeckx joined the Dominicans in 1934 and professed the following year. He studied in Ghent with Dominicus DePetter, OP (d. 1971), a noted philosopher who openly rejected neo‐Thomism as an overarching system and maintained a willingness to begin philosophy from the perspective of human experience. This was to have a decided effect on Schillebeeckx, whose own theological anthropology is at once deeply historical and pastoral. Schillebeeckx pursued theological studies at Le Saulchoir, the Dominican Studium at Etiolles in France, and the Sorbonne. He taught young Dominicans at Louvain from 1943 to 1957 and was appointed to the chair in dogmatics at the University of Nijmegen the following year, teaching there until his retirement in 1983.