Jean-Baptiste Terrien

Jean-Baptiste Terrien (born at Saint-Laurent-des-Autels, Maine-et-Loire, 26 August 1832; d. at Bellevue, near Paris, 5 December 1903) was a French Jesuit dogmatic theologian.

Life

Terrien entered the Society of Jesus at Angers, 7 December 1854. Beginning in 1864, he taught philosophy and dogmatic theology at the seminary of Laval, France. In 1880, the Jesuits were expelled from France under the Third Republic, and the Laval seminary relocated to Saint Helier, Jersey. Terrien continued in his position there until 1888.

Terrien was appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the Catholic Institute of Paris, where he taught from 1891 to 1894. Afterwards, he remained in this city as spiritual father and writer.

Works

During his first period of teaching, he did not publish any theological work, except a treatise, "", Jersey, 1882, for private circulation; there are also five or six other treatises in manuscript or lithographed, which form a substantial body of Positive rather than Scholastic theology, after the manner and doctrine of Johann Baptist Franzelin.

In a quite different style is framed a neo-Thomistic monograph, published at Paris in 1894: "". At this time, Terrien began to write more popular works, and published the following doctrinal treatises in French:

, 1893; Italian translation by G. M. Rossi (Naples, 1895); , 2 vols., 1897; new ed., 1908; , 4 vols., 1900, 1902.

Philosophically, Terrien was more sympathetic to Thomism than to the school of Francisco Suárez.