Christ Our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology by Paul O’Callaghan

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 621 background. In general, Ayres treats his subject matter chronologically. Yet whenever something new emerges in Augustine’s Trinitarian thought, Ayres stops to provide detailed historical surveys of theological or exegetical traditions informing that development. Given the complexity and volume of source material Ayres must marshal, as well as the long period of development in Augustine’s theology, this reviewer cannot think of a better method for historical contextualization. To have presented so much background material all at once at the outset would have dulled the reader’s sense of Augustine’s continued search in many places and over many decades for insight into the triune God. So are there lingering questions? At points, Ayres gestures towards, but does not expound, the ecclesial (and ecclesiological) context in which Augustine’s Trinitarian thought develops. And although he expends a great deal of energy trying to demonstrate how even Augustine’s most philosophical or speculative Trinitarian moments are themselves dependent upon prior theological commitments, the question—posed most strongly in recent years by Johannes Brachtendorf and Roland Kany—of what exactly Augustine means in De Trinitate when he promises to provide reasons to the more skeptical members of his audience can at times feel as if it has gone unanswered. To be sure, Ayres has argued that, for Augustine, to strive to reason at all about the triune God is to bump against the weakness of the fallen human mind and the need for ongoing transformation and reorientation of one’s errant desires, if one is ever to attain to anything like understanding in the Augustinian sense. The more historically minded will possibly chafe at Ayres’s persistent use of the first person plural throughout the work, but, viewed from another perspective, perhaps this challenging style is fitting for a book aimed at showing the unity of Trinitarian theology and the dynamic, decentering method Augustine employs when pursuing it. DOUG FINN Boston College Boston, Massachusetts Christ Our Hope: An Introduction to Eschatology. By PAUL O’CALLAGHAN. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. 358. $35.00 (paper) ISBN: 978-0-8132-1862-5. Tides ebb and flow in theology. The twentieth century witnessed a blossoming of interest among both Catholics and Protestants in eschatology, especially as an overarching category for understanding the fundamental nature of Christian faith. Catholic theologians in the second half of the 622 BOOK REVIEWS century engaged in wide-ranging speculation about the nature of death, judgment, hell, and purgatory. The leading figures of the day—Rahner, Balthasar, Ratzinger—put forward novel ideas: death as a privileged moment for the exercise of the “fundamental option,” the possibility of universal salvation, resurrection occurring immediately at death, purgatory as an aspect of the encounter with Christ. Liberation theology recast eschatology in a thisworldly mode. These ideas were not always greeted with approbation. In 1979 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a monitory “Letter on Certain Questions in Eschatology,” followed by a more detailed statement from the International Theological Commission in 1992 on “Some Current Questions in Eschatology.” Signs are now appearing, however, of a certain return to normalcy in Catholic eschatology. Two comprehensive eschatologies by Catholic theologians have appeared in English recently: the book here under review and Cándido Pozo’s Theology of the Beyond (New York: Alba House, 2009, translated from Spanish). In both, some new conceptions from recent discussions are appropriated, but the outlook of the tradition is given a greater weight. O’Callaghan consistently respects magisterial teaching (which is not very extensive on eschatological topics). His book seeks to introduce the reader to the Church’s faith and theological tradition in relation to last things, rather than to argue for a unique perspective. O’Callaghan notes that he has taught seminary courses on eschatology for many years (at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome) and the text seems intended for the seminary classroom. It is not introductory in the sense that one might recommend it to lay people interested in last things; it assumes too great a grasp of the fundamentals of theology. The ideal reader is someone who already has such a grasp and...