Der Begriff religio bei Thomas von Aquin. Seine Bedeutung für unser heutiges Verständnis von Religion by Erich Heck

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 8~5 Thomas's treatment of grace in the systematic works, he overlooks one of the main reasons for this. He fails to locate the systematic works in their Sitz im Leben in the pedagogical system of the times, which gave the primary place to the commentaries on Scripture. When one realizes that all of St. Thomas's teaching as a doctor of theology was devoted to lectures on the Scripture and that the Summa, for example, was only " outside reading," then one will realize that the one-sidedness of the treatment in the Summa was being balanced by the treatment of the same themes in the lectures on the Scripture, in a less systematic but more biblical fashion. We are in basic agreement with the conclusion of the author where he suggests that the Thomistic and the contemporary approaches can be mutually helpful. This is a valuable suggestion, though there will not be very many in practice who have the patience and intellectual sympathy to get to the depth and relevance of St. Thomas's treatment that lie beneath his thought categories which sound so foreign to many today. The author does not attempt to show how this bridge can be built. He has, however, put us a step closer to the realization of such a project by his organization of the textual material of St. Thomas. Marquette University Milwaukee, Wiscomin J. R. SHEETS, s. J. Der Begriff religio bei Thomas von Aquin. Seine Bedeutung fur unser heutiges Verstiindnis von Religion. By ERICH HEcK. Miinchen-Paderborn -Wien: Verlag Ferdinand Schoningh, 1971. Pp. 336. DM 32. The subject of religion is one of great theological actuality and importance . However, it is the subject of study not so much for theologians as for historians, sociologists, psychologists, and perhaps philosophers. The theological examination of the religious phenomenon's structure and origin has to a very great extent been neglected in modern theology whether Catholic or non-Catholic. With a view to meeting in some way this need, and in order to help somewhat towards an authentically theological interpretation of the mass of facts offered by modern historical study, by sociology and psychology, E. Heck has set himself the task of expounding the essential lines of St. Thomas's thought on the subject, whilst at the same time taking care to point out how the teaching of Aquinas may well be completed and at times modified by the results of modern scientific investigation into the origin and structure of the religious phenomena. St. Thomas's treatise on religio is one of the most extensive in the Summa Theologiae, taking up 20 full questions divided into 109 distinct articles 3~6 BOOK REVIEWS (II-II, qq. 81-100). It is rather unfortunate that it has not received the attention it most certainly deserves from commentators and students of Aquinas. The treatise is built into his formidable and ingenious moral theological synthesis: for, as distinct from most modern investigators, he conceived of religio as that quality or disposition of soul that is called forth by man's realization and conviction of his creaturehood, and of the CreatorGod 's claims, based on the metaphysical fact of creation. Faith is obviously presupposed and one might say even included (in-formatively) in all religious experience and life, as also is the ultimate possibility of demonstrating the existing reality of a Creator-God (See I Cont. Gent., c. 9, n° 58; also his frequent reference to the ius and beneficium of creation as the source of all religious experience and disposition; III Sent., d. 9, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1, n° 20; III Cont. Gent., c. 120, n° 2924; I-II, q. 100, a. 5 ad 2). Now, Heck, in order to achieve his end of expounding the essential thought of Aquinas and of pointing up its true relevance in modern theological discussion (and perhaps in a special way in ecumenical discussion), bases his work on a detailed examination of 14 articles of the thomatic treatise, viz., on the 8 articles of II-II, q. 81, and on the following six: II-II, q. 82, a. 2; q. 83, a. 3; q. 84, a. 1; q...