Lo Spirito Santo "anima" del Corpo Mistico: Radici storiche ed esempi scelti dell'ecclesiologia pneumatologica contemporanea by João Paulo de Mendonça Dantas

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lo Spirito Santo "anima" del Corpo Mistico: Radici storiche ed esempi scelti dell'ecclesiologia pneumatologica contemporanea by João Paulo de Mendonça Dantas John Nepil Lo Spirito Santo "anima" del Corpo Mistico: Radici storiche ed esempi scelti dell'ecclesiologia pneumatologica contemporanea by João Paulo de Mendonça Dantas ( Lugano, CH: Eupress FTL, 2017), 607 pp. The title quotation of de Mendonça's The Holy Spirit, "Soul" of the Mystical Body is our first indication that complexity is afoot. Augustine's Sermon 267, given on the feast of Pentecost, is the first appearance of the perennial axiom "the Holy Spirit, soul of the Church." Along with the "complementary analogy" of the Church as "temple of the Spirit," the expression recalls both the Church's mysterious Trinitarian origins and how the Spirit continues its work of "unifying and vivifying" (528, 521). Nonetheless, the axiom must be distinguished, as a divine person does not (strictly speaking) inform the created reality of the Church. De Mendonça's work takes up this question, by first studying the axiom's historical roots and then reviewing selected examples from the last century. The Brazilian-born author completed his dissertation in Lugano, Switzerland, under Manfred Hauke in 2009. While his research enabled him to engage the Christological dimension of ecclesiology, he was only able to "touch on pneumatology" (9). Thus for his Abilitazione (Habilitationsschrift), he heeded the call of John Paul II to "breathe with both lungs" and undertook the present work of pneumatological ecclesiology (9). The 607-page Italian work is truly exhaustive, though intermittently repetitive. It consists of four chapters: biblical foundations, historical-theological development, seven contemporary authors, and lastly, de Mendonça's own systematic observations. The expression "Holy Spirit, soul of the Church" is not explicitly scriptural, but does have biblical "foundations" (545). After reviewing a series of Old and New Testament passages, de Mendonça concludes that the image of the Holy Spirit as the soul of the Church is principally based in the somatic ecclesiology of Paul (128). He then turns to the historical development of the axiom, explaining that, long before Augustine, Irenaeus and others had already begun to theorize between the Spirit's presence and activity in the Church and that of the soul of a body. Along this same line, Origen first concluded Christ to be the soul of the Church. But the medieval tradition appropriates Augustine's formulation, most especially in the writings of Thomas Aquinas. Here we find the axiom both qualified and complemented; qualified by the refined Aristotelian understanding of soul (i.e., principle of unity), and complemented metaphorically with the Spirit as heart and personality of the Church. The axiom declined following Robert Bellarmine until it was featured [End Page 716] in the nineteenth-century ecclesiological renewal of Johann Adam Möhler and Matthias Joseph Scheeben. These two men helped lay the foundations for the ecclesiology of the mystical body, one that provided a conducive framework for the expression. Magisterial appearances then followed; first in the encyclicals of Leo XIII (Divinum Illud Munus [1897], §1309) and Pius XII (Mystici Corporis [1943], §§205–6), and followed thereafter by the Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium, §7, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §797. The second half of the volume features seven twentieth-century authors: Heribert Mühlen, Charles Journet, Yves Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, Leonardo Boff, and Leo Scheffczyk. The final author, though perhaps the least-known, is one worthy of attention. Scheffczyk, a seminary friend of Ratzinger and long-time professor in Munich, continues to gain attention in Italy; one hopes that his writings will soon be accessible to the English-speaking world. De Mendonça's selection of contemporary authors is indeed striking. Mühlen and Boff, along with the late Congar, strongly highlight the pneumatological dimension of the Church, to the detriment of the Christological (503). Journet, von Balthasar, Ratzinger, and Scheffczyk, as well as the early Congar, continue the more traditional Christological emphasis, to the detriment of the pneumatological (503). The proper balance lies in the right relationship of these two dimensions: for within the Church, the action of the Holy...