Opera Omnia, Vol. V: Quodlibet I ed. by Henry of Ghent, and: Opera Omnia, Vol. XIV: Quodlibet X ed. by Henry of Ghent

Abstract

470 BOOK REVIEWS makes husband and wife co-creators with God, thereby expressing their love for him in their love for one another. He fails, however, to establish the necessity of procreation for a sexual love which adheres to the per" sonalistic principle. The problem is that "in the sexual relationship ... two orders meet: the order of nature, which has as its object reproduction, and the personal order, which finds its expression in the love of persons ..." (p. 226). Wojtyla believes, therefore, that a choice to marry and have sexual relations must be a choice of both love and procreation. In trying to establish the impossibility of love without procreation, he perhaps proves too much. He argues (pp. 51-54) that the necessary end of the sexual urge itself is procreation; it is material for love between persons only accidentally, since "love between persons is essentially a creation of the human will " and " there may be affection between people who are not sexually attracted to each other" (p. 51). This argument seems to separate the natural purpose of the sexual urge from its role in the mutual love of husband and wife, rather than show the two are necessarily connected . Moreover, treating the object of nature as an end to which the human person is subordinate without establishing procreation as an essential personal good runs the risk of reducing the person to a means of procreation-a view Wojtyla rejects. Finally, if one must choose both love and procreation together in marrying and having sexual relations, it would seem that every sexual act would have to be motivated in part by a procreative intent-another view which Wojtyla rejects. Holy Redeemer College Waterford, Wisconsin STEPHEN A. DINAN Opera Omnia, Vol. V: Quodlibet I. by HENRY OF GHENT. R. Macken, O.F.M. (ed.). Ancient and Medieval Philosophy; De Wulf-Mansion Center; Series 2. Leuven: Leuven University Press; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979. Pp. xciii + 260, plus 12 reproductions outside the text. Opera Omnia, Vol. XIV: Quodlibet X. By HENRY OF GHENT. R. Macken, O.F.M. (ed.). Ancient and Medieval Philosophy; De Wulf-Mansion Center; Series 2. Leuven : Leuven University Press; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981. Pp. cxxvi + 331, plus 8 reproductions outside the text. Scholars of thirteenth and fourteenth century philosophy and theology have long stressed the need for critical editions of the works of Henry of Ghent (d. 1293), the dominant theologian at the University of Paris BOOK REVIEWS 471 between the death of Aquinas and the arrival of Scotus. Scholarship of the last fifty years has demonstrated the enormous influence Henry exercised on his contemporaries and successors, including Giles of Rome, Godfrey of Fontaines, and above all Duns Scotus. Henry's two major works, the Summa of Ordinary Questions and the Quodlibetal Questions, reflect his long career as Master in Theology at Paris. The latter are products of solemn university disputations held each year before Christmas and Easter. In such a forum the master would entertain questions and field objections from anyone on any subject, hence their designation as "quodlibethal " or " what you will." Henry held fifteen such quodlibetal disputes in as many years, a testament to his stamina as well as his intellectual prowess. The present editions contain his first (Christmas, 1276) and tenth (Christmas, 1286) Q'uodlibets. Edited by Rev. Dr. Raymond Macken, O.E.M., they mark the first installments of the ongoing critical edition of Henry's Opera omnia by a team of scholars under the direction of Macken at the De Wulf-Mansion Centre of the Catholic University of Louvain. Although Henry's primary concerns are theological, these Quodlibets contain a wealth of philosophical discussions. In Quodlibet I Henry argues that the world cannot be eternally created (qq. 7-8), that there is no real distinction between existence and essence in creatures (q. 9), that through the power of God matter could exist without form (q. 10), and that the will is superior to the intellect (q. 14). Quodlibet X returns to several of these issues in an expanded form and thus is important for precisions and developments of Henry's earlier views. Of particular interest is the renewed discussion in question...