The Context of Casuistry ed. by James F. Keenan, S.J., Thomas A. Shannon

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 647 understanding of history, if one leaves the New Testament intact rather than dismantling it and fitting its pieces into a pattern conformed to a more "general hermeneutic," it is easy to appreciate the continuity between the New Testament and the present worshiping community Oohnson could have done more with the theme of worship in the New Testament itself). Johnson has performed a valuable scholarly and pastoral service. The task that remains is to describe the manner in which the New Testament, especially the Gospels, speaks of the events of Jesus' life as they exist now in his transformed humanity, thus forging an unbreakable link between the Jesus of history and the Christ in glory. There are hints of this in Johnson's book (144-58). When we have sublated the achievements of historical research into the biblical vision of time and history, we will once again read the Gospels as the privileged means of coming into contact with the real Jesus whose life on earth exists now in a resurrected state of divine glory: we will recover the ancient understanding of the mysteria vitae Christi. John Paul II Institute Washington, D.C. FRANCIS MARTIN The Context of Casuistry. Edited by JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J., and THOMAS A. SHANNON. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995. Pp. xxiii + 231. $55.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). In the introduction, Keenan and Shannon explain that this collection of essays "is a deliberate response toAlbert Johnson and Stephen Toulman's The Abuse of Casuistry" (xv). The response comes as a general endorsement of Johnson and Toulman's attempt to rescue ca:.uistry from the disrepute it has suffered ever since Pascal's Provincial Letters. Specifically, the editors endorse Johnson and Toulman's "claim concerning the distinctiveness of high casuistry: that is, the method of moral reflection practiced in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries was considerably different from the science associated with the 'manuals' of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic thought" (ibid.). Along with Johnson and Toulman, Keenan and Shannon do not want the deductive methodology of later forms of casuistry, which issued in an inflexible mode of moral reasoning, to obscure the inductive approach to casuistry undertaken in the centuries before the later ossification set in. The essays explore the emergence of this early form of casuistry and also suggest that this inductive mode of reasoning is pertinent today. The book is divided into five parts. The first part, entitled "Franciscan Roots," includes two essays. In "Method in Ethics: A Scotistic Contribution," 648 BOOK REVIEWS Shannon argues that a profound shift in ethics came with Scotus's claim that creation's final cause is derived not from a necessary discernible plan but from God's free will. Because God's activity is free, and because we cannot know from natural things our ultimate end nor the things that lead to our ultimate end, "there is no necessary connection between an act and our final end. While such an act may be appropriate to our final end, such appropriateness is contingent" (9). In the absence of a teleological goal to constitute objective moral goodness, Scotus identified moral goodness not with the act as such, but with the intention of the agent. In this scheme, only two acts have intrinsic moral worth: the act of loving God, which is intrinsically good, and the act of hating God, which is intrinsically evil. Beyond these two, "all acts must be contextualized for them to receive their full moral status. While the object is significant in establishing the natural goodness of the act, one must still situate the act with respect to its end, manner, time, and place for it to be a truly moral act" (11). Thus when it comes to divorce or lying, specific circumstances can qualify moral prohibitions. In conclusion, Shannon suggests that Scotus's method can make a contribution to present-day debates in moral theology, a contribution pointing in a revisionist direction. At one point, Shannon argues that for Scotus right reason is sufficient in determining when circumstances loosen the binding nature of natural law. This point is reinforced in the second essay in this collection, "The Structure of...