Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt

Abstract

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology ed. by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt Robert P. Imbelli Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology. Edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2021. Pp. ix + 422 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-932589-85-6. The volume’s attractive cover painting, depicting Thomas Aquinas praying before the Crucified, encourages readers to assume a more meditative mindset as they approach the rich collection of essays within its covers. They originate from a conference held at Ave Maria University in 2020 and proceed from the conviction that “studying the mystery of Christ in dialogue with Aquinas can assist us in today’s crisis of Christology” (3). Thomas thus appears in the essays, not as a repository of answers, but as exemplary “Magister Sacrae Paginae” and speculative genius who probes the Tradition to elucidate something of the inexhaustible mystery of the Church’s Lord who is the Savior of the world. To “dialogue” with him, as several of the essays contend, is also to enter into prayerful dialogue with the Christ who summons not merely to intellectual integrity, but especially to affective charity. What, then, is the nature of the “crisis” that besets us? In many ways it is both ancient and new. The writers recognize a recrudescent Arianism in its protean shapes. There is the ongoing project of “liberal Christology” that celebrates the manifestation of God’s mercy in Jesus of Nazareth but strains to confess this Jesus to be “God Almighty in the Flesh” (the title of Bruce Marshall’s closely argued essay). There are feminist and liberationist variants that stress the moral imperatives arising from Christology but scant the crucial ontological implications. But, as Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia, O.P., observes in his short, but incisive “Foreword”: “Striking at the very core of uniquely Christian convictions about faith, hope, and salvation, the crisis of Christology is in the end a crisis of faith” (viii). This “crisis of faith” receives further delineation in the book’s final two essays. Marshall marvels at “the remarkable disappearance, in Western Catholic religious life, of the fear of God,” and suggests that many consider Jesus’ mercy “virtually unstoppable,” but allow his justice “to disappear, more or less completely, from view” (350). Daria Spezzano echoes the theme in “Is Jesus Judgmental?” She finds that “one firm tenet of popular Christology is that Jesus does not judge” (368). In salutary contrast she draws on both the Summa and [End Page 339] Thomas’s scriptural commentaries to set forth his teaching on Christ as “eschatological Judge” to show “why we need Christ’s wise judgment, how it reveals the Father’s love, and therefore why it gives the most profound reasons—to those who really will in the end be the friends of Jesus—for gratitude and hope” (369). What unites the essays is their firm adherence to the fundamental “logic” of the New Testament: the confession of the uniqueness and universality of Jesus Christ and the transformative way of life to which he calls. They find in Thomas a prime proponent and exponent of that “logic” in his own historical context and a sure guide in our present Christological task. They recognize further that, though rooted in the New Testament witness (as his biblical commentaries amply demonstrate), Thomas realizes that the mystery at the heart of the New Testament Good News also promotes “a distinctively metaphysical mode of Christological reflection” (88). Particularly suggestive in that regard are the following essays. Anthony Giambrone’s rich discussion of “Primitive Christology and Ancient Philosophy” persuasively shows that Paul’s writings already open upon ontological claims that the conciliar tradition and Thomas will later pursue. He contends that “No amount of creative agency or even latreia accorded by Christians to Christ can successfully assert his divinity without some idea of divine homo-ousia. And that requires some proto-Dionysian grammar of transcendent being or Thomistic notion of ipsum esse subsistens. Otherwise, the Logos will remain an Arian Artisan and worshipful super-angel: above all things, but merely atop...