150 BOOK REVIEWS on them the ability to judge more surely in the practical order than can those who have only book knowledge (cf. STh 11-11, q. 45, a. 2, on the gift of wisdom, with the example of chastity). Each virtue, or more precisely all the virtues united in the active experience, provide such a knowledge which is specifically moral. The knowledge through experience that is given by the gifts is inseparable from that proceeding from the virtues, for the organism of virtues and gifts, united in the believer, intervenes integrally in the concrete action. The gifts are rooted in the theologal virtues and cannot be separated from them. Nevertheless, the experience of the gifts possesses its own special character, an awareness of an inspiration or a motion of the Spirit calling for docility and inciting to action. From the subject's point of view the modality is more passive or receptive. There is a sense of being moved by another, while at the same time acting very personally in faith, confidence, and love. Many other things could be said about this beautiful book which touches upon numerous problems. I only hope these lines will be sufficient to make it appreciated. (Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P.) SERVAIS PINCKAERS, 0.P. Albertinum Fribourg, Switzerland The Beginning and the End of "Religion." By NICHOLAS LASH. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 284. $54.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-521-56232-5. About halfway into this book of collected essays, Nicholas Lash mentions that he keeps at home a poster from the British Government's Propaganda Office during World War II, one of a series meant to sustain high levels of vigilance in the civilian population. Its message: "Careless talk costs lives" (127). Only slightly altered, this monitum could also serve as the epigraph to what, in retrospect, makes for a remarkably cohesive assemblage of essays: "careless God-talk corrodes faith." Like a leitmotifin an opera, Lash, the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, alerts the reader to this central concern of his, as when he defines theologians as those people "who watch their language in the presence of God" (59), or when he wittily points out that too often in contemporary theology the bandying about of the term "ineffability" has become an all-purpose cop-out for hard theological analysis: "As the God of modern deism fades from view like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, his only trace a smile of vague and indeterminate benignity, some people BOOK REVIEWS 151 construe ineffability to mean that we may say, concerning God, more or less whatever takes our fancy" (58). But more centrally, this motif emerges both from the author's insistence that words be defined carefully and from his own consistency in their use. This requirement has become especially exigent in today's global civilization, where nearly everyone is aware that past traditions are now colliding in a "clash of civilizations," so that it becomes imperative to speak across traditions in a way that both respects the integrity of the other tradition and yet also allows real conversation to occur. Consider this dilemma: In contemporary uses of the word "god," there is a common carelessness which takes two forms. On the one hand, we find it far too easy to label as "gods" whatever other people worship and, on the strength of this ascription, to judge such people to be "polytheists." Whereas, of course, although "we" reverence, cherish, hold in high respect and worthy of devotion a great diversity of people, values, things, ideas and dreams, we suppose ourselves to worship only that which we call "god." (31) This passage occurs in part 1 of this two-part book, that is, the section devoted to the encounter of Hinduism and Christianity (the three chapters of this section are made up of Lash's Teape Lectures in India, which were established by the Revered W. M. Teape to promote Hindu-Christian relations), where these kinds of misinterpretations are especially tempting. Soi-disant monotheists are especially prone to look on apparently "polytheist" religions and cultures as tautologically idolatrous, but Lash insists that this too-easy classification...
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Mar 1, 2002
Bob Sang 