De Lubac Research Articles

Book Review: Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac

Book Review: Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac

Medieval Exegesis . Vol. I The Four Senses of Scripture by Henri De Lubac (review)

running head henri de lubac, MedievalExegesis. Vol. I The Four Senses ofScripture, translated by Mark Sebanc. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998. Pp. xxiii, 466. isbn: 0-8028-4145-7. $45. Henri de Lubac's study of the four senses ofscripture (published in 1959 as the first part oíExégèse médiévale) is probably more often referred to than actually read as a classic in its own right. It is not often realized that de Lubac (1896-1991) played a major role in the revitalization ofcatholic thought in the decades prior to the Second Vatican Council, through both his students and a great range ofwritings, whether about Buddhism (1951-55), Origen and medieval exegesis (1959—64), atheism (1968), Teilhard de Chardin (1962-68), Pico della Mirandola (1974), or Joachim of Fiore (1979-81). In all these works, de Lubac was fascinated by possibilities offered by any hermeneutic that emphasized spiritual dimensions of meaning. As de Lubac explains, there were many variant forms of the theory of multiple meaning. According to one popular saying, 'the letter teaches events, allegory what you believe, morality what you do, anagogy what you aim for.' There were many versions, however, ofthe theory. Origen espoused a three-fold system, that ascended from the historical to the mystical and then to the moral sense. De Lubac tells the fascinating story of Origen's influence in the Latin West. Although officially condemned for heresy, Origen's writings were still copied through translations made by Rufinus and Jerome, despite the dangers they recognized in his work. De Lubac's concerns in MedievalExegesis can be read as a coded critique ofthe narrowness ofthe neo-scholastic orthodoxy then prevailing in catholic circles in the 1950s, along the same lines as Jean Lcclercq in The Love ofLearning and the Desirefor God (1957). MedievalExegesis is the more nuanced and richly documented work. Lcclercq's vision ofmonastic culture as a whole was perhaps too much shaped by his fascination for St. Bernard, and a tendency to classify medieval thought as either monastic and meditative or scholastic and unspiritual. De Lubac's analysis is more aware of its diversity. De Lubac's discussion of medieval interpretations about the injunction (Deut. 21:10-14) t0 capture a beautiful woman from the enemy, shave her and then marry her as about the appropriation ofpagan wisdom, touchingly unaware oftheir sexist brutality, unconsciously sheds much light on the gendered assumptions ofmedieval exegesis as a whole. The theory that there were multiple senses to scripture was itself based on analogy with the presence of different dimensions (body, soul, and spirit) in the human person. While not commenting explicitly on Origen's act of selfmutilation , he indirectly helps show how medieval exegesis was itself shaped by ambiguous attitudes towards the body. Origen acted out a process ofself-castration that monks and clerics (as well as their academic heirs) have long engaged in through the mind. De Lubac's rich documentation enables us to become aware ofthe way in which so much medieval exegesis is about a struggle with the meaning ofthe body. Nowhere is this more vivid than in the tradition of ascetics commenting on the 'Song ofSongs.' Although Origen was always hostile to gnostic exegesis, and insisted on the fundamental continuity of the Old Testament and the New, he was himself arthuriana accused ofgnostic extravagance. By releasing exegesis from the constraints ofa purely literal interpretation (favored by the Antiochian school), Origen encouraged William ofSt. Thierry and St. Bernard to explore the richness oferotic desirewhile suppressing awareness of the physical. Not all medieval writers agreed with their exegesis. De Lubac is certainly too dismissive ofthe creativity ofliteral exegesis between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, practiced alongside moralizing and allegorical interpretations. Like Leclercq, de Lubac was writing within the context ofa debate among catholic scholars within religious orders, important in the 1950s but now rather dated, that pitted admirers of patristic asceticism against enthusiasts for scholastic culture. Mark Sebanc's fluent translation of both de Lubac's text and of numerous Latin passages itselftestifies to the fact that we can no longer take for granted the capacity of students interested in medieval literature to...

Henri De Lubac and the Roots of Communion Ecclesiology

De Lubac's ecclesiology offers a model for our times, not so much in his positions on specific issues but more in the generosity and multidimensionality of his ecclesial vision. The keys to appreciating de Lubac's multidimensionality lie in his sense of paradox, his inclusive approach to catholicity, and his ability to treat as complementary many elements of ecclesiology that others tend to pit against each other. These qualities enable de Lubac's vision to transcend current liberal vs. conservative dichotomies.

La Bibbia nel Concilio: La redazione della costituzione "Dei Verbum" del Vaticano II by Riccardo Burigana

592BOOK REVIEWS ments in theology and history. The greatest contribution of this book is thus not the debatable conclusion which it reaches, but rather the challenging question which it proposes. Francis J. Murphy Boston College La Bibbia nel Concilio: La redazione delta costituzione "Dei Verbum"del Vaticano II. By Riccardo Burigana. [Istituto per Ie scienze religiose: Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, nuova serie, 21.] (Bologna: Società éditrice il Mulino. 1998. Pp. 514. Lire 65,000 paperback.) This work recounts in great detail the evolution of Vatican Council II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the ante-preparatory phase of the Council to the final vote of November 18, 1965. Thanks to his thorough examination of many personal archives, the author is able to trace every stage of the discussion in the various committees and subcommittees that were responsible for this Council document. On the whole, the author's analysis confirms the usual interpretation, even while adding some surprising details. The original schémas on "The Fonts of Revelation" and the "Deposit of Faith" were prepared, as is well known, by theologians of the Roman school under the supervision of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and Father Sebastian Tromp, SJ. These schémas were challenged by a loosely knit group of non-Italian theologians, including Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, and Henri de Lubac. In the course of time these theologians were supported by exegetes and ecumenists who shared the concerns of Pope John XXIII that the Council be oriented toward a return to the sources, aggiornamento, and the promotion of Christian unity. After the creation of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, the reformist party could count on the patronage of Cardinal Augustine Bea, its president. Cardinal Franz König and many bishops rallied to the reformist cause. Throughout the Council the sharpest debate about revelation focused on the question of the "two sources." Granted that revelation was transmitted through Scripture and Tradition under the vigilance of the magisterium, were there any truths contained in Tradition that were not also in Scripture? The Roman school considered the affirmative answer to be a matter of faith, constantly taught, at least since the Council of Trent. The opposition, influenced by Josef Rupert Geiselmann's research on the Council of Trent, maintained that Catholics were free to hold that all revelation was in Scripture, even though some revealed truths could not be fully and clearly known without the help of tradition. The Secretariat argued that since the Geiselmann position was compatible with the letter of Trent, and was more acceptable to Protestants, it could and should be tolerated. BOOK REVIEWS593 The debate at the first session of the Council showed much dissatisfaction with the initial schémas prepared by the Roman school.John XXIII accordingly constituted a "mixed commission" under the joint presidency of Cardinals Ottaviani and Bea to draft a new document. But the mixed commission reached a stalemate on the question of "constitutive tradition." Several other points were sharply debated. The Roman school held for the absolute inerrancy of the Bible, whereas the reformists were willing to admit errors in Scripture provided that they were not formally taught. Secondly, the revised schémas seemed to limit revelation to "salutary truths," an expression that the Roman school found vague and confusing. The Roman school were dissatisfied ,thirdly,with the schémas that failed to affirm the historical reliability of the Gospels. On all these points, persistently championed by Cardinal Ernesto Ruffini, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, Bishop Luigi Carli, and others, Paul VI finally intervened to insist on changes to accommodate the concerns of the minority, and Cardinal Bea himself went along with the pope. In the end, therefore, the Constitution on Divine Revelation, while more ecumenical in tone, was not markedly different in substance from the schémas prepared before the Council and withdrawn at the first session. Thanks to his extensive research, Burigana is able to give an exact account of the positions taken by hundreds of theologians who engaged in the debates on revelation. Although the account is clear in itself, it is inevitably repetitious; it is also difficult to follow unless one makes constant reference...

World Christianity and Marxism by Denis R. Janz

BOOK REVIEWS General World Christianity and Marxism. By Denis R. Janz. (NewYork: Oxford University Press. 1998. Pp. Lx, 188. $35.00.) As the current century draws to a close and the passions of the Cold War recede , Denis Janz has found the time ripe for a comprehensive study of the impact of Marxism, in both its doctrinal and political expressions, upon world Christianity, broadly conceived. The question he raises is simultaneously massive and complex. His approach to that question can be divided into three parts. In the first section of the book,Janz locates Marx in the context of nineteenthcentury intellectual history, examines his generally dismissive approach to religion , and then surveys the essentially negative, but often qualified, responses of Christian churches and thinkers to Marxism in the period prior to the ColdWar. The second, most original and extensive part of the book examines the concrete encounters of Marxism and Christianity in seven national case studies. The countries therein examined are the Soviet Union, United States, Poland, Nicaragua, Albania, Cuba, and China. On the basis of these case studies, the author , in the third part of the book, develops his general conclusion that the encounter with Marxism has been the defining event for twentieth-century Christianity, as a result of which, "on balance world Christianity has benefited" (p. 154). That conclusion is certainly open to debate and rests largely on the case studies cited. These studies can be disputed on several levels.What is the basis of selection of the case studies? Would not France and Brazil provide equally, if not more fruitful studies than the United States and Cuba? Is an extensive series of case studies capable of producing a comprehensive explanation of the impact of Marxism on world Christianity? The problem of sources is also pertinent. The author uses mainly secondary sources in English. Here, to be sure, his purpose must be kept in mind. His goal is not to make a definitive answer to the crucial question which he raises, but rather to stimulate serious, scholarly exploration of that topic. However, such an undertaking requires the combined efforts of scholars from many disciplines, nations, and confessions. Janz deserves to be applauded for initiating this pursuit. He correctly emphasizes the impact of Marxism on Christianity's self-definition. But, that self-definition has to be probed in the light not only of Marxism but also of concurrent develop591 592BOOK REVIEWS ments in theology and history. The greatest contribution of this book is thus not the debatable conclusion which it reaches, but rather the challenging question which it proposes. Francis J. Murphy Boston College La Bibbia nel Concilio: La redazione delta costituzione "Dei Verbum"del Vaticano II. By Riccardo Burigana. [Istituto per Ie scienze religiose: Testi e ricerche di scienze religiose, nuova serie, 21.] (Bologna: Società éditrice il Mulino. 1998. Pp. 514. Lire 65,000 paperback.) This work recounts in great detail the evolution of Vatican Council II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation from the ante-preparatory phase of the Council to the final vote of November 18, 1965. Thanks to his thorough examination of many personal archives, the author is able to trace every stage of the discussion in the various committees and subcommittees that were responsible for this Council document. On the whole, the author's analysis confirms the usual interpretation, even while adding some surprising details. The original schémas on "The Fonts of Revelation" and the "Deposit of Faith" were prepared, as is well known, by theologians of the Roman school under the supervision of Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani and Father Sebastian Tromp, SJ. These schémas were challenged by a loosely knit group of non-Italian theologians, including Karl Rahner, Joseph Ratzinger, Edward Schillebeeckx, Yves Congar, Marie-Dominique Chenu, and Henri de Lubac. In the course of time these theologians were supported by exegetes and ecumenists who shared the concerns of Pope John XXIII that the Council be oriented toward a return to the sources, aggiornamento, and the promotion of Christian unity. After the creation of the Secretariat for Christian Unity, the reformist party could count on the patronage of Cardinal Augustine Bea, its president. Cardinal Franz König and many bishops rallied to...

Book Reviews: Introduction

Book Reviews: Introduction Joseph F. Kelly Several helpful texts have been reissued as paperbacks; some are recent texts, some are classics. Into the latter category falls The Apostolic Fathers, translated by J. B. Lightfoot, published by Baker Book House for $19.99, ISBN 0-8010-2199-5. A second classic is Medieval Exegesis, Volume I: The Four Senses of Scripture, by Henri de Lubac, translated into English for the first time by Mark Sebanc and available from Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., for $45.00, ISBN 0-8028-4145-7. There is no indication in this book that the other three volumes will also be translated, but this is the volume of most value to Early Christian scholars. Scholars looking for convenient texts to teach about Syriac Christianity now have available Holy Women of the Syrian Orient by Sebastian Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-21366-1, $15.59; it was originally published in 1987. Cambridge University Press has printed Canto editions of Authority and the Sacred by Peter Brown, IBN 0-521-59557-6, originally published in 1995 and priced at $9.95, and The End of Ancient Christianity by Robert Markus, ISBN 0-521-62510-6, originally published in 1990 and priced at $12.95. Yale University Press has reprinted Theodosius: The Empire at Bay by Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell, ISBN 0-300-07447-6, first published in 1994 and available for $17.00, and Mary Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan, ISBN 0-3000-07661-4, first published in 1996 and available for $14.00. Cistercian Publications offers a revised version of The Venerable Bede by Benedicta Ward, ISBN 0-87907-479-X, first published in 1988. Finally, the University of Notre Dame Press has reissued Augustine and the Limits of Politics, edited by Jean Bethke Elstain, ISBN 0-268-02001-9, first published in 1995 and available for $16.00. As always, our thanks to the publishers for making these titles available at prices suitable for assignment to students. Copyright © 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Theology in History by Henri De Lubac

BOOK REVIEWS 481 resume work on this task and carry it through to the end. (Translated by Sr. Mary Thomas Noble, O.P.) JEAN-PIERRE TORRELL;O.P. Albertinum Fribourg, Switzerland Theology in History. By HENRI DE LUBAC. Trans. ANNE ENGLUND NASH. San Franscisco: Ignatius Press, 1997. Pp. 625. $29.95 (paper). ISBN 0-89870-472-3. Perhaps more than any single book, Theology in History communicates the multifaceted intellectual personality of Henri de Lubac. This wide-ranging collection of thirty-six previously published and unpublished scholarly and occasional texts, from ninety-three pages to a single page in length, contains some of de Lubac's most significant essays, as well as some less weighty, but no less trenchant, writings. Ignatius Press, in a translation that is mostly fine, has published in a single volume with two parts what in French was two volumes-Theologie dans l'histoire: I. Lalumiere du Christ and II. Questions disputees et resistance au nazisme (Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1990). Michel Sales, S.J., has written an informative forward and has edited the text with brief historical notes. Theology in History reveals de Lubac's unified theological perspective on the substance of the Christan faith within diverse historical, cultural-linguistic contexts. Part 1, "The Light of Christ," begins with a section on "The Fathers and Christian Humanism." In an article on "The Dialogue on the Priesthood by Saint John Chrysostom" (1978), de Lubac affirms the ministerial synthesis, necessary for the communication of the "gift of God," between teaching, worship, and government in the Church; a break-up of this unity results for the Church in "legalism in government, the magistery of professors in doctrine, superstition in worship" (30). "Origenian Transposition" (1961) examines Origen's purification and assimilation of Platonism in Christian faith; this method of transposition, as opposed to dialectical rejection, has been operative throughout the history of Christian thought. "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Pedro Garcia" (1977) situates Pico within authentic Catholicism, despite the judgment of "a handful of theologians," among them Bishop Garcia and "a whole battalion of historians" (40). De Lubac's preface to G. Chantraine's 'Mystere' et 'Philosophie du Christ' selon Erasmus (1971) presents Erasmus as, above all, a theologian who concentrated on the mysterium, philosophia Christi, and the bond between exegesis and theology. "On a Thought by 482 BOOK REVIEWS Pascal" (previously unpublished)-"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me"-diagnoses Pascal's internal struggle with the new secular vision of the world as analogous to Christ's paradigmatic and redemptive kenosis. In a masterful opusculum, "The Dispute in Modern Times about the Salvation of Origen" (1982), de Lubac presents an exemplary and fascinating study on the fate of the apocryphal "fall" of Origen in the history of scholarship. De Lubac attributed great importance to his unfinished and heretofore unpublished "TripartiteAnthropology," the longest text in Theology in History. The tripartition of man appears in St. Paul-"your entire being, spirit, soul and body" (1Thess5:23)-as "a threefold zone of activity, from the periphery to the center, or, to use a traditional and irreplaceable word, to the 'heart"' (117). While a number of commentators reduce man to a bipartite anthropology of soul and body, the spirit (pneuma) "is the principle of a higher life, the place of communication with God" (125). In an analysis that runs from antiquity to the modern period, de Lubac shows that "across languages, theories and, as one never stops saying today, cultural contexts that differ greatly, to be sure, it is possible to discern a fundamental continuity" (154). Worthy of its own separate discussion, "Tripartite Anthropology" displays de Lubac's magisterial command of the Christian tradition as well as his hermeneutical approach of affirming continuity amidst cultural-linguistic change. In contradistinction to "the narrow anthropological dualism that triumphed in modern Scholasticism as well as in the university philosophy springing from Cartesianism" (173), the tripartite anthropology is "the constant basis" (176) of human transcendence and Christian spirituality. De Lubac's position on the natural desire for God is evident in this concern for a human and "mysterious zone where the impulse toward God is situated" (200). The epilogue to part 1, "The Light...

Liberal Ideology, An Eternal No; Liberal Institutions, A Temporal Yes? And Further Questions

Michael Baxter's long review provides an outline of David Schindler's useful first book; concentrates on its treatment of John Courtney Murray; gives a free pass to its lengthy ontological and theological speculations; and calls attention to its impracticality. Like Baxter, I share de Lubac's view of grace and nature (mediated to me by three Jesuits, Henry Bouillard, Juan Alfaro, and Bernard Lonergan), although I draw from it practical applications quite different from those of Schindler and Baxter. Further, I agree with the main thrust of Baxter's criticism: just where one wants to test Schindler's grand hypotheses about how grace ought to work in a “civilization of love,” particularly with regard to politics and economics, Schindler has almost nothing practical to say, and such few gestures as he offers seem lamely indistinguishable from those he criticizes, for example Murray (on the First Amendment) and Richard John Neuhaus (on the public square). His reading of my own work, too, is excessively polemical.

Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy ed. by David M. Gallagher

BOOK REVIEWS 137 the delights of divine play in creation, and enter into the life of the triune God. Thompson's work gives us hope-hope that the renewal of theology, based on a balanced harmony of ressourcement and aggiornamento (enrichment by the sources and responsiveness to contemporary needs), which appeared so promising in the works of theologians like Congar, de Lubac, and Balthasar, will continue in the mainstream of American theology. At the same time, I suspect that Thompson would be the first to admit that the work of integration has only begun. Of the many issues that, in my opinion, remain to be confronted I would like to outline only two. First, one needs to elaborate the philosophical-theological foundations of "participatory knowing" in general and, specifically, in matters theological. Affective knowledge, wisdom (sapientia) based on the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and an ontological conformity with Christ, is a necessary foundation and hoped-for consequence of proper theological knowledge, but it is not identical with it. Every saint had the supernatural gift of wisdom, but not every saint was a theologian in the strict sense of the word. Here differentiation must precede integration. (The wisdom tradition in the fathers and mothers of the Church and the treatise of St. Thomas on the gift of wisdom [STh II-II, q. 45] may provide the starting point.) Second, Thompson's synthesis appeals only to those who have already practiced this method, in some way or other. Those who accept only the method of literary and historical criticism in dealing with the Scriptures need to be shown that the very logic of the critical method demands that it be transcended (not abolished!) by those who apply it to the Bible. University ofDallas Dallas, Texas ROCH KERESZTY, 0.CIST. Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy. Edited by DAVID M. GALLAGHER. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994. Pp. 220. Thomas Aquinas and His legacy offers the analyses and keen observations of some of the more prominent Thomistic philosophers on the contemporary horizon. It is impossible, within the short compass of the present review, to do ample justice to the various speculative threads that are woven through this collection. Several distinct themes, pursued by authors of proven distinction , are well articulated and placed in their historic context. Yet perhaps most interesting is what is not said, but which nonetheless leaps from the 138 BOOK REVIEWS page to the alert observer: namely, the systematic speculative focus of the authors. For several years, there has been an underlying tension affecting the Thomistic intellectual community. Under the strong impetus of the unchallengeable greatness of Etienne Gilson, whose systematic philosophic intelligence coexisted with the habitus of the historian, the renascence of medieval historical inquiry was enormous. However, this very event tended to eclipse systematic inquiry in favor of more historical research. While great figures such as Gilson and Anton Pegis never failed to approach issues in a systematic vein, many lesser lights assimilated only the historical habitus while properly speculative life waned. What resulted was an imperialism of the historical habitus at the expense of philosophy. This imperialism suffers by contrast with St. Thomas's use of history which is, as they say, a "cut to the chase." For example, "Aristotle says 'x' and gives three reasons, a, b, and c; on the contrary, Augustine says 'y' because of d, c, and e; but I respond that it should be said that..." Thence flows Thomas's own analysis, followed by his responses to objections. Both his Summae are filled with such considerations; and few can imagine that he exhausted the fertility of the principles that he employed. St. Thomas could not afford the luxury of aggrandizing historical competencies that distracted from his speculative focus. This virile speculative engagement, which adverts to historical competencies only as a necessary auxiliary (he did, after all, consult Moerbeke), does not accord well with Gilson's caveat that "No philosopher can know that he is a Thomist unless he also be an historian" (Etienne Gilson, History of Philosophy and Philosophical Education [Milwaukee: Marquette, 1948], 1920 ). And this prescription, quite apaii from the greatness of Gilson, immersed Thomistic thought in...

Visions of a Nation Transformed: Modernity and Ideology in Wilson's Political Thought

Over the past several decades, our understanding of modernity has been profoundly changed. This change has occurred as a result of a body of critical scholarship that challenges the widely-held notion that the modern world is characterized primarily by the triumph of secular rationalism and the steadily declining influence of religion and spiritu ality. The works of Eric Voegelin, Karl Lowith, Ernst Lee Tuveson, Jacob Talmon, Henri de Lubac, Norman Cohn, Hans Jonas, and Michael Walzer represent a series of elaborations on the various revo lutionary outbursts that have driven Western civilization since the Ren aissance.1 Each of these authors has advanced the general thesis that the self-understanding of the modern West, as revealed through these revolutionary movements, has been informed in part by an immanen tized Christian eschatology, and this self-understanding cannot be fully understood apart from its roots in innerworldly messianic speculation. Modern political symbols, in other words, have distinctly religious par

The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan by J. Michael Stebbins

484 BOOK REVIEWS faith. Yet faith-knowledge alone is insufficient to account for Jesus' extraordinary gifts as a teacher: for this we must appeal to a special charism along the lines of an infused knowledge. According to Torrell this knowledge is best understood by reference to Aquinas's mature teaching on prophecy: God equipped the prophets with an infused light (but not infused ideas) enabling them to communicate divine truths to others. Likewise, God conferred on Jesus an infused light akin to that of the prophets, but with this qualitative difference: in him the lumen is a permanent feature of his cognitive life (a habitus), while it is given to the prophets only intermittently (per modum actus). The foregoing i;ummary will have served its purpose if it has conveyed to the reader some sense of the very rich historical, philosophical, and theological reflections that comprise this volume. The editorial team of the Revue thomiste is to be commended for the high caliber of this and the other special publications it has produced in recent years: the 1992 commemorative volume on the theological achievement of M.-M. Labourdette; th~ 1993 centenary index ("tables generales 1893-1992"); the Gilson issue of 1994; and most recently an issue devoted to Thomas Aquinas and the onto-theo-logy debate (1995). This reviewer eagerly waits for more. Fordham University Bronx, New York GREGORY M. REICHBERG The Divine Initiative: Grace, World-Order, and Human Freedom in the Early Writings of Bernard Lonergan. By J. MICHAEL STEBBINS. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Pp. xxii + 399. $65.00 (cloth). Aquinas insists that the creator's primary intent is the "order of the universe ," and Bernard Lonergan's dissertation on "operating grace" in Aquinas's writings managed to move beyond the stalemated discussion of "sufficient" and "efficacious" grace precisely because he displayed how any discourse about grace had to be connected with larger theorems of the creator's operation in creation. What speaking of the divine action called "grace" requires is a set of metaphysical skills adequate to speaking of the "order of the universe" as created. A tall order, whose scope the published edition of his dissertation-Grace and Freedom-so understated that its implications have been missed by many philosophers and theologians fascinated with such questions. Stebbins's careful reconstruction of that text reminds us of its daunting scope. And part of the reason it can do so is that he illustrates both the method and conclusions of Grace and Freedom through a later text which Lonergan had composed (in Latin) for a course on grace offered from 1947 to 1960: De ente supernaturali (which will appear in volume 16 [Early Latin Theology] of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, published by BOOK REVIEWS 485 University of Toronto Press). The significance of this collateral source is that it can profit from and respond to Henri de Lubac's epochal Surnaturel (1946). For those not familiar with Grace and Freedom, as well as some who thought they were, a list of Stebbins's chapters manages to convey the scope of Lonergan's achievement: 1. The Role of Understanding in Theological Speculation; 2. The Principal Instance of Supernatural Being: The Created Communication of the Divine Nature; 3. Thirteenth-Century Breakthrough (The "Theorem" of the Supernatural); 4. Supernatural Transformation of Human Activity; 5. Obediential Potency and the Natural Desire to See God; 6. Molinist and Bannezian Systems; 7. Theoretical Perspective on Divine Concourse; 8. Contingence, Sin and Divine Efficacy. As always, Lonergan must actively reflect on method while executing a theological inquiry, so Stebbins rightly begins with his insistence that such inquiry must be more than "just a networks of concepts; it is primarily an act of understanding" (xix)-Chapter 1. Then, following the expository order of De ente supematurali, he shows how Lonergan roots the supernatural in the theorems developed to speak of the natural: of creation itself. ("Theorem," as we shall see, is a favorite word of Lonergan's, intimating what it takes to move beyond our imaginations to a set of propositions able to articulate the metaphysical issues at stake.) Following the analogy of nature, we can see how the "two operations by which creatures...

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Christ and Spirit. Spirit‐Christology in Trinitaraian Perspective by Ralph DelcolleWinds of the Spriti: A constructive Christian Theology, Peter C. HodgsonThe Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and john Zizioulas in Dialogue by Paul McParthanChanging the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology by Mary McClintock FulkersonPlurality and Christian Ethics, by Lan S. MarkhamTher fall to Voilence: Original sin in Relational Theology by Marjorie Hewitt SuchockiReligion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World's Religion by Keith WardPower & Christian Ethics by James P. MackeyMystical Language of Unsaying by Michael A. SellsNarratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology and Scripture by William C. Placher

REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:Christ and the Spirit. Spirit Christology in Trinitarian Perspective by Ralph Del ColleWinds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology, Peter C. HodsonThe Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue by Paul McPartlanChanging the Subject: Women's Discourses and Feminist Theology by Mary McClintock FulkersonPlurality and Christian Ethics, by Ian S. MarkhamThe Fall to Violence: Original Sin in Relational Theology by Marjorie Hewitt SuchockiReligion and Revelation: A Theology of Revelation in the World's Religions by Keith WardPower & Chrristian Ethics by James P. MackeyMystical Languages of Unsaying by Michael A. SellsNarratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture by William C. Placher

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Narrative in the Hebrew Bible. By David M. Gunn and Danna Nolan Fewell. Ezechiel. By Henry McKeating. The Beginning of the Gospel: Probings of Mark in Context. By Adela Yarbro Collins. Sophia and the Johannine Jesus (Journal for the Study of the New Testament. Supplement Series 71). By Martin Scott. The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins. By B. L. Mack. From Synagogue to Church: Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities. By James Tunstead Burtchaell. Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish‐Christian Origins. By Joan E. Taylor. Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism. By Jaroslav Pelikan. Early Greece (Second Edition). By Oswyn Murray. Democracy and Classical Greece (Second Edition). By J. K. Davies. The Later Roman Empire, A.D. 284430. By Averil Cameron. Arator on the Acts of the Apostles: A Baptismal Commentary (Oxford Early Christian Studies). By Richard Hillier. Leonzio di Damasco, Vita di Santo Stefano Sabaita (725‐794) (Studia Orientalia Christiana. Monographiae 4). Arabic text edited and translated by B. Pirone. Christianiv Mediaeval and Modern: A Study in Religious Change. By Dennis Nineham. Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages. By Frances Beer. Perspectives on Marriage: A Reader. Edited by Kieran Schott and Michael Warren. The Knights of Malta. By H. J. A. Sire. Fürsten und Reformation: Geistliche Reformpolitik weltlicher Fiirsten vor der Reformation. Spatmittelalter und Reformation, Neue Reihe, 2. By Manfred Schulze. High Church Prophet: Bishop Samuel Horsley (1733‐1806) and the Caroline Tradition in the Later Georgian Church. By F. C. Mather Religious and Secular Forces in Late Tsarist Russia: Essays in Honor of Donald W Treadgold. Edited by Charles E. Timberlake. Discourse and Context: An Interdisciplinary Study of John Henry Newman. Edited by Gerard Magill. Die Kirche: Eine katholische Ekklesiologie. By Medard Kehl. God: Action and Revelation. By Christoph Schwobel. Persons, Divine and Human. Edited by Christoph Schwobel and Colin Gunton. The Graced Horizon: Nature and Grace in Modern Catholic Thought. By Stephen J. Duffy. The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue. By Paul McPartlan. In the Breaking of Bread: The Eucharist and Ritual. By P. J. Fitzpatrick. The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality. Edited by Michael Downey. The Roots of Christian Mysticism. By Olivier Clément. World Religions and Educational Practice. Edited by Witold Tulasiewicz and Cho‐Yee To. Catholic Schools and the Common Good. By Anthony Bryk, Valerie Lee and Peter Holland.

The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. VI: Theology: The Old Covenant by Hans Urs Von Balthasar

BOOK REVIEWS The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics. Vol. VI: Theology: The Old Covenant. By HANS Uns VoN BALTHASAR. Trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis. Ed. John Riches. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991. Pp. 443. In this penultimate-volume of The Glory of the Lord, von Balthasar sets forth a " biblical aesthetics " in which the manner of the emergence of the Glory of God in the world of man is spelled out. He proceeds by examining the bewildering variety of the manifestations of God's Glory in the Old Testament, but always as unified in their historical convergence upon Jesus, the Christ, the final and definitive presence in history of the divine Glory in whom Word and Image, Messiah and Servant, Son of Man and Son of God, are at one. This manner of proceeding is little consonant with contemporary Catholic exegesis, which prefers to regard the Old Testament as a free-standing hook, and is rather fastidious about reading it as " literally " the prologue and the Sitz im Leben of the New. For such exegetes, the literal and the historical senses are entirely distinct, because of their methodological enlistment in the historical pessimism of the Enlightenment. Balthasar, of course, is not of their camp. Balthasar's mastery of Old Testament exegesis is on a par with the effortless command of the Western philosophical, theological, and literary tradition which he has displayed in the earlier volumes of this work. While he relies heavily upon von Rad, a glance at the index shows that his knowledge of Old Testament scholarship is based upon a wide reading, upon which he levies throughout the book with practiced ease. The exegetical method implicit in his analysis is the one employed by scholars such as de Lubac, Guillet, and Ligier; its classic Augustinian understanding of the free unity of history, and of the consequently free meaning of Old Testament and the New as fulfilled in the Kingdom of God, needs no apology. The currently common supposition that the " literal " sense of Scripture is that which an Enlightened positivism will permit needs only to be recognized to be rejected. In the opening pages of the Introduction Balthasar sets the theme which will dominate the book: the rationally irresolvable dialectical 139 140 BOOK REVIEWS tension between God and all that is not God, a tension inherent in the revelation of the Glory of God. In keeping with the emphasis of his earlier volumes, Balthasar is insistent upon the radical gratuity of the revelation of the Glory of God. The revelatory manifestation of God as God, who is beyond all perception, all knowing, all communication , and yet is communicated, perceived the more surely where the more veiled, and definitively revealed on the Cross. The revelation of God's Glory is of God as the Absolutely Other, as formless, and so as in tension with all form which would mediate the revelation. This communication, this mediation, is utterly ex nihilo; it relies upon no capacity in man, upon no natural process of spiritual development, and is unrelated to, because absolutely transcendent to, all human projects. Impossible to prepare for, the manifestation is constantly new, arising out of no prior possibility in man or his world, and responding to nothing in him which might make the revelation capable of anticipation. The paradox of God's self communication of his formless Glory is then beyond all utterance, and yet is uttered, given form: the final Form is, of course, the Christ. This is the basic datum, the ground upon which all theology rests, and is pure grace, a gift beyond all expectation, incapable of being imagined. All the preparatory Old Testament images finally fail. The paradox, the self communication of God who is beyond all utterance, yet is uttered, has its resolution only in the Form, the personal unity, of Christ. The revelation always at once transcends and assimilates the concrete historical forms by which it is mediated. The pagan materials are transformed by their historical deployment in the revelatione .g., the pagan myths of creation, of divine wars and marriages, the pagan wisdom-and in their deployment, they converge, hut not within the Old...

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article:Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in DialogueJeffery Rowthorn and Russel Schulz‐Widmar eds, A New Hymnal for Colleges and Schools

The Eucharist Makes the Church, Henrl de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, by Paul McPartlan. Foreword by Edward Yarnold S.J. T& T.Clark, Edinburgh, 1993. pp. xxii-342, £24.95.

The Eucharist Makes the Church, Henrl de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, by Paul McPartlan. Foreword by Edward Yarnold S.J. T& T.Clark, Edinburgh, 1993. pp. xxii-342, £24.95.

Aquinas on Mind, by Anthony Kenny. Routledge, London and New York, 1993. Pp. viii + 182. £30.00 (Hb).

AQUINAS ON MIND, by Anthony Kenny.THE QUEST FOR THE ORIGIN OF JOHN'S GOSPEL A SOURCE ORIENTATED APPROACH by John Brodie.THE GRACE HORIZON. NATURE AND GRACE IN MODERN CATHOLIC THOUGHT by Stephen J. Duffy.LITERARY FORMS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT By James L Balley and Lyle D.AUGUSTINE AND THE LIMITS OF VIRTUE, by James Wetzel.AQUINAS ON HUMAN ACTION: A THEORY OF PRACTICE, by Ralph McInerny.THE EUCHARIST MAKES THE CHURCH, Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, by Paul McPartian.THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD by N.T. Wright.

Origen as Theologian and ScholarOrigen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian. Henri Crouzel , A. S. WorrallOrigen of Alexandria: His World and His Legacy. Charles Kannengiesser , William L. PetersenOrigenes als Philologe. Bernhard Neuschäfer

It is significant that Pere Crouzel, author of our first book, delivered the keynote address at the symposium where the nineteen papers assembled in the second were read. It is hard to imagine a discussion of Origen without the background of Crouzel's wide-ranging and profound syntheses. The present volume is a very catholic study, readable and not overwhelmed by footnotes, that insists on the permanent role of Origen as a teacher of Catholic theology and defends him primarily from the charge of unorthodoxy. It is based on three earlier works by the author, who himself realized how the studies complemented and supplemented one another. Crouzel's view of Origen is characteristic of much modern French Catholic thought, especially after the writings of Henri de Lubac, cited more often than any other modern writer (notably on pp. 48-49). Earlier in this century Eugene de Faye had strongly emphasized and indeed overemphasized the philosophical aspects of Origen's thought (a tendency even stronger in Robert M. Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition [Chico, Calif., 1984]), along with many German students. Such an emphasis has often been supported by insistence on the writings of Origen preserved only in Greek rather than in the Latin translations, suspect as perhaps adjusted to fourth-century orthodoxy. Crouzel, on the contrary, insists with French scholars generally that Greek and Latin, like many of Origen's own ideas, are complementary rather than contradictory. He rightly treats him as primarily a theologian rather than a philosopher. In addition, Crouzel's work resembles that of Jean Danillou in that it is really a collection of essays on various topics rather than a systematic (a word Crouzel dislikes) account of the subject. The topics are obviously very important for the study of Origen. First

MYSTICAL TROPOLOGY IN BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Summary In this essay I take as point of departure De Lubac's description of twelfth century monastic exegesis as ‘mystical tropology’ (‘tropologie mystique’). Applying this concept to Bernard of Clairvaux, I analyse his use of the sensus moralis in sermon 4 In resurrectione. In this sermon Bernard reflects not only on the Resurrection but on the applicability of all central facts in sacred history to monastic life. It appears that there is no fixed order of importance in the succession of those sacred events. The monastic community can be compared with the apostles waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit. In this spiritual state their looking back at the sacred past is at liberty to select the most appropriate moment of the life of Christ in order to have it reenacted in the liturgical setting of the monastery. De Lubac, on his part, thinks that Bernard's discourse, being organised in so loose a fashion, is in danger of falling apart into a ‘broderie mystique’. I try to demonstrate that this is not the...