Maurice Blondel Research Articles

Yves de Montcheuil: Action, Justice, and the Kingdom in Spiritual Resistance to Nazism

The few extant studies of Jesuit martyr and theologian Yves de Montcheuil focus on his life and theology. This article combines these considerations with philosophical and political ones by examining how Montcheuil's spiritual resistance to Nazism emerges from his study of action and justice in the thought of Nicolas Malebranche and Maurice Blondel. Montcheuil's oeuvre culminates in a lived theology of sacrifice, and shows how the French war experience contributed to doctrinal development in areas such as faith and action, liberation theology, church—state relations, and lay ecclesiology.

From Neo-Thomism to St. Thomas

Maurice Blondel's appreciation of scholastic philosophy was tempered from the beginning with a definite critique that reflected his own philosophical concerns. Although he drew indirectly on St. Thomas in his doctoral thesis, the young philosopher was highly critical of Thomism in the famous Letter on Apologetics. The ensuing debate pushed him to clarify his own philosophical position in the face of neo-Thomism. It was clear to Blondel that the renaissance in Thomist studies advocated by Aeterni Patris could only take place if scholastic philosophy would assimilate some important elements from the positive tradition. This realization would, in time, drive the French philosopher to a reappraisal of St. Thomas, and neo-Thomism to a confrontation with neglected aspects of its own tradition.

Sacramental Ontology: Nature and the Supernatural in the Ecclesiology of Henri de Lubac

Abstract This essay argues that for Henri de Lubac, a sacramental ontology provides the link between a Eucharistically based ecclesiology and the issue of the relationship between nature and the supernatural. For de Lubac it is the sacramental order of reality that draws humanity to a deeper participation in the divine life. Maurice Blondel's substitution of Tradition for the dilemma between extrinsicism and historicism shapes de Lubac's sacramental ontology. The latter's concern for the social character of the Church and his opposition to an individualist ecclesiology are key to his understanding of the relationship between the supernatural and the Eucharistic character of the Church. Arguing that Eucharist and Church are mutually constituting, de Lubac wants to counter both extrinsicist and historicist approaches to the Church. For de Lubac, the Eucharist provides an avenue for the mutual interpenetration of nature and the supernatural, thereby overcoming the dualism between extrinsicism and historicism. It is through the sacramental means of Christ, the Church, and the Eucharist, that God is present in the world. This presence means for de Lubac neither an acceptance of the State on its own terms nor an exaggerated spiritualist critique of Constantinianism.

The Eucharistic Cosmology of Teilhard de Chardin

A creative renewal of metaphysical conceptions of eucharistic consecration in the face of dominant models based on ecclesial community has the potential to make a valuable contribution to mission and spirituality by relating the Eucharist to the active lives of lay people within the Church and outside it. This is a possibility for many churches and not just those with a Catholic liturgical tradition. The Jesuit theologian and palaeontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin develops a suggestive eucharistic theology as part of a cosmological vision in which the whole of creation is ultimately dependent on the transforming power of the Eucharist. The antecedents of this theology are to be found in the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and Maurice Blondel, and it has clear affinities with Gregory of Nyssa's eucharistic imagery. Fundamental to it are the notions of sacred space, incarnation and transfiguration.

A POSITIVE PHENOMENOLOGY: THE STRUCTURE OF MAURICE BLONDEL'S EARLY PHILOSOPHY

Given recent developments in Franco‐German phenomenology with its so‐called ‘theological turn’, there has been a concomitant renewal of interest in Maurice Blondel's thought. In this paper I consider the phenomenological structure of Blondel's early philosophy. Blondel defended and published his controversial thesis in 1893 and with this work presented a highly original phenomenology that was deeply indebted to the positive tradition and yet went beyond this same tradition to include even religious practice as part of its inquiry. Keen to engage the rationalist philosophers of the French academy, Blondel proposed a phenomenological project that was geared to engage the critical spirit of an age that was already deemed to be post‐metaphysical. It is in clarifying the manner in which Blondel conceives such a positive phenomenology that I indicate how his thought may contribute to contemporary debates in the phenomenology of religion.

The Hermeneutical Debate within Modernism: Loisy, Blondel and von Hügel

The controversy which developed between Maurice Blondel and Friedrich von Hügel concerning Alfred Loisy's L'Évangile et L'Église (1902) brought the hermeneutical issue to central stage in Roman Catholic theology. Though it was not immediately evident at the time, in the fusion of the respective contributions of both men lay the seeds of an eventual solution.

The Fullness of Christian Action: Beyond Moralism and Antimoralism

The Fullness of Christian Action:Beyond Moralism and Antimoralism Livio Melina (bio) There are no problems more insoluble than those that do not exist. Would that be the case with the problem of action, and would not the surest means of resolving it, the only one, be to suppress it? To unburden consciences and to give life back its grace, its buoyancy and cheerfulness, wouldn't it be good to unload human acts of their incomprehensible seriousness and their mysterious reality? The question of our destiny is terrifying, even painful, when we have the naiveté of believing in it, of looking for an answer to it, whatever it may be, Epicurean, Buddhist or Christian. We should not raise it at all.1 These are the provocative words with which one of the greatest of contemporary thinkers, Maurice Blondel, begins his masterpiece L'action, dedicated to the mystery of human action. At the end of the nineteenth century, he sought with this work to unmask the falsity of the project of diluting the problem of morality to the point of rendering it nonexistent. And at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we cannot fail to note the results of such an experiment. Blondel had already anticipated the error of this approach: the wish to conceal a [End Page 123] genuine problem only succeeds in making it worse. His words proved to be prophetic: "The moral problem of action and of human destiny does not exist, it was said, and to solve it, it seemed, is to suppress it. But lo and behold, thinking that we slip out from under it, we raise it in its entirety."2 The Moralism of a New Casuistry Certainly today we are more aware then ever of the gravity of the problem of morality for humankind. The recent past has seen a multiplication of ethical questions beyond all measure, to the degree that they are now of absolute thematic importance for understanding our society. But this took place in an altogether unique way. The attempt was made to resolve such questions by means of a rational technique, and by scrupulously avoiding to consider them in light of any global claim about morality and its ultimate foundation. The case of ethics is emblematic: the programmatic evasion of ultimate questions of meaning has yielded to a proliferation of formal methodological questions and to the unchecked growth of casuistry.3 The attempt to avoid the central question has led to the multiplication of particular problems, which seem to be ever more devoid of any solution. Consequently, we may grasp the fundamental paradox of our time: "our culture, which can be characterized by an eclipse of the moral, is tormented by problems of ethics."4 The torment of which we are speaking is not easily grasped in an explicit form; but it can be perceived and is disseminated in the form of a pessimism that will only get worse and that leads to the progressive demoralization of society. It is this spiritual situation that Taylor names "the unease of modernity."5 The more action lacks a reference to an ultimate meaning, the more a moralism of rules becomes oppressive. A substantial number of moral disputes—which have so proliferatedin the media—have contributed to this confused situation. The artificiality of their arguments and the disconcerting pluralism [End Page 124] of the positions taken foster a deep-seated conviction that the domain of morality is constituted by a series of opinions from among which each individual may choose according to taste and point of view. The result calls to mind the image of the tower of Babel, on which everyone works busily, but without anyone understanding anyone else. Something similar was described in the chaotic panorama presented by Alasdair MacIntyre in After Virtue when he spoke of "a disquieting suggestion."6 To such a state of affairs, Catholic moral thought was no stranger; after the Second Vatican Council and the bitter polemics surrounding the encyclical Humanae Vitae, it focused, in a unilateral and reductive way, on questions of normative morality. Certain authors, in search of a more "open" interpretation of moral norms, introduced argumentative models of proportionalist origin,7 with...

Maurice Blondel on the Structures of Science within a Positive Phenomenology

The author examines Blondel's discussion of the natural sciences from L'Action (1893). He shows that this penetrative study of the sciences in a phenomenological setting allows the French philosopher not only to clarify the limitations of scientific theorization, but also, and in a contemporary setting more interestingly, to explain why it is that they are so successful.

The Two Wings of Catholic Thought: Essays on “Fides et ratio” ed. by David Ruel Foster and Joseph W. Kotersi, S.J.

BOOK REVIEWS 325 The Two Wings ofCatholic Thought: Essays on "Fides et ratio." Edited by DAVID RUEL FOSTER and JOSEPH W. KOTERSI, S.J. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003. Pp. 247. $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8132-1302-9. "Truth and love are conjoined wings ... for truth cannot fly without love . . . and love cannot hover without truth." So hymned St. Ephrem the Syrian. Some sixteen hundred years later, Pope John Paul II began Fides et ratio (FR) with the same metaphor. He likened faith and reason to "two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth." The book under review takes its title from this opening line of the encyclical. This volume joins two previous book-length collections in English on the encyclical, Faith and Reason, edited by Timothy L. Smith (St. Augustine's Press, 2001) and Restoring Faith in Reason, edited by Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (SCM Press, 2002). Of the three collections, The Two Wings is the most unified. The contributors share a philosophical perspective congenial to the pope's. Four of eight completed their doctoral studies in philosophy at the Catholic University of America; Robert Sokolowski's spirit broods over the essays. The book has three parts: four essays on "Doctrinal Perspectives" and four on "Historical Perspective" bookend two essays on practical "Implications."There is a summary outline and an index of topics and proper names for the encyclical, a six-page selected bibliography, and indices of topics and proper names for the book itself. Avery Cardina"l Dulles opens the book with a masterful reading of FR as reframing the 1930s French debate on "Christian philosophy." He identifies three "classical positions." In the first or Augustinian/Gilsonian position, philosophy after Christ can only be Christian. The second, associated with Louvain Thomism, affirms philosophy's independence from faith. Jacques Maritain, Maurice Blondel, and Henri de Lubac represent three variants on the third position . Dulles relates these positions to the three "stances" of philosophy treated in FR 75-77. He locates the pope's own positions as closest to de Lubac's mediation between Gilson and Blondel. Dulles notes both the priority the pope gives to philosophical inquiry over system and his desire to put personalist anthropology at the center of a renewed metaphysics. Delighting in the irony of a pope defending reason, Joseph Koterski reflects on how the metaphysical courage urged by the pope might play out in country, church, and college. He defends the pope's use ofthe language ofliberal political philosophy (FR 24-25) in support of human dignity and solidarity. He contextualizes it in papal social thought, which he in turn correctly frames against the social atomism engendered by modern states. A more than instrumentalist view of democracy requires a philosophy of "genuinely metaphysical range" (FR 83). Without such a metaphysical focus, theology tends to "spiritual good feeling" without intellectual rigor and to the "dislocated philosophical rationalism that is often taught in academic theology courses" (31). Prudence Allen's "Person and Complementarity" recalls an earlier discussion of the "problem of the act of faith" as recapitulated by Roger Aubert in 1958. 326 BOOK REVIEWS Faith is an integral human act. A dynamic philosophy of the person demands "complementarity" between the three couplets of reason and faith, philosophy and theology, and philosophers and theologians. Integral complementarity is more than fractional. It creates something new. A"newevangelization" has taken place in certain Catholic philosophical faculties, including Catholic University's. Allen urges philosophers to join theologians in a new evangelization of Catholic colleges and universities. She decries curricular separations between philosophy and theology that marginalize the latter. As he concludes FR, the pope invokes Mary, Seat of Wisdom. David Meconi enlarges on this brief mention of Mary as a model for philosophers. For an understanding of the "sapiential" dimension of philosophy, this essay is central. It captures the spirit of the encyclical as a whole. Echoing maternal imagery from the history of philosophy, Mary's posture privileges awe and wonder over methodic doubt. Philosophy's openness to a reality not its own ends in the human vocation to receive God. Meconi, like Dulles, returns to...

Maurice Blondel and Early Anglo-American Pragmatism

Maurice Blondel and Early Anglo-American Pragmatism

The ‘Fourfold Sense’: De Lubac, Blondel and Contemporary Theology

Henri de Lubac's contribution to Catholic theology is well‐known. But the work of the latter part of his career on medieval exegesis has received less scholarly acclaim. Historians of exegesis find it apologetic and too theological, and thus unhelpful in their field, while most theologians, with a few exceptions, have seemed to find it too historical for their work. This article argues that de Lubac's Medieval Exegesis is an exercise in theology, but specifically a tradition‐oriented historical theology. Drawing upon Maurice Blondel's philosophical definition of tradition, de Lubac aims to describe the ‘fourfold sense’ as a tradition, a theological mentalité, often implicit, that suffuses ancient and medieval Christian theology. It is the author' hope that the recognition of the proper genre and aim of de Lubac's magnum opus et arduum is the catalyst for further, properly theological, reflection upon its claims about scripture and tradition.

A Estrutura Triádica da Filosofia de M. Blondel (o Trinitarismo Blondeliano)

The present work intends to show that Maurice Blondel's philosophy follows a triadic structure made up by the undissociable bond between thought, being and action, which is not just the resuit of the evolution achieved in the Trilogy but that was already present since L'Action (1893). Firstly we briefly outline the itinerary from L'Action (1893) to the Trilogy, underlining the continuity that Blondel ascribes to his progress coming later to make evident the unity of his philosophical project. Secondly we will consider the aspects revealing a triadic structure in the philosophy of action: the sense of action as mediation, the dialectics of action and the logic of action. Finally we will show how blondelian philosophy, in its characteristic structure, corresponds, quoting the author, to an "unitarian trinity".

La logique de l'amour. À propos de quelques volumes récemment traduits de H.U. von Balthasar

On the basis of an overall reading of three works by H.U. von Balthasar which have been recently translated, the author tries to encounter the systematic centre of the famous Trilogy : «what is then which always governs the living texture of this dynamic, plastic, mobile work ; what is it which, like an unsuspected store, lends to its momentum that ability to project and shed new light on all the areas dealt with ? ». The author suggests in this context that Balthasar's thinking is governed from start to finish by a logic of love ; this brings together in a singular and unexpected fashion the Swiss theologian and the «Master of Aix», Maurice Blondel.

Blondel and a Living Tradition for Catholic Education

This paper suggests that an appreciation and application of the notion of Maurice Blondel’s “living tradition” would help in addressing some concerns about Catholic education. Blondel’s key insights and his contributions to Catholic thinking and a living tradition are discussed along with the educational implications for Catholic schools.

Durkheim's Pragmatism Lectures: A Contextual Interpretation

This article attempts to understand Émile Durkheim's 1913–14 lectures on pragmatism and sociology by situating them in the socio-intellectual context of the time. An analysis of books and journal articles from the period reveals that the ideas of the Anglo-American pragmatic philosophers Charles Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller were very popular in pre-World War I France. The French term le pragmatisme, however, was used to refer not only to the thought of these philosophers, but also to the work of French thinkers, such as Henri Bergson and the Catholic Modernists Maurice Blondel and Edouard Le Roy, who wrote extensively about human action. Pragmatism, because of its associations with Bergsonian spiritualism and the theology of the Modernists, came to have religious connotations for many French intellectuals. Durkheim had a similar understanding of pragmatism and his critique of the pragmatists cannot be fully grasped unless these religious connotations are considered. The article concludes by discussing several implications of this interpretation for sociological theory.

Echoes of the Centennial of Maurice Blondel's Action

Echoes of the Centennial of Maurice Blondel's Action

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Christ in Christian Tradition. Volume Two, Part Two: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixrh Centuty. By Aloys Grillmeier. Christ in Christian Tradition, Volume Two, Part Four: The Church of Alexandria with Nubia and Ethiopia after 451. By Aloys Grillmeier. The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism. By Denys Turner. Hail Mary? The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism. By Maurice Hamington. Christian Doctrine in the Light of Michael Polanyi's Theory of Personal Knowledge (Toronto Studies in Theology, no 66). By Joan Crewdson. Nonfoundationalism (Guides to Theological Inquiry). By John E. Thiel. Sacramenta: Bibliographia Internationalis. Compiled by Maksimilijan Žitnik. Critical Perspectives on Christian Education. Edited by Jeff Astley and Leslie Francis. After All: Religion Without Alienation. By Don Cupitt. The Last Philosophy. By Don Cupitt. The Christian God. By Richard Swinburne. Die Religionswissenschaft und das Christentum: Eine historische Untersuchung über das Verhältnis von Religionswissenschaft und Theologie (Studies in the History of Religions 61). By Sigurd Hjelde. John Duns Scotus: Contingency and Freedom, Lectura I, 39. Edited by A. Vos Jaczn, H. Veldhuis, A. H. Looman‐Graaskamp, E. Dekker and N. W. den Bok. Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings. Edited by T. McDermott. St Thomas Aquinas: Teacher of Truth. By Francis Selman. Aquinas' Five Arguments in the ‘Summa Theologiae’ la, 2, 3. By Lubor Velecky. Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence, By Gijsbert Van Den Brink. God. Passibility and Corporeality. By Marcel Sarot. An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Introducing Philosophy 1). By B. R. Tilghman. Ancient Greek Philosophy: Its Development and Relevance to Our Time. By Robert C. Trundle, Jr. Taking Life Seriously: A Study of the Argument of the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’. By Francis Sparshott. Feminist Interpretations of Plato (Re‐Reading the Canon). Edited by Nancy Tuana. In Spite of Plato: A Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. By Adriana Cavarero. The War Lover: A Study of Plato's ‘Republic’. By Leon Harold Craig. Plotinus. By Lloyd P. Gerson. Al‐Farabi and His School, by Ian Richard Netton. The Age of German Idealism (Routledge History of Philosophy 6). Edited by Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins. ‘Fear and Trembling’ and ‘Repetition’ Edited by Robert L. Perkins. The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac. By Jerome I. Gellman. Kierkegaard and Modern Continental Philosophy. By Michael Weston. ‘The Letter on Apologetics’ and ‘History and Dogma’. By Maurice Blondel, texts presented and translated by Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan. Being and My Being: Gabriel Marcel's Metaphysics of Incarnation. By Joseph Konickal. GenEthics: Technological Intervention in Human Reproduction as a Philosophical Problem. By Kurt Bayertz. Clinical Bioethics: Theory and Practice in Medical‐Ethical Decision Making. By James F. Drane. Ecotheology: Voices from South and North. Edited by David G. Hallman. Ecology, Policy and Politics: Human Well‐being and the Natural World (Environmental Philosophies). By John O'Neill. Emotion and Spirit: Questioning the Claims of Psychoanalysis and Religion. By Neville Symington. The Psychology of Religious Knowing. By Fraser Watts and Mark Williams. Counseling and Psychotherapy of Religious Clients: A Developmental Approach. By Vicky Genia. The Puzzle of Ethics. By Peter Vardy and Paul Grosch. Power and Christian Ethics. James P. Mackey. Knightly Piety and the Lay Response to the First Crusade: The Limousin and Gascony c.970‐c.1130. By Marcus Bull. The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200. By C. Stephen Jaeger. Religion and Society in Russia: The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. By Paul Bushkovitch. Confession and Community in Seventeenth‐Century France. Catholic and Protestant Coexistence in Aquitaine. By Gregory Hanlon. The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. By Richard Godbeer. ‘No Religion Higher than Truth’: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia. By Maria Carlson. The Jesuit Myth. Conspiracy Theory and Politics in Nineteenth‐Century France. By Geoffrey Cubitt. Critics on Trial: An Introduction to the Catholic Modernist Crisis. By Marvin R. O'Connell. Religion and Democracy in Latin America. Edited by William H. Swatos. A Tale of Two Missions. By Michael Goulder. Studying John: Approaches to the Fourth Gospel. By John Ashton. The Epistle of Barnabas: Outlook and Background (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2/64). By James Carleton Paget.

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Katholizität: Die Briefe Friedrich von Hügels an Giovanni Semeria by Giuseppe Zorzi

Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Katholizitaet: Die Briefe Friedrich von Huegels an Giovanni Semeria. By Giuseppe Zorzi. 2 vols. Tuebinger Studien zur Theologie und Philosophie, Vol. 3. (Mainz: Matthias-Gruenewald Verlag. 1991. Pp. 301; 302-618. Paperback.) This two-volume work is a splendidly edited and copiously annotated edition of Baron Friedrich von Huegel's letters to the Barnabite priest and theologian Giovanni Semeria and seeks to understand and contextualize von Huegel's and Semeria's role in the Modernist crisis as well as their version of a Liberal Catholicism. Volume I represents an effort in intellectual biography, based upon the correspondence between von Huegel and his fellow Italian Modernist as well as from numerous other sources and scholarly literature. But it is more than an intellectual biography, in that Zorzi seeks to understand the heart of von Huegel's theological concerns, in particular his attempt to forge in an intellectually open manner a religious apologia that does justice to scholarship and saintliness, incarnation and transcendence. In part one of the book, this intellectual and religious drama is shown as taking place in a life of vastly different influences, those of John Henry Newman; Henri Huvelin, the spiritual adviser; and the historical critic and exegete Alfred Loisy. In the second part we see von Huegel in dialogue with Semeria and other figures of the Modernist crisis. Here the main focus is on those themes and tensions that have characterized theology throughout the past two hundred years: questions of scientific autonomy and criticism, scholarship and dogma, as well as the role of ethics and spirituality amidst these creative yet fruitful tensions. The human characters representing these foci in the book are the friends of von Huegel with whom he engaged in a particularly intense discussion: Alfred Loisy, Maurice Blondel, George Tyrrell, and Giovanni Semeria. It is the presentation of Semeria's life, as reflected in von Huegel's correspondence, which struck this reviewer as especially valuable for the English reader who may not have been exposed to the Italian Modernist. We are presented here with the personal drama of the author of Scienza e Fede: his intellectual and spiritual quest, his struggle of conscience with institutional infringements amidst an active campaign of ecclesiastical denunciation and prohibition to preach and publish, and, finally, his exile in Brussels and subsequent military service. All along it was von Huegel's letters and support which in no small measure sustained Semeria, who is now considered a viable candidate for beatification. …

A Crítica se Maurice Blondel ao Conceito Bergsoniano de Intuição

Henri Bergson and Maurice Blondel, contemporary philosophers who share a common influence of the "spiritualist positivism", show effective conditions for an eventual approximation. Nevertheless, the relative philosophic atitude of each of them is fundamentally marked by divergencies which come to light in the particular case of the concept of "intuition". With a common general definition, "intuition" gains precise specificities in each author due to its appearance in different phases of the course of both philosophies, aroused by different motivations and bearing distinct function and consequence.

The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System by Avery Dulles, S.J.

BOOK REVIEWS The Craft of Theology: From Symbol to System. By AVERY DULLES, S.J. New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1992. Pp. x + 228 with index. $22.50 (cloth). The catholicity of Avery Dulles's method in The Craft of Theology is best demonstrated by the broad compass of his self-chosen label, "postcritical theology." Postcritioal theology, he states, puts no un· fair demands on the reader to conform to the spirit of the age nor does it imply that previous approaches (precritical, critical, paracritical) are obsolete. Postcritical theology seeks to make the ecclesial character of theology more recognizable than has most Catholic theology since the Second Vatican Council (viii). Postcritical theology takes its cues from a variety of sources: Polanyi's attention to the tacit dimensions of knowing, Lonergan's understanding of the dynamics of conversion, the "sense of the faithful" in Johann Adam Mohler, the recovery of the tradition in John Henry Newman and Maurice Blondel, and the postliberal theology of Albert Outler and George Lindbeck. Alongside these more traditionally oriented sources, The Craft of Theology also explores the social and symbolic dimension of ·the divine self-com· munication (22). To this end, Dulles employs Ricoeur's theory of the symbol in order to extract " the latent meaning of the classical doctrine of the hypostatic union " and Habermas's notion of an ideal speech situation in his anthropological analysis of the symbolism of sin as "anti-communicative" (27, 33). Dulles's latest work is a carefully structured synthesis of the typologies and constructive proposals which his readers have encountered in previous works. Even though the twelve chapters were originally composed for different occasions, Dulles intends the work " to have greater unity than a simple collection" (ix). The first four chapters are devoted to questions of theological method, including the develop· ment of fundamental theology or apologetics. The next two chapters deal with Scripture and tradition as sources of theology. The seventh chapter specifies the role of the ecclesiastical magisterium in systematic theology and includes a discussion of " the delicate problem of theological dissent." This is followed by two chapters on the relationship of theology to two cognate disciplines, philosophy and physical science. Without calling for a specifically Christian or Catholic philosophy, 513 514 BOOK REVIEWS Dulles nonetheless raises the question of whether " the intimate connection between systematic theology and the type of metaphysical realism that was embodied in scholasticism, both medieval and modern " can ever be adequately surpassed (ix-x, 133). Chapters ten and eleven pick up the thread of chapter seven by addressing the place of university theology in the service of the Church and the question of academic freedom. The final chapter develops the argument that ecumenism -both interreligious and intra-Christian-is best understood not as a separate branch of theology but as a dimension of all good theology. As in Models of Revelation (1983), his fundamental theology derives principally from a theory of symbolic mediation of doctrines. In The Craft of Theology, Dulles is prudent to address the charge of subjectivism commonly made against his theory of symbolic mediation and analysis of models (50-52). His theory of symbolic mediation, he states, is closer to the symbolical theology of Karl Rahner than to the less dialectical " experiential-expressive " theory exemplified by Schleiermacher 's statement that " Christian doctrines are accounts of the religious affections set forth in speech" (18). As with Rahner, symbolic realism for Dulles rests upon a theological anthropology that takes corporeal existence in a historically constituted, communal body as a real, symbolic expression of the human spirit. Dulles's theory of symbolic communication is supposed to accord greater cognitive import to religious symbols than does the view that symbols are merely expressions of the inner sentiments of the faithful (17-18). In Models of Revelation, Dulles defined the cognitive value of the symbol as surpassing the passing mood of the subject and " giving rise to thought" (137, 153). In The Craft of Theology, however, Dulles frequently reverts to a less nuanced position. Sometimes he equates symbolical theology with critical reflection upon a non-discursive human evocation of an interior state: [R] ecognition of the symbolic or evocative character of revelation can...