BOOK REVIEWS

Words About God: The Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Ian T. Ramsey. New York: Harper and Row, 1971. Pp. 244.  $3.95.

This book is one of the latest additions to the Harper Forum series designed to present students with reliable resources for the study of religion. Words About God is subtitled The Philosophy of Religion, but the book is concerned solely with the logical uses of religious language. Moreover, except for the first section, the essays are limited to contributions of British philosophers of this century. This is, of course, a parochial view of the problem, but it is also the case that in recent years British philosophers have given special attention to these issues.

It is clear that Ramsey, now Bishop of Durham, makes no pretense of inclusiveness. He wants to illustrate the evolution of the discussion of the logic of religious language in British empiricism from the early work of Russell, G. E. Moore, and Wittgenstein to A. J. Ayer and the Verification Principle and on to the broadening of empiricism and the implications of this development for more recent explorations of the logic of theological discourse. Ramsey fulfils this intention very well. I must remark, not entirely gratuitously, how heartening it is to see a Bishop so at home in the intricacies of contemporary philosophical analysis!

The editor's Introduction gives an excellent brief over-view of the issues. This is followed by a section of classical passages on the problem by Plotinus, Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas, Mansel, and R. Otto. These essays should impress the student with the fact that theologians have long been aware of the necessity of reserve or reticence in speaking about God. I found the lesser-known selections (perhaps for that reason) from Lotze and Bradley on the personality of God especially interesting.

Parts Three and Four include numerous selections from 20th century British philosophers on the analysis of language--from Russell's distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and by description and Ayer's Verification Principle to Weismann's discussion of " language strata," Ryle's " category mistakes," Strawson's " logic of persons," Austin's " performative utterances," and Max Black's analysis of the cognitive role of metaphor, among others. Part V of the book illustrates how these newer insights into the uses of language are now being applied to the logic of religious discourse. This section contains essays by R. W. Hepburn, Donald Evans, and the editor.

The last section of the book is not entirely satisfactory. One is led to see how philosophical analysis has presented theology with new tools and

a new opportunity for fruitful exploration of the peculiarities of its language, but the selections chosen to illustrate the application are few and, in this reader's view, not among the best in what has become an extensive and richly diverse body of literature. Two points can be made in the editor's defense: He was apparently required to pare down his original selection of essays considerably, and he was no doubt mindful of the fact that numerous collections of essays on religious language have appeared in the past few years--many of them containing the best journal articles in the field--indeed, some of them duplicating essays already reprinted more than once.

Does this collection of readings serve the purpose for which it was designed? As indicated, Ramsey illustrates the development of language analysis in this century with a perceptive and economical choice of basic essays. However, the book offers the student a limited exposure to the theological uses of language analysis. It will have to be supplemented with the now well-known collections of Flew and Macintyre, Basil Mitchell, Dallas High, and others.

Scholars in the field will be familiar with the literature condensed into this volume. On the other hand, students with limited philosophical training will find much in this book too difficult for them. The book will, then, be of primary use to students with some philosophical sophistication--advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The book should do good service in advanced courses in the philosophy of religion. The publisher has priced the book too high for a paperback edition of readings of less than 250 pages.

James C. Livingston

College of William and Mary

Williamsburg, Virginia

God Within Process. By Eulalio R. Baltazar. New York: Newman Press, 1970. Pp. 186. $5.95.

It is difficult to sort out the many issues to be raised in a discussion of God Within Process. (1) There is the use of the process thought of Teilhard de Chardin; there are many who would object to this approach in theological discourse. (2) But even if one has a somewhat open mind to evolutionary thinking, it is possible to question whether it can ever find substantive use in God-talk; God is to be kept removed from the arena of process and evolution. (3) And it is possible to go along even this far without thereby committing oneself to accepting the formulations and conclusions developed by the author. I find it necessary to keep at least these three points distinct; my enthusiasm for Baltazar's work is more or

less pronounced, depending upon which of these levels I happen to find myself. Let this review divide itself along the lines of the distinctions just made.

(1) I am always anxious to read new statements in the terms of processive thinking. There can be no doubt that the scientific, philosophic, and social atmosphere today has structured itself in evolutionary categories. The evidence for the evolution of biological species is so convincing that the paradigm of evolution has gained widespread application in many areas. It is always to be expected that as a scientific theory becomes more and more acceptable within the scientific community, it will come to be regarded as a scientific fact. Then this scientific " fact " serves as a useful organizer of data in other disciplines; difficulties and misunderstandings arise when we treat this organizer, this paradigm, as a fact in those areas in which it has not established itself as a fact. The evolution of biological species may merit being considered a scientific fact; " evolution " in the speech and examples of men like Chardin and Baltazar is hardly factual in all instances; it is a very useful theory--no less and usually no more.

It would be unfair to suggest that the categories of evolution are the only ones which can be extended past their sphere of origin. One of those philosophies which Baltazar finds inadequate today grew from the scientific evidence for matter and form into the metaphysical " insight " of potency and act. Such " insights " (a more felicitous description than " theory " or " paradigm," which can easily sound as if they are not too securely related to the real situation) are no more factual than is " evolution " in most of its applications today. The point is that whoever does not " see it " judges that the insight or the theory is not credible. No amount of evidence can convince one of the ontological validity of potency/act unless and until the mind sees the light and affirms the truth of this organizing insight. This should not preclude discussions in which the convinced argue their case to those who remain unable to assent to this position, but, whenever they fail in their efforts, they should not begin to suspect ill-will or some over-developed skepticism. There is never sufficient positive evidence to force someone to affirm a point of view which might serve as a super-organizer of all reality.

Most of the polemic in recent writings by process thinkers (many of whose writings have been overly-polemical) stems from the exciting conflict between two different world-views. Too many men whose thought patterns are in terms of process and evolution begin to speak most unkindly of those still caught up in a " static " view of reality; they forget too easily that their own view is nothing more than a view, a useful reality-organizer of whose truth they are convinced. Baltazar can call " assumptions " based on a static view of reality " false " (p. 9) ; he should not forget that most of his discourse is likewise built on assumptions which are not proven to be true. And, on the other hand, those still living in

the " static " universe too often cannot at all understand why these process thinkers will not accept the " correct " world-view; they too forget that their " insight " is not a guarantee of absolute and certain truth in their point of view.

All this urges caution whenever one puts himself to the task of criticizing the literature and conversation engaged in by those whose outlook and convictions might be radically different from one's own accustomed ways of thinking and speaking. I find evolution and process very useful categories, and I am most sympathetic to them; this does not mean that all my comments and criticisms will be totally objective. I can only try.

Baltazar has nobly moved well past the level of mere polemics into the sphere of applications of his categories to religious thought. His book is not merely an attack on " static " thinkers (although it is that too) but is a constructive effort to bring new language to theology; there is no effort to destroy the content of theology but rather to express that content in such a way that more contemporary men might live with a real faith in a real God.

However, something must be said about Baltazar's decision to use process thought for religious speech. Is his explanation and defense of process thinking consistent and convincing (always remembering that no rational debate can ever force one to adopt a new world-view) ? My first criticism is that Baltazar has depended too heavily on Chardin at a point where Chardin is especially weak. In the Phenomenon of Man (and in God Within Process) one finds clear statements purporting to describe the building-up of the universe from the time so many years ago when there were only electrons, from electrons to atoms to molecules to megamolecules to living matter to sensible life to rational life to believing reason. I read each author to be saying that this process has actually occurred. They are not merely using mythical language to describe one possible route for evolution (if indeed we can extend the notion of evolution past the wide confines of biological species) but are describing what has happened in history. I could accept this description if the language were only mythical; after all, one's world-view must permeate everything in some way. However, I cannot agree with it as it is presented by Baltazar, an actual history. In a logical analysis of reality as we know it today, one could easily devise such a scheme, a type of Porphyrean tree of the universe. However, this successful logical activity does not validate efforts to make the scheme temporal; we cannot take a logical analysis of existing reality and simply say that the most simple parts came first in time, to be followed by the successively more complex parts until we have believing man.

My second criticism in this area is more important. Baltazar so very frequently rejects the dualisms of past philosophies; the recurring dualism is that between this world and another world, natural/supernatural, matter/ideas or forms, science/metaphysics, however one might express it.

In his efforts to attract the secular theologians to his side, Baltazar argues forcefully against the sort of dualism which places all real value and meaning and being in some other world; we must live in and treasure this world. He rejects metaphysics because it is other-worldly.

Baltazar attempts to locate transcendence in the realm of time rather than in space where the classical philosophers found it. He describes the evolution of our time, past to present to future, and then into the eschatological future which is continuous with but qualitatively different from time as we know it. Such a picture is helpful for maintaining the notion of transcendence without the need always to express it in spatial images. My observation is that Baltazar's temporal formulation is just as dualistic as any previous spatial formulations. The same criticisms which he brings against his predecessors can be directed now toward him. How is it different to say that we live now in a world of appearances (p. 129) and that reality is only in the future than to say that we live in a world of appearances and the reality is in another world of forms? If Greek philosophy with its emphasis on escaping this imperfect world is inappropriate for today's man, how can we propose a scheme in which we will be fulfilled in some new future (even if it is in this world) ? Baltazar effectively argues against a spatial metaphysics, but he himself constructs a temporal metaphysics.

Baltazar is not unaware of this objection, and he claims to answer it by pointing to the evolutionary character of time. Our present time (" timelessness " for Baltazar since we now live only in appearances, in a stage of becoming) evolves into the eschatological future which is a totally new dimension. This is a different time than the time we know now, and so I claim that Baltazar has not overcome dualism in his explanation of transcendence. The consistency of my position is born out when we read Baltazar's description of God. God is in the eschatological future; he is the Fullness of Time. He reveals himself only imperfectly now because the complete revelation of the Fullness of Time would destroy our present " timelessness "; only when we reach the eschatological future will we know God as he is. I cannot quarrel with this; in fact, it is a stimulating and helpful description. However, I would insist that Baltazar keep clearly in mind that he is speaking about our knowledge of God, God's revelation of himself to us; he is not here describing God as he is in himself. Baltazar does not say that God is incomplete now, only to be completed in the eschatological future; it is his revelation to us which is incomplete. God is in the eschatological future, and he is the ground of the evolutionary process. This can only mean that, as we live now in our present, God is in the eschatological future. Baltazar must have our present time (" timelessness ") and the eschatological future both existing " now," " simultaneously," but on different levels (so that " now " and " simultaneously " are used only analogically). How else can God be the ground

of the evolutionary process? And if all this is true, has not Baltazar placed himself into another dualism? He should rejoice that his dualistic picture might gain a sympathetic hearing in today's world, but he cannot claim to have superseded metaphysical dualism (unless time supersedes space).

We indicated previously that " evolution " can be extended from its proper sphere, biological species, into almost all other areas of thought. This is to be expected whenever a concept is being tested as a possible organizing theme. However, I think that Baltazar fails to maintain the analogy strictly enough. He moves from " change " to " process " to " growth " to " evolution " to " development " (and back and forth within this range of concepts) as if all these words are interchangeable; they are not. It is unfair to depend upon the connotations of " evolution " when one is speaking merely of " growth." Baltazar frequently calls up the examples of acorns becoming oak trees and of the fetus becoming the child and the child becoming the adult. These are natural growth processes, not evolutionary processes in the commonly-accepted sense of evolution. A more telling criticism is that these are examples of essentially cyclic events; after all, the phase successive to the oak tree is the acorn, and the fetus follows the adult. And we know that those Greek philosophies tended to have a cyclic view of history. The Hebrews and their Biblical literature present a linear view of history, and evolution in its proper sense is likewise linear, directed toward the future. Baltazar's arguments would be more convincing if his examples were better chosen.

We can complete this first section by commenting on Baltazar's frequent assertion that the future is in some way contained in the present. I agree with this if full emphasis is given to the phrase " in some way "; we can read the future to a certain degree if we can succeed in reading the minds and hearts of men in the present. A much deeper truth which process thought highlights is that the past is contained in the present and the present in the future. This latter statement can be affirmed at the same time as we realize that real novelty can always happen; to say that the future is contained in the present goes a long way toward restricting future novelty.

(2) We have already alluded to the use of process philosophy for God-talk. In many ways Baltazar has done this successfully. He has opened the door for Christian/atheist dialogue; he has shown points of contact between Christians and Marxists, and he has attempted to make it possible for the scientist and theologian to share the same world and to speak to one another about that world.

By his fine analysis of God as the ground of process, Baltazar skillfully avoids the Whiteheadian inclusion of God within the process. God is within Baltazar's process in the context of his relationship to creation, and especially to man; however, it is never suggested that God himself develops or evolves.

156 BOOK REVIEWS

(3) Finally, we address the problem of theological content in God Within Process. Any theology which allows its emphasis to fall on the future invariably assigns little space to the event of Jesus Christ. It is true that the Old Testament is promises, but those have been fulfilled in Jesus. It is true that Jesus spoke about coming again; it is also true that Jesus has come and that this first coming is the foundation of our hope in any future coming. It is true that in the earliest days of the Church people expected to see Jesus any day, but it is also true that Christians soon came to realize how rich had been the revelation already made in Jesus. We say today that we are a pilgrim People of God. We look to the coming of God's reign, but we walk on the path pointed out by Jesus, and we find strength for our pilgrimage in the grace of Jesus Christ. Our faith does look to the future, but it also rests on the past. Baltazar gives too little room to Emmanuel, God-with-us.

There are some jarring statements concerning the Bible. In spite of Acts 11:26, Baltazar claims that "Christian" is not a scriptural term. (p. 70) Exodus 3:14 somehow comes out as: " I will be who I will be." (p. 127) However, he has an excellent discussion of " covenant " and has constructively indicated how non-Christians today might be related to the God of the Christians. I am not convinced that all cannot be included in the covenant with Jesus, since he came to all men. Likewise, it could be argued that in the historical process the Old Testament covenants have yielded to the Christian covenant, and so it would be inappropriate to conceive of pagans today as living under God's covenant with Noah. However, the other side is that in the development of the pagan's salvation history, he may have reached only a stage comparable to that enjoyed by Noah; he must continue to grow toward Christ, ever remaining faithful to his covenant with the God of Noah. We can hope that Baltazar will develop this discussion.

Baltazar has not spelled out a doctrine of sin. Is it possible for someone to break his covenant, to become unfaithful to his faithful God? Or has Baltazar set up a situation in which every human being can find himself in a covenant with God? Any theology today must address itself to evil, and especially to moral evil. One world is very much aware of its own sinfulness, and it must hear that it can be forgiven.

Finally, Baltazar sings the praises of his God who is the fullness of activity. (p. 124) He is contrasting this with the hellenic " static view " of God. The pity is that so many people for so many centuries have thought of God as static, unmoving, the great Stoneface in the sky. The hellenic God is actus purus, which might be translated as " the fullness of activity." Baltazar has not arrived at some startling conclusion about God; all those metaphysical theologians of the past have been speaking about God as " the fullness of activity." I close with this point because it speaks equally loudly to Baltazar and to those who theologize in traditional

metaphysical terms. It is time for each side to listen to the other. This does not mean a forfeiture of convictions about reality; it does mean accepting the tentativeness of any human enterprise, whether it be practiced by oneself or someone else. I am certain that Baltazar and other disciples of Chardin have heard enough about the " dangers " of their approach; so too have others heard enough sharp comments about their " static " world-view. In many ways there is not that much difference in conclusions. I would find it difficult to choose between " actus purus " and " the fullness of activity."

William J. Finan, O.P.

Yale University

New Haven, Conn.

M. B. Ahern. The Problem of Evil. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Pp. 96. $4.50.

The most interesting thing in the world would be to know if God is like any of the ways in which we conceive of him, particularly the way in which we describe his actions and explain his motivations. Almost any argument over evil, and God's involvement with it, sets up rather rigid guidelines for his activity and limits him to specified alternatives. The issue is whether, in fact, God has open to him only the avenues set down in our arguments or whether he is free to act in ways other than those which conform to our particular logics.

To say this is not to suggest that God may not accept one of the ways of action we set down for him. Our arguments may be close to his own way of thinking, and even identical at some points. The problem is that we have an anthropocentric way of treating any ironclad logical conclusion of ours as if it exhausted God's alternatives. Mr. Ahern's new treatment of the problem of theodicy has the great virtue of recognizing the wider sets of possible modes of action and purposes in the divine activity and basing the discussion of evil on a recognition of the possibilities open to God in arriving at his decisions.

However, Mr. Ahern does pose his problem primarily as one of either the adequacy or the logical cogency of certain arguments already given, as he interprets these. That approach tends to turn the question of evil into a logical analysis of various arguments, whereas the issue is why and how God acted in virtue of what he is like. In other words, the question hinges on gaining greater insight into God's nature more than it does on the form of arguments previously given, each of which has its own assumed notion of God that explains why he might act as described.

If other treatments of evil have seemed to decide the question conclusively

on one side or the other, perhaps the chief merit of Ahern's treatment is to try to demonstrate that the issue must remain open and inconclusive. God's existence is left as " an open question." (p. vii) Such indetermination and inconclusiveness is much more in the spirit of post-modern man, who has given up his trust in the finality of " modern " reason. There are, as Ahern points out, " several kinds of problems about God and evil, not only one." (p. ix) In this case what we have is not one issue to be argued too conclusively in one direction or another but rather the basic issue of trying to determine what the questions are and in how many ways they might be phrased. Such an approach does not lead to definite conclusions, but it does involve a more realistic appraisal of our situation.

This much being granted, however, it is true that Mr. Ahern does go through various formulations of the arguments as if the alternatives presented were mutually exclusive and must be accepted or rejected just as offered. He speaks of " theists " as if they were one group, of fixed mind and agreed in outlook. In Chapter I, Ahern's treatment does split down the " problem " of evil into various forms rather than one, and this makes more sense out of our dilemma than a simplistic notion. That is, if, as he suggests, there are a variety of forms to the problem and not one, then it is more understandable why we are perplexed and still remain so. A single issue might be answered, but if our problem is how to phrase the problem itself, that is more difficult.

At times, however, Mr. Ahern is more rigid in his thinking. He states that a " wholly good being " must always be opposed to evil. (p. 3) Yet there is no evidence that God is bound by such strict alternatives. It is agreed that the notion of evil admits of multiplicity. Why cannot God's intentions be less than single and simple too? The truth is that our author seems quite flexible in his conception of the subtlety of the problem of evil and yet quite rigid and strangely traditional in his ways of conceiving of God. Could it not be that fresh insight into the problem of evil comes only as new insight into God's intentions is realized or a new conception of his nature is framed?

" Omnipotence " is one of the key terms (Chap. Ill), but--strangely-- Mr. Ahern does not stop for a full-dress re-evaluation of the meaning of " omnipotence." All the while he realizes that how this divine attribute is interpreted is central to the solution of the issue. His discussion of evil leads us to the key terms which must be re-thought but does not itself proceed to this needed reappraisal. It thus forms a prolegomena to a fruitful new approach to a question of evil.

What Ahern does conclude for us is that there is no reason why these terms (omnipotence, perfect goodness, and evil) need not be contradictory. This depends upon how each is conceived. We have a number of alternatives, and everything hinges on how these are worked out. (p. 14) However, of these three central terms, he does the least to reinterpret perfect

goodness, and it just might be that " goodness " is more complicated than we have imagined. Understanding " evil " might depend on grasping the subtlety and variety of alternatives open to the operation of " goodness."

For instance, Mr. Ahern says that " a morally perfect being acts well always." (p. 17) This statement is often accepted, but it is a simplistic notion which needs much reconsideration. At times it is suggested that " goodness " might not be so straightforward, but these hints perhaps need greater exploration if evil is ever to be understood. Mr. Ahern sees that evil changes if perfect goodness is not a divine attribute, but he should go on from this to see that all might depend on leaving goodness in God but at the same time moving on to new ideas of its meaning and mode of operation.

Perhaps the primary value of this book lies in its continued assertion that the problem of evil is not one but many (e. g., the general problem, concrete problem, etc.). Recognizing this complexity is an advantage, since perhaps only if we over-simplify the problem are we likely to misunderstand evil. However, the conclusion to this analysis should perhaps be that our primary energy must now go into exploring just how many ways it is possible to formulate the question of evil.

One conclusion might be that God is not as concerned to be " perfectly " good as some men think, or at least that his notion of his own perfection is not as rigid as ours has sometimes been. Mr. Ahern's primary concern seems to be to show that, due to the complexity of the issue, God's existence cannot be ruled out dogmatically but remains an open question. This is an improvement over the usual rigidity of our thinking about God and a worthy conclusion to the study. Yet it leaves totally open the question of just how we might begin to restructure our thinking about God's nature and his intention in new ways.

The only answer available, Ahern concludes at one point, (p. 58) is an indefinite one, and perhaps it is good for us to learn to accept such inconclusiveness when we deal with God. However, Mr. Ahern draws back from the suggestion of God's freedom, saying " the risk is too great." (p. 64) It would be interesting to know whether God actually is as timid as our author supposes. No conclusion can be decisive (p. 79) where God is concerned. We must learn the art of speculation and constant suspense.

Frederick Sontag

Pomona College

Claremont, California

Faith and Philosophical Enquiry. By D. Z. Phillips. New York: Schocken Books, 1971. Pp. 277. £2.50.

Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Heidegger had much to do with Paul Tillich's " symbolic " and curiously atheistic Systematic Theology. Half-baked uses of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein have much to do with Dr. Z. Phillips' " linguistic " and dubiously theist, though allegedly Christian, philosophy of religion. Faith and Philosophical Enquiry is a collection of thirteen influential papers, first published between 1963 and 1970, which typify ingenious muddle-headedness, but which are like Tillich's writings in their importance as indicators of major modern trends. Phillips shares Tillich's penchant for speaking for the Judaeo-Christian tradition as a whole, while eclectically avoiding anything that might seem superstitious (or even faintly supernatural) to defend in a scientific age.

Phillip's tactics put one in mind of Tillich's responses to " challenges " like: " Now that we know so much more about physics and biology than Moses or Jesus or Aquinas ever could, how can we consistently believe in a Transcendent Creator? ". Tillich's relatively explicit responses throw much light on Phillips's real directions. Tillich would reply that such questions dealt a healthy blow to " superstition " and " fundamentalism." Creation stories, like Fall-of-Man stories, are not literal but symbolic. Traditionalist clergy left them crudely and outdatedly symbolic. Updated symbolic and wise Tillichian theology teaches that anthropomorphic, traditionalist (e. g., Thomist) talk about God as a transcendent, purely spiritual, triunely personal ens realissimum distinct from the physical universe created by him debases God by making him a mere Supreme Being who creates and lovingly relates himself to personal creatures. Traditionalist talk objectifies God as a Being among beings. Such dying, unacceptable symbols must give way to live symbols: God is Being-Itself, not a distinct Transcendent Being. God is Ultimate Concern itself, not a concerned, personal Creator. God is beyond Existence and Essence and presumably beyond ever giving any earthly help to those old-fashioned enough to call upon His name in prayer. (Compare Phillips at pp. 103-105).

Phillips does not list any Tillichiana in his bibliography. But it is well worth bearing Tillich in mind when one feels lulled by many widely scattered and moving passages in Faith and Philosophical Enquiry which seem to be pronouncements of an ardent Kierkegaardian theist. For sudden echoes of Tillich and his emulators show that these appearances of Christian fideism are misleading. Phillips uses Kierkegaard's contrast of Eternal God and temporal man not, as first appears, for the Sad Dane's Supernaturalism but rather for the earthier Cultural Relativism of Wittgenstein-à-la-P. G. Winch.

" The objector who accuses me of denying the objective reality of God may have in mind a statement which I should support--namely the statement

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that God is not an object. That is a statement of grammar. Those who deny it, I suggest, speak of God in a way which is a logical extension of ways in which we speak of human beings. If God is a thing He is finite; and a finite God satisfies the needs neither of religion nor of theology." (p. 60) The convenient quasi-ambiguity of the words " object " and " thing " here may put some off the scent. It does indeed seem demeaning to a theist to call God a thing or an object as those words are often used in ordinary language. For the theist takes God to be both personal and supreme. In a similar way, when Phillips typically says that God is not a thing among things or an object among objects, (p. 85) or that God in his heaven is not an extra domain over and above our natural world, the Christian may interpret Phillips as saying something highly theistic. (Cf. Chapter III) For the theist agrees to the extent that God is not just one being among many, not just " something else " besides created nature: the Transcendent God is the uniquely perfect being, the only ens a se. But what Phillips really means in philosophical terms is that God is not a Substance, that God is not a Transcendent Being. Look again at the baited words: " If God is a thing He is finite." Suppose we write instead: " If God is any substance, if God is the ens a se and ens realissimum but nevertheless can be correctly given the label ' ens,' if God is a distinct individual being, then it follows that He is finite." We would so have written out more clearly what Phillips means, which is presumably the first part of an argument of the form: " If Q then R, but R is incompatible with the needs of religion or theology, so (by Modus Tollens) NOT-Q "!! But why must God be finite if God is an individual or ens, or is a personal individual, or is a thing in the technical sense of a Substance? Possibly Phillips himself is conveniently misled by this demeaning flavor of " thing " or " object " in ordinary usage when we contrast mere things or mere objects, so sadly limited--("finite")--because they are mindless, with conscious persons? Possibly also Phillips supposes like Spinoza (and Tillich?) that no substance X can be infinite in any religiously or otherwise important sense if it is distinct from- another substance Y, even if Y is finite and dependent on X. Compare the child's fallacy of supposing that there cannot be an infinite (infinitely dense) series of numbers (fractions) between 0 and 1 because there is a number 2 which lies outside the infinite series. Being infinite need not involve being all-inclusive, any more than being all-inclusive involves being infinite. Phillips also seems to embrace the dogma that if X makes Y meaningful, valuable, purposeful, etc., then X cannot have any properties which are somehow faintly analogous to-- (" logical extensions of ") --any properties of Y. But this dogma is fatal for even Phillips's philosophy of religion. He wants to say that God is the meaning of the world. (Chapter III) He wants to say that both concepts of God and concepts of human institutions and events are intelligibly discussable by insiders. Thus God and man share the property that the concepts of each of them are intelligibly

discussable by insiders. (Cf. Chapters II and IV-VII) Must that be denied too on pain of demeaning God?

Another fallacy which is crucial to spot if one is to understand the source of many profoundly confusing, and at present very influentially confusing, remarks spread right across this book is the fallacy behind those already quoted words: " Those who deny it, I suggest, speak of God in a way which is a logical extension of ways in which we speak of human beings." (p. 60) The major implications of this sentence in the whole passage quoted is shown by the way it directly precedes " If God is a thing He is finite." Thus we have the first part of an intended argument which unfolds modo tollendo as: " If P and Q, and if Q then R, but R is incompatible with the needs of religion or theology, so NOT-Q and thus NOT-P." In other words, we have an argument to the effect that, if the medieval tradition of analogical predication in theology were accepted, then we would have to make God a thing in some anthropomorphically demeaning way. (Hume's attacks on Natural Theology are praised by Phillips more than once). Hence we would next have to agree that God is finite, which is theologically and religiously intolerable, so that any talk of Analogia Entis must be scrapped by non-idolaters. Nowhere in the book is there a serious attempt to consider how and why many gifted and careful and devout medievals concluded that analogical predication, controlled by applications of the Via Negativa, could make so much of both theism and theology possible to understand without any anthropometric sacrilege. Indeed Phillips tends towards defaming those medievals when he writes " Religious mystery is connected with . . . the prohibition against idolatry: that is against likening God to anything natural." (p. 142) It is hardly surprising that Phillips makes unfriendly gestures in the course of his book towards Aquinas's Five Ways, towards the neo-Thomist E. L. Mascalls' Existence and Analogy, and towards the Catholic neo-Wittgensteinian P. T. Geach's sympathetic chapter on Aquinas in his book with G. E. M. Anscombe Three Philosophers. The Anglican philosopher-theologians John Hick and Bishop Ian Ramsey are also chosen for castigation: for to Phillips's horror, we learn, Hick believes with the analogists that persons will enjoy an eschatological existence which will be literal existence and not totally unlike present personal existence. (pp. 124 ff.) Personal immortality does not require demythologizing and re-symbolizing to death! This, it seems, makes Hick like a " superstitious " mother who trusts in a Virgin Mary still living after physical death to protect a baby from observable, physical harm. (Cf. p. 103) Hick and Ramsey are also at fault, one gathers, for joining atheists like Kai Nielsen in criticizing the Winch-Phillips attempt to make features of religious ways of life only assessable by (and intellectually accessible to) people deeply involved in promoting or practising those ways. (See Nielsen's excellent " Wittgensteinian Fideism," Philosophy, 1967, which scores many direct hits on Winch's succès de scandale relativiste, well quoted by Phillips here, The Concept of a Social Science.)

Phillips, like Tillich, sees no disastrous inconsistency between the " Closed Circle " or " Internal Criticism Only " approach to philosophy of religion and the " Being an Insider I'm Free to criticize Any Superstitions like Personal Immortality or Divine Individuality " approach to theology. Nor does Phillips realise that the Wittgensteinian " Family Resemblance " approach to polymorphous concepts becomes unmanageable as an analytical method if too much intransitivity is allowed to the relation of similarity and there are too many relata so related. Realizing this and making good comparative use of many centuries' work on analogical predication would be a way of taking what is permanently valuable in Wittgenstein seriously for purposes of philosophy of religion. Phillips seems blind to this. There is much else to query in Phillips's method. When comes the implied cross-cultural, cross-philosophical objectivity of his criticism of his rivals when his method is supposed so radically to isolate different sets of criteria for rationality as being internal to different approaches to the world? Here is a source of much rank inconsistency and possibly of some pure nonsense. " I'm safe in my Circle but you're not safe in yours! ": this is the slogan between the lines, the theme song chanted implicitly throughout thirteen arrogant essays by various square-circular rabbits popping out from supposedly magic Wittensteinian, Kierkegaardian, and " Up-to-Date " Christian hats.

Caveat emptor! But those who like provocation might especially enjoy " Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding," " From World to God?," " Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Enquiry," " Religious Beliefs and Language-Games," and the New Welsh Voluntarist Manifesto " God and Ought."

John King-Farlow

University of Guelph

Ontario, Canada

Reason and Faith Revisited: The Aquinas Lecture, 1971. By Francis H. Parker. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971. Pp. 45. $2.50.

Professor Parker tells us in the first paragraph of this stimulating Aquinas Lecture " that a complete return to the age of Aquinas is today impossible, at least for me. Much as I prize, even envy, St. Thomas' synthesis, too much water has gone over the falls of modernity for us to be able to return it all to its original reservoir." (p. 2) Although Parker does not spell this out clearly enough, one of his most crucial disagreements with Aquinas about Reason and Faith concerns the demonstrative cogency of the Five Ways. St. Thomas thought that from certain obvious contingent truths

known by sense-experience, as well as from obviously certain necessary truths known by the human intellect, one can demonstrate God's existence.

On the matter of obvious contingent truths Aquinas seems mercifully closer than Parker to Aristotle's general trust in the senses. (For the Stagirite and the Angelic Doctor our trust in the senses' general reliability is not a matter that requires prolonged philosophical agonizing). It is also significant that Aquinas seems similarly closer to those modern Anglo-Saxon and Continental Philosophers who query the intelligibility of concepts (or ' concepts ') of a human experience that have no logical ties with concepts of the shared human world. Parker belongs considerably to the hyper-cautious epistemological tradition of Descartes, Hume, and Russell and of their sceptical ancestors. (Parker appeals to his Harvard mentor C. I. Lewis's ' doubt '-answering but deeply ' doubt '-recognizing pragmatism at pages 21-22). Parker's epistemological prolegomena to his programme for reconciling Faith and Reason (pp. 4 ff.) are studded with neo-Cartesian sounding expressions like " immediate experience " and " a first order belief that seems to be a record of immediate experience," " a second order belief that seems to follow from some other accepted belief." (Parker's very way of talking about second order beliefs' merely seeming to follow similarly begs certain questions against Aquinas on necessary truths.) We suspect that if Aquinas's and Aristotle's spirits were to visit Parker, they would refer him to vital queries about the intelligibility of much neo-Cartesian philosophical usage of " immediately perceive," " directly observe," " seems," " appears," and " experience," queries raised in such contemporary works as J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, (Oxford: 1962; 14 ff., 135 ff., etc.), Peter Achinstein's Concepts of Science (Baltimore: 1968; 172 ff.), and L. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: 1953; Pt. I, 34-35, 172-178, etc.). Their spirits might likewise refer him to Marcel's rejection of Idealism, Heidegger's and Sartre's refusal to ' Bracket the External World,' and Marxist arguments that we must start doing philosophy like Aristotle with man as a social animal, confident of a shared world. We do not wish to beg the question against Parker that critics of such neo-Cartesian usage and methods are entirely right. Indeed we have ourselves endorsed elsewhere the value for philosophical humility of often accepting probability instead of seeking certainty. But surely in 1971 one cannot just take it for granted that much of the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition on sense experience and reason has been intelligibly attacked, let alone undermined, by neo-Cartesians and other heirs of scepticism. It is odd for Parker to dissociate himself from extreme followers of " rationalism," yet to pick up their jargon.

Thus Parker's attempt to replace Aquinas's approach to the reasonableness of Faith with something more up-to-date gets off to a rather dubious start. But much of the remaining discussion is helpful. Although the following points are not entirely novel, they are freshly and illuminatingly

woven together. (I) In many contexts a false belief may be highly reasonably and quite irreproachably believed because of the contextual problems and evidence. (pp. 7, 41 etc.) (II) There is no a priori logical link between the true proposition (a) that characteristically theistic religious beliefs and characteristically non-religious beliefs are often about different kinds of intended OBJECTS and the question-begging proposition (b) that therefore religious beliefs are typically irrational and non-religious beliefs typically rational. (p. 27) (III) Religious faith may have a justification which is perfectly rational, whether or not this closely resembles what some philosophers consider to be our paradigms of good reasons in mathematical and scientific proofs. (p. 35) A religion like Christianity may be reasonably believed " Because it gives life and the world a meaning and point which they otherwise lack." (p. 39) (V) Many a rationalist has already committed himself to seeking intelligibility by rejecting extreme sceptical queries about basic " principles," and indeed committed himself to such " principles " as the Law of Identity and the Stability of Meaning which he takes to be logically or semantically necessary truths. (Our double quotes indicate Parker's choice of label.) Such a rationalist is in a bad analogous and perhaps profounder quest for another form of (ultimate) intelligibility: the quest through religious commitment for meaning, point and purpose in life. (pp. 20, 38, 41, etc.)

This approach to Faith and Reason seems to Parker to be radically different from ideas in Aquinas and in William James. Is it? We comment: " Sic et Non." Doubtless Aquinas would disagree with the last clause of Parker's " It may be reasonable to believe that the world has a purpose even though that belief may in fact be false." (p. 41) An Aristotelian premise of St. Thomas's Fourth and Fifth Ways is that man is cognizant both of purposefulness in nature and also of certain absolute values, which are exemplified in much that he experiences. Parker's implicit sympathy for the historically very ancient sceptical tradition (which characterizes what he called the " falls of modernity " dividing him from the Medievals) may prevent his enthusiastically endorsing so strong a premise. But he should at least note that his own interestingly allied uses of " ought " and " rational " in this Lecture do suggest commitment to some degree of human knowledge of absolute values and intrinsic purposefulness. And Parker should next note how Aquinas's use of the Fourth and the Fifth Ways (after his giving the earlier three) offers us a systematic way of making sense of our human awareness of limited examples of purpose and value. Just so, what Parker on page 39 calls " the Christian Story " offers us not just some scattered inklings of point and purpose but a systematic sense of the meaning of life. William James seems in " The Will to Believe " to share Aquinas's and Parker's sense of our human need for a systematic teleology. But the distinction that Parker tries to draw on pages 42-43 between James's supposed passionalism and Parkerian reasonableness strikes us as thin and artificial.

page 166

The present reviewers have discussed at length a good number of the issues vividly raised by Parker's useful explorations and now sketchily resurrected by us in this notice. We beg leave to mention the following works: Reason and Religion (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1969) ; " Cogency, Conviction and Coercion," International Philosophical Quarterly, 1968; "Rational Commitment and 'The Will to Believe,'" Sophia, 1969; " Faith--and Faith in Hypotheses," Religious Studies, 1971; " Gambling on Other Minds--Human and Divine," Sophia, 1971. We are not there entirely in agreement with Parker! But we are glad to see his lively, thought-provoking Aquinas Lecture in print.

William N. Christensen

University of Alberta

Edmonton, Canada

John King-Farlow

Universities of Alberta

and of Guelph, Ontario, Canada

Thomism and the Ontological Theology of Paul Tillich: A Comparison of Systems. By Donald J. Keefe, S. J. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1971. Pp. 360.

In this book Fr. Keefe presents us with an orderly and scholarly study of two diverse ontological methods of theology by way of comparing Thomism and the systematics of Paul Tillich. He does this in order to determine " the formal structural principles which make theology what it is." (p. ix) Such a work is of special significance in our age because the emphasis upon interdisciplinary studies in general, and upon the correlation of the secular disciplines and theology in particular, makes it imperative to distinguish them with sufficient clarity. Otherwise Christian faith becomes subject to the critical judgment of some humanistic norm, instead of the revealed categories of the Bible which, in the context of a living Tradition of the Church's teaching authority, must be the foundation for discovering their contemporary counterparts. With Tillich the author insists that any method of Christian theology has to be one of correlation on account of the interrelatedness between divinity and humanity which has been revealed in the mystery of Christ. He proposes that the Christian transformation of Aristotelianism by St. Thomas and of Platonism by Paul Tillich provides us with two models of the way in which any humanist discipline might be correlated with theology. Because of the diverse classical ontologies which they transform, these two theological methods are quite divergent. Despite this fact, Fr. Keefe maintains that

each system is adequate to its task of rendering revelation intelligible with a remarkable coherence in accord with its proper principles of ontological methodology.

By a direct examination of the Aristotelian and Platonic ontologies and methods the first chapter explains the relationship between ontology and theology. The act-potency correlation of the Aristotelian ontological method leads to an understanding of being as immanent essence and of non-being as that which admits of potential intelligibility. St. Thomas perceived that this essentialist understanding of the world is in potency to a theological interpretation of reality. In the revelation of Christ he discovered the existential actualization of essential substance. Christian faith alone is able to save the Aristotelian world-view of immanent essentialism from the hopeless enslavement of finite being and reason. Plato's ontological method, left to itself, is no more hopeful. His Weltanschauung, however, leads rather to a tragic existentialism. Between being and non-being he beheld a contradictory opposition which riddles human existence and makes it ultimately meaningless. Tillich brings the substance of Christian revelation to bear upon Platonic hopelessness and transforms his ontological method by the New Being of Jesus as the Christ who has overcome the tragic estrangement of human existence from its true depth in God the ground of all being. His systematic theology still preserves the radical ambiguity of existential man by maintaining the Platonic contradiction between being and non-being. On the other hand, the Thomistic synthesis accepts the Aristotelian contrary opposition between being and non-being which allows for the potential theological intelligibility of the world and so provides an ontological method which can support theological statements that are true literally. But Tillich's dialectical method of correlation between essential and existential being does not remove the ambiguities of man under the conditions of existence. Thus his system leads to a constant deliteralizing of the kerygma in favor of religious symbols which can never be interpreted literally.

Thomism, therefore, inquires about man's calling in light of the revelation that Christ's existential grace is universal. Man can learn factually from this revelation which provides a literal revision of Aristotle's pagan view of reality. In his second chapter, " Thomism-A ' Questioning Theology '," Father Keefe explains its theological method as " the hypothetical assertion of the structure of the revelation." (p. 53) From this method flow theological statements which are actually questions that parallel the assertions of faith. Such theological statements are hypothetically true. They are hypothetical because the Thomistic transformations of Aristotelian metaphysics is based upon the assumption that the act-potency correlation is valid. They are hypothetically true insofar as such theological assertions are a possible actualization of the potential understanding of faith. The Thomistic system, therefore, is founded upon formal structural principles

which issue forth in theological statements that are by hypothesis affirmations of faith, i. e., they are in reality questions of faith in the fides quaerens intellectum. If they were looked upon as affirmations of faith, these statements would no longer be per se theological, since the understanding of revelation can never replace the grace of faith necessary to accept the revealed mystery as actually true. The Thomistic systematic theology, then, provides " necessary reasons " for the intelligence of a believer who seeks to penetrate the meaning of a mystery that is contingent, inasmuch as it is disclosed to man because of God's sovereignly free activity in revelation-and-salvation history. In other words, no system of theology can ever demonstrate the fact of Christian faith that the Father's saving love and wisdom had to actualize the substance of creation by means of the Redemptive Incarnation and so rescue the world from an immanent essentialism or tragic existentialism either of which would imprison finite reality in final meaninglessness. Thomism, therefore, is essentially a negative theology (via negativa) which shows the impossibility of the full actualization of the world's potentialities apart from Jesus Christ. According to the author, the Logos incarnate, and not the Logos apart from his human embodiment as Revealer and Redeemer, is the Prime Analogate of being. He reveals in and through his humanity the gratuitous existence of grace which alone can make man the actual image of God. For Thomism the " Adam before the Fall " is interpreted as the ontological condition of possibility for the Fall which regards a future fulfillment in the " Second Adam " and not a past paradise. Since man is created only in Christ, he is actually a sinner solely in view of deficiency from the being of Christ. " Adam before the Fall " signifies literally an affirmation of our existence in Christ and so the ontological priority over the fallen Adam can only be that of the Christ. That is why faith in the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption of Mary is an essential part of the Thomistic systematics. She is the ontological guarantee that a human person created in Christ has been fully actualized by her sharing in the gratuitous existence of his grace so intimately as to have been preserved from sin and raised up to the glory of bodily resurrection.

The third and final chapter, embracing about two-thirds of the book, is a thorough analysis of the formal structural principles in Tillich's " answering theology." Keefe's conclusion that his system is generally adequate to its theological task of faithfully rendering revelation intelligible is not intended to disparage Thomism or any systematic theology. In Tillich's writings he does find a prejudice that any system must be dialectical and so incompatible with a literal understanding of theological statements. At this point, however, we should try to appreciate Tillich's limited usage of the term " literal " to facts or data that are in some way empirically verifiable. Certainly the Thomistic evaluation of our analogous knowledge about revealed mysteries would also preclude this definition of literal but

does admit of a " proper " meaning that Tillich does not seem to account for in his religious and theological knowledge. He attempts dialectically to mediate between the " heteronomy " of appealing to an irrational authority in matters of faith and the " autonomy " of relativizing the whole of reality, thereby removing any possibility of ultimate concern. His method of correlation is a dialectical medium, a " theonomy," which makes the Christian message in his system a theology that answers the questions arising from a philosophical analysis of man's existential situation.

Tillich's Christian theology is grounded in the tensions between the concrete and the universal. Only the affirmation of faith in the Logos Sarx, the Word Incarnate, can keep these tensions in a dialectical balance. For, as the Logos, Christ is absolutely universal and, as Incarnate, he is absolutely concrete. Thus all theological statements can be based upon an ultimate concern with Jesus as the Christ. The sense of ultimacy in Christian faith derives from his universality which embraces every possible relationship, while the sense of concern or existential commitment comes from the concrete picture of the Christ given in the Gospel. Christ, therefore, is the actual fulfillment of the tendencies and aspirations found in any religion and theology. His system is structured around this central principle of ultimate concern which spells the difference between being and non-being or between ultimate meaning in existence and absurdity. The norm for his Christian theology is the New Being of Jesus as the Christ who is our ultimate concern by bringing salvation to an otherwise hopeless and ultimately meaningless existence. The fragmentary share of man in the New Being through faith preserves preliminary concerns, such as politics and all secular pursuits, from becoming idols instead of vehicles of ultimate concern. Thus to interpret a religious symbol literally would make it an idol since it has been taken from finite material. At the heart of Tillich's system is the discovery of a new significance for being, namely, essence, which is the ontological perfection of existential man, i. e., his complete participation in the New Being. And so, ever to interpret man's existential world of ambiguity, estrangement, and anxiety, as the basis for a " literal " understanding of " essence " would mean the destruction of the radical distinction between essence and existence. Essence always signifies the perfect participation by man in the New Being which alone can reunite him with God the true depth of his being, whereas existence must mean estrangement from God in his system. Existence that would provide the matter of religious symbols which could be understood literally would necessarily mean for Tillich that man could be saved without Christ. The literal significance of words describes the phenomena of daily experience, while religious and theological language must be transparent to the ultimate, the depth of existential being. Tillich's systematics is an " answering theology " in the sense that it formulates Christian revelation in terms that are designed to answer the questions of human existence which arise

out of some experience of ultimate concern, i. e., the ontological shock experienced in some form as the threat of non-being inherently involved in finite existence.

Keefe concludes that the differences between Tillich and Thomism are far less doctrinal than systematic. For Tillich the application of the Protestant Principle demands that all myths must be " broken " or deliteralized and held in dialectical correlation with critical thinking. Otherwise, the symbolic myth becomes idolatrous, which is making ultimate the content of a preliminary concern. In Tillich's system the Protestant Principle is the equivalent of the Chalcedonian definition for Roman Catholic theologians in that it rejects the confusion of the divine and human in revelation while insisting upon their correlation. According to Keefe, when Tillich applies the principle to a criticism of the Roman Catholic dogma of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, he is denying what he believes the doctrine to mean, which is in reality not what the dogma intends. He interprets the dogma as the foundation for the adoration of a finite material object. While the Roman Catholic insists upon the " objective " reality of Christ in this Sacrament, he does not understand the " objectivity " of being in the same way as Tillich who restricts it to phenomenal reality available to technical analysis. Either usage may be considered valid, as Keefe points out, but theological dialogue becomes impossible when they are confused.

In explaining the structure of Tillich's system, the author emphasizes immediately that the Prime Analogate of being for him is the essential unity of God, man, and the universe, namely, the eschatological New Being. It is the Christ in a Trinitarian context embracing the universe of creation essentially and not existentially. Jesus as the Christ, as united with the depth of being, was always essential and never existential, i. e., he was in existence but not of it. Keefe considers this to be identical with the Prime Analogate of Thomism, but differing from it in that the Thomistic ontological basis is esse, i. e., existence in Christ as the ontological perfection of human nature. Dogmatically, he also looks upon Tillich's interpretation of the mystery of Christ to be basically the same as that of Thomism. But the Thomist problem is how to understand an existential hypostatic union, while for Tillich the union is " essential " and so no problem in this context because essential humanity is supposed to be united with the Logos. His problem is how Eternal God-Manhood (essential manhood) can manifest itself under the conditions of existential estrangement. The paradox of the Word becoming flesh is not the essential union between God and man but the historical union of divinity and humanity. This is why Tillich's entire systematics is based upon the method of correlating the essence of the revelation of the New Being with the existence of sinful estrangement in all other men. Again Keefe makes the assertion that the real difference between Tillich and Thomism is systematic and not dogmatic.

For Tillich to take literally the statement that Jesus Christ is true God and true man hypostatically united would mean that essence and existence are identical. For Thomism, on the other hand, existential statements do not necessarily imply estrangement but rather the substantial composition of essence and existence with the potentiality for further actualization including that of the hypostatic union itself.

There is one Roman Catholic dogma, the Immaculate Conception, which Keefe believes that Tillich's system can and should support. Mary's sinlessness is an ontological implication of the Christ-event. Since Christ transcends our existential estrangement, the actualization of created goodness in space and time has not been realized in him as in a creature like Mary. She is both in. and of existence, and, as a particular human individual, would have her being totally in and by his being which is the Christian revelation. Her creation in non-estrangement would show that creation is not necessarily identified with the Fall as well as show that creation and Christian revelation are really the same.

This book is a significant contribution to systematic theology. By carefully distinguishing theology from faith and dogma Fr. Keefe helps clarify its special role as a scientific reflection within the believing community as well as open up ecumenically different approaches to the inexhaustible riches of the Christian revelation. More specifically, his comparative study of two such systems as that of Thomism and Paul Tillich virtually touches upon the main enterprises in philosophical theology, since each flows within the two mainstreams of thought in the intellectual history of theology-- Platonic Augustinianism and Aristotelian Thomism. Each tradition ought to be in a better position of mutual enrichment by sharing insights in their common Christian problem of developing a viable theology in our secularized society. The author observes, interestingly enough, that contemporary Catholic theologies seem to be favoring the existential Augustinianism characteristic of Tillich's Platonic method, while post-Bultmannian Protestant theologians are abandoning dialectical theology and becoming more concerned with the " literal " understanding of theological statements, as has been characteristic of the Thomistic tradition. Actually this book should help foster dialogue between Catholic and Protestant theologians about the validity of God-talk and the real meaning or truth-value of religious discourse in general.

There are some defects in the work worthy of note. The author's extremely heavy style--made somewhat necessary by the nature of his subject--is often complicated the more by unfortunate errors in printing. Documentation in the footnotes, while adequate for most portions of the book dealing with Tillich's system, is noticeably lacking in his treatment of Thomism. Many more references to the works of St. Thomas and also to his principal commentators are required if one can judge with greater confidence his own interpretation of Thomism as a living system today.

For instance, when he makes a statement that Thomism by virtue of its emphasis upon creation in time (p. 103) is incompatible with a theory of polygenism while entirely consistent with an evolutionary world-view, the careful reader rightly expects more documentation and elaboration in support of his assertion.

A much more crucial opinion that asks for some critical examination is Fr. Keefe's contention that pure nature enjoys only a conceptual reality. (p. 107) It is not a real possibility but only a conceptual possibility and functions as a counter-concept by which the gratuity of grace can be understood. But if we cannot conceive of pure nature as a real possibility, then the reality of grace itself seems to be somewhat compromised in that its distinctness would not be discernible to us. It would appear more accurate to say that the grace of Christ is ever able to elevate and permeate that which would otherwise be pure nature in us. Potency does not cease to remain in a being even after its fulfillment, just as essence remains itself following upon its actualization by existence. Besides, that which is intrinsically possible is extrinsically possible to the divine omnipotence. And pure nature is an intrinsic possibility which would be real on account of God's sovereign freedom in creating. Even though we never encounter pure nature de facto, still the basic realism of abstraction can support its real possibility for the sake of providing a genuine realism to the gratuitousness of grace.

Fr. Keefe calls Christ the Prime Analogate of being because " He is the formal cause of the substantial actuality of men." (p. 91) Such a way of putting it tends to confuse certain formalities in the dynamic relationship between faith and reason that is the act of doing systematic theology. First of all, the purpose of the analogy of being--intelligible ontologically to reason--is precisely to elucidate the analogy of faith revealed in the Christian mystery. To appeal directly and exclusively to the revealed mystery of Christ disparages the philosophical function of reason in its fundamental theological task of rendering the analogue as meaningful as possible in its reference to the faith. Also, to speak of Christ as the formal cause of humanity (p. 128) seems to equivocate regarding this genus of causality. When he speaks of Christ as the intellectus of the potential human truth affirmed in faith, one might interpret this as the living relationship between the risen Lord and the believer in the revelatory experience of making an act of faith. But he identifies this intellectus of Christ as the formal cause of the substantial actuality of men. If he is commenting on Thomism in this context, then it seems that a Thomist must take issue with his use of terms. Man's substantial acts refers to his actus essendi or ens simpliciter or existential actualization of his human substance. To make Christ the formal cause in any intrinsic sense of man's substantial actuality would obviously confuse his unique existence with ours. Thus we must distinguish that dimension

of actuality within us which is ens secundum quid (the entitative order of accidents further fulfilling our being and which is really our bonum simpliciter). In this order Christ " informs " us with his grace, providing we understand this to mean that our Christian sanctification is a participation in the fullness of his communion with the Father and carefully interpret the genera of causality as efficient, exemplar (extrinsic-formal), and final. This grounds an intimate union with Christ without confusing individuality.

Finally, one wonders whether Fr. Keefe's conclusion that Paul Tillich's system differs from Thomism only qua system, i. e., in its logic, ontology, and use of analogy, is entirely true. His keen clarifications have certainly removed much misunderstanding and so are invaluable to the ecumenical dialogue between various Christian theologians. But it surely is not a service to authentic ecumenism if what is alleged to be common to the different faith-traditions is not so in reality. Fr. Avery Dulles has made the observation that Tillich does not sufficiently purify his philosophical categories in light of the Christian revelation. His systematic theology does not seem to support adequately the reality of the supernatural, the notion of Biblical inspiration, the content of the basic Christian mysteries of man's creation and fall, the Redemptive Incarnation, the Mystical Body, the realism of the Lord's resurrection, and our eschatological hope to share in his glory. I do not believe that Fr. Keefe has quite succeeded in communicating his own conviction that there are not real differences in the Christian faith between the Protestant systematics of Paul Tillich and the Roman Catholic systematic theology of Thomism. He has, however, been very successful in identifying the formal structural principles that make these two systems theological and in paving the way for further dialogue between them in the future.

Frederick M. Jelly, O. P.

Dominican House of Studies

Washington, D. C.

Logic for Philosophers. By Richard L. Purtill. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1971. Pp. 431. $9.95.

This college textbook was chiefly written to ameliorate the efforts of those who at various academic plateaus are seriously trying to philosophize correctly and effectively. It is a commonly recognized fact that philosophers are generally aware that they have a tremendous dependence on both empirical data and valid processes of reasoning in their attempts to wrest the hidden ultimate secrets from nature. Experience soon teaches the youthful philosopher that the path to truth is filled with logical pitfalls

and detours and that in his world there are more apparent answers than real ones. Philosophers, perhaps more than their confreres in the academic world, usually do not have to be " sold " on the importance of posing any problematic precisely and properly, for badly put questions generate only ambiguous and unsatisfactory answers. Then, too, philosophical methods of investigation and argumentation must not ignore the genuine advances in the field of Logic so as to be logically crisp and scientifically rigorous. To face such a noble challenge philosophers must be fully equipped with the knowledge of approved logical techniques. Dr. Purtill tries to prepare philosophers for this task by offering them this book: " I think logic is as much the philosopher's natural tool as statistics is the social scientist's, . . . (and) more problems than we think may be open to investigation by formal logic." (p. xvi)

Dr. Purtill deserves much praise for his attempts to meet this need in the world of the academe. No longer can philosophers take suspect short-cuts or cowardly detours in their philosophizings on the grounds that adequate textbooks in Logic are lacking, for, as Aristotle felt, " one must be already trained to know how to take each sort of argument, since it is absurd to seek at the same time knowledge and the way of attaining knowledge " (Metaphysics II). Of course, the author is also well aware of the responsibilities that are so germane to scientists and theologians; they too could profit not a little from a serious study of this book. In this book will be found a very rich presentation of the myriad techniques of formal logic from Aristotle and the Stoics through the outstanding medievalists to moderns and even contemporaries like Carroll, Quine, and Hintikka. But, if one is well grounded in these logical techniques, one will be most apt to philosophize more fruitfully and even more easily. To give these techniques more intelligibility Dr. Purtill in a customary pedagogical manner offers almost a thousand practical exercises covering all the major aspects of formal logic.

Though the book is definitely Carnapian in its approach and orientation, it exhibits constantly a laudable fairness to all systems of logic. Dr. Purtill demonstrates a great respect for Aristotle and his principal contributions to the development of Logic; yet throughout there is a tremendous emphasis on symbolic logic's methods. In Part I there is a clear exposure of the rudiments of proof and disproofs. Besides, many of the problems ancillary to " propositional logic " are expertly analyzed. His endeavors to clarify the notion of " existential import," which is and has been a knotty problem for many modern and contemporary logicians even of the Carnapian school, deserve much praise. On the other hand, he has seemed to fail in his honest efforts to explains the symbolists' distinction in the area of Predicate calculus between " propositional statements " and " propositional functions." In Part II (pp. 203-350) he does a masterly job in presenting through symbolic notation the great advance being made in modal, epistemic,

and deontic logical systems. His examples, showing how these systems can assist philosophers laboring in the areas of cognition and ethics, are most helpful critically.

To this reviewer Dr. Purtill's Logic for Philosophers is a good textbook because his primary purpose in writing it was satisfactorily fulfilled: " We are acquiring logical techniques so as to be able to apply them to interesting philosophical problems." (p. 324) Besides, he is sober in his expectations of the analytical potential of logical techniques: " there are a good many philosophical arguments which cannot usefully be analyzed by the techniques of formal logic and, therefore, not by the techniques which you have learned from this book." (p. 348) Despite the many praiseworthy aspects of this book, however, the plethora of typographical errors were lamentable, especially those that may have been somewhat substantive to the understanding of a technique. But, perhaps, the publishers realizing the importance of this book will be more careful in the next edition.

Dennis C. Kane, O. P.

Providence College

Providence, R. I.

Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, translated by F. R. Larcher, O. P., with a preface by J. A. Weisheipl, O. P. Albany: Magi Books, Inc., 1970. Pp. 252. $6.50.

This version of Aquinas's Commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle has been prepared by Fr. Larcher, an able and skilled translator of medieval Latin, and it is a welcome alternative to the earlier translation of his erstwhile collaborator, Fr. Pierre Conway, O.P. (Exposition of the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle, Quebec: La Librairie Philosophique M. Doyon, 1956.) Since Fr. Conway's work appeared fifteen years ago, and then only in mimeographed form, Fr. Larcher's becomes the first English translation of this important logical treatise to appear in type and in durable binding, and hopefully it will now find its way onto many library shelves. While preserving Fr. Conway's literal style, Fr. Larcher has inclined somewhat further to the modern idiom and is more readable on this account. He is accurate in his interpretation of the text, in all but a few instances rendering Aquinas's thought with great fidelity. This reviewer thus has no hesitancy in recommending the translation to those who know no Latin themselves, and so are completely dependent on the translator for their understanding of St. Thomas's thought.

Some idea of the style of translation and its difference from the earlier

version may be seen in the following brief excerpts from St. Thomas's commentary on Book II, chap. 1:

As can be seen from this, there is a dependence of the one version on the other, not unlike that of William of Moerbeke's improvement of the Latin translation made by James of Venice from the original Greek text. Also visible here is Fr. Larcher's wise decision to leave technical Latin phrases intact, explaining them where necessary with bracketed inserts. Otherwise he does not adorn the text in any way, furnishing us with a bare translation alone. There are no explanatory footnotes, no cross references, no analysis of the argument (not even the brief outlines given by Fr. Conway at the beginning of each lectio), and most regrettably, no index (which is all the more unfortunate considering that Fr. Conway had already made a start in this direction). Fr. Larcher does not even inform us as to which English translation of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics he used for collating the text and the commentary, though it is obvious that this is G. R. G. Mure's, which first appeared in the Ross edition and has been reprinted in McKeon's Basic Works. Bekker numbers are inserted throughout, however, and these would permit the use of another translation, such as Hugh Tedennick's in the Loeb Classical Library edition. A serious omission, in this reviewer's estimation, is the paragraph enumeration that is found in the Leonine and Marietti (manual) editions; this makes it extremely difficult

to locate references made to the commentary in customary scholarly form. Of less consequence is the omission of the text numbers from Averroës's Great Commentary, which would have facilitated comparison of St. Thomas with late medieval and Renaissance commentators.

The translation is generally clear, although there are a few places where it might be improved. For example, the first sentence of Lect. 24, Bk. I, begins as follows: " After clarifying with examples how there is demonstration quia through effect, the Philosopher here shows how there is demonstration quia through things not immediately connected." [p. 77] Here " per non immediata " is translated literally but indefinitely as " through things not immediately connected," whereas the reference is clearly to premises that are not immediate, i. e., that do not contain a proximate cause (78a25). Again, in Lect. 1 of Bk. II, where Aristotle is discussing an eclipse and St. Thomas speaks of what is happening in defectu lunae, Fr. Larcher refers to this as " the waning of the moon " [p. 167]; the eclipse phenomenon would better be spoken of as " the darkening of the moon," since " waning " (usually associated with, and opposed to, " waxing ") connotes a totally different phenomenon. These are trivial instances, of course, and are not meant to detract from the general excellence of the version.

Fr. Weisheipl has provided a brief but good introduction to the work, though not as complete as that written by Vernon Bourke for the English translation of St. Thomas's Commentary on Aristotle's Physics (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). Fr. Weisheipl mentions the commentaries of Averroës, Grosseteste, and Albertus Magnus on the Posterior Analytics [p. ix] but offers no comment on the extent to which these might have been used by Aquinas in preparing his commentary. Again, although he gives brief indication of the various Latin translations that were available at the time of St. Thomas's writing, he makes no detailed use of the four critical editions of these translations now available in Aristoteles Latinus; these could possibly shed light on the importance of Moerbeke's translation for Aquinas's accurate understanding of the Greek text.

These criticisms undoubtedly ask for too much, considering Fr. Larcher's and Fr. Weisheipl's intentions, but the fact is that this English translation has now appeared, and no publisher is likely to undertake printing another version for some time to come. It is therefore doubly unfortunate that a more complete job was not done at this time. One suspects, of course, that these deficiencies, if they may be called such, were dictated by economic factors, as is the case with so many scholarly enterprises these days. And considering this, we should be thankful to Fr. Larcher, and to his publisher, for giving us what they have, namely, a reliable (if unadorned) English translation of an important commentary on the exceedingly difficult text of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics.

William A. Wallace, O. P.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

Johannes Quidort von Paris, Über königliche und päpstliche Gewalt. By Fritz Bleienstein. Textkritische Edition mit deutscher Übersetzung. Frankfurter Studien zur Wissenschaft von der Politik, IV. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1969. Pp. 360.

This work was composed as a doctoral dissertation under the direction of Prof. Carlo Schmidt. Along with a solid introduction to the political and ecclesiological theories at the time of John Quidort of Paris, Bleienstein presents a description and classification of all nineteen known manuscripts as well as an edition of the tractate accompanied by a translation in German.

Since he has nothing new to add to J. Leclercq's analysis of the sources and external history of the origin of the tractate (Jean de Paris et l'ecclésiologie du XIII^e siècle [Paris, 1942]; Introd. and critical edition), Bleienstein presupposes the pertinent literature in regard to essential points. Working independently and from a new viewpoint, he proceeds to treat the location of the tractate in the history of thought. . . . Whereas Scholz, Finke, Grabmann, and Leclercq (Un modèle d'argumentation théologique) are interested in internal ecclesiastical aspects, Bleienstein immediately approaches the matter as a " state and Church " problem. (p. 19) Thus he arrives at a well-balanced characterization of ecclesia and christianitas (res publica christiana, p. 23) and is able to offer an appropriate introduction to the correct understanding of the " dualistic theory," which John of Paris supports. The author is right to warn against an all too hasty application to elements in the present-day situation which are purportedly grounded in the tractate De regia potestate et papali: the sovereignty of the people, democratic structures, and secularization exemplify the catchwords that have been extrapolated from this work. Through an analysis of the indirect sources (Leclercq presents a summary on pp. 31, 35-37, which Bleienstein unfortunately fails to take over) the position expounded in the introduction could have been more exactly substantiated. John of Paris is not a revolutionary; through his intensive use of Thomas (and, by way of Thomas, Aristotle), through his recourse to Henry of Cremona, Humbert of Rome, Gottfried of Fontaines he returns to pre-decretal material. He can thus enter into opposition against Boniface's followers without any anti-curial pressure. John does not simply reject existing conditions; he succeeds in developing a well-balanced criticism of the papalistic theories in the light of tradition and under the influence of the reception of Aristotle. In this way there arises the image of a " completely autonomous political system, which functions exclusively according to its own laws and does not necessarily require a supernatural superelevation." (p. 31) Bleienstein could verify his statements even more clearly by further research in this field.

Werner J. Krämer

Cusanus-Institute

University of Mainz

Jesus and Israel. By Jules Isaac. Ed. Claire Huchet Bishop; trans. Sally Gran. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Pp. 405. $12.50.

This book suffers from a sad flaw for which neither author, nor editor, nor translator are responsible. It will, I fear, not be read but, if read, not heeded by the very ones it challenges to a change of mind. Why, for God's sake, did I accept the editor's invitation to review it? At the risk of sounding immodest, I am doing it for just that--for God's sake.

No honor is done to Jesus if he is seen as no more than the great antagonist of the rabbis of his time or of his kinsmen in general. One modern exegete, Ethelbert Stauffer, prides himself on having found the key to Jesus' message, life, and death by seeing him as Torahketzer, a " heretic rejecting the Torah." This is only an extreme example of the false picture painted of him by interpreters, great and small, professional or not.

Before I go into greater detail, I should like to introduce the author, a renowned French historian. Prior to the Vichy government, he was " Inspector General of Education for France." When the German troops occupied the part of France he lived in, he fled south. Soon after the Gestapo, aided by the Vichy police, began to " round up " all the Jews they could find, Isaac's wife and daughter fell into the hands of these human bloodhounds and were later put to death. Even before this happened, Isaac had begun to explore the reasons for centuries of anti-Semitism. How could hatred of Jews have taken root, indeed waxed strong in nations that called themselves Christian, he asked. The result of his query is this " cry of an outraged conscience, of a lacerated heart." (p. xxiii)

What makes the book unusual is the author's unique stance. He concludes the preface to the 1948 printing with this profession: " The reader may wonder to what religion the author belongs. This is easy for him to answer: none. But this whole book witnesses to the fervor that inspires and guides him, fervor for Israel, fervor for Jesus, son of Israel." (p. xxiv) Isaac's devotion to Jesus is made even clearer when, in another passage, he agrees with many modern exegetes that the probable span of Jesus' ministry was but one year and then continues: " That the one year, Jesus' single year, was enough to kindle a flame in the world which would never be extinguished thereafter is a miracle, there are none more convincing." (p. 97)

These sentences permit us to look not only at Isaac the man but also at Isaac the author. He is an assimilated Jew who reasons as if he were a Christian. The New Testament is the anvil on which he hammers out his charges. This book, then, as well as other writings of the last twenty years of his life, are severe indictments of Christian teaching of contempt for Jews. Still, Isaac is quoted by the Editor as saying that he does not pretend " that in the old and bitter controversy between Israel and Christianity,

the responsibility, the wrongs and failures are all on one side, the Christian side." This does not prevent him from going on: " In addressing Christians primarily, am I not justified in thinking that the Christian aspect of the problem, the Christian wrongs, Christian responsibility alone should count for them? Or would I be mistaken, then? Is the Sermon on the Mount not law for every Christian? " (p. xvii)

This book is made up of twenty-one theses (or " propositions "), one of which stresses that Jesus, for Christians God-in-the-flesh, was " in his human lifetime a Jew, a humble Jewish artisan." (p. 11) Isaac quotes a few pertinent passages from the New Testament, among them Rom. 9:3-5, where strangely enough tōn syggenōn mou kata sarka is translated as " my kinsmen by race " [italics mine]. The English translator generally follows the Revised Standard Version, " except when other English renditions come nearer the French text." (p. iv) But Isaac's French original clearly says mes parents selon la chair. One need not be an anthropologist to realize that the Jews are not a race, in the scientific sense of the word. Almost everyone knows that there are, for instance, light-skinned and dark-skinned Jews. Granted that " race " is often used in a wider sense, in a book born of the agonies caused by Hitler's racism such a use seems to me utterly out of place. Still, my objection is minor, minor in the sense that it in no way weakens the thrust of Isaac's book. I mention it only to show that even we who are committed to cleanse the air that for centuries has polluted the coexistence of Christianity and Judaism can never be sensitive, discerning enough in our speech.

Another important thesis of Isaac's wars against the all too common assumption that Judaism at the time of Christ was degenerate, a body without a soul, when in reality Jewish religious life was rich and intense. Part of the misrepresentation chastised by Isaac is the usual portrayal of the Pharisees as men preoccupied with external observances but totally lacking in inner fervor. Isaac's answer is at once impassioned and impartial. His description of Pharisaic shortcomings is sterner than anything I would like to write but I quote it at length to prove that Isaac cannot be shoved aside as an " apologist," a man intent on whitewashing the Jewish past. The passage is perfect evidence of his justice and utter devotion to truth as he sees it:

But to what degree does this disparaging definition apply to the historic Pharisees? Exactly as much as the definition of the word Jesuitical to the Jesuits.

Of course, Israel did not lack for hypocrites, for affected, sententious, and pretentious puritans; they are denounced and excoriated in the Jewish Talmuds as they are in the Gospels; but what " organized piety can ever wholly escape . . . hypocrites "? Tartuffe belongs to all religions, all times, all countries. It is very true that Pharisee rigorism had its faults: an excess of scruples and subtlety in interpreting the Law led to the hollowest casuistry (thirty-nine kinds of activity forbidden on the Sabbath); an obsessive fear of any impure contact tended to

separate " the saints " not only from the foreigner, the accursed pagan, but from the rest of the Jewish people, the ignorant mass of the ammei ha-aretz or common people, the plebeians; the plethora of external observances, of abstinences, fasts, ablutions, purifications, left hardly any place for the exercise of true piety, which is not a ritual technique but a spiritual life, an effusion of the heart. The influence of the Pharisee rabbis was therefore not without danger for Judaism; and it is not surprising that it elicited sharp reactions on Jesus' part. But once this is said, the facts, the writings, good sense, everything indicates that historic Phariseeism does not admit of a definition synonymous with either hypocrisy or formalism, as so many Christian writers still maintain--and as if the true faith required such a masking of historic truth. " A greater misreading of history," writes R. Travers Herford, the best historian of Phariseeism, " it is scarcely possible to imagine."

We cannot doubt that there were men of conviction, of high moral worth, of sincere and pure devotion, faithful to the teaching of the Prophets, among the most influential of the Pharisees. Jewish history and the Talmuds bear this out, as do the Gospels. . . . Phariseeism had its faults, but it also had its merits (from which Christianity would profit largely) : it enriched the Jewish religion, continuing in its evolution, in its spiritual progress, with new beliefs--in the resurrection of the dead, in a judgment beyond the grave; trust in God, hope in His justice, messianic expectation were thereby strengthened; without eliminating the sacrificial Temple rites, prayer and the reading of the Law in the Synagogues moved to the forefront of religious life and in a certain way spiritualized it; finally, the new expansion of Judaism won it numerous adepts--proselytes or God-fearers-- in the pagan world. When Christianity applies itself to casting aspersions on Pharisee Judaism, it is forgetting everything it owes it; and it is being not only unjust but ungrateful. (pp. 39-40)

Isaac's work contains such a wealth of material that no reviewer can do justice to it. It would take pages to discuss adequately so important a topic as " Jesus and the Law." For Renan, Jesus' chosen role was not to reform but to destroy Judaism. But when Renan said this, he had ceased to be a Christian himself. Isaac, therefore, adds statements by Christian theologians who--undeterred by Jesus' own avowal, " I have not come to destroy, but to give fullness " (Isaac's own rendering)--proclaim: " Jesus Christ abrogated the Law. This is what Christianity preaches." (p. 50) It is an intellectual pleasure to watch his sharp mind, with no other help than that of New Testament texts, make mincemeat of the pronouncements by those theologians.

Equally devastating is Isaac's treatment of the once common opinion that the Jews " as a whole " rejected Jesus because they were " earth-bound," " proud," " materialistic," indeed, filled with " gross carnal aspirations." (p. 133) I have always been stunned by sayings like this: " The Jews rejected Jesus because they loved themselves more than God." (ibid., n. 8) How can a Christian utter these words without a sting of conscience, without fear that they will choke him? Is it possible that he pronounce this verdict without the least apprehension that he might condemn himself?

Obviously, it is. A man's mind can be so twisted that, while signing a death sentence, he may think he is sealing the fate of another and not realize that he is condemning himself. Similarly, it is not only a threat to Jews when a Christian calls them " the people who crucified Jesus," it is spiritual suicide; not only does he press the knife against the throat of Jews but at the core of his own spiritual existence.

Isaac deals with the " Crime of Deicide " in several chapters and on one hundred and fifty pages. I wish I could convey the impact of these pages in a paragraph or two but this is simply impossible--I can only beg the readers of this review to study this section; they will be the better for it. Never again will they read the Passion narratives with the mind of an inquisitor or persecutor but with the eyes of a sinner seeking forgiveness. If I may quote from my own essay " Deicide as a Theological Problem ": ". . . the deepest case against the use of ' deicide ' and ' deicides ' is . . . the fact that the two terms pervert the mystery of the Passion. They move the accent from voluntary sacrifice and loving death to murder, from God's gracious deed to man's vicious act. More than that, it is not just a shifting of accent, the whole theology of the Cross becomes man-centered instead of God-centered, sin-oriented rather than grace-oriented " (Brothers in Hope, Vol. V of The Bridge [New York: Herder and Herder, 1970], p. 203 f.).

" Deicide " is an abusive term: it brings misery and death to Jews but crippled hearts and a shambled faith to Christians. In fact, every anti-Jewish theologoumenon is a boomerang. Every attempt to divorce the ministry of Jesus from its Jewish setting, to ignore the Jewish roots of his teaching, to drive a wedge between him and all his contemporaries, invariably leads to an impoverished understanding. There are a number of proofs in Jesus and Israel that Jesus' teaching is deeply anchored in Jewish tradition, even when it goes--or seems to go--beyond it. Anyone who approaches the bond between Jesus and his kinsmen with an open mind, will find in Isaac's treatment of the beatitudes, for instance, many valuable hints, indeed starting points for further study. Isaac's book combats a pseudo-theology that is Gentile rather than Christian. Yet it does much more; it helps the Christian reader meet his Master and Brother in the flesh--in his Jewish humanity.

It hardly needs saying that I do not agree with every word in Isaac's book. Still, I recommend it most warmly to all Christians, particularly to all those who, in one way or another, have been called to " the ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:4). More than that, I implore them to study it meticulously; it will redeem them, free them of all self-righteousness and fill them with humility and love.

Our thanks and praise go to the publisher, translator, and editor. I wish the praise were unstinted. But it is a pity that there are no indices to help the serious student retrace his steps through the mighty forest he has just

crossed. The translation is for the most part excellent. But why a rendition of the propositions from another source has been incorporated (see p. xiii) I cannot understand; they lack power and follow the French original so slavishly that their meaning is not always clear. For instance, a reader unacquainted with the history of synagogue services in the post-exilic era might take the sentence: " According to a very liberal custom, ' the carpenter's son ' was permitted to speak and teach in the synagogues . . ." to mean that Jesus received some sort of special permission; he will be bewildered by the word " liberal," not knowing whether it stands for " generous " or " unorthodox " while, as a matter of fact, interpreting the Torah was open to every Jew capable of doing it.

The Editor, a woman of many talents and a strong sense of justice, is Jules Isaac's spiritual heir and the representative of his thought in the United States. She has contributed a foreword and innumerable footnotes, all of which testify to her concern for bringing the " teaching of contempt " to an end. Yet, not all her remarks on Vatican II, particularly on the deicide issue, are judicious. She relies almost completely on Abbé René Laurentin's pamphlet published by the Paulist Press and obviously does not know the reviewer's comprehensive history of the Council's Statement on the Jews in the Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (Ed. H. Vorgrimler, New York: Herder & Herder, 1969, Vol. Ill, pp. 1-136), where some of the problems are discussed, not by an outside observer but by an eye- and earwitness.

Occasionally Mrs. Bishop is the victim of stereotypes, not against Jews but seemingly in favor of them. There are few works on Christian-Jewish relations that will not mention that the medieval world liked to portray the Church as victorious, standing majestically erect with a crown on her head, chalice and banner in her hands, while the Synagogue is blindfolded and bent, the lance in her right hand broken, and the tablets falling from the other. This is an ever recurrent theme, the most famous example of which are the two figures in the South porch of the Cathedral of Strasbourg.

Mrs. Bishop chooses as the interpreter of the statues a French author who offers us the old commonplace of Judaism as " a misguided religion, a stumbling block," and so on. (p. 43) Had she taken another look at the figures she might have discovered that the nameless sculptor carried out his commission but outwardly; he chiseled his protest against the common view of the Synagogue as well as his sympathy with her grief into the two stone figures. His Ecclesia is handsome but cold, her face shows no compassion. She seems impervious to the world around her, while his Synagoga, bent though she is by the sorrows of exile, radiates a spiritual beauty. In fact, her total bearing wins the immediate sympathy of any observer who is not guided by preconceived notions.

In 1939, a German poet, Ernst Stadler, was moved to hail the work of the sculptor as one of love:

Dass wunderbar in Gottes Brudernaehe

Von Niedrigkeit umhuellt ihr reines Bildnis stehe.

Roughly translated, the artist wanted " her pure image, though wrapped in lowliness, to stand--oh marvel!--in the brotherly nearness of God."

These criticisms are small, they concern only blemishes. Still, I consider it important that we who seek to do away with the often vicious stereotypes against Jews do not ourselves use clichés, never make an assertion without trying to verify it, never present a conjecture of ours as a statement of fact, and so on. The battle against anti-Judaism or any other negative stance must be fought, not only on the theological but also on the psychological plane. Our prejudices are certainly born of hostile emotions but they are midwived by careless thinking. It is not only against hatred and rancor we have to guard ourselves, but against that naiveté which leads to fast and thus false conclusions. To my mind, one of the outstanding characteristics of Jules Isaac is that, for all his passion, he is a humble, clear thinker.

John M. Oesterreicher

The Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies

Seton Hall University

South Orange, New Jersey

Studies in Revelation and the Bible. By Mario W. Shaw, O. S. B. Indianapolis: Catholic Seminary Foundation of Indianapolis, 1970. Pp. 92. $2.50.

This is a collection of occasional papers of varied provenance. One, concerned with the revelation-drama of the Fourth Gospel, was written in 1960; two others concern revelation in the ancient Near East and covenant-revelation in the Old Testament (1962-63). The final ones, dealing with the rupture between Judaism and Christianity, are the most recent (1970). The dates are worthy of note as the bibliographies for each paper have not been updated, though they are selectively thorough up to that time. Hence the work of such as René Latourelle or Gabriel Moran on revelation or Dennis McCarthy on covenant or even Raymond Brown's magisterial study of the Fourth Gospel is not mentioned. Perhaps some bibliographical addenda and a more complete revising would have enhanced the value of such period pieces for the average reader. However, the articles do serve as useful summaries of biblical information for the times represented. They are generally well-organized and clear, and the longest essay, that on the Fourth Gospel, is intriguing and readily adaptable in the light of later research.

The last sections on the Judaic-Christian rupture are current in thought and bibliography and are rather passionate appeals against anti-Semitism.

Unfortunately, the reviewer was somewhat distracted from the trend of thought in the appeal by the fact that page 90 is entirely blank--hopefully, the defect is unique to the reviewer's copy. Generally, the proofreading has been well done save for " principle " instead of " principal " on p. 38-- a common oversight.

Alan Smith, O. P.

Dominican House of Studies

Washington, D. C.

Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis. By John Herman Randall, Jr. New York and London: Columbia University Press. 1970. Pp. 254. $7.95.

This little book, with the disproportionately long title and the even more disproportionately high price, represents a rather ambitious project requiring a scholar of Randall's expertise and stature to carry it out. And, in his own way, he does carry it out very well. He has not aimed at a detailed, comprehensive study of the topic but, rather, he has written a series of connected essays which are characterized by conciseness and clarity. Basically, the book may be divided into two parts, the first dealing with Hellenism and the second with early Christianity. The first part impresses one as certainly the better of the two, for it deals with an area in which the author has for a long time given abundant proof of his scholarly competence and in which he seems to be more at home. He begins by discussing the main characteristics of the thought and culture of the Hellenistic world, especially as centered around Alexandria. He then presents a clear and well-drawn picture of the principal secular ways of deliverance, the Epicurean, the Stoic and the Skeptic, the last of which he feels makes the most sense and is the most relevant to the human situation today. The book, incidentally, contains a number of asides and reflections which, whether or not the reader concurs, are worth listening to.

The fortunes of the Hellenistic philosophical systems in Rome are next examined with special attention devoted to Cicero, Seneca, Panaetius, Posedonius, and Antiochus. A chapter on the revival of religious ways of salvation and the mystery cults is followed by one on the nearly pure rationalism of Plotinus. All of this is handled by a scholar who knows what he is talking about and who can explain it to others. In treating of early Christianity, however, he seems less at ease, and he is certainly less convincing when, for example, he compares Pauline Christianity with the mystery religions. In discussing early Christian thought the author, now emeritus, relies very heavily, as he frankly admits, on what he learned as a student from his own teachers. In many cases, what was once new and provocative has now become passé.

The book concludes with several chapters on Augustine's completion of the Christian synthesis. While much of what the author writes has been said before, he puts it together very neatly and clearly, adding his own interesting reflections. His analyses of philosophical and religious thought are, with very few exceptions, penetrating and thorough, and they are admirably presented to the reader. Some of his ideas may be controversial and some of his conclusions debatable, but they merit our attention.

George T. Dennis, S. J.

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D. C.

Work, Society and Culture. By Yves R. Simon. Edited by Vukan Kuic. New York: Fordham University Press, 1971. Pp. 250. (Appendix: Simon Bibliography). $7.50.

Yves Simon was at once a precisionist and a comprehensive and depth student in philosophy, a profound Catholic in his life and thought, and among American Catholics by far the most creative philosopher. He knew how to work and enjoyed it. Two events will indicate his determination to work. When at the age of fifty-eight he was terminally sick, he insisted on being carried onto the stage to deliver from a stretcher a promised lecture on " Jacques Maritain: The Growth of a Christian Philosopher," and when I once asked this sick man whether he was working, he replied: " Good Lord, man, if I wasn't, I'd be dead."

In the present study, the sixth posthumous book, he remarks (p. 41) that " if philosophers are good for anything, it should be for analyzing and clarifying concepts which, no matter how vague, convey something of great significance." For example, the concept of joy, love, hope, and of course the concept of " work " which is a constant phenomenon in the life of persons and society. Is work merely manual labor and limited to servants or even to slaves? Are philosophers, research teams, bankers, poets, and prophets to be considered among the world's workers? In his earliest essays on "work" (Trois leçons sur le travail, 1938), Simon was over influenced by a Grecian and long-perduring aristocratic idea of work, the idea that the manual and servant worker was not merely the prototype of the one doing work but the only one.

In the present treatise Simon repeatedly retracts that narrow view (pp. 4, 17, 55-58) and notes that it was criticized by many friends. Not only his habits of thorough and comprehensive study but his charism of seeing that philosophy takes up problems as they are here and now given drive him to consider " work " in the context of modern industrial work

and as linked with the total society and culture, and bring him to consider work, society, and culture in the invaluable light thrown on these realities and concepts by giants who have struggled with them, e. g., Fourier, Comte, Marx, Durkheim and Veblen. He keeps making one well-ordered thought of the problems and of fragmentary solutions in moderns and ancients.

I hope Vukan Kuic and others go on editing these important studies and that the editors and Mrs. Simon and son Anthony are working on a biography. An extensive Yves Simon bibliography by Anthony O. Simon is appended to the present volume.

Leo R. Ward

University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana

Santiago Ramírez O. P., Su Vida Su Obra. By Vicente Marrero. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigationes Cientificas, 1971. Pp. 334. $3.50.

Very few Americans, even among those who are familiar with the current philosophical and theological periodicals, know Father Santiago Ramírez's writings. This phenomenon is even more remarkable when one considers the world popularity attained by some of the theologians of the recent Council, such as Congar, Rahner, Küng, and others. Father Ramírez, however, as history will tell, is superior to all of them. As the best theologian of the twentieth century and the foremost commentator on St. Thomas, he surpasses Cajetan, John of St. Thomas, Bañez, Vitoria, etc., both in quality and in quantity.

The theological stature of Father Ramírez, however, is not unknown in Europe. He was professor at the Angelicum in Rome for three years and at the University of Fribourg for twenty-five. The last twenty years of his life were spent in Salamanca totally devoted to writing and theological research. While there he published La Filosofía de Ortega y Gasset, which, against Father Ramírez's wishes, triggered a philosophical-political controversy which lasted for months. Once the storm was over, he withdrew completely from public life and retired to his monastery where he peacefully spent the last years of his life.

Father Ramírez was an exceptional professor. He possessed an unusual clarity, a profound insight into problems, a prodigious memory and an amazing theological erudition. Listening to his lectures was enough to make one realize he was not only a good professor but also a genius, the like of which appears only rarely.

Perhaps the phrase that synthesizes his theological attitude is illustrated best by his own words, " Science deals with problems that are eternal. It is not wise to deal with the little problems of everyday life to abandon

those that are perennial." Paradoxically, he knew perfectly the philosophical and theological problems of everyday life and accepted from them everything that could transcend the fashion of the day and be eternal, for truth, wherever it may be found, was his only concern.

Father Ramírez was a convinced Thomist, because he believed the fundamental principles for any valid theological synthesis were contained in St. Thomas's theology. His Thomism, however, was not servile, for truth is more important than St. Thomas. In questions concerning grace, not only did he feel St. Augustine to be superior to St. Thomas but he also had words of admiration for Suarez, Scotus, Newman, and other modern theologians and philosophers.

Father Ramírez knew modern exegesis as well as the positive sources of theology. He placed, however, much importance on the rational analysis of faith, the theological discourse, and maintained that it is impossible to have a good theology without a good philosophy. The erudition of his knowledge is so great and the analysis of the problems so exhaustive that it may perhaps hinder the appreciation of his writings. There are few ready to follow the detailed and exhaustive analysis of the problems. His approach to them, however, is not purely analytical. In the end he always reduces everything to unity and order, without which there cannot exist a good theology or philosophy.

In theology his method is historical. He approaches the problems by going to the sources and by following their historical development, which he considers essential in evaluating and finding their solutions. His three volumes of De Hominis Beatitudine are pioneer works in this sense. When reading them, one does not know which to admire most, the historical approach to the problems, his phenomenal erudition or the rational penetration of the most difficult questions. In the first volume the reader finds thirty pages of bibliography on the problem of beatitude which he asserts to have read, Meos Oculos Vidit.

On tradition and progress he says, " To oppose tradition and progress is equivalent in philosophy to the opposition between illuminism and traditionalism; the former system ascribes everything to reason; the latter to historical change. But none of these doctrines satisfies completely the desire of total explanation, and we should say that the truth is shared by both. Neither reason has an absolute dominion over reality, nor circumstances. A tradition which is merely a simple recollection is the mark of peoples in decline. On the other hand, a progress which is not rooted in tradition is short-lived and disappears."

Although Father Ramírez is primarily a speculative moral theologian, as evidenced by his De Hominis Beatitudine published in 1943, he has written many other volumes, the majority of which will be published soon. Among the yet unpublished works perhaps the most original of them is the volume on the passions, which is one of the questions treated rather

infrequently by the commentators on St. Thomas. In addition, he has written two volumes on mysticism. His discussion of this question criticizes John of St. Thomas's commentary on the doctrine of St. Thomas on the gifts of the Holy Ghost for having something of St. Thomas and something of John in it too. Other important works deal with original sin, law, and theological virtue. Father Ramírez was a peritus of the Council and belonged to the commission which discussed the problem of collegiality of the bishops. At the conclusion of this session, which had accepted his views on the subject, Father Ramírez published De Episcopatu ut Sacramento deque Episcoporum Collegia concerning the question, a book which he completed in two months.

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