Memory is the least studied dimension of Augustine's psychological trinity of memory-intellect-will. This book explores the theme of 'memory' in Augustine's works, tracing its philosophical and theological significance. The first part explores the philosophical history of memory in Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. The second part shows how Augustine inherits this theme and treats it in his early writings. The third and final part seeks to show how Augustine's theological understanding of Christ draws on and resolves tensions in (...) the theme of memory. The place of memory in the theological anthropology of Augustine has its roots in the Platonic epistemological tradition. Augustine actively engages with this tradition in his early writings in a manner that is both philosophically sophisticated and doctrinally consistent with his later, more overtly theological writings. From the Cassiacum dialogues through De musica, Augustine points to the central importance of memory: he examines the power of the soul as something that mediates sense perception and understanding, while explicitly deferring a more profound treatment of it until Confessions and De trinitate. In these two texts, memory is the foundation for the location of the Imago Dei in the mind. It becomes the basis for the spiritual experience of the embodied creature, and a source of the profound anxiety that results from the sensed opposition of human time and divine time (aeterna ratio). This tension is contained and resolved, to a limited extent, in Augustine's Christology, in the ability of a paradoxical incarnation to unify the temporal and the eternal (in Confessions 11 and 12), and the life of faith (scientia) with the promised contemplation of the divine (sapientia, in De trinitate 12-14). (shrink)

What is a human being according to Augustine of Hippo? The question has occupied a group of researchers from Brazil and Europe and has been explored at two workshops during which the contributors to this volume have discussed anthropological themes in Augustine's vast corpus. In this volume, the reader will find articles on a wide spectrum of Augustine's anthropological ideas. Some contributions focus on specific texts, while others focus on specific theological or philosophical aspects of Augustine's anthropology. The (...) authors of the articles in this volume are convinced that Augustine's anthropology is of major importance for how human beings have been understood in Western civilization for better or for worse. The topic is therefore highly relevant to the present times in which humanity is under pressure from various sides. (shrink)

Gegenstand dieser Arbeit ist der anthropologische Personenbegriff Heinrichs von Gent (vor 1240-1293). Die zentrale These lautet, Heinrich entwickele zwar keine geschlossene Theorie der menschlichen Person, verbinde aber ganz verschiedene philosophische Kontroversen seiner Zeit inhaltlich durch eine bestimmte Perspektive auf den Menschen in seinem Verhältnis zu Gott auf der einen Seite und der Natur auf der anderen Seite miteinander. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmet sich der Autor Heinrichs Beitrag zu den Fragen nach dem Prinzip der Individuation, der Ewigkeit der Welt sowie dem (...) Verhältnis von Verstand und Wille. Im Zentrum der Darstellung steht hierbei jeweils, wie Heinrich zu seiner Positionierung unter Rückgriff auf verschiedene Autoritäten ein Konzept entwickelt, hinter dem eine scharfe Grenzziehung zwischen den Bereichen Gott, Mensch und Natur steht. Die Bestimmung dessen, wie der Mensch einerseits aus reinen Naturkategorien herausgehoben wird, wie zugleich aber vermieden werden muss, den Menschen selbst zu Gott werden zu lassen oder Gott in denselben Strukturen wie die von ihm geschaffene Natur zu verstehen, verknüpft Heinrich von Gent immer wieder mit dem Begriff Person. Sich als Person gegenüber Naturkausalitäten frei verhalten zu können, begründet für Heinrich die Würde einer Person. Die philosophiehistorisch angelegte Studie zeigt durch die direkte Auslegung der Quellentexte auf, wie Heinrich von Gent eine solche Position entwickelt: Einerseits durch Rückgriff auf verschiedene Traditionen und andererseits in Auseinandersetzung mit anderen Denkern seiner Zeit, allen voran Thomas von Aquin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E. HochschildJoseph T. Lienhard, S.J.Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology. By Paige E. Hochschild. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Pp. 251. $125.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-964302-8.When students of St. Augustine consider his teaching on memory, they turn instinctively to the Confessions, book 10, and to On the Trinity, books 11 and 12. The lyrical passage in the Confessions is (...) easy to teach and intriguing in its contents. Paige Hochschild paints a much larger picture, drawing on far more sources. She also sees memory as a central category in Augustine’s thought. In the opening paragraph of the introduction, she describes memory (for Augustine) as the way the mind meets the world, as the way things external to the body are apprehended, as the way intelligible objects are known, and as what it means to be constituted in the image of God. This is a big order. And “order,” in Augustine’s sense, is key: the mind, as memory, brings order to the natural world, but also brings to light a providential order that is implicit in the sensible.The book is divided into three parts: (1) the philosophical tradition (Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus), (2) Augustine’s earlier writings (from the Cassiciacum dialogues up to De magistro and De musica), and (3) the Confessions and De trinitate. The conclusion of this complex study is that memory is salvific: it accounts for the soul’s progress by the dialectical play of the knowledge and love of what is possessed, yet not possessed. The lifelong process of healing in which memory functions is fulfilled in contemplation.Two characteristics of Hochschild’s book can be mentioned at the outset. First, she studies each author diachronically, measuring progress and growth in the author’s thought, and particularly in his understanding of memory. Second, she readily invokes a wide range of categories to explain and illuminate her main topic. The book is anything but an extended encyclopedia article on “memoria in Augustine.” The two principal terms in the title, “memory” and “theological anthropology,” are richly developed and elaborated.Chapter 1 begins with a short note on Augustine’s knowledge of Plato. It is generally admitted that Augustine read some of the dialogues of Plato in translation: the Timaeus, the Republic (albeit only parts of it), the Phaedo, and the Phaedrus. Some of these works, at least, may have come down to him through doxographers. But Plato’s influence on Augustine remains shadowy. It is “Platonism,” and particularly Plotinus, that influences him so clearly, a point made memorably in Confessions 7.9.13-15, and its intriguing reference to the libri Platonicorum. Before all else, Platonism delivers Augustine from the bondage of materialism.Hochschild treats Plato’s doctrine of memory under four headings: sense perception, knowledge as recollection, divisions in the ways of knowing, and the practice of dialectic. In regard to sense perception, the sharp distinction (found in the Republic) between opinion (doxa) and knowledge (epistêmê) [End Page 144] needs to be refined, Hochschild avers. At least in some later works, the sensible is an image of the intelligible, and hence some sense perception can be infallible. On the next topic, Plato invokes recollection to explain direct apprehension of the forms, but recollection does not recall what was perceived in the past but is a restoration of a clear, logical relationship. The Republic introduces a new element, “the illuminative power of the Good” (21). The final section of chapter 1 treats dialectic, concluding that “knowledge is fulfilled in virtue, and the art of dialectic is not merely an exercise in definition, but a hexis, and a way of living” (27).Chapter 2, on Aristotle, begins with the observation that, if Plato’s influence on Augustine was indirect, Aristotle’s was even more indirect, reaching Augustine through Plotinus. Most familiar, of course, are Augustine’s account of reading Aristotle’s Categories during his days at Carthage (Confessions 4.16.28-31) and his later use of the categories of substance and relation in his understanding of the Trinity, creating the category of “substantial relation,” which would... (shrink)

Abstract Theology may well provide useful insights into the question of human autonomy?if one is willing to entertain the existence and authority of God as expressed through the scriptures. Accordingly, the Bible presents humanity as designed to exercise much autonomy. But, humanity immediately abused that freedom, resulting in the present universal captivity of the human will to sin and death. The will can now only be liberated from its self-centered bondage through the substitutionary death and resurrection of the God?Man Jesus (...) Christ, received by grace through faith (according to the Protestant soteriological framework). With the acceptance of Christ by faith, the Holy Spirit enters into the believer, causing the will to begin a process of regeneration in which the old self-centered deformation of the will is gradually liberated to a restoration of its original design?a God-centered existence characterized by freedom in pursuing a life of genuine love and righteousness. Within this general theological anthropology, Christians often disagree about the relative level of self-determination at the most crucial point?the decision of faith. Philipp Melanchthon (1497?1560) provides an excellent snapshot of this theological debate, due to the evolutionary character of his own teachings on the subject. In 1519, he taught that human beings had no freedom in the choice of faith. At his death in 1560, he taught that human beings did have (at least some) self-determination in this decision. A survey of this doctrinal transformation allows for an in-depth exploration of human autonomy from a theological perspective. (shrink)

In this book, Victoria Lorrimar explores anthropologies of co-creation as a theological response to the questions posed by technologically enhanced humans, a prospect that is disturbing to some, but compelling for many. The centrality the imagination for moral reasoning, attested in recent scholarship on the imagination, offers a fruitful starting point for a theological engagement with these envisioned technological futures. Lorrimar approaches the topic under the purview of a doctrine of creation that affirms a relationship between human and (...) divine creativity. Traditionally, theological treatments of creativity have been almost exclusively applied to artistic endeavours. Here, Lorrimar breaks new ground by extending such theological accounts to include technology, and uniting them with the strengths of scientific accounts of co-creation. She draws on metaphor studies, cognitive sciences, as well as literary studies, to develop an account of human creativity in relation to divine creativity, which is then applied to various enhancement scenarios. (shrink)

Since its first appearance in 1821/22, The Christian Faith has had a fractious history of reception. It implements decisive departures for theology, founding the possibility to speak about God on human freedom. It recognises the role of historical consciousness, and the need to relate to advances in the natural sciences. The study investigates the early critiques of Schleiermacher’s analysis of the feeling of utter dependence, of his conception of Christ as the archetype of the God-consciousness, and of his doctrine (...) of God in terms of absolute causality. It reconstructs the revisions carried out in the second edition of 1830/31 as a break-through to a transcendental argumentation. Does Schleiermacher’s elaboration of the anthropological turn in theology leave it defenseless against the dissolution of faith in a saving God in Feuerbach’s projection thesis? Does it offer a naturalising account of religion? And where does the interconnectedness of nature established by God leave what was prized by the Romantics, human individuality? Ongoing objections and new constellations of questions are examined in their relevance for a modern theology that spells out faith in God as a practical self-understanding. “Maureen Junker-Kenny’s book is an outstanding presentation of Schleiermacher’s theology. She attends not only to the development of his method from the first to the second edition of The Christian Faith, but also to his concrete interpretation of Creation, Christology, Redemption, Theological Anthropology, especially human freedom, and his understanding of God. The book has an exceptional value in the way she relates Schleiermacher not only to his contemporaries, but also contemporary concerns. Schleiermacher’s theology is shown in its relation to the modernity of his age, but also the ongoing modernity of today. The book has a depth and breath that make it indispensable not only for historical theology, but also contemporary constructive theology.” – Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Harvard Divinity School “In Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics. A Theology Reconceived for Modernity, Maureen Junker-Kenny proves herself to be not only a distinguished interpreter of Schleiermacher’s work, but a creative practitioner in her own right of his dialogical method. Elegantly conceived and beautifully written, the book shows how Schleiermacher connected the different aspects of his thought—form/content, structure/doctrine, piety/critical rigor—into a coherent system. Self, Christ and God in Schleiermacher’s Dogmatics is now the only guide to Schleiermacher’s magnum opus, Christian Faith, anyone needs.” – Christine Helmer, Northwestern University, Chicago. (shrink)

The author proposes a model for theological anthropology as embodied sensing that is based on an interdisciplinary exploration of the corporeal turn from a southern African perspective. The work of James B. Nelson is acknowledged, stating that body theology starts with the concrete, the bodily expressions of life and not with doctrines about God and humanity. The theological anthropology of David H. Kelsey is evaluated as a theological anthropology with a sentiment of the flesh. (...) Based on clearings in the work of David Kelsey and an interdisciplinary research, the author proposes a model for theological anthropology as embodied sensing which functions within the intricate and complex connection of the living body, language and experiencing in a concrete lifeworld with an openness to the ‘more than’. The author considers the use of bodymapping within narrative therapy as a way in which to uncover the intimate and intricate connection between the living body, experience and language, and implementing insights from theological anthropology as embodied sensing. (shrink)

Was ist das Sein? Meister Eckhart versteht das Sein nicht als etwas, was man an sich selber haben kann, sondern etwas, was man allein durch die Selbstvernichtung in einem anderen geben oder empfangen kann. Dies stellt das Seinsverständnis der Relationsontologie dar. Der Entwurf der neuen Ontologie bei Eckhart lässt sich als einen grossen Wendepunkt in der Geschichte der Philosophie verstehen. Denn die zwei grössten Philosophen im Mittelalter, Augustinus und Thomas von Aquin, nahmen hingegen immer noch die Substanzontologie auf, die sich (...) von Aristoteles herleitete. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht hauptsächlich die lateinischen Werke Eckharts und rekonstruiert seine Ontologie in den drei Bereichen, nämlich in der Dreifaltigkeitslehre, der Schöpfungslehre und der Anthropologie, um zu beweisen, dass Eckhart die traditionelle Substanzontologie überwand und neulich die Relationsontologie entwickelte."-- Back cover. (shrink)

Classical rabbinic texts -- Bible and biblical commentaries -- Codes and their cognates -- Responsa.

Abdallah Ibn Mas?ud, ein Gef„hrte des Propheten Mu?ammad (s.a.s.), berichtete: W„hrend ich mit dem Propheten in einem Palmenhain war, und er sich auf einen blattlosen Palmenzweig st_tzte, kamen einige Juden vorbei.

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name (...) for threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:694 BOOK REVIEWS Exercises in the Work of HUvB," Antonio Sicari writes on "Theology and Holiness," and Georges Chantraine writes on the relationship of "Exegesis and Contemplation." Missing from Henrici's account of Balthasar's philosophical presup· positions, as well as from the other contributions, are further sugges· tions for exploring possible relationships with some of the current con· cerns in North America like the hermeneutical debates or those surrounding other (...) methodological issues. Much work is still needed in this area, especially a more thorough encounter between the position of Balthasar and those of Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, and Paul Ricoeur, to name but a few of the dominant figures in North American theological circles. Schindler's volume is highly to be praised as an invaluable introduction to the work of one of the giants of our century. Let us hope that more such studies will be forthcoming. Concordia University Montreal, Quebec CHRISTOPHE PoTWOROWSKI The Anthropological Character of Theology: Conditioning Theological Understanding. By DAVID A. PAILIN. New York: Cambridge Uni· versity Press, 1990. Pp. 300. $54.95 (cloth). That the discipline of theology is an activity of human beings whereby even in the most pronounced theologies of revelation the " creaturely form" of theology is acknowledged is not a matter of dispute. What is debated is the extent to which this Barthian rendering of the anthropological moment of theology " conditions " our theological understanding. It is in the interests of sorting this out that David Pailin, Reader in the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Manchester in England, devotes this volume. The result is a rather systematic study in which the author explores the various angles where one can register theology's human dimension-from basic theistic claims to doctrinal formulations-while simultaneously justifying the integrity of theological inquiry in philosophical perspective. Indeed, throughout, it is the hand of a philosopher of religion that is at work, synthesizing and categorizing the contemporary theological landscape and carving out the true subject matter of theology, namely, that which is "ontologically, valuatively and rationally ultimate" (p. 4). The book is best read with an eye to each of these poles. On the one hand, the ostensible project is to examine, evaluate, and clearly affirm the human character of the theological enterprise. Simply BOOK REVIEWS 695 acknowledging the theological identification of human being, ergo the theologian, as a creature addressed by the divine word is inadequate. Even if this should require the practitioner to engage in a " laborious movement from one partial human insight to another" (Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, 1, p. 14), it does not give due recognition to the formative influence exercised by the theologian's fallible and culturally specific situation in life. These include language, conceptual perspective, metaphysical commitments, social location, and religious experience. On the other hand, Pailin is mindful that attention to theology's anthropological character and his methodological accentuation of it is in danger of yielding to the reductionist charge that religion is a complex of human projection and anthropomorphic description. In response Pailin consistently argues the case for the justifiability of religious belief, theistic claims, and theological predication. In this respect his work is not only descriptive of what theologians are doing but it attempts a revisionary intervention in the realms of philosophical and systematic theology. Classical theistic renditions of the divine attributes are subjected to critical scrutiny, e.g., divine impassibility and its relationship to divine love, and traditional interpretations of Christian doctrines are relativized by their cultural context, e.g., Anselm's theory of atonement. His own constructive subtext betrays a clear preference for neo-classical process theology and its conceptualization of God's relationship to the world and history. The key issue that governs Pailin's view of the integrity and limits of theological understanding revolves around the relationship between formal and material predication. What we mean by God and what we say about God are inextricably bound up with our speculative efforts to understand the nature of ultimate reality. The theologian and the metaphysician are in pursuit of similar quests with the proviso that the farmer's judgments are ensconced within a religious perspective. This does not exempt theological judgments from being rationally... (shrink)

Un spécialiste du judaïsme et un rabbin éclairent les enjeux du monothéisme juif dans le monde contemporain par un retour à ses origines.0.

What was the Enlightenment? This question has been endlessly debated. In this book, historian Matthew Kadane advances the bold claim that Enlightenment is best defined through what it set out to accomplish, which was nothing short of rethinking the meaning of human nature. Kadane argues that this project centered around the doctrine of original sin and, ultimately, its rejection, signaling the radical notion that an inherently flawed nature can be overcome by human means. Kadane explores these ambitious, wide-ranging themes through (...) the story of the largely unknown Pentecost Barker, an eighteenth-century "purser" and wine merchant. Examining Barker's diary and correspondence with a Unitarian minister, Kadane tracks the transformation of Barker's consciousness from a Puritan to an Enlightenment outlook. In one man's conversion, Kadane tracks large-scale shifts in self-understanding whose philosophical reverberations would (and have continued to) shape debates on human nature for centuries to come. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Reformed Virtue after Barth: Developing Moral Virtue Ethics in the Reformed Tradition by Kirk J. NolanAmos Winarto Oei, PhDReformed Virtue after Barth: Developing Moral Virtue Ethics in the Reformed Tradition Kirk J. Nolan LOUISVILLE, KY: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX PRESS, 2014. 192 PP. $30.00In this addition to the Columbia Series in Reformed Theology, Kirk Nolan attempts to overcome the theological obstacles that Karl Barth raises to Reformed moral (...) virtues ethics. He hopes that his work will contribute to the broader discussion regarding Christian virtue ethics in two ways: the relational dimension of virtue and its prophetic contribution to challenge and influence personal life and future social arrangements (viii–ix). Nolan's thesis is that the attempt to overcome theological obstacles requires grounding virtue ethics in a covenant based in God's free election (8). Though virtue ethics may seem out of place in Reformed theology, especially in the thought of Karl Barth, Nolan argues that Barth's theology actually proves virtue ethics can be compatible with the Reformed tradition. [End Page 213]He elaborates the thesis by identifying those areas of greatest theological concern in the tradition and seeking to address them. He first looks at John Calvin's theology, the Westminster Confession, and Jonathan Edwards's theology (chapter 1). One concern to address is the problem of "Constantinianism" in their thought where they all "presume church-state relations in which the church is the dominant force in society" (35). Karl Barth challenges such presumption by pointing out that the church's role is not to coerce her morality on others but instead simply to present the power of the Holy Spirit. Virtue ethics is not top-down management.Nolan then looks at the theology of Karl Barth himself (chapters 2 and 3), especially those areas that may present difficulties to virtue ethics: Christocentric anthropology, rejection of the Analogia entis, and rejection of habitual grace. Nolan explores these difficulties by engaging with others such as Erich Przywara and William Werpehowski, arriving at so-called "virtue ethics without recourse to natural morality" (71). What does a virtue ethic without natural morality look like (chapter 4)? The key feature is that it is grounded in God's revelation instead of "an overly optimistic view of the effects of sin on humankind" (108). This implies, using a modified Thomist terminology, that all virtues in this ethic are infused; in this case, they are all shaped by grace, and this grace continues to work in the life of believers even when they stubbornly resist it (simul iustus et peccator).In the final chapter (chapter 5), Nolan shows the practice of virtue ethics by addressing a short history of social witness in the Presbyterian Church (USA). Virtue ethics after Barth will commit to practical wisdom, frugality, and charity. The PC(USA) should make these commitments explicit and then should integrate its institutional focus on social injustice with concern for individual moral change since "virtue ethics, with its link between the flourishing of society and the flourishing of individuals, provides rich resources for this integrative task" (133).Kirk Nolan has creatively argued for a Barthian virtue ethics, developing a virtue ethics based on Barth's doctrine of revelation. This is an important addition to the discussion of virtue ethics. One question comes up through the reading of this work: Can a virtue ethics without natural morality be really called Reformed? Reformed tradition, in the works of people such as John Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger, Peter Martyr Vermigli, and Francis Turretin had a well-developed view of the conscience as having an innate or implanted knowledge of the natural law—albeit one that could not motivate unregenerate sinners to do the good which pleases God. [End Page 214]Amos Winarto OeiAletheia Theological Seminary (Indonesia)Copyright © 2017 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

This article sketches an intellectual history of the distinction between Christian theology and Christian ethics. The twists and turns of that history have been obscured by a recent tendency to deny the distinction's usefulness, as part of a wider strategy for reasserting theology's relevance to modern social problems. By contrast, earlier theologians assumed the value of the theology/ethics divide, interpreting it through Aristotelian, neo-Kantian, and finally Marxist categories. The distinction fell into disrepute because theologians struggled to maintain the (...) distinction consistently and disagreed on the concerns implicated by it, variously using it to affirm the moral subject's agency, the divine/human difference, or the complexity of real people's circumstances. Nonetheless, the distinction has persisted as a useful shorthand for recognizing the limitations of Christian theology, qua a conceptual discourse, in fully apprehending its subject matter of the Christian life. (shrink)

The article explores the manifesto of the Moscow Anthropological School, emphasizing the primacy of hallucinations in anthropogenesis. The current predicament of modern humanity urges the anticipation of something genuine and substantial. However, the essence of philosophy does not always align with the prevailing “spirit of the times.” Its mission is to pursue autopoiesis, scrutinizing society for its inherent flaws that impede progress. From this viewpoint, F.I. Girenok’s hallucinatory theory is entirely pertinent and justified. The narrative of civilization is typically portrayed (...) as a chronicle of discoveries and triumphs of rationality over irrationality. The history of fears and misconceptions, which not only persist from the past but also resurface, is less well-documented. Therefore, the program of the Moscow Anthropological School is far from being peripheral; on the contrary, it holds significant relevance. It furthers the tradition of inversion anthropology, initially established by N.Ya. Danilevsky, the first Russian critic of Darwinism. This anthropological tradition was particularly advanced by the concept of B.F. Porshnev and the research of contemporary authors like Yu.M. Boroday and V.A. Podoroga. Each, in their unique way, contributed to the critique of evolutionism and reductionism. F.I. Girenok’s concept evokes schizoanalysis, albeit devoid of Marxist influence, unlike G. Deleuze. All these aspects warrant a comprehensive philosophical discourse on the manifesto. Meanwhile, reports and discussions concerning F.I. Girenok’s theory revealed that not all participants are readily prepared to tread the path suggested by the founder of this theory, confining themselves to theological explorations instead. This, as per the author of the article, inherently signifies that hallucinatory and messianic anthropologies are complementary to each other. (shrink)

The texts in this book offer new observations on incarnation in light of the developments of the past twenty years in both philosophy and theology, as well as current debates in anthropology and ethics.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic is responsible for the large-scale devastation experienced all over the world. This ‘invisible stranger’ interrupting our daily lives is highlighting in a new and acute way the vulnerability of the human race. Life as we knew it is being changed forever. COVID-19 also exposed the injustices embedded in social structures all over the world. What will life with and after COVID-19 look like in South Africa? The pandemic reveals that South Africa is not the fair (...) and just society we hoped for since the transition to a democratic country in 1994. In light of this, we should be preparing ourselves for the new ‘abnormal’ as what seemed normal was problematic and therefore, truly abnormal. Seeking guidance from evolutionary anthropology, this article will explore whether the evolutionary story of Homo sapiens might offer us insights on how to successfully navigate the multiple challenges COVID-19 unmasks and also brings forth. A discussion on the evolutionary history of homo sapiens within the context of niche construction theory reveals that our unique capacity for imagination and creative collaboration made us successful as a species. It is these capacities for imagination and cooperation that might facilitate us in successfully imagining and thereafter living the new ‘abnormal’. In this article, the question of imaging the new ‘abnormal’ will be explored.Contribution: By creatively integrating the perspectives evident in this research, this article explores whether the Prophets of Israel might offer a feasible paradigm to determine coordinates for the imagined new ‘abnormal’ to be a more fair and just society. (shrink)

Today's social and political climate often pits conservative or traditional Christianity against "progressive" Christianity. But what is progressive Christianity? What is a progressive Christian? What is a progressive church? Christianity in Blue answers these questions by drawing from biblical scholarship, Christian history, theology, popular culture, philosophy, and cultural anthropology. Kaden shows how socially liberal values and progressive attitudes can be the fruits of taking seriously both the Bible and Christian tradition. But rather than treating these sources as static (...) authorities and the final word on every subject, Kaden argues that they are places to start one's exploration of how to be a Christian in the world. Being a progressive Christian is an ethical exhortation to "uplift human personality," as Martin Luther King Jr. once said. This exhortation structures how progressive Christians receive, interpret, and apply the Bible and Christian tradition to daily life. A robust tradition provides an anchor to avoid the illiberal trends in contemporary society, and a commitment to uplifting human personality provides a check against dehumanizing uses of Scripture and tradition. Christianity in Blue will help both progressive and conservative Christians better understand the importance of the Bible, theology, history, and philosophy for building a loving church for everyone. (shrink)

On the heels of the advance since the twentieth-century of wholly physicalist accounts of human persons, the influence of materialist ontology is increasingly evident in Christian theologizing. To date, the contemporary literature has tended to focus on anthropological issues (e.g., whether the traditional soul / body distinction is viable), with occasional articles treating physicalist accounts of such doctrines as the Incarnation and Resurrection of Jesus cropping up, as well. Interestingly, the literature to date, both for and against this influence, is (...) dominated by philosophers. The present volume is a collection of philosophers and theologians who advance several novel criticisms of this growing trend toward physicalism in Christian theology. The present collection definitively shows that Christian physicalism has some significant philosophical and theological problems. No doubt all philosophical anthropologies have their challenges, but the present volume shows that Christian physicalism is most likely not an adequate accounting for essential theological topics within Christian theism. Christians, then, should consider alternative anthropologies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003) 87-100 [Access article in PDF] "Soul-Less" Christianity and the Buddhist Empirical Self:Buddhist-Christian Convergence? Charlene Burns University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Buddhist-Christian dialogue seems to founder on the shoals of theological anthropology. The Christian concept of the soul and concomitant ideas of life after death appear to be diametrically opposed to the Buddhist doctrine of anatta, no-self. The anthropological terminology, with its personalist implications in (...) Christianity and its impersonal meanings for Buddhism offers perhaps the greatest challenge to interreligious understanding. The two traditions have built up stereotypical interpretations of one another's (and their own) vocabularies to such an extent that "personal" and "impersonal" have at times operated in dialogue as "party slogans and fighting words. " 1In this paper I explore the plausibility that new interpretations of the human being in both traditions may overcome this problem. There is no agreement across denominations on the meaning of soul for Christianity and likewise no single orthodox interpretation of no-self for all forms of Buddhism. There are of course basics for both traditions that serve as the starting point for all interpretations, and these will be identified below. During the last decade interesting and innovative ways of elaborating on the basics for both Buddhism and Christianity approach something of a middle ground in religious anthropology. It is my thesis that the moves made by Christian theologians toward emphasis on the person as a body-soul unity, and by at least one Buddhist scholar toward the idea of an empirical (not metaphysical) self, are closing what has been perhaps the most problematic gap between the two traditions. The State of the Personal Soul in Christianity The stereotype of Christian anthropology is of the human constituted by a separable body and soul. Although there have been important voices expressing otherwise in history, for the average believer the immaterial soul separates from the physical body at the moment of death, and most assume that the soul goes immediately to its eternal reward or punishment. 2 (While the issue of the timing and nature of resurrection is an important and contested one, attention cannot be given to it here, since the present issue is the soul before death. ) [End Page 87]Early Christians agreed that the human being is more than just a physical body. However, there has never been agreement on the number and kind of "ontological ingredients" it takes to make a person. 3 Trichotomy, dichotomy, and monism have all been proposed at one time or another. The trichotomist position, usually attributed to Paul, was first popular among Greek and Alexandrian Christians. In this view, the human is made up of body, soul, and spirit: the parts function in concert, with soul mediating between the spirit and body. Here, the spirit is the essential self that exists in relationship to God. Dichotomists say that we are made of two substances, body and soul/spirit. This dualism of separable metaphysical substances with soul animating the body came to dominate the Western theological scene, in part due to Augustine's influence. Although there are significant differences in detail between trichotomist and dichotomist positions, what matters for our purposes is the underlying common anthropological assumption that "persons survive apart from their bodies. " 4Strong challenges to dualist anthropologies came in the seventeenth century in the form of materialism and monism. Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, argued for materialism, saying that there is no such thing as incorporeal substance. Nothing survives death, he said: it is through divine grace that we will be resurrected into eternity. Present-day descendants of materialism include psychological behaviorism, brain-mind identity theory, and epiphenomenalism. The second strong challenge to dualism took the shape of monism, as in the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza. He believed that reality is a single substance, and matter and spirit are properties of it. All of creation manifests the absolute substance, God. Each entity exists as idea in the mind of God, and so the soul can be said to be eternal when it becomes one with the mind... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BEING AND ONE THEOLOGIAN I PROPOSE EXPLORING the view of being of one theologian whose work has received wide attention both in Germany and America. Wolfhart Pannenberg is known primarily through his formulation of the seven controversial theses in (and on the subject of) Revelation as History (1961), and through his development of this approach into a full-fledged theological methodology "from below" in Jesus'God and Man (1964) (...) and Theology a:ttd the Philosophy of Scienc :e (1973). Yet philosophers and theologians have not failed to notice that some rather interesting and novel ontological speculation has accompanied the work of this philosophically oriented theologian, speculation that could represent the seed of a novel approach to contemporary ontology. Now Pannenberg's passing references to God',s being, and to being in general, could be criticized from a theological perspective ; perhaps he would even prefer a treatment along such lines. However, another line of approach also suggests itself: if one can show that Pannenberg is advocating a way of viewing being in general, how does his approach fare when taken as the foundation of a SY'stematic ontology? Is it more at home in olassical philosophical thought about being or, if not, what contemporary influences does it reflect? Of course, for manyif not most-theologians, to attempt such an abstraction would be to tear their theology asunder, joint from marrow. For example, Barth's doctrine of the becoming God, as Eberhart Jiingel has admirably shown, is designed to do justice only to the God of revelation, and is meant to be taken as prior to all philosophical speculation about God's being and being in general.1 1 Eberhart Jiingel, Gottes Sein ist in Werden (Tiibingen, 1965), e.g. pp. 9f, 73ff; cf. Barth's Kiroh7iohe Dogmatik, II/I, pp. 202f. 645 646 PHILIP CLAYTON But lying at the heart of Pannenberg's theology is the refusal to shield his theology in this way. Theology is the science of God as the all-determining reality (TPS 302ff),2 and faith cannot defend any statement that reason fails to verify (Jesus 109). As his recent anthropology sorties into behavioral psychology, sociobiology and philosophical anthropology to produce an" anthropology in theological perspective" rather than a theological anthropology, so we may also expect a readiness on Pannenberg's part to consider his ontological statements as " ontological hypotheses" (if this is not a contradictio in adjecto ), to be tested by means of their" fit" with general speculation on the nature of being. Indeed, in BQT II: 237 and TPS, Chapter 5, he explicitly asks us to try the biblical understanding of reality in the court of the " contemporary experience of reality." Elsewhere, in a direct discussion of ontology, Pannenberg uses theological subject matter as an "example" meant to " contribute to a better understanding " of the philosophical issues involved (TKG 132f). 1. The Pannenbergian Ontology Assuming the validity of my admitted abstraction and of an unashamedly philosophical rather than theological analysis, what is this "novel" view of being found in Pannenberg's writings? Pannenberg holds that "futurity" is fundamental for Jesus' message (TKG 54). All reality is "eschatologically oriented "-in philosophical terms, referred to (bezogen auf) the future-and God is "the God of the coming kingdom" (BQT II: 237), "the God of history" (Grundfragen 112-28), "the power of the future" (TKG 57). This is not merely an 2 In the following I will use the common abbreviations for Pannenberg's works: 'TPS' for Theology and the Philosophy of Science (Philadelphia, 1976) ; ' BQT' for Basic Questions in Theology, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1971) ; 'Jesus' for Jesus-God and },fan, 2nd ed" (Philadelphia, 1968); 'TKG' for Theology and the Il.ingdom of God (Philadelphia, 1969) ; 'Idea' for The Idea of God and Human F1'eedom (Philadelphia, 1973); 'Anth' for Anthropolgy in Theological Perspective (Philadelphia, 1984) ; and 'Grundfragen' for Grundfragen systematisoher Theologie, Band 2 (Gottingen, 1980). BEING AND ONE THEOLOGIAN 647 epistemological thesis, emphasizing, say, the limitedness of our knowledge of the divine; " God in his very being is the future of the world" (TKG 61). If this is so, what is God's ontological status now? "It is necessary to say," Pannenberg writes, "that, in a restricted... (shrink)

This paper is not merely an attempt to come to terms with Edward Schillebeeckx’s theology and his philosophical mindset. Such attempts have already been made years back, when his ties with phenomenology, and also with postmodern hermeneutics and culture were pivotal for us in order to better understand his influence on mid-20th century Continental philosophy. This present study partially remains on those premises, but also brings Schillebeeckx’s thought closer to the 21st century, since nowadays concepts like salvation and resurrection tend (...) to embed particular meanings, such as well-being and ancestrality, which until recently were considered halfway synonyms of the previous images, and thus were looked upon with less persuasion. This study follows their interchangeable use in Schillebeeckx’s doctrine of creation, where the purpose of the Christian creedal formula is to appease in a tribal sense, rather than to fun­ction as a confession of faith. On the other hand, Schillebeeckx’s take on the resurrection as a means to reconnect humanity to its ancestral faith will further be inspected as the starting point of his rehabilitated anthropology or the humanum. The initial discussion on the relationship between God and Jesus in the history of salvation finalized with Jesus’ death receives a new turn in Schillebeeckx’s thought when in this same context he talks about the resurrection. Jesus’ status after the resurrection is analyzed here considering the tribal flavors it receives in Schillebeeckx’s work with an accent on its outcome for the new humanity and its well-being. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:RECENT BARTHIANA 1 JOHN D. GODSEY Wesley Theological Seminary Washington, D.C. N 0 ONE CAN responsibly do theology today without reckoning with the prodigious legacy of Karl Barth, the Swiss Reformed theologian who was born in 1886, began theological studies in 1904, entered a full-time pastorate in 1911, taught dogmatics successively at Gottingen, Munster, Bonn, and Basel between 1921 and 1962, and died in 1968. From his (...) electrifying Commentary on Romans through his multivolumed but unfinished Church Dogmatics he wrote unceasingly in the areas of exegetical, historical, ethical, practical, and dogmatic theology, and ventured from time to time into the realms of politics and culture. Helper in organizing textile workers while pastor in Safenwil, questioner of major assumptions of neoProtestant liberal theology, spiritual leader of the German Confessing Church's struggle against Nazism, principal author of the Barmen Confession, participant in the 1948 Amsterdam Assembly of the World Council of Churches, and invited guest of Pope Paul VI in Rome in 1966-these are some of the highlights of Barth's colorful career. The books under review provide impressive testimony to Barth's ongoing significance for modern theology. One is a work 1 Karl Barth, The Gottingen Dogmatics: Instruction in the Christian Religion, vol. I, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Eerdmans, 1991). 490 pp. $39.95 cloth. George Hunsinger, How To Read Karl Barth: The Shape of His Theology (Oxford Univ. Press, 1991). 298 pp. $32.50 cloth. John Macken, S.J., The Autonomy Theme in the Church Dogmatics: Karl Barth and his Critics (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990). 232 pp. $54.50 cloth. S. W. Sykes, ed., Karl Barth: Centenary Essays (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1989). 171 pp. $39.50 cloth. 269 270 JOHN D. GODSEY by Barth himself, two grew out of doctoral dissertations, and the other contains interpretative essays by five theologians who wished to honor Barth on the occasion of his centenary year in 1986. To appreciate properly the surprising appearance of Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics requires a bit of history. After ten years as a pastor in the village of Safenwil in north-central Switzerland, Barth was called in 1921 to be "Honorary Professor of Reformed Theology" on the theological faculty of the University of Gottingen in Germany. Having neither doctorate nor teaching experience, he was offered the cp_air on the basis of the first edition of Romans ( 1919) with the expectation that he would represent the Reformed tradition in this German Lutheran stronghold. During his first years he presented exegetical lectures on biblical texts as well as historical lectures that would help him learn his own tradition: the Heidelberg Catechism, Calvin, Zwingli, the Reformed Confessions, and Schleiermacher. Not until 1924-25 did he dare attempt to lecture on dogmatics, and even then he was not allowed to use the title "dogmatics," which was reserved strictly for Lutherans, so he chose to name his lecture series " Instruction in the Christian Religion," recalling Calvin's chief work, Institutio religionis christianae. Unlike his second cycle of lectures in Munster in 1926 (published as Prolegomena to Die Christliche Dogmatik in 1927) and the magisterial Church Dogmatics that began in 1932, these first lectures on dogmatics were never published during Barth's life time. Preserved in his own handwriting, they were edited and finally made public in 1990 in the Swiss edition of his Collected Works. The first of two volumes has now appeared in English and comprises four of seven chapters : three on the doctrine of the Word of God (as Revelation, as Holy Scripture, and as Christian Preaching) plus one on the doctrine of God. Three other major loci (Anthropology, Reconciliation, and Redemption) will appear in Volume Two. Professor Daniel L. Migliore of Princeton Seminary has written a 48-page Introduction to the whole, which provides brilliant insights into Barth's theology and points RECENT BARTHIANA 271 out the particular characteristics and peculiarities of this first (and only completed!) set of lectures on dogmatics. Why should one read the Gottingen Dogmatics rather than, say, the Church Dogmatics? First, Barth's basic theology, at least the lineaments thereof, is to be found here in what is perhaps its most accessible form; in relatively short compass he sets forth his... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:332 BOOK REVIEWS lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry. The Catholic University ofAmerica Washington, D.C. ROBIN DARLING YOUNG Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its (...) class='Hi'>History and Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press, 1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper). In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate "lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the ministry of the Church. Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative might be condensed as follows. The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion : Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good. Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does BOOK REVIEWS 333 not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church. This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which, while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus, and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship " (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship " (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains... (shrink)