thomas aquinas and karl barth: an unofficial catholic-protestant dialogue edited by bruce...

DOI:10.1111/nbfr.12098

Reviews

THE CULTURE OF CONTROVERSY: RELIGIOUS ARGUMENTS IN SCOTLAND,1660–1714 by Alasdair Raffe (Studies in Modern British Religious History)The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2012, pp. xi + 289, £55.00, hbk

In Scotland, perhaps surprisingly, the Reformation was nothing like as protractedand as bloody as in England: about twenty Protestants were burned at the stakefor heresy, including two former Dominicans, whereas the only unquestionableCatholic martyr, the Jesuit St John Ogilvie, was hanged in 1615, for allegedtreason. But then there was no regal monster in Scotland like King Henry VIII,nothing like the Dominican Pope Pius V’s unwise excommunication of QueenElizabeth in 1570 nor anything like the carnage envisaged by the Gunpowder Plotin 1605.

Some decades later, however, the Scots were indeed bitterly divided over reli-gion, as Dr Raffe shows in this excellent book (the product of a doctoral thesis atthe University of Edinburgh). But the martyrs commemorated in the Grassmarketin Edinburgh were Covenanters, Presbyterians hunted down and killed (1661–68)because of their opposition to royal control of the Kirk as they perceived it (themonument was created in 1937). They were regarded by their fellow Protestantsas disloyal subjects. Later still, since many Episcopalians remained loyal to theexiled Stuart dynasty, and were disproportionately well represented in the Jacobiterebellions, the repressive measures taken against them by the Hanoverian stateremained in force into the last decades of the 18th century.

This intermittent and certainly violent conflict was between Presbyterians andEpiscopalians in the reformed Church of Scotland but each party was also dividedinternally. Alasdair Raffe, recently returned to Edinburgh as a Chancellor’s Fellowin history, documents the controversies that raged from the restoration of KingCharles II in 1660 to the death of Queen Anne in 1714. These relate principallyto church government, allegiance to the throne, especially after the Dutch inva-sion (the ‘Glorious Revolution’), progressive or anyway unavoidable toleration ofnonconformity, and so on, all with significant doctrinal implications, deeply held,if never properly spelled out. In its own way, the Covenanters’ struggle to freethe Kirk from Episcopalian submission to the throne anticipated the Disruptionin 1843 when a third of the clergy and people seceded out of hostility to laycontrol to form the Free Church of Scotland. The struggle against erastianismin the Church of England, which gave rise to the Tractarians and the OxfordMovement, was over the same issue — not to forget another version of the samestruggle, even more momentous, against Josephinism, Gallicanism, etc., in theCatholic Church, which necessitated the Vatican Council in 1869–70.

In the course of his exposition Dr Raffe highlights hitherto unexamined debatesabout religious enthusiasm, worship and clerical hypocrisy, as well as the thennew idea of religious toleration and the advent of articulate irreligion. As regardsenthusiasm it would have added colour to his narrative but unfortunately hehad no reason to discuss Madame Bourignon (1616–80), the Flemish mystic,whose quietist resignation to the divine will, condemned as heresy by her ownRoman Catholic authorities, was greatly appreciated by Episcopalians among thelanded gentry in rural Aberdeenshire. For decades Bourignianism was repeatedlycondemned by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: listed in 1711

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among the heresies to be abjured by ordinands, it was 1889 before this prescriptionwas cancelled.

Less exotically, the Church of Scotland minister in Banff in the mid 1670swas directed by the General Assembly to ‘endeavour to prevent the spreading oferrors, and in particular of popery and quakerisme, among his flock’ (Cramond,Annals ii, 43). These may seem unlikely errors, a hundred years after the formerCatholic priest John Knox liberated the Scots into Presbyterianism (as the storygoes); the tiny minorities of surviving Catholics and committed Quakers, as Rafferightly says, were, amazingly enough, ‘figures of fear and hatred for Presbyteriansand Episcopalians alike’ (p. 3). Dr Raffe does not overlook the execution in 1697of the 20-year-old Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead for blasphemy, rightlyputting it down to fears on the part of the local Presbyterian ministers that theecclesiastical arrangements settled in 1690 might not be quite secure.

People in all social ranks and all over Scotland (apart from the then extensiveGaelic-speaking region) delighted in religious controversy. Dr Raffe analyses thearguments about religious dissent and persecution (chapter 4). He traces anddocuments the ways in which opponents stereotyped one another as ‘fanatics’and ‘enthusiasts’ (chapter 5). He examines disputes about the morals of theclergy, customarily intent on discrediting individuals (chapter 6). By seceding,temporarily or permanently, dissenters displayed their dissatisfaction with theestablished order (chapter 7). There is quite a history of rioting and rabble rousing(chapter 8). Bringing all this to a head, Dr Raffe establishes a new conceptualframework for discussing and understanding the dynamics of public debates, withthe religious controversies in Scotland as a paradigm. While the book makesfascinating reading for students of Scottish history, Dr Raffe prepares the waysuccessfully to open up wider and more general questions about the possibilitiesand practicalities of whatever forms of pluralism and dissent in any given publicarena.

FERGUS KERR OP

THOMAS AQUINAS’S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: A BIOGRAPHY by BernardMcGinn, Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2014,pp. xi + 260, $24.95, hbk

This excellent and beautifully written book is a fine introduction to the SummaTheologiae and to how it has been regarded over the years. It invites compar-ison with Jean-Pierre Torrell’s Aquinas’s ‘Summa’: Background, Structure, andReception (2005) since McGinn and Torrell appear to be trying to do exactly thesame thing in their different works. McGinn’s volume, however, is, I think, betterthan that of Torrell since, while not being much longer, its scope and theologi-cal interest is wider, and since it is more comprehensive when it comes to theways in which the Summa Theologiae has been evaluated since Aquinas died.It is also written in a more engaging style for people approaching the SummaTheologiae for the first time and with wide-ranging interests in the history oftheology. McGinn is now Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago andhas published a number of distinguished studies on Christian thought. His newbook is well up to the standard of his much acclaimed previous ones. In hispreface to it he says that he found it ‘scary’ to turn to the Summa Theologiaesince he is not ‘a card carrying member of any Thomist party’ and since he haswritten little on Aquinas during his career (p.ix). My view is that McGinn is be-ing unduly modest here. I think that his new book is one of the best introductory

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works on Aquinas currently in print. The high quality of the scholarship behindit might not be obvious to people turning to it with little or no knowledge ofAquinas and what has been written about the Summa Theologiae. Yet those withmore understanding of Aquinas and the secondary literature on him will quicklynote how extensive and accurate McGinn’s grasp of Aquinas’s thinking is andhow equally extensive and accurate is his grasp of ways in which Aquinas hasbeen interpreted and misinterpreted. This is a book in which McGinn wears hisexpertise lightly to the benefit of his intended readers.

McGinn begins by placing Aquinas historically (Chapter One is titled ‘TheWorld That Made Aquinas’). So, he explains the significance of the papacy in thethirteenth century, describes the rise of the European universities, and commentson the nature of medieval scholasticism. He then moves on in Chapter Two(‘Creating the Summa Theologiae’) to offer an account of Aquinas’s life andwritings. In this second chapter McGinn also turns to the plan and purpose ofthe Summa Theologiae. In doing so, he spends quite a bit of time focusing onthe phrase sacra doctrina (sacred teaching). And rightly so, since the SummaTheologiae is basically an extended essay on what Aquinas took to be sacradoctrina. As McGinn says: ‘Thomas uses reason and philosophical modes ofarguing throughout the Summa, but it is not a work of philosophy, or evenof philosophical theology. The Summa Theologiae is fundamentally a work ofdoctrinal theology, however much it makes use of philosophy and philosophicaltheology’ (p.54). McGinn goes on to observe that Aquinas says that sacra doctrinais a scientia (science), but, as McGinn rightly says: ‘It is clear that sacra doctrinais [for Aquinas] an unusual “science”, one that while it may fulfill the basicpremises of Aristotle’s view of science as sure knowledge, stretches Aristotlebeyond what he would have recognized’ (p.57). Here we find McGinn touchingon a point to which he helpfully returns at several places in his book: thatthe teachings of the Summa Theologiae seriously differ from what we find inAristotle, even though Aquinas is often wrongly described as a straightforwardlyAristotelian thinker. Another point that McGinn’s book usefully and correctlystresses is that Aquinas is very much struck by our ignorance of God’s nature.In Chapter Two, McGinn observes that, for Aquinas, ‘the true wisdom of thetheologian is to know that he or she does not know’ (p.63). Later in his bookhe writes: ‘In Thomas’s view, the wisdom of sacra doctrina is not learning moreof what can be said about God, but in coming to appreciate more and morefully the mystery of God’s unknowable existence by exploring how languagefalls short of knowing or naming God’ (p.85). That Aquinas was influencedby apophatic or negative theology such as that found in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius is not always sufficiently appreciated, but McGinn is up to speed on thismatter.

In Chapter Three (‘A Tour of the Summa Theologiae’) McGinn embarks on theseemingly impossible task of surveying the contents of the Summa Theologiae inaround forty pages. But he rises to the job with great skill and provides the bestshort summary of the Summa Theologiae known to me. In doing so he emphasizesthose aspects of its teaching that are central to it – such as Aquinas’s convictionthat creatures are made to exist for as long as they exist by God. ‘For Thomas’,says McGinn, ‘when we think about the world we are confronted by the question“Why is there anything?” One might be tempted to reply, “Who cares? That’sjust the way it is”. Thomas, of course, does care. His search for ultimate answersled him to conclude that all the beings we know need not have been . . . Thefact that they do exist requires a being whose essence (what it is) is identicalwith existence (it is), and that such a being is one and the same as the God ofExodus 3:14, who said, “I am who am”’ (pp.83–84). You will, I hope, see fromthis quotation how well McGinn is able to capture what Aquinas teaches whileexpressing himself in clear and non-obfuscating prose.


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The remainder of McGinn’s book (Chapters Four [‘The Tides of Thomism’]and Five [‘The Rise and Fall of Neothomism’]) take us through the way in whichpeople have reacted to Aquinas and the Summa Theologiae since Aquinas’s death.There is a long and complicated story to tell here, one in which both friends andfoes of Aquinas feature. But McGinn tells it very well while being brief and tothe point, and he manages to do so without having a pro-Aquinas or an anti-Aquinas agenda. The result strikes me as a balanced and non-partisan account ofconsiderable value.

If pressed to find fault with McGinn’s book I would suggest that it might havenoted how much of the teaching of the Summa Theologiae is open to questionbecause of its commitment to a kind of biblical fundamentalism that requires usto read the book of Genesis as literally true and which also requires us to thinkthat the New Testament gospels give us accurate information when it comesto what Jesus of Nazareth did and said. Much of what Aquinas writes in theSumma Theologiae, especially what he says concerning Adam and Eve, rests onthe assumption that the book of Genesis can be read as an historically accuratedocument. And Aquinas’s account of the theological virtue of faith assumes thatwe have very thorough access to the words of Jesus. Aquinas takes those withfaith to be believing what God has said to us in the teachings of Jesus, whois God incarnate. That the theology of the Summa Theologiae rests on suchassumptions has to be reckoned with by people trying to defend Aquinas thesedays since the assumptions I now refer to have been seriously challenged by manybiblical scholars, scientists, historians, and theologians. And even those scholarswho think that they can give us an accurate account of the life and teaching ofChrist seem to present us with remarkably different accounts of ‘the historicalJesus’.

BRIAN DAVIES OP

DUST BOUND FOR HEAVEN. EXPLORATIONS IN THE THEOLOGY OFTHOMAS AQUINAS by Reinhard Hutter, William B. Eerdmans PublishingCompany, Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K., 2012, pp. x + 511,£ 32.99, pbk

The latest book by Reinhard Hutter is a real tour de force spanning the thought ofThomas Aquinas and many of its interpretations. Converted to Catholicism withhis wife in 2004, Hutter – as Professor of Christian theology at Duke UniversitySchool and as a lay Dominican – expresses in this book his deep conviction aboutthe actual importance of Aquinas in the field of Catholic theology. Written toconvince of the ‘perennial relevance of the theology of Thomas Aquinas’ (p. 1),Dust bound for heaven intends to overcome the common objection to the culturalactualization of this medieval thought. For Hutter, ‘the very indetermination of thelate modern supermarket of ideas’ (p. 4) permits a new reception of the CommonDoctor in order to re-think the contemplative and sapiential character of theology.This programme is called by Hutter ‘ressourcement in Thomas’ and aims to offerthe light of Aquinas’s anthropological insights (hylemorphic body/soul and ordi-nation to the eternal communion with God) as an answer to the double Westerncrisis of reason and faith. So the ‘Prelude’ is devoted to showing how ‘Thomas’saccount presupposes the very horizon of a redeemed judgement in which theol-ogy’s discursive knowledge is informed by sacra doctrina increasingly bearingthe stamp of the scientia Dei itself’ (p. 45). In assonance with the relationship


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between faith and reason, the ‘Postlude’ ends the book with a reflection about‘mystery and metaphysics’ starting from Eucharistic adoration.

As well as this frame, Hutter’s book includes four sections. The first intends todevelop the Catholic principle according to which ‘human nature is wounded butnot destroyed’, regarding the following topics: passions, common good and naturallove of God under the condition of sin. Two chapters constitute this section. Whilethe former shows how Aquinas’s position on passions differs from Descartes’sand Hobbes’s theories, underlining the spiritual dimensions of the passions inthe ‘body politics’ of the medieval Doctor, the latter aims to offer an accountof the Thomist political theology, based on the consideration of the natural loveof God and man’s condition after the Fall. Starting from these premises, Hutterclaims that Aquinas can offer – beyond sovereign secularism and mere liberalism– the philosophical and theological resources for a ‘theologically enlightenedliberalism’. So, recognising itself limited and dependent, ‘genuine liberalism hasa lingering intuition that the natural love of God above all is necessary for it toflourish comprehensively, and that it cannot restore, let alone produce, on its ownthe natural love of God above all’ (p. 108).

The second section, called ‘Created for Happiness – Bound for Heaven’, alsoconsists of two chapters, devoted to the pivotal question of the relationship be-tween grace and nature in the Common Doctor’s thought, starting from the dis-puted theme of the natural desire for the vision of God. At the centre of discussion– that is in my opinion the glowing core of the book – there is the attempt byHutter to overcome two opposite positions. On the one hand, he considers therenowned position of Henri de Lubac who claims that the spirit is the desirefor God and, on the other hand, the conception proper of Jansenism as well asLutheranism and Calvinism, according to which humanity after the fall is dustand only the elect are re-created for heaven. The two chapters of this sectioncorrespond to two strategic steps. In the first, Hutter outlines the hermeneuticalhorizon advocating the interpretation of Lawrence Feingold from the attack ofJohn Milbank. The second step coincides with the attempt to read the work ofAquinas as a third and subtle way that differs from the alternatives in conflict inthe contemporary theology. In accord with an old interpretation of the Dominicantheologian Marie-Joseph Le Guillou, Hutter claims that ‘human nature is capaxDei, is ontologically oriented towards the beatific vision’, but ‘the affirmation thatthe created intellect has only one concrete ultimate end is fully compatible withthe distinction between two orders of finality’ (p. 243). So humankind can be con-ceived as ‘dust bound for heaven’, without deconstructing the moderate dualismof grace and nature, theology and philosophy, faith and reason – as happens fromthe thomistic point of view maintained by de Lubac/Milbank. Although Hutterrejects the accusation of ‘paleothomism’, setting himself on Feingold’s side, it isvery difficult to distinguish his position from the Baroque or the Neo-Scholasticone (and the affinity between these interpretations of Aquinas and the modernway of thinking).

Three chapters constitute the third section ‘Bound to Be Free, Suffering DivineThings – Grace and the Theological Virtues’, in which the author explores theway chosen by God to lead human beings to their last end ‘without frustrat-ing God’s will and without destroying human freedom’ (p. 14). Therefore, inchapter 7, we can read a relecture of Aquinas (in Augustine’s wake) that aimsto overcome the modern controversy De auxiliis according to two fundamentalelements: the idea of causality that excludes a competition between divine andhuman agency, and the peculiar conception of the actualization of the call toglory by grace. The following chapter is devoted to the recovery of how thetheological virtues of faith and hope are deeply united according to Saint Paul,Aquinas and Benedict XVI, while the chapter 9 insists on the value of theological


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faith for theology’s inner unity compared to ‘the pervasive fragmentation of con-temporary Catholic theology’ (p. 313). The last section ‘Seeking Truth – Wisdomand Contemplation’ contains two essays on the actuality for theology of the wis-dom of analogy (against the opposite interpretations of Wolfhart Pannenberg andEberhard Jungel) and of the role of philosophical contemplation (in dialogue withAlasdair MacIntyre and Benedict Ashley OP).

Ultimately the ‘explorations’ offered by Hutter can be read as a precise andchallenging contribution to the thomistic ressourcement in theology, even if theperspective remains too bound to the Neo-Scholastic conception of duplex ordo.Should we not seek a reason for this hermeneutical choice in the political desire toconstrue a so-called ‘genuine’ liberalism on the basis of Aquinas’s magisterium?

MARCO SALVIOLI OP

VERNACULAR THEOLOGY. DOMINICAN SERMONS AND AUDIENCE IN LATEMEDIEVAL ITALY by Eliana Corbari, [Trends in Medieval Philology,22],De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2013, pp. xiv + 248, €99.95, hbk

This monograph originated with doctoral research conducted by the author un-der the direction of the distinguished historian of medieval preaching CarolynMuessig, and represents the recent turn in sermon studies toward greater sen-sitivity to the sermon as a place of encounter between preacher and audience.While still primarily a study of texts and textual communities, rather than perfor-mance and event, the basic concern of this project is to examine the interactionbetween clerical sermon writers and preachers and their lay, often female, readersand hearers. Rather than understanding the preacher as ‘active’ and the audi-ence as ‘passive’, this optic emphasizes the interpenetration between the twogroups.

As Dr Corbari explains in her introduction, the book seeks to demonstrate thatmedieval sermons, especially those preached or written for reading in Lent, bytheir use of the vernacular idiom, present an unusually rich opportunity to mapout the theologies of the laity, especially women. The emphasis here is on thediversity of approaches and conclusions. She believes, correctly I think, that aperception of preaching as an monochromatic presentation of the conclusions ofthe scholastic theologians for lay consumption is profoundly mistaken. Neverthe-less, the sermon was a bridge between the concerns of the ecclesiastical hierarchyand the religious world of the laity. Lenten preaching is the primary focus of thestudy because Quadragesimales are among the most common sermon collectionsand, as Carlo Delcorno has already noted, probably the most widely diffused.More important than the sermon as an interface and the abundance of Lentensermonaries as evidence, this project is guided by Bernard McGinn’s call for thestudy of the theology of lay people as a third idiom alongside the theologies ofthe monastery and the university. This ‘vernacular theology’ is not limited to writ-ing in the vernacular, rather it is a mode of thinking found also in lay authors,such as Angela of Foligno or Bridget of Sweden, whose works are preservedin Latin.

To accomplish this project, Corbari focuses on three Dominican preachersactive in Florence, Jacobus de Voragine (c. 1230–1298), Jordan of Pisa (c. 1255–1311), and Jacopo Passavanti (c. 1302–1357). This allows examination of a Latinsermon collection (Voragine), a collection of vernacular reportationes of sermons


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preached in Lent (Jordan), and a vernacular treatise on the Lenten theme ofpenance (Passavanti). Thus Corbari can compare Latin sermons intended prin-cipally for the clergy, preaching as recording in volgare by lay hearers, and apenitential treatise prepared by a preacher for lay consumption. Through the anal-ysis of extant manuscripts, Corbari tracks the diffusion and reproduction of thethree works. She finds that, while the owners of the Voragine manuscripts weremostly male clerics who included them with sermon collections generally, theowners and copyists of the two, more common, vernacular works were mostlywomen, religious and lay, and that they bound them in volumes containing othervernacular religious works, often authored by women. Thus women were a majorforce in the circulation of these works and their consumption.

What does this tell us about ‘vernacular theology’? In common with othervernacular religious literature copied and written by women, the two vernacularcollections show little concern for metaphysics (in contrast to Scholastic the-ology), but a strong focus on personal experience and conversion (much likemonastic theology). The emphasis on spiritual development and growth also linksthe literature to contemporary hagiography, another discipline with a wide femalereadership and that often had as its focus female saints. As a test case for thislinkage, Corbari dedicates the long final chapter of her book to Villana de’ Botti(1332–1361), a lay penitent contemporary of Passavanti and congregant of SantaMaria Novella, where that Dominican often preached. Comparing Villana’s vita,our major source for her life and spirituality, with the previously analyzed ‘ver-nacular theology’, Corbari finds a clear convergence. Although written in Latin,the vita reflects the same active, literate, visible, and (often) vocal female au-dience as the two earlier vernacular works. This connection allows Corbari toexpand her scope to look at saints popular with that audience, such as MaryMagdalene, whose popular biography was composed by Passavanti’s fellow Do-minican Domenico Cavalca. Here too, experience and conversion take centre stagein the life of a penitent woman, who, with her sister Martha, are also active asfemale preachers.

Villana not only heard vernacular preaching on vernacular themes, she dis-cussed such themes with her female contemporaries. Again the vita reflects themonastic concerns of experience and conversion, and it presents a spiritual worldinclusive of women. In short, for Corbari, the theological world of the Santa MariaNovella friars and their convent’s lay penitents was a shared religious community,not a rigidly demarcated world where Latin-literate clerics and vernacular-usingwomen lived parallel lives isolated from each other. Women, like Villana, werenot passive consumers of vernacular theology, but helped mould it and, outsideof sermon times, were its primary transmitters. It is no surprise that Corbarifinds that the cult of the vernacular theologian Villana was promoted by layconfraternities that also shared her theology.

While the idea of ‘vernacular theology’, the breakdown of the scholarly con-structed wall separating clerical and lay piety, and the recognition of women asmediators between clerical theology and the laity are not original to this mono-graph, it provides a narrowly circumscribed but carefully examined test case. Theresult is a convincing demonstration that these three developments in the recentstudy of medieval preaching were evident in Dominican circles in late-thirteenthand early fourteenth-century Florence. As a narrowly-focused sounding, oftenconcerned with codicological issues, it will be of interest principally to special-ists in sermon studies and might well serve as a model for similar soundingsoutside of Italy.

AUGUSTINE THOMPSON OP


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THOMAS AQUINAS AND KARL BARTH: AN UNOFFICIAL CATHOLIC-PROTESTANT DIALOGUE edited by Bruce L. McCormack and ThomasJoseph White OP, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 2013, pp. viii + 304,£ 23.91, pbk

This book is the third in a series of dialogical works exploring Barth and Aquinasthat have emerged from conferences convened by the editors. Navigating amethodological course between the Scylla of mutual caricature and the Charybdisof false consensus, the volume identifies a surprising degree of convergence be-tween the two seminal thinkers. The result is a mutually illuminating dialogue ofsurprising fruitfulness, which will—in its content as well as its form— serve tocatalyse further refinements in doctrinal perception.

The authors explore five key doctrinal themes, each examined by two scholars,one with ‘Barthian’ expertise, the other with ‘Thomist’ (although, as evidencedthroughout, such expertise are not mutually exclusive). A masterful introductionby Thomas Joseph White situates Barth-Aquinas dialogue within contemporaryscholarship and historical development. White presents both thinkers as offer-ing a unified vision of theology proper and economy; both present responsesto the challenges of modern epistemology, reflecting their distinctive theologi-cal accounts of the interaction between theology and contemporary intellectualculture. If White continues to exegete Barth with such incision and lucidity, hewill in time emerge as the most significant Catholic commentator on Barth sinceBalthasar.

Robert Jenson and Richard Schenk tackle questions de Deo Uno. Notwithstand-ing Barth’s shift toward an event ontology, Jenson highlights a surprisingly meta-physical treatment of the divine nature in Barth’s Church Dogmatics, includinga willingness to appropriate the categories of Heideggerrian ontology in serviceof traditional realist theology. Schenk’s essay, whilst not responding directly toJenson’s, notes that the limits of Thomistic metaphysics (God as principle, notobject) open onto the highway of discipleship, the ‘experience of non-experience’(p. 60) that is the starting point for theology as sacra doctrina.

The second locus explores the intra-Trinitarian relations: Guy Mansini—drawing on St Benedict and Dietrich von Hildebrand—examines the appropri-ateness of deploying models of the divine processions derived from the moralcategories of humility and obedience, tracing the contours of a Christocentricapproach that protects divine aseity. McCormack’s essay affirms the complemen-tarity of Barth and Aquinas’s account of the relationship between processionsand missions, whilst noting that an interval between the immanent and economicTrinity (held by some Barthians) implies an analogia entis.

Keith Johnson and Thomas Joseph White relate Christology to soteriology andprotology: Johnson explores issues of ‘natural theology’ in a Christological con-text, arguing that differing accounts of the creator-creature relationship underpina divergence in Christology. White, meanwhile, reflects on the communicatioidiomatum and the hypostatic union as its ground, noting Barth’s self-consciousretrieval of pre-modern ontological categories despite his development of Chem-initz’s genus tapeinoticum in light of the Son’s unique reprobation.

The fourth locus explores questions of grace and justification: noting the ro-bustly anti-Pelagian stance of both thinkers, Joseph Wawrykow situates their di-vergence in questions of merit and the Thomistic rejection of the Lutheran simul.Barth’s criticism of Thomas on grace, however, is presented as having purchaseover rigid neo-Thomist readings typified by Bartmann, rather than Aquinas him-self. Amy Marga’s complementary essay examines the doctrine of justification,returning to the primary sources in the light of the Joint Declaration and HansKung’s book: a deep affinity between Barth and Aquinas emerges from their


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account of the believer’s relationship to their new personal history in Christ,rather than from more traditional questions of grace’s mode of operation.

John Bowlin and Holly Taylor Coolman examine moral theology, under therubric of ‘election, providence and natural law’. Bowlin highlights a sharedcommitment to a social theory of obligation, noting that whilst Barth’s hyper-Augustinianism is formally (if not materially) indebted to Hegel, Aquinas doesnot begin with post-Kantian actualism. Coolman’s adroit exposition of Aquinas’srich concept of law (particularly the status of human action as created participa-tion) indicates the presence of an analogia legis in the Summa’s treatise on law:that law has Christology as its foundation and telos is undoubtedly a point ofconvergence with Barth.

Throughout, Barth and Aquinas are presented not primarily as primogenitors oftheological trajectories with a shared vector away from Liberalism (pace ReginaldCant), but as theologians offering distinctive doxological grammars. The authors’ability to identify fertile points of connection—without yielding to a Procrusteanconsensus—attests to the value of shared dogmatic reflection as a means ofmoving beyond the illusory comforts of inherited caricatures.

Material dogmatic convergence, however, may conceal a formal disagreementregarding the ‘shape’ of theology and the prominence given to particular articlesof doctrine (for example the extent to which election can serve as the governingtheological principle par excellence): by isolating individual doctrines with analmost surgical precision, the relation of particular ‘theological organs’ to the‘body theological’ is potentially overlooked. Indeed, it is clear that such differ-ences in theological form are a function of a more properly basic disagreementregarding matters of fundamental ontology and the metaphysics of knowing: this,indeed, was the subject of an earlier work by the editors, exploring the analogiaentis. Nonetheless, that this qualification clearly emerges from the text attests tothe honesty of its exploration of fertile lines of dialogue without elision into thechimera of a tertium quid.

Perhaps most edifying, however, is the book’s overall tone and style: the volumeis an exemplary instance of the shared theological reflection that ought to charac-terise ecumenical relations. Benefiting from its status as a dialogue of individualtheologians rather than ecclesial communities (alluded to by the presence of ‘un-official’ in the subtitle), the contributors are freed to exchange suggestions andoffer non-binding—even provocative—interpretations. As a fraternal quest for thetruth, the simplistic binary application of ‘Catholic’ and ‘Reformed’ is robustlyavoided, seeking instead to elucidate the inner logic of each thinker on their ownterms. This, as McCormack notes in the afterword, is ultimately grounded by ashared communion in the truth, thereby witnessing to the theological vocation asan exercise of the glorious freedom of the children of God.

OLIVER JAMES KEENAN OP

IN DEFENCE OF WAR by Nigel Biggar, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013,pp. xii + 316, £25.00, hbk

Any work which sets out not only to defend the just war tradition, but to argue forthe justice of particular historical conflicts is bound to court controversy. Whenthe particular conflicts defended include ‘the British prosecution of the FirstWorld War in 1914–18’ and ‘the American-led Coalition’s invasion of Iraq in2003’ (p. 331) then the task would for many critics of just war seem somewhatludicrous. So it is to the credit of Professor Nigel Biggar that he not only


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provides robust arguments for his position, but in doing so provides a lessonin moral theological engagement with concrete cases. Biggar argues that themoral theologian should not rest in the realm of abstract principles, but shouldbe engaged in helping decision-makers reach concrete conclusion (p. 333). Thebook can thus be understood as appealing not only to specialist theologians, butto all who have an interest in war (which is arguably all of us). His own interestis not hidden, and in the introduction he admits his life-long fascination withwar, a passion which he puts to work in using the wide and varied sources fromwhich he draws across several disciples.

The book is not a manual setting out classical just war theory and seekingto defend it in a number of theses. Rather, it assumes some familiarity with themain tenets of just war theory. Neither is it a work which sets out systematicallyto explore just war theory; which is not to say that important conclusions arenot developed in the course of Biggar’s defence. Some of the materials used inthe book come from previous publications, so we should not expect the unityof a systematic work, nevertheless Biggar has arranged the materials in an orderwhich brings a progression through the two halves of the book.

The first half is concerned with defending just war against critics within theChristian tradition. Here Biggar faces the challenge of explaining how war can bethe expression of christian love. In response to this he lays out his own position asan expression of Augustinian Christian Realism, arguing that it is wishful thinkingto imagine that war will somehow go away if our response to injustice is pacifism.He engages with some of the leading proponents of christian pacifism, taking ontheir readings of scripture and questioning their understanding of justice, love andforgiveness. Next he looks at some of the key principles of just war tradition, theprinciples of double effect and proportion, concluding this first half of the bookwith a concrete examination of how to apply the principle of proportion to theFirst World War.

The second half of the work begins at chapter five and Biggar’s defence ofjust war against the arguments developed by David Rodin. Here Biggar movesfrom engagement with criticism from within the christian tradition to criticismfrom a modern liberal thinker in the analytical tradition. This shift enables Biggarto engage with the themes of legality and morality, and the relationship betweenthem. Here he defends natural law against legal positivism, arguing that nationshave prior moral responsibilities which entail they can under certain circumstancesjustly engage in armed conflict without the backing of international law. Concreteapplication is given in this case by an analysis of the morality and legality ofNATO’s intervention in 1999 in Kosovo. Here again Biggar combines carefulanalysis of a particular conflict with his wider theory of the relationship betweenmorality and law, set in the context of his Augustinian Realist theology.

The final chapter is potentially the most controversial, defending the justiceof the 2003 Iraq war. Biggar is aware of this and as such uses it to show howthe various elements developed throughout the book can be brought together toprovide a robust defence of war. Thus he seeks to produce a defence againstthe strongest case his opponents might throw at him, in order to counter theaccusation that his work avoids discussing hard cases, and thus cannot be takenseriously as a defence of just war.

From the above outline it is clear that Biggar had engaged upon an ambitiousproject, which threatens to win him few friends, but many detractors. As a projectsome may view it as somewhat over ambitious, but I am inclined to agree with hisassessment of the responsibilities of the moral theologian to engage with concretecases, even if this risks overstepping competencies. When engaging with such arange of fields (history, legal theory, military strategy etc.) there is always thedanger that the real experts will dismiss the claims of the theologian. But there isalso room for dialogue and mutual enrichment, which is of immense value when


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academics leave the class room and come face to face with realities which cannotbe neatly divided into a modern curriculum.

The work contains some specific weaknesses, such as Biggar’s analysis ofintention and double effect. Here the influence of New Natural Law theory leadsBiggar to argue that intending to take life is always wrong (directly acting againstone of the basic goods), and thus those who are on the side of justice and kill inwar cannot be intending to do so. Since most killings in war are not accidentalBiggar has to find a way to explain how non-accidental killings are not intentional.This entails performing gymnastics with the notion of intention, to argue that asoldier who deliberately kills an enemy does not intent to do so if the soldier doesnot want to kill the enemy (e.g. if another means of removing the enemy fromthe battle were possible). A more general question the book raises is in regard toits underlying theological commitments. We have noted that Biggar engages anAugustinian Realist perspective, but what form of Augustinian does he support?His Protestantism (p. 241) makes him suspicious of claims to the establishment(past, present or future) of international human consensus and harmony. Yet thejust war theory which he seeks to defend is itself the product of internationalconsensus, and it is difficult to see how it could have gained much groundwithout the promotion of international organisations (both ecclesial and secular).Yet despite these question marks, Biggar has written a very good defence of justwar, and shown other theologians how to engage with difficult moral questionsin concrete cases.

DAVID GOODILL OP

RELATING GOD AND THE SELF: DYNAMIC INTERPLAY by Jan-OlavHenriksen, Ashgate, Farnham Surrey and Burlington VT, 2013, pp. 205,£54.00, hbk

Shortly after the first draft of Jan-Olav Henriksen’s book was completed, AndersBehring Breivik bombed government buildings in Oslo killing eight people, andwent on to murder a further sixty-nine, mainly youngsters, at a Labour PartyYouth camp outside the city. Breivik ‘appeared to lack any kind of empathy forhis victims . . . [seeing] himself on a crusade against what he called the “Islamiza-tion” of Norway, convinced that he was on a mission from God’ (p. 1). In textsdistributed on the tragic day, Breivik also rails against Marxism, multi-culturalism,and feminism. Reflecting on this event, Henriksen, Professor of Systematic The-ology and Philosophy of Religion in the Norwegian School of Theology (Oslo),subsequently asks, ‘What can cause a man to use religious imagery in this way,when he engages in atrocities so contrary to Christian practice and doctrine?. . . (W)hat kind of self is it that . . . separate(s) other humans from its own inthe world in such a way that a man can slaughter his own countrymen withoutempathy? How can religious imagery and religion . . . provide people with themeans . . . to split the world into two in such a way that all evil is placed with“the others”’ (p. 1).

Important though these precise questions are, as its title suggests Relating Godand the Self is not solely a book about religious violence, its links with funda-mentalism, or the misuse of religious rhetoric to justify patently evil deeds. It hasclear and obvious application in these areas, for sure, but its philosophical scopeis broader. Its wider aims are to investigate the ‘dynamic interplay’ of self andGod images, ‘to explore how notions or symbols of God make a difference withregards to the experience of self’ (p. 7), and how such experiences interact with


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religion. This leads Henriksen to ask how different psychological conceptionsof the self permit us to understand different facets of the God symbol, whichall of us have, whether atheist or believer. Drawing carefully if abstractly frompsychology, philosophy and theology, and primarily a contribution to the philos-ophy of religion, he expounds the core idea that ‘in order to experience God,this experience has to be mediated by means of a symbol that also orders ourperception of ourselves . . . [and] if there is a working symbol of God, there mustalso be an internal relationship between God and the self’ (p. 7).

The book treats these questions in a business-like way across four chapters.After an introduction setting out the stall, Chapter 1 takes a selective, if recog-nisably Lutheran route, through historical accounts from soul to self, from Platothrough Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Hegel, and Kierkegaard. While from astrictly Catholic perspective a brief discussion of (at least) Aquinas’s theologicalanthropology and, perhaps, the non-Kantian route through late modernity mighthave further illuminated his account, to tell any sort of coherent story conciselyacross these literatures is an achievement in itself. Chapters 2 and 3 then presentthe core of the argument. Chapter 2 introduces a range of psychological andquasi-psychological approaches to the self, beginning with but going beyond thepsychodynamic, including Kirkpatrick’s important work on attachment and Godconcepts, and culminating in a Ricoeurian account of the narrative self. At onestage I thought that Henriksen was settling for a standard postmodern, plural,linguistically based, experiential self, but it is clear that he recognises that em-bodiment, biology, and our real relations in the world ground the self, and saveit from endless dispersal, though the full challenge of linking univocal (bio-cognitive) and equivocal (social constructivist) approaches was sidestepped. Heis also aware that experienced and represented selves, although related, can bedistinguished. Likewise, the clear coverage of Ricoeur might have been usefullyconnected with work on the autobiographical self in memory research. But thepsychological literature on the self is vast before anyone begins to attempt torelate it with wider approaches in philosophy. Moreover, the take home messageemerges clearly enough, namely that ‘religion is self-hermeneutics’ (p. 109), andprovides the tools for situating and developing self, while the self that emergessubsequently engages with religious narratives in particular, sometimes peculiar,and occasionally pathological ways.

Such destructive self-pathologies are skilfully treated in Chapter 3. Henriksen’sdiscussion of an omnipresent judging and punitive God of shame reminded mevividly of a former colleague who fervently hated religion for this very reason.Urging us to let go of this ‘super-ego God’, Henriksen also covers the potentiallyharmful effects of a certain view of sin, of abuse, and of patriarchy. He includes, aswell, important treatments of narcissism, religious idealisation, and the potentialfor religious violence (back to Breivik). Here, I think, it could be useful for otherscholars to compare what Henriksen has to offer with the strictly secular approachof so called ‘Terror Management Theory’ which attempts to account for similarphenomena but from a radically different starting point.

In the final chapter, Henriksen recapitulates his main arguments, but also clar-ifies his theological position that God can have a psychological effect thoughalways through the mediation of experienced self-concepts and images. Person-ally, I think this is a potentially more useful and academically productive startingpoint than that adopted by many standard theological discussions of ‘religious ex-perience’ that imply that God somehow directly ‘causes’ experience. Moreover,in drawing attention to the double hermeneutic of God-self and self-religion heoffers an accommodating framework for future work.

The book is well presented, scholarly, and likely to be valuable to researchersand teachers in various disciplines, yet, surprisingly, it was not a ‘page turner’for me. Perhaps I was just slowed by its pedagogic feel. Yet the latter careful


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approach is arguably no harm in interdisciplinary areas such as this where readersare likely to be unfamiliar with all the background. A good book then overall,certainly worth ordering for one’s university library, if not necessarily for one’spersonal bookshelves.

PETER HAMPSON

WAYS OF MEETING AND THE THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS by DavidCheetham, Ashgate, Farnham, 2013, pp. 224, pbk

Theological reflection on other religions and the practice of inter-religious dia-logue remain highly contested and often fraught areas of enquiry and engagement.While it has been natural for theologians to see the task in hand as being primar-ily one of finding the right theological paradigm, one that can account for thereality of religious pluralism, such paradigms have seldom proved to be withoutconsiderable difficulties and controversy. Likewise, while it has been natural forthose involved in the concrete encounter of dialogue with other religions to wantto engage with the religious experience and practices, the spirituality, of othertraditions and to seek here either for convergence or mutual enrichment betweentraditions, such endeavours have very often made other members of those tra-ditions uncomfortable. In such a situation it has proved highly desirable to findother ways in which members of religions can creatively encounter and respondto each other combining commitment to their traditions with openness to theother. David Cheetham provides us with just such an approach, in his refreshing,creative and vigorously argued study.

Cheetham is concerned to explore non-religious ways in which members ofdifferent religions can meet, ways that creatively explore and engage with the‘imagination and attitudes of thinking, finding new spaces for meeting, and sus-taining commitments to faith traditions’ (p.197). Thus, in considering what kindof person a comparative philosopher needs to be (chapter 1) Cheetham notes theshift in contemporary philosophical and theological reflection on the encounterwith other cultures and their religions to an insistence on the tradition specificor conditioned nature of all such encounter and the rejection of the idea thatthere can be neutral perspectives or engagements, such as advanced in pluralisttheologies of the sort advocated by John Hick. He cites here the British Catholictheologian, Gavin D’Costa, as a leading advocate of the tradition specific ap-proach. Cheetham is concerned that such tradition specific approaches can endup becoming inward looking, since the emphasis is on the internal criteria andperspectives of that tradition. As a corrective, he suggests that the comparativephilosopher should be the kind of person who is willing to use his or her imag-ination creatively and construct models in which the religions meet each otherin different ways, models that are then subject to more rigorous philosophicalanalysis. Here, for instance, we could take the pluralist account of Hick as onesuch theoretical model and think about what it is like and what it might teach us.This provides ‘a temporary amnesty or forgetfulness concerning the restraints ofincommensurability, difference, global complexity or politics of thought’ (p.28).Such models are recognised as thought experiments and as fictional in nature andhence do not contradict the tradition specific character of any actual encounterwith other religions.

Cheetham argues further that we might develop an ‘aesthetic attitude’ (chapter5). More generally, this characterises an approach to another religion, wherebysomeone engages with that religion within the categories of aesthetic appreciation,


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just as one might engage with aesthetic productions in general such as stagedramas, responding in various ways and with different emotions to the charactersand plot. More narrowly, such an attitude considers the actual artistic works ofother religions as a point of encounter, where a member of one religion canreadily appreciate the beauty of that work, such a sacred image, and agree witha member of another religion about its aesthetic merits, without this having toinvolve doctrinal questions about what is believed about that image or enter thecultic engagement with it found in that religion. Such an approach thus differsfrom a religious one in that it needs neither to resolve the issues of the truth ofthe other nor to affirm the religious experience of the other:

The idea of an encounter on the basis of an ‘aesthetic attitude’, or a kind ofplay, in intended as one possible suggestion towards providing a different kindof meeting space. Moreover, our goal has been to facilitate ‘safer’ forms ofempathy with other faiths by suggesting a shift from ‘spiritual’ to aestheticsorts of method and discourse. In which case, the depth-encounter with otherfaiths is not a case of spiritual adultery as such; not so much about being‘open’ to an interfaith commitment but about learning to see the world andthose others in a certain way. Or else, being in an aesthetic mode is aboutliving not as a full-blown participant in other religious experiences but ‘as animaginatively participating perceiver’ (p.147).

Cheetham considers a range of such non-religious spaces where members ofdifferent religions can encounter each other in profound ways, to have ‘deepmeetings’ without the only criterion for depth being those explored in theologyor spiritual experience. There is the external space of the world as a whole, wherethere can be mutual experience and enjoyment of the many different created goodsto be found in the world. This provides an alternative to a more theologicalapproach concerned with considering other religions in terms of the presence andactivity or God or the salvation of human beings (chapter 3). Likewise, thereis the subjective space of the individual self and the multiple ways in whicha person opens him- or herself to others. This provides an alternative to theapproach of ‘inter-spirituality’, centred on exploring the spiritual experiences ofother traditions and identifying areas of convergence (chapter 4). There is alsothe social space of ethics, centred on a call for the ‘re-enchantment’ by membersof individual religions with their own specific ethics, so that they have the basisand incentive from within their own tradition to engage with individuals in otherreligions. This is also contrasted with theological attempts to develop a globalethic that can be ascribed to by all religious traditions (chapter 6). Summing upthe book Cheetham gives us a wide range of concrete examples of what meetingin these different spaces might entail:

People of opposing beliefs (believer and non-believer) admiring the glory ofa sunset; the enjoyment of beautiful and profound works of art and musictogether; sharing non-moral excellences, skills and goals; a crowd recognisinga comic moment; experiencing sorrow together over a catastrophe; takingpleasure in the beauty of other traditions – and recognising that this is anaesthetic rather than a religious ‘agreement’; exercising human creativity whenmaking ethical decisions together. These are the kind of experiences that couldbe appropriated by all religious traditions and articulated within their ownbelief systems and structures (p.199)

As the final remark indicates, the potential value of such spaces of meeting is thatthey do not conflict with the particular commitments members of religious tradi-tions, but rather have their basis within those commitments and are encouragedby them.


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Both because of the interesting nature of the alternative ways of meeting sug-gested and because of the sustained argument that makes the book stimulatingto read at every point, Cheetham’s work is to be recommended. I would, how-ever, want to make two comments on what Cheetham proposes: first, while Iwelcome Cheetham’s suggestion of the use of imaginative models in compara-tive philosophy, I think greater recognition might be made of the creative andimaginative dimensions already present in the work of those, such as D’Costa,who keep firmly within a tradition specific approach. I do not agree that itis as inward looking as he suggests; second, we might also recognise as wellthe ways in which classical traditions of Christian theology and the history ofChristian encounter with other religions have already entered the non-religiousspaces Cheetham advances. Such recognition would locate the very good sug-gestions Cheetham makes in continuity with the past as well as constructivelylooking to the future.

MARTIN GANERI OP

CATHOLICS OF THE ANGLICAN PATRIMONY: THE PERSONALORDINARIATE OF OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM by Aidan Nichols OP,Gracewing, Leominster, 2013, pp. 82, pbk

What is in a title?, one might ask. The title of this slim volume by the distin-guished Dominican scholar, Fr Aidan Nichols OP, makes strikingly clear whatmembers of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham are. PersonalOrdinariates – structures erected by Pope (now emeritus) Benedict XVI – aregoverned by the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus (2009). This Con-stitution makes provision for Anglicans, who so wish, to enter into full commu-nion with the Catholic Church in a corporate manner while retaining distinctivefeatures of their Anglican liturgical and spiritual identity.

In the Preface, the author states that Anglicanorum coetibus has changed thelandscape of English Christianity irreversibly. For an understanding of this devel-opment, Nichols examines four particular themes which help to explain the pointand purpose of the Ordinariate for England and Wales. To this end, the book isdivided into four chapters.

Chapter One examines the historical and theological context of the Ordinariateof Our Lady of Walsingham (2011). Theological issues raised by the historicalbackground of Anglicans are looked at from the Reformation period to the presentday. Various streams of Anglicanism are viewed – the Catholic, the Protestant andthe Broad or Liberal currents – from the perspective of Anglicanorum coetibus.The emergence of Catholic-minded Anglicanism is mapped out in some detail,from its beginning in the reign of James I (1603–25) with the High-Church party,through to the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century. The author discernsa theological shift with the Tractarians whose aim, as he puts it, was ‘to takeover the Church as a whole, to render it consistently Catholic albeit in an Englishway’. This aim was continued by Anglo-Catholics of succeeding generationsuntil the outcome was rendered unattainable when the shape of apostolic ministrywas abandoned in recent years. Nichols sees the emerging Ordinariate as a sortof ‘little church’ (ecclesiola) for former, traditional Anglo-Catholics ‘within abody . . . culturally unfamiliar to them but theologically congruent’.

Chapter Two places Anglicanorum coetibus within the wider theological visionof Pope Benedict. The author supposes Pope Benedict to be a ‘Noah figure’seeking to bring various passengers into the ‘Ark’ which is being buffeted by the


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storms of relativism and secularism. These passengers include Eastern Orthodox,‘Lefebvrists’ and particular Lutherans, as well as Anglicans. With regard to thereconciliation of the Church of England as a whole to the Holy See, the influ-ence of Bl. John Henry Newman upon Pope Benedict’s thinking is considered.Newman’s view (in a letter of 1866) was that the most to be hoped for wasthe reconciliation of the Anglo-Catholic party. Anglicanorum coetibus, Nicholsremarks, shows Pope Benedict to be of the same mind on the matter. The au-thor proceeds to ask what does Pope Benedict look for from the Anglo-Catholicparty? One affinity is a similar theological view concerning the relationship be-tween Scripture and Tradition. Another is the appeal of the Anglican ‘three-foldcord’ – the union between Scripture, Tradition and Reason. Evidently there isclose affinity between the Anglo-Catholic tradition and Pope Benedict’s highview of the liturgy, in its fostering of beauty and richness in worship. In the areaof ‘spiritual practice’, the author links Pope Benedict’s vision with Anglicanismin general. Included here is pastoral outreach and involvement beyond the con-fines of Church membership; also included is Newman’s doctrine of conscienceas a possible example of Anglican patrimony in that entry into the Ordinariate isconsequent upon a personal conscientious decision to do so.

Chapter Three is concerned with the liturgy. The author explains that ‘the 1662liturgy, interpolated with some either silent or spoken Sarum or Roman prayers,became bit by bit the Roman Use or the Sarum Use, interpolated with somespoken Cranmerian prayers’. As background, the Protestant nature of Cranmer’sPrayer Book reforms (1549, 1552) are described together with the discontent ofAnglo-Catholics and their demand that they be supplanted rather than developed.The matter of ritual – items and gestures legitimate for use in worship – was alsoa serious issue for Anglo-Catholics. A Royal Commission Report in 1906 heldthat both the texts and ceremonial of the 1662 Prayer Book were unsatisfactoryfor the religious needs of the day. The latter half of the last century saw theemergence of several sets of Anglican rites (in parallel with the 1662 PrayerBook) from which churches could pick and choose. During the same period asubstantial number of Anglo-Catholics became adherents of the Revised RomanLiturgy (1969).

In the final Chapter the author argues a need for the Ordinariate from theperspective of mission and evangelism. He refers to the ‘credibility gap’ whichis affecting the Catholic Church in England. He explains how the Ordinariate iswell-placed to fill the gap. For evangelizing, Nichols feels there is a need for theChurch to have what he calls a ‘native-cum cosmopolitan recipe’, that is a mix ofCatholics indigenous as well as immigrant. Another need, he mentions, is for theOrdinariate to keep alive the memory of notable figures of the Anglo-Catholicmovement as a means of inspiration for its members within the Catholic Church.

The book is clear and concise, and it is written in a fluent, engaging style.It should prove informative for Latin Catholics and inspiring for Ordinariatemembers. However, this Welsh-speaking reviewer feels compelled to ask: what ofWales, for so long a devoutly Catholic country, as portrayed through its languageand history? A mention, en passant, of Wallia alongside Albion in the finalChapter would have covered the Ordinariate’s landscape.

The publishers are to be commended on a fine publication. It deserves a widereadership.

RHIDIAN JONES


thomas aquinas and karl barth: an unofficial catholic-protestant dialogue edited by bruce...

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