DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2009.01312.

Reviews

APPRECIATING THE COLLECT: AN IRENIC METHODOLOGY, edited by

James G. Leachman OSB and Daniel P. McCarthy OSB (St Michael’s Abbey
Press, Farnborough, 2008). Pp. xx + 242 incl. indexes, n.p.

This is the first volume of the series, Liturgiam Aestimare: Appreciating the
Liturgy. The series is part of the project, Documenta Rerum Ecclesiasticarum In-
staurata, whose aims include the publication of detailed studies of the Latin texts
of the Modern Roman Rite, and whose directors are Leachman and McCarthy.
As the editors explain in their Preface, this collective work employs the method-
ology favoured by the Pontifical Liturgical Institute in San Anselmo, Rome.
The methodology uses eight keys, arranged in four ‘dimensions’ (anamnesis,
epiclesis, doxology, koinonia) and four ‘foundations’ (theandric, christological-
pneumatological, ecclesial, symbolic). The editors have found a ninth key: Chris-
tian maturation.
Chapter 1: ‘History of Collect Studies’, by James G. Leachman, is a survey
which includes references to research tools. It ends with a list of twelve ‘perennial
difficulties’ encountered in the study of liturgical texts. Chapter 2: ‘Collectarum
latinitas’, by Reginaldus Thomas Foster with Daniel McCarthy, is a master class
given by a great Latinist. It works its way through the tenses of the Latin verb, the
principles of the subjunctive mood, the sequence of tenses, and the many ways of
expressing purpose. It draws attention to the decisions which have to be made by
translators, and warns against a number of pitfalls. Chapter 3: ‘How to Interpret a
Collect’, by Renato De Zan, translated from the Italian by James Leachman and
Ephrem Carr, begins with a brief survey of some of the authors who furthered a
scientific study of the collects. It then explains the method used in the Pontifical
Liturgical Institute. It considers the role of textual criticism, philology, semantics,
historical analysis, literary criticism, and pragmatic analysis. It ends with the hope
that out of the wealth of tradition new formulas will emerge, expressing in new
ways the Church’s faith in Jesus Christ. This chapter is De Zan’s re-writing of his
contribution to the handbook edited by Chupungco. It is curious that De Zan does
not list the eight keys which are mentioned in both the Preface and Chapter I, that
is, the four dimensions and four foundations of a celebration, although he does
mention them, with due acknowledgment of Lodi’s work, in his contribution to
Chupungco. Chapter 4: ‘The Collect in Context’, by Patrick Regan, expertly and
easily guides the reader through the history of the prayer which concluded the
entrance rite of the Roman Mass, variously called oratio, collectio, and collecta.
It deals with the traditional explanation of the collect as the presidential prayer
which collects the prayers of the assembled people. It then comments critically
on the Modern Roman Rite, where the collect ends a series of introductory rites,
of which the entrance rite is only the first.
The next five chapters contain studies of particular collects. Chapter 5: ‘The
Collect for the Easter Vigil’, by James G. Leachman, applies the full force of
the proposed methodology to one collect. It shows how the method can bring
out the richness of a text. It is longer than the other articles, and might have
been pruned of some interesting but distracting paragraphs, e.g., the excursion
into what The Apostolic Tradition says about candidates for baptism. Perhaps it
remains too close to its origin in a colloquium. Leachman’s interpretation of the

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collect contains some surprising ideas. He argues that the opening words evoke not
only Easter night but also Christmas night, resurrection and incarnation. Without
doubt it is possible to make this connection, but does the prayer itself really invite
us to do this? The contention that the prayer evokes God’s self-emptying raises a
similar question. Chapters 6–9 are fine examples of how to interpret collects. They
are: ‘An Anglican Experiment in Appreciating the Liturgy: The Easter Day Collect
(First Holy Communion) in The First Prayer Book of Edward VI’, by Bridget
Nichols; ‘The Opening Prayer for Epiphany: A Linguistic and Literary Analysis’,
by Anthony O. Igbekele; ‘The Vocabulary of the Collects: Retrieving a Biblical
Heritage’, by Gerard Moore; and ‘Between Memories and Hopes: Anamnesis
and Eschatology in Selected Collects’, by Daniel P. McCarthy. Nichols includes
reflections on the modifications which occurred in the transition from Sarum to
Prayer Book. Igbekele includes the intriguing suggestion that stella duce evokes
‘a natural process of revelation’. Moore shows how the careful reading of a collect
can discover biblical references; he also questions Mohrmann’s idea that the high
style of a collect would have made it inaccessible to the original congregations.
McCarthy, well known to readers of The Tablet, is accurate and readable.
Chapter 10, ‘Concluding Synthesis’, by Ephrem Carr, mildly regrets that not
all the chapters make full use of the methodology. But perhaps it is a good thing
that authors adopt a fairly flexible approach.
The book’s focus on the collects does not prevent it from including a wide
range of material and reflections, and, like McCarthy’s writings in The Tablet, it
should appeal to readers who are not professional liturgists or Latinists. Future
volumes in the series will be more user friendly if they give English translations
of all quotations in foreign languages, including Latin. The present volume does
this sometimes, but not always.
The close reading of any liturgical text inevitably raises questions about the
relationship between the text as a written text and its use in celebration. De Zan,
in drawing attention to the need for pragmatic analysis (what does the text do
in the celebration?) shows he is aware of this question. Indeed he mentions the
way in which Enrico Mazza focuses not on the text of the collect as text but on
the role of the prayer in celebration. Regan too is attentive to this question. The
texts as such are part of the heritage of Latin euchology. They deserve careful
study, and should be translated as accurately as possible. New collects should be
composed in such a way that they stand up to detailed study. But of course it
is possible, even normal, for people to join fully in the Church’s liturgy without
accounting for every clause in every liturgical text.
PHILIP GLEESON OP

EMBODIED SOULS, ENSOULED BODIES: AN EXERCISE IN CHRISTOLOG-

ICAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE MIND/BODY
DEBATE, by Marc Cortez (T and T Clark , London 2008) Pp. vi + 243,
£65.00 hbk

This book arose from Cortez’ doctoral studies under Professor Alan Torrance.
The work constitutes a sustained argument for the necessity of theologians to
address anthropological questions christocentrically, an exploration into the na-
ture of christological anthropology, and its application to a key issue in human
ontology.
Cortez begins by noting that, although there is a widespread consensus among
theologians concerning the need for a christological centring in the area of theo-
logical anthropology, sustained attempts actually to do this remain scarce. He also
draws attention to the mind-body debate as an example of a complex, unresolved

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issue of human ontology which continues to raise urgent questions, especially

in the light of recent scientific and philosophical developments. He notes that,
despite the recent widespread rejection of dualistic anthropologies in preference
for both reductive and non-reductive physicalisms, there remains a lack of any
real consensus concerning how physicalism is to account for human ontology,
with the result that non-physicalist theories refuse to go away.
His work constitutes an attempt to bring these two areas together, drawing
on the resources of Karl Barth’s theological anthropology in order to elaborate
the grounds, scope and methodology of a christological anthropology and tracing
its implications for this precise issue in human ontology. The choice of Barth
is explained in terms of the profoundly christocentric nature of his theology, his
extended, systematic considerations of humanity in the light of the Incarnation, his
sustained considerations of methodological issues associated with such analysis,
and his specific focus on the implications of this for our understanding of the
mind/soul-body relationship. The focus of the first half of the book (Chapters
2–4) is on expounding those aspects of Barth’s thought pertinent to this exercise,
while the second half (Chapters 5 and 6) attempts to apply the insights of Part
One to a range of theories associated with the contemporary mind-body debate.
Cortez’ own perception of the purpose and value of his study is threefold.
First, he sees it as contributing to the ongoing project of understanding Barth’s
thought through ‘an analysis of an underappreciated aspect of his theology’ (p.
15). Secondly, he hopes it will contribute to contemporary philosophy of mind
by serving particularly as a clarification, analysis and evaluation of a number
of recent theories. Finally, he sees its distinctive contribution as the drawing
together of these two disparate fields of inquiry in order to shed the light of the
Incarnation on human ontology. He thus provides us with criteria for evaluating
his own efforts.
Chapter 2 constitutes a systematic, rigorous and impressively researched ex-
amination of how Barth develops his theological anthropology on the basis of
christology. Rooting Barth’s christological anthropology in his theanthropological
theology of creation Cortez explains how Barth nevertheless takes care to ensure
that the christological approach does not erode the legitimate distinction between
christology and anthropology by rooting Christ’s uniqueness in his relation to the
Father. His methodology is thus grounded on the humanity of Christ as it stands
in both continuity and discontinuity to all human beings. From this, he shows
how Barth establishes the minimal requirements essential for a concept of the
human being which can be used theologically through a consideration of Christ’s
humanity and, from this, a derivation of truths about human nature in general.
Chapter 3 constitutes a demonstration that Barth’s christocentric theology not
only does not preclude, but makes possible the sort of interdisciplinary dialogue
in which he hopes to engage in Part Two of the book. Throughout this section
Cortez utilises various objections made to Barth’s thought in this area in order
further to clarify his position, simultaneously revealing the subtlety and strength of
Barth’s thought in comparison to some of his detractors. This is not to say Cortez
is uncritical of Barth: in several places he indicates where his own exposition
contributes to the ways in which he has been misunderstood. Where Cortez
might have been more critical, in my opinion, is in his account of the limits
which Barth placed on philosophical approaches to human ontology, seeming to
deny to human reason a genuine metaphysical depth and range, thus relegating
philosophical analysis to a concern with the merely phenomenological. The work
would have benefited considerably from some sort of recognition and response
in this area.
Chapter 4 establishes those criteria by which the christological validity of
any theory of human ontology is to be evaluated. Here, Cortez proceeds to
demonstrate that the principles Barth derives from his christological anthropology,

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while seeming to preclude both monistic materialism and substance dualism, may
not necessarily preclude certain refinements of physicalism and dualism. In terms
of the criteria for the success of his project defined by Cortez himself, this first
half of the book would seem to be an impressive addition to Barthian scholarship.
On this basis alone the work deserves to be read by anyone who wishes to engage
with this or related aspects of Barth’s theology.
In the second half of the book (Chapters 5 and 6), Cortez examines a range of
modern theories of human nature, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses both
in terms of consistency with Barth’s christological anthropology and their own
inner and contextual coherence. Chapter Five considers a range of non-reductive
physicalisms (NRP) and Chapter Six a range of holistic dualisms (HD). With
regard to the former, Cortez argues that any NRP theory, to be viable chris-
tologically, must be able successfully to address challenges particularly in the
areas of mental causation, phenomenal consciousness and continuity of personal
identity. He concludes that while such theories tend to struggle to explain the
mental causation required for personal agency and freedom, they are able to ac-
count convincingly for consciousness and personal continuity through death and
resurrection. His final assessment of NRP theories is that while there are substan-
tial issues associated with them that still require resolution, they are nevertheless
viable candidates for christologically adequate human ontologies. In my own esti-
mation, Cortez treats too lightly the problems for physicalist theories concerning
personal identity, essentially asserting, rather than adequately arguing for, their
ability to offer a coherent account.
As far as HD is concerned, Cortez argues that the key challenges centre on
mental causation, embodiment and contingent personhood. He judges that, in spite
of a priori intimations to the contrary, this type of theory may be able to address
the issue of mental causation more convincingly than NRP theories. Concerning
the problem of personal embodiment he thinks that, while emergent and Thomistic
versions of HD in particular may have the potential to offer coherent accounts
of the body-soul relationship, a significant weakness of all HD theories is their
simultaneous adherence to the separability of body and soul on the one hand,
and the primacy of the embodiment relation on the other. At this point there are
some significant lacunae in the exposition which perhaps render this conclusion
a little premature, but given Cortez’ main focus and the impressive amount of
ground covered in the second part of his book (as in the first), this is perhaps
understandable.
Cortez considers that dualistic ontologies run the risk of threatening contingent
personhood with their tendency to assume the natural immortality of the soul. He
thinks, however, that there is no reason for HD proponents to commit to this idea,
possibly preserving contingency through adhering to special divine intervention
to preserve the soul prior to resurrection. Cortez’ analysis at this point is a little
unconvincing, seeming to conflate primary and secondary causation at crucial
points (as indeed Barth appears to do also). On the whole though, Part Two
of Cortez’ work is an impressive piece of scholarship which evidences deep
familiarity with all the pertinent issues and which certainly achieves the purpose
of the author: to contribute to contemporary philosophy of mind by serving as a
clarification, analysis and evaluation of recent theories. As a sourcebook for those
working in the area of human ontology it is an invaluable addition, providing an
extremely helpful taxonomy of the debate and a wide-ranging bibliography.
Finally, as noted, Cortez sees his distinctive contribution as the drawing to-
gether of the two fields of Barthian theology and human ontology in order to
shed the light of the Incarnation on the latter. In this he achieves no small suc-
cess, his profound familiarity with Barth’s thought in this area helping to make
visible the relevant issues for any such enterprise in terms of ground, scope and
methodology, and shedding valuable light on those dimensions of both NRP and

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HD requiring clarification and further research if they are to yield christologically

viable theories.
STEPHEN YATES

STARTLING STRANGENESS: READING LONERGAN’S INSIGHT by Richard.

M. Liddy (University Press of America, Lanham 2007) Pp. 251

How does one go about introducing a classic in philosophy such as Lonergan’s

Insight? No doubt there are various approaches to be taken. The one adopted
by Mgr. Richard Liddy, a professor of theology at Seton Hall University, New
Jersey, is through autobiography. I think the book is a success both as an exercise
of intellectual and spiritual autobiography and as, at once, an introduction to
Insight, principally, but also to Method in Theology. As the author explains in
the beginning of the work, these two strands in the book can to some extent be
separated out, since earlier and later chapters deal with Liddy’s own intellectual
and spiritual journey and his contacts with Lonergan, while central sections of the
book are more focused on coming to grips with the self-appropriation to which
one is invited in reading Insight.
Liddy’s own story is emblematic of many of his generation. He grew up in a
devout American Catholic household in the 1940s and ‘50s and began seminary
formation in New Jersey, going on to study at the North American College, Rome
in 1960. One has the impression from what Liddy writes that this solid foundation
in Catholic faith and practice played its part in his weathering the storms which
followed in the great cultural and ecclesial upheavals of the 1960s. His Catholic
upbringing included every encouragement to pursue the intellectual quest to bring
faith and reason into harmony.
Liddy’s interest in philosophy was awoken before going to Rome by a seminary
lecturer who introduced him to the historical analysis of philosophy in Gilson’s
work. Once in Rome, Liddy, like many of his contemporaries who attended the
‘Greg’ during this period, encountered Lonergan, then lecturing on the Incarnate
Word and the Trinity. Liddy provides us with entertaining and insightful anecdotes
reflecting the teaching style and personality of Lonergan and the way he was
regarded by a student audience for the most part baffled by what he had to say.
(Anthony Kenny appreciated what he heard – although, he admits, he never came
to grips with Insight. The young Hans Küng, on the other hand, thought the
Canadian Jesuit had nothing to tell him that he needed to know.) After ordination
in 1963 Liddy returned briefly to the United States only to be told by his Bishop
that he should return to Rome for a doctorate in philosophy which would equip
him to teach the subject in the seminary. The Second Vatican Council was in
session and the cultural and political turmoil of the 1960s was now beginning to
affect the young priest’s outlook. Liddy was unsure as to how effective philosophy
could be and he began to be more concerned with social activism and with new
psychological theories concerning individual affective growth. His doctoral work
was on the aesthetics of Susanne Langer, but in order to find out if philosophy
had anything of real value to offer he followed the advice of other students and
began to tackle Lonergan’s magnum opus, Insight.
The way Liddy contextualises his encounter with Insight is one of the strengths
of the book, since he shares with the reader the prejudices he had regarding the
perceived aims of the book and the way the personal transformation that took
place in struggling with Lonergan’s text helped him to overcome the dichotomies
that were present in his prior assumptions. Insight helped Liddy to see as mis-
guided the modern dichotomies of ‘either intellectual or experiential’, ‘either
social activism or ivory tower philosophising’, ‘either everything post-conciliar

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or the medieval world of Aquinas’. At a time when a good number of his con-
temporaries were leaving the priesthood, Liddy’s existential struggle with Insight,
together with his deepening prayer life, kept him both a priest and a Catholic.
Rather than philosophy having nothing to say, the drama of his encounter with
Lonergan’s thought and with rival philosophical conceptions now brought home
to him the personal nature of the opportunities and challenges of philosophy.
In the late 1960s a work by Langer appeared in which she frankly professed
a metaphysical materialism and reductionism which entailed that the religious
world-view was so much myth. Liddy could no longer view such challenges to
religion as items to be learnt for a theology exam soon to be forgotten. One had
to be authentic in facing the alternatives: was this materialist world-view right
or was the Christian one cogent and true? His Archimedean ‘eureka’ moment
occurred not in a bath but, in true American style, in a shower and was a
resolution of this intellectual and personal conflict. Liddy saw the way the central
features of Lonergan’s Insight fitted together in such a fashion as to show that a
materialist metaphysics, arising as it does from an empiricist view of cognition, is
erroneous. Not only that, he saw also that the alternative, critical realist position
on epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and natural theology, adumbrated in Insight,
is something to be personally verified (in its fundamental aspects) in one’s own
conscious experience.
The ‘startling strangeness’ of the book’s title refers to Lonergan’s way of
describing the breakthrough to a critical realism which is experienced to be at
once a home coming to what, as Wittgenstein would put it, we have always in
some obscure way ‘known’ about ourselves as persons who know, choose and
love, and at the same time a challenging and awkward experience. Why the
latter? Because the inveterate empiricism to which we are prone as part animal
makes it difficult for us to appropriate the intelligent and reasonable operations
of which we have been conscious since we were small children and in accord
with which we operate. Even small children assess the evidence of what they
see and what they are told in order to come to a reasoned judgment and through
such judgments make claims about reality. But the history of philosophy shows
that spelling out such operations and following through on their implications is a
very tricky matter.
I believe that both the engaging drama and humour of Liddy’s autobiographical
introduction to the study of Lonergan’s thought, and his clear and judicious
presentation of key arguments in Lonergan’s philosophy, make this book a most
valuable contribution to the secondary literature on this seminal thinker in the
Catholic tradition.
ANDREW BEARDS

A SECULAR AGE, by Charles Taylor (Harvard University Press, Cambridge

MA, 2007) Pp. x + 874 pp., $39.95 pbk

One scarcely knows how to endeavor to write a brief review of Charles Taylor’s
recent magnum opus, A Secular Age, which comes in at just under 900 pages.
If I were a sociologist, I could try to evaluate Taylor’s engagement and critique
of various theories of secularism and secularization in the post-medieval west and
his proposing of a new genealogy of the rise of secularity, a genealogy centered
in the new focus on the world that appeared in Franciscan theology and piety, and
not just in the metaphysics of Duns Scotus (p. 94), and in new forms of focus on
the laity in the high middle ages (p. 94 again), a discussion that Taylor recognizes
is in some, but not radical, tension with the more idealist genealogy proposed
by John Milbank (pp. 773–776). Or I could focus on Taylor’s discussion of the

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modern “disciplinary” society, in a discussion obviously indebted to Foucault (see

chapter 2).
If I were a historian of religion, I would delve into Taylor’s analysis – founded
somewhat on the work of Karl Jaspers – of the development of how we conceive
the religious dimension as it has changed from the axial age to the post-axial age,
and in particular religion’s relationship to violence (cf. chapters 17 and 18).
If I were a political theorist, I might analyze Taylor’s very interesting reflections
on the ways that communities need carnival, in a discussion indebted to Bakhtin
(pp. 45–54), and the ways that communities, religious and non-religious, are
always tempted to build their own ‘righteous’ identity over against an unrighteous
scapegoat, in a discussion indebted to Girard (pp. 685–689).
Perhaps more importantly, if I were a theologian, I might analyze Taylor’s
vision of a church as a community of diverse itineraries (p. 772). Or I might
consider his way of reading even the low moments in the history of Christian
thought, where, for example, Taylor shows how even the worst kind of medieval
atonement theory (which is certainly not all medieval atonement theory), in which
God looks like a narcissistic tyrant out to uphold his honor through the unleashing
of his wrath on Jesus (who stands in for the world), still at its best points to the
kind of truth about God’s wrath Christians still need to affirm, i.e. that God
refuses radically to accept or condone the violence and wickedness of the world,
which separates us from God (p. 652). I would also want to note Taylor’s vision of
the history of theology as something of a tensely held together mosaic of various
impulses to capture some part of Christianity’s always partial understanding of
God and God’s work in the economy of divine action with the world, a mosaic in
which not every part can be taken to its full conclusion, lest it destroy other parts
of the mosaic. Can Christianity ever, Taylor might ask, hold together adequately
the impulse to speak of divine wrath and the equal impulse to speak of divine
mercy, or synthesize finally the truth of God’s grace with the demand for human
freedom? Taylor reminds his readers of the importance of epistemic modesty and
overlapping metaphors whenever humans begin to speak of God (p. 652 again). To
refuse such modesty, to believe that the whole truth of how to live the Christian
life has been attained by a certain community, is nothing short of heretical –
Taylor’s own term (p. 755). Readers of New Blackfriars familiar with the work
of Sebastian Moore, or St. Augustine for that matter, would also find Taylor’s
move to reconnect the erotic drive with the soul’s journey to God very interesting.
Perhaps the most striking insight Taylor reaches toward, one in sympathy with
the work of David Tracy and theological liberalism, is that Christianity has to
re-imagine in the present age what it means to be and live as a Christian, and that
the ways that this re-imagining needs to take place, Taylor hints, may not always
be in line with the present wishes of the magisterium of the Catholic church (pp.
503–504).
In fact, there is something in this book to interest not just sociologists, historians
of religion, political theorists, and theologians, but also intellectual historians,
anthropologists, psychologists, and others. Furthermore, the book is an excellent
piece of intellectual history. Anyone who wants to deepen profoundly her or
his knowledge of modern European culture will find extended discussions of
Mallarmé, Hopkins, Péguy, Nietzsche, and others, and shorter but very interesting
summaries of and comments on the thought of figures like Ruskin and Schiller.
In fact I once heard someone say that anyone who wants to learn the history of
philosophy should forget about reading primary sources and simply read Taylor.
While I do not want to endorse this view literally, I will say that anyone who
had read Sources of the Self and A Secular Age will have significantly broadened
and deepened her cultural and philosophical education.
Since I teach philosophy, though, I want to engage Taylor’s philosophy specif-
ically, and focus in particular on his main argument for why and how we late

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western moderns should, at the end of the day, embrace Christianity. Here I am
taking an enormous liberty of selection – to cover every philosophical moment or
argument in this book would require another book of just about the same length
as Taylor’s.
So, first, why should we accept Christianity, and embrace it as the itinerary on
which we will live our lives and see the world? Taylor’s answer is that religion
alone, and Christianity in particular, gives to the embodied self what Taylor calls
‘fullness’ (see the Introduction). The other two options for itineraries of human
life, modern secularism and postmodern heroism, have fundamental problems.
Modern secularism can too easily become what Taylor would call a ‘flat’ mode
of life: I embrace my ordinary work, my ordinary marriage, my ordinary hobbies,
and I fail to aspire to some kind of greatness, some kind of excess driven by my
deepest passions and instincts (see Chapter 11). My sexuality and aggression are
policed by bourgeois religion, society, and state, and I focus on making money
and living decently in society. My life is content but mediocre, I have become
Nietzsche’s ‘last man’. How do I escape from the mediocrity of the ‘last man’?
Nietzsche’s response to the problem of the ‘last man’ (and here Taylor’s reading
of Nietzsche is certainly open to debate) is to celebrate the aristocratic warrior
ethic of the Homeric poems, the life of instinct and aggression that aims at some
kind of greatness, aesthetic, perhaps, or military. While this option does give
rise to a certain kind of fullness, a certain kind of transcendence of the ordinary
into the extraordinary that modern bourgeois secularism fails to enable, it is also
very tied to sometimes spectacular embraces of violence and death. But, Taylor
would say, we want life, not death, love, not violence and the alienation that
comes from self-assertion. So we want spiritual fullness, adventure and intensity,
not complacent flatness, but we also want life and love, not death. So we turn
to the religious option: a life of aspiration and transcendence, but not one that
culminates in spectacular and destructive celebrations of licentiousness and death
and violence, but one that ends in love.
And this brings me to a second question, how does the logic of embracing
Christianity work? What does it mean to embrace the Christian path? Here Taylor
offers a picture that is at one level deeply Catholic. For it operates according to
a logic of nature and grace: Christianity somehow has to make contact with our
humanity, has to take the ‘natural’ desires of body and soul and transfigure them,
not destroy them. (Yes, the whole nature/grace question is loaded and complex,
but Taylor addresses it in a rather traditional way.) There is no purely dialectical
vision of Christian faith, no divine transformation that does violence to human
identity or human nature as it stands and is experienced before or outside the
Christian faith and life. Taylor is interesting in how he deviates from traditional
understandings of ‘nature’ (again, I am simplifying). He is, perhaps to his own
surprise, a Freudian of sorts, in addition to being a Nietzschean of sorts. Who we
are as humans is deeply identified with our sexual desire and our aggression, our
impulse to violence. Now here Taylor is to be congratulated, not least because
most contemporary Christian theologians refuse to accept just how deep the lust
for violence and power runs in our souls. (Although, in a return of the repressed,
it is interesting to note that some of the recent theologies that are most focused
on persuading readers of the ontological and ecclesial peace and harmony that are
ostensibly available only in Christianity are in fact intellectually and rhetorically
violent pieces of writing.) It is not, for Taylor, as if our sexuality and aggression
have to be whitewashed, morally purified before they can enter into the economy
of grace. Rather, it is precisely the energy of our sexuality and aggression that
makes possible our living the Christian life fully, should we choose to embrace
it. Sexual desire can become sexual desire for God, desire that does not leave the
body behind. (Here Taylor is an apt student of Augustine, who also does not leave
the body behind, as the work of Beth Felker Jones has recently reiterated.) And

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as for aggression, we have to continue to respect its ‘numinous power’ (p. 649).
But, Taylor seems to say (and here I put his points into my own words), there is
the possibility of transfiguring the energy or aggression into an energy, equally
intense and electric, of ‘limitless self-giving’ (p. 654). The attraction of violence
is in major part the excess or abandon that can be experienced by going berserk
in battle. Something of that abandon, in a more joyful way, can be experienced
in letting go of oneself in a radical gift of love to God and neighbor (p. 668).
I don’t know if Taylor’s account of the transfiguration of sexuality and aggres-
sion fully works – certainly Nietzsche would not think his focus on the aristocratic
warrior ethic could be subsumed and redeemed in this way. Can sexual desire
and aggression be quite so completely transfigured for humane ends? Even so,
I applaud Taylor for taking human sexuality and aggression so seriously. Indeed
I would go so far as to say that one of the main challenges for contemporary
theologians is to incorporate sexual desire and violence and aggression into their
theologies. John Milbank, David Bentley Hart, and Sebastian Moore have been
at the forefront of recovering an erotic desire for God, but the confrontation with
violence and aggression needs more attention. Rowan Williams is the paradigm
example of someone whose theology is not afraid of letting the violence and
aggression in our souls breathe, although it would take more time to explain
exactly how. It is a basic insight of psychoanalysis, respected by Taylor, that
our sexuality and aggression cannot be denied, lest they return in even more
destructive ways. Humanity in its flesh and bones has to be reckoned with, and
not simply by calling our powerful sexuality and aggression sinful. Taylor is at
his strongest when he hints, tantalizingly, that our sexuality and aggression are
what they are so that they can participate in the divine pedagogy of humanity, in
a framework proposed by Irenaeus (p. 668), and be transformed into energy for
communion and love. But it is incredibly gratifying to see a Christian philosopher
value Nietzsche and Freud so highly.
JEFFREY MCCURRY

A THEOLOGY OF CRITICISM: BALTHASAR, POSTMODERNISM, AND THE

CATHOLIC IMAGINATION, by Michael P. Murphy (Oxford University Press,
Oxford 2008). Pp. xiv + 210, £45.00 hbk

More than any other major Catholic theologian of the twentieth century, Hans Urs
von Balthasar re-set theology into the ambit of the humanities in ways unlikely to
be emulated. He managed to achieve the almost impossible, of writing an aesthetic
theology based on an awesome stock of learning whose range encompassed a
faculty of arts. Balthasar provided a theological umbrella under which those with
affiliations in the humanities might shelter, comforts which had been hitherto
unavailable. An outcome of this generosity of vision is that the shifting basis
of the human condition, and what kills its spirit in contemporary culture, can
be more imaginatively calibrated. In this scholarly and carefully crafted work,
Murphy grasps these opportunities and explores how a Catholic imagination offers
prospects of reverse from the cul-de-sacs of postmodernism.
Primarily concerned with narrative and language (Derrida looms much), Mur-
phy seeks to find a basis for coherence, a harmony that would resolve the un-
profitable dualism that increasingly governs contemporary critical thought. Thus,
construction as a response to nihilism forms his ambition for the study in which
‘the analogical imagination can staunch the wounds of deconstructionism’ (p. 72)
and this entails conversion (pp. 73–74). As he observed rightly earlier in the
study, ‘all roads, whether begrudgingly or not, lead back to questions of theol-
ogy’ (p. 20). His primary concern is with the reconciliation of opposites and their

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redemption in a theological aesthetics. Thus, the study involves a re-casting of

many facets of contemporary thought into the realms of theological expectations
whose contours are illustrated in highly specific examples: Flannery O’Connor’s
short story, ‘Revelation’, Lars von Trier’s film, Breaking the Waves (1996), and
David Lodge’s novel, Therapy. Murphy’s range of source material is fittingly wide
for the task this study undertakes. For a work whose main text is 159 pages long,
30 pages of notes, in some cases with multiple paragraphs, might seem excessive,
yet they indicate the enormous care undertaken by the author to express matters
comprehensively.
In its appeal to what is transcendent, the study aspires to produce a more
coherent theological reading of the imagination than it claims has been hitherto
available. But these ambitions entail a slightly imperial dismissal of two sociolog-
ical works on culture, dismissed as ‘ephemeral’, of the kitsch and theologically
fatigued (pp. 49–50). These might pass on insight but fail on theological rigour.
Oddly, later he comes to realise that Balthasar did have concerns with practical
issues of the social sciences, with ‘subject formation, interpersonal relationships,
and the ethics of love’ (p. 131). These issues also emerged for him earlier in
relation to identity and roles (p. 116). Indeed, it might be said that Balthasar, as
in Theo-Drama was the only major theologian who could write sociology fluently
and with understanding. Yet, one has to take Murphy’s study on its own terms.
Two of his three case studies succeed and these are his vehicles for much dense
and sometimes discursive reflection.
Flannery O’Connor never lets a theologian down. This wise, brilliant woman
was uncanny in her theological acumen for one so young. Murphy’s use of
her short story, ‘Revelation’, to illustrate the epiphany of imagination is well
done, where the imperfections of a hierarchy drawn on earth are subsumed into
the Pseudo-Dionysius and his characterisation of procession and return. This
redemption of hierarchy entails a vision which Murphy persuasively enlarges.
His theme, of the relationship between medieval theology and contemporary
postmodernism, is well brought into focus in chapter 3, which is telling and
impressive.
Less so is chapter 4 that involves a laboured use of Trier’s central character,
Bess, who achieves sanctity by being pummelled. She is used to illustrate Chris-
tological properties of loss and gain. Her death, after a life of sacrifice based
on a sexual mission of availability to all, is scarcely convincing as an example
of what Theo-drama might be about. The invocation of bells as indicative of
Catholicism, oscillating between use as a metaphor (pp. 104–5) and an actual-
ity (p. 125) is pushed in directions of a dualism, one expressive of an analogical
imagination. Their symbolism is insufficient to bear the weight of the conclusions
Murphy seeks to sustain, of healing and redemption, where the weak emerge as
the strongest. Indeed, ironically in the weakest chapter in the book, the most
distinctive properties of the Catholic imagination emerge in contrast to Protes-
tantism. The bells draw attention to a liturgical context that is never properly
explored, where word and deed fuse in rite to fuel a Catholic imagination. Some-
how, their use in the context of Trier is artificial and unpersuasive. Far more
fitting and fruitful examples could have been invoked by Murphy of the use of
the bell in film signifying redemption – Tarkovsky comes to mind. Oddly, this
use of the film draws attention to the over-emphasis on the word as against the
visual to formulate a Catholic imagination. Admittedly, Murphy could retort that
this would involve writing another book.
Dealing, in chapter 5, with Therapy Murphy is on securer ground, and brings
forward the notion of conversion employed earlier into the existential choices
facing its questing hero, Tubby. Set in relation to Balthasar and Kierkegaard,
Murphy gives a useful reading of the pilgrim journey to Compostela, one beset
with impure motives where the questing is fruitless but where the self of the hero

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finds an accommodation to himself sufficient to journey onwards. This chapter

represents a fruitful re-casting of seeking in contemporary culture, where matters
of conversion and redemption and emptiness and incompleteness are brought into
focus in ways that point to the imagination for their resolution. In this chapter,
Murphy seems to find his voice for his own pilgrim journey into imagination and
redemption, and it is here that the sense of narrative of the study most clearly
emerges, and where it counts, in the final chapter.
Although clearly and well written, there is a microscopic property to the book,
particularly in the examples used, yet overall in the text, sentences of real bril-
liance break out and steely insights emerge. The learning is there, but rather
episodically distributed in the study. At occasional points of languor, one waits
hopefully for relief. Understanding of the contemporary relevance of Balthasar is
well sketched (chapter 2) and what is sought is credible, of an imagination that
would surmount the contradictions emerging in postmodern philosophy to realise
a coincidence of opposites. But ‘seeing the form’ of God, in ways that relate
to the imagination (p. 156), signifies the need for some accommodation to the
visual, however well the text feeds the mind’s eye as to what to imagine. This is
the missing dimension of the book that makes its text at times seem arid.
It is just not enough to conclude that the Catholic imagination is ‘incarnational,
sacramental and trinitarian’ (pp. 157–8). What Murphy ends on brings into focus
a nagging worry of the study, as to how Catholic the imagination is that he
wishes to present for coherent theological inspection. Invoking Balthasar and
three Catholic writers and directors hardly suffices to produce what needs to
be distinctively stipulated, perhaps in a sectarian way Murphy is reluctant to
envisage. Also, a more telling conclusion is required, one that more fully draws
together the thesis of the book. Somehow, the study just stops at the end. Good
in parts, bibliographically rich, and broad in sweep and ambition, it provides a
useful reference point for a reading of facets of the Catholic imagination, a topic
seemingly flourishing in the US but decidedly dormant in the UK. Much is to be
learnt from our American cousins and this study is indicative of what is worthy
of emulation.
KIERAN FLANAGAN

ZIZEK AND THEOLOGY by Adam Kotsko (T&T Clark , London 2008) Pp. vii +
174 pp., £14.99

Theology has opened up to what is often dubbed ‘continental’ philosophy.

Whether or not the harvest of this philosophy always rewards the labour of
its reading is a moot point, but there is no sign that the labours cease. There
is always new flora to be examined and, perhaps, introduced to theological soil.
Slavoj Zizek is the latest transplant. In this thorough and accessible book Adam
Kotsko sets himself the task of carrying out an initial examination.
Zizek’s intellectual and political roots are a curious hybrid of a reading of
Hegel, Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, Althusserian structuralist Marxism, and
an obsession with popular culture. He defines himself as a Marxist and an atheist.
However those confident self-designations fly in the face of his philosophy, which
is concerned to undermine the ready and ideological acceptance of the world
so that emancipatory potential might be released. This Althusserian project of
ideology-critique is linked to Lacan in that it is identified as an assault on the
‘big Other’, the master signifier that at once represses possibility, creates the space
for fantasy, and establishes that against which emancipation must be achieved (by
this argument God can be identified as one such big Other). The method is
Hegelian; Zizek makes a statement about the big Other, contradicts it, and then

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out of the synthesis announces that a truth has been reached. This explains why
his books contain assertions, philosophical exegesis and political commonplaces,
tell jokes, contradict themselves, often lack narrative and so on. Zizek is trying to
force the reader to emancipate her or himself from thrall to Zizek and, thus, think
for himself or herself. The irony is of course that with all of his publications
Zizek is doing nothing other than ensure that his name itself becomes part of
the big Other, and the industry of exegesis that he has inspired (and of which
Kotsko’s volume is one of the better examples) denies space for the emancipation
of the reader.
Zizek’s work is not possessed of any great humility, and therefore it is unsur-
prising that it has turned to questions of theology and, specifically, Christianity.
That turn happens because what he is trying to do is deal with the question of
what happens after there has been emancipation from the big Other. Kotsko calls
this the ‘morning after problem’. It is the problem of the fate of the moment of
emancipation.
Zizek draws on Alain Badiou’s theory of the ‘truth-event’ according to which
truth is something that happens as an event. As Kotsko shows, for Badiou a
truth-event erupts unpredictably from a situation that is occupied by all and yet
only fully apprehended by those who are excluded from the ‘official’ definition
of the situation. Badiou gives a secular reading of the conversion of St Paul
as an example of a truth-event. In Kotsko’s gloss, ‘the resurrection of Christ is
the unexpected truth-event that seizes Paul, causing him to dedicate his life to
spreading the gospel’ (p. 79). Consequently Badiou sees the truth-event as the
irruption of a ‘new beginning’, but Zizek argues instead that it is better seen
as a moment of detachment from what has gone before. For Zizek then the
truth-event is an emancipation from the big Other, a kind of death of the old.
In an interview that Kotsko does not cite (and Zizek’s output is massive so this
is no criticism), but in a passage that he makes it possible to see is typical,
Zizek said: ‘What I like is to see the emancipatory potential in institutionalized
Christianity. Of course, I don’t mean state religion, but I mean the moment of St.
Paul. I find a couple of things in it. The idea of the Gospel, or good news, was
a totally different logic of emancipation, of justice, of freedom’ (‘IDEOLOGY
IS A CERTAIN UNIQUE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNIVERSE AND YOUR
PLACE IN IT, TO PUT IT IN STANDARD TERMS, WHICH SERVES THE
PRODUCTION OF THE EXISTING POWER RELATIONS AND BLAH BLAH
BLAH’ at http://www.believermag.com/issues/200407/?read=interview_zizek).
The thesis about the Gospels – note that he sidesteps Christ – leads Zizek to
a somewhat hackneyed and predictable assault on institutionalised Christianity.
For him, what happens on the ‘morning after’ is Church building and thus the
consolidation in ideology of a new big Other from which there will in turn need
to be emancipation. Zizek is not saying that it is possible to return to the Gospel
message, rather his point is that its institutionalisation needs to be negated if it is
going to be able to shatter the contemporary big Other. And the way to do that
is to draw out dialectically the conflict between the Gospels and the Church. In
all of this it is clear that Zizek is using Christianity and, by extension, theology,
for his own purposes. He is just trying to find a new place to carry out his
self-appointed task of negator in the name of emancipation: Lenin, Stalin, St Paul
are all reduced to the same status. It is in that spirit of negation that he claims
that Christianity is fundamentally a comedy. Kotsko quotes Zizek’s question: ‘is
there anything more comical than Incarnation, this ridiculous overlapping of the
Highest and the Lowest, the coincidence of God, creator of the universe, and a
miserable man?’ (p. 153).
If there is a temper that runs through this book it is, I think, one of Kotsko’s
increasing apprehension that perhaps Zizek has considerably less to say about
theology and Christianity than he thought when the project was started. Attempts

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are made to link Zizek with Altizer, Tillich, Bonhoeffer and even Kierkegaard
and Chesterton (Zizek has claimed the latter as two of the stimulants of his
thought), but the connections that Kotsko forges say more about the ingenuity of
his mind than Zizek’s own insights. Indeed, Kotsko has written a sophisticated
and knowledgeable book, but about a body of work that is perhaps best ap-
proached theologically as an over-inflated footnote to C.S. Lewis’s identification
of the Incarnation as a ‘catastophic historical event’ (The Problem of Pain 1940,
Centenary Press, London, p. 12).
KEITH TESTER

SUBJECTIVITY AND BEING SOMEBODY by Grant Gillett (St Andrews Studies

in Philosophy and Public Affairs, Imprint Academic 2008) Pp. xxx + 286,
£17.95 pbk

Subtitled ‘Human Identity and Neuroethics’, this book is the work of a neurosur-
geon who is also a well-trained analytical philosopher and professor of medical
ethics at the University of Orago, New Zealand. The argument ranges widely –
so widely, that it is not always easy to know where it has got to or where it is
going. And the author’s style, or rather lack of it, places formidable obstacles in
a text which would be difficult enough even if it had been written in English. It
is, however, worth persevering to the end of the book, not only because Gillett
brings together many lines of expertise and enquiry in a novel way, but also
because there emerges from these dense pages a challenging vision of the human
subject.
Gillett’s primary thesis, if I have rightly discerned it, is this. Human beings
are animals, but not merely animals. They are also persons, and from the first
they are following a particular developmental path, the end point of which is
incorporation into the world of inter-personal relations. It is only as embodied,
however, that they can participate in these relations, and the human condition
is that of the ‘embodied subject’. Such an embodied subject has a soul – not
in the sense of an immaterial entity that could be detached from the body and
endure without it, but in something like the sense of Aristotle’s ‘form’. The
soul is that which identifies the human being as somebody, by ordering his life
and activities as ‘mine’. The development of the human being is in the first
instance cognitive, involving conceptual skills, and therefore the grasp of rule-
following. However, conceptual skills are acquired only through interaction with
others. Hence the moral sense – the sense of being in relations of reciprocity
and accountability towards others of one’s kind – is an integral part of being
human.
The human being also has an individual identity: he is who he is, and not
another thing. This identity is not conferred upon him by some real essence to be
described in biological terms. For example, a person does not derive his identity
from his biological origins in the union of two cells. His identity is in some
sense the product of a continuous narrative, of which he himself is the author.
Gillett spends some time attacking the views of Parfit and others on the topic
of personal identity, while taking from Parfit the thought that what matters to us
are continuities rather than Leibnizian principles of individuation. The relevant
continuities concern the story that is accessible to me, in memory, intention,
and relationships. Hence self-attribution has a central role in the life, and also
in the concept, of the person. And my self-attributions are not determined by
the biological processes on which my life depends but are essentially revisable,
projecting both backwards in memory and forwards in intention a self-conception
that evolves through my dialogue with others.

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All that is summarized by Gillett in the statement that ‘a human being is. . . a
being-in-the-process-of-becoming-among-others where those others that one de-
velops among bring out facets of one’s own identity dependent for their expression
or articulation on the being-among that supports them.’ (p. 249.) The sentence
illustrates Gillett’s style, which is one of ‘Oxford analyticalese’ stirred up with
a dose of Heideggerian Hierunddasein: a synthesis, in other words, of the two
greatest crimes against the written word ever committed by philosophers.
A subsidiary aim of the book seems to be to rescue the concept of the human
person from biological reductionism. On Gillett’s account we are human beings,
located in human bodies and subject to biological laws. Memory, consciousness
and intention are rooted in neural networks which create the electronic links
between our environment and our response to it. But there is, ‘inscribed’ in the
human body, a narrative of self-identity, and this narrative creates the person,
not as a body, but as somebody – in other words as a node in the network
of inter-personal relations, whose identity and destiny are conferred by its own
self-attribution. Self-attribution opens the individual to the address of others. First-
person knowledge makes the I-thou relation possible, and so sets our biological
functioning within a broader framework of accountability. Gillett (rightly in my
view) sees this as containing the solution to the free-will problem, and also to the
philosophical problem raised by multiple personality disorder. Who I am is who
I take myself to be, when speaking sincerely in the first-person case. My self-
attributions, as Wittgenstein pointed out, are privileged, guaranteed by immunities
to error embedded in the deep grammar of ‘I’. This mysterious feature, properly
understood, is sufficient to refute biological reductionism, and to vindicate the
concept of the ‘soul’, in the form that Gillett introduces it.
In the course of his discussion of free will and responsibility Gillett addresses
the argument of Benjamin Libet, who famously demonstrated that the neural
processes sufficient for intentional movement occur shortly before the subject
reports that he has made up his mind. Libet and many others have taken this as
showing that there is no free will, that ‘intention’ is merely an epiphenomenon,
a helpless commentary in consciousness on events that proceed without it. That
nonsense is exploded by Gillett in a few pages of effective argument. Libet’s
‘proof’, he suggests, depends upon four assumptions: that an action is a discrete
bodily movement; that there is a mental event which is the cause of the act;
that one can fix the time of a mental event on the basis of its reportability;
and that ‘the detectable brain event is the cause of the act rather than being a
reflection of preparatory moves or neural events involved in acting with intent’
(p. 112). All those assumptions, he plausibly argues, are false. In effect Libet has
begged the argument in his own favour, by assuming that free choice must be
an event in the causal chain, rather than a condition of accountability, attributed
to the self-conscious subject – a condition that is ‘not located in neuro-time’
(p. 117).
It is impossible in a short review to cover all the topics raised by Gillett, who
has read widely in the recent literature of both philosophy and neuroscience, and
who clearly intends to produce a comprehensive synthesis of the two disciplines.
In conclusion, however, it is worth raising a question about the term ‘neuroethics’
which, the subtitle suggests, is the real discipline that the book exemplifies. Is
there such a discipline? Is there a branch of ethics that specifically concerns
matters of neurology, or a branch of neurology that raises questions that are
not general questions of ethics? The problematic use of brain surgery to control
epileptic seizures and the worst forms of depression has certainly raised moral
questions of a novel kind. Ought you to remove a terrible and distressing disability
if, by doing so, you also remove the soul? But the real questions here are more
metaphysical than moral: does the person remain at the end of the operation, or
have you effectively destroyed him? Clearly such questions are of great concern

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to Gillett, but he says nothing to convince me that there is a specific discipline

of ‘neuroethics’ adapted to discussing them.
The point is important, I think, since it is not just philosophy but the hu-
manities generally that are being invaded by claims made on behalf of neuro-
science. My own discipline of aesthetics is now being bashed about by experts
in ‘neuroaesthetics’, which subject has its own Institute, under Semir Zeki, at
University College London, and its own journal. John Onians of East Anglia
University has branded himself as a neuroart-historian, while Dartmouth College
has a ‘MacArthur Center for Law and Neuroscience’, devoted to messing up legal
reasoning by combining it with brain imaging. One by one real but non-scientific
disciplines are being rebranded as infant sciences, even though the only science
involved has absolutely nothing to do with their subject matter. I have no doubt
that we will soon see chairs in neurotheology, neuromusicology and maybe even
neurofootball and neurocookery too.
There is a very good reason to complain about this, and Gillett is well aware of
it. As his argument shows, neuroscience is strictly irrelevant to understanding the
nature, identity and moral predicament of the human person. Questions about the
nature of the human person are in the first instance metaphysical, and no amount
of brain imaging will solve them, or even help us to state them. Philosophy is
a real discipline, but it is not a science. Aesthetics, criticism, musicology, law
are also real disciplines. But they too are not sciences. They are not concerned
with explaining some aspect of the human condition but with understanding it,
according to its own internal procedures. Rebrand them as branches of neuro-
science and you don’t increase knowledge: you lose it. Brain imaging will not
help you to analyse Bach’s Art of Fugue or to interpret King Lear any more than
it will unravel the concept of legal responsibility or deliver a proof of Goldbach’s
conjecture. It will simply propagate the newest of superstitions, which says that I
am not a whole human being with both mental and physical powers, but merely
a brain in a box.
Gillett’s book, by a philosophically sophisticated neurosurgeon, might have
helped us to understand the point, since it defends a particular kind of holism
about the human being. It is all the more regrettable, therefore, that it is so atro-
ciously written. Gillett has the vices of style that make anglophone philosophy
unreadable (numbered sentences, unmemorizable acronyms, bracketed qualifica-
tions, the PC feminine pronoun etc.), backed up by uncritical borrowings from
continental frauds – including the psychopath Jacques Lacan, whose intellectual
credentials have been definitively destroyed by Gillett’s fellow neuroscientist Ray-
mond Tallis, as well as by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont in their Intellectual
Impostures. There is much to be learned from Gillett; would that he could teach
it, therefore, in natural language, in his own voice, saying it straight.
ROGER SCRUTON

WHOSE GOD? WHICH TRADITION?: THE NATURE OF BELIEF IN GOD, edited

by D.Z. Phillips (Ashgate Publishing , Aldershot and Burlington, VT 2008). Pp.
vii + 173, £55.00 hbk

Perhaps the last book edited by the late D.Z. Phillips (d. 25 July 2006), this
volume consists of papers delivered at the 2005 annual Claremont Conference on
the Philosophy of Religion, held at Claremont Graduate University in California.
Although of course very well known through his own work as a—if not the—
leading exponent of a Wittgensteinian approach to the philosophy of religion,
Phillips’s contribution to the field has been latterly enhanced by a steady stream
of edited or co-edited volumes consisting of the proceedings of these Claremont

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conferences—an outpouring of considerable interest from many different authors

and perspectives, not just his own. While some of these conferences were focused
on explicitly Wittgensteinian concerns, some ranged rather more widely, and this
is one of those.
Although the title is an obvious allusion to Alasdair MacIntyre’s Whose Jus-
tice? Which Rationality?, and although the question of competing – and perhaps
incommensurable – traditions of rationality is indeed discussed, MacIntyre’s work
on these topics is not addressed directly. Instead, as Phillips explains in his in-
troductory essay, this volume deals with a twin challenge raised by much recent
analytic philosophy of religion: namely, (i) the assumption, stated either explicitly
or implicitly, that the work of prominent practitioners such as Richard Swinburne,
Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Stephen T. Davis, William Hasker, and
many others adheres firmly and faithfully to Christian ‘orthodoxy and tradition’
(p. 1), and (ii) the suspicion that in fact their work departs from that orthodox
Christian tradition in many significant respects, not least in denying God’s eter-
nity, simplicity, and omniscience of free human actions (pp. 2–5). In some cases,
for example with Wolterstorff, the revisionist character of their work is openly
admitted and indeed insisted upon as part of a necessary programme of ‘dehel-
lenization’ (see pp. 141–145). But in other cases, at least according to Phillips,
such (Protestant) analytic philosophers seem largely unaware that their concept
of God would be unrecognisable to their putative ancestors in the faith, including
classical Reformed theologians, let alone Augustine and Aquinas. Or, rather, it
would be recognised, but as a species of Socinianism or some other such heresy
(see the essays by Brian Davies and Paul Helm for further discussion along these
lines). And this despite the fact that such analytic philosophers are apparently
more than willing to accuse Phillips and others of revising the tradition beyond
recognition to suit their own philosophical predilections. As Phillips sees it, this
is a perfect case of Matthew 7.3–5. And so, rather mischievously, he organised
this conference to ‘accuse the accusers’ (p. 2), to turn the tables on his analytic
colleagues and put them in the dock to face the charges of anthropomorphising
the divine nature and thus violating what Phillips calls ‘the grammar of God’.
According to Phillips, his inspiration for this conference actually begin in this
very journal, in Brian Davies’s ‘Letter from America’ (New Blackfriars, 84 (2003)
371–384), in which Davies – writing from a Thomist perspective – raised con-
cerns about the anthropomorphic character of much recent philosophy of religion.
This gave Phillips the idea of providing a forum for Davies and other like-minded
philosophers to further express their concerns, and indeed the majority of contrib-
utors to this volume are Roman Catholics who are at least deeply knowledgeable
of and sympathetic to the Thomist tradition, even if they are not necessarily
Thomists themselves. Thus, after Phillips’s introduction, the contributors include
Fergus Kerr, Anselm Kyongsuk Min, Gyula Klima, James F. Ross, Brian Davies,
and David Burrell. The two final contributors are philosophers in the Reformed
tradition, Paul Helm (who writes firmly against the anthropomorphic trend noted
above), and Stephen T. Davis (who provides a closing ‘minority report’ in defence
of himself and the other figures ‘accused’ in this conference). In short, although
Phillips provides an introduction that sets the stage and raises questions ‘from a
Wittgensteinian context’ (p. 2), the actual content of the book is mostly Thomist
or Thomist-inspired, with an ambiguous Reformed coda.
Having got this far in the review, rather than seeking to summarise the various
essays, it is perhaps best to turn to the end, to Davis’s response. He sets out ‘two
different ways of understanding the Christian God’:
Theory A: God is the unique, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good
creator of the heavens and the earth; God cannot fail to exist; and God is
timeless, strongly immutable, impassable and metaphysically simple.


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Theory B: God is the unique, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly good

creator of the heavens and the earth; God cannot fail to exist; and God is
temporal, weakly immutable, passable, and not metaphysically simple (p. 162)
Without going into detail on the content of each theory, it is sufficient to note
that Davis says that, yes, he does indeed affirm Theory B over Theory A; that
‘God is a person in at least some of the ways in which we are persons’ (p. 162,
note 3); that those who accept Theory A ‘are inevitably drawn to compatibilist
views of human freedom’ which he cannot accept (p. 163); that at least in some
sense it is proper to speak of God as ‘an item in the universe’ (p. 164); that the
doctrine of divine simplicity is something he does not find coherent enough to
even understand, let alone endorse (pp. 164–165); that he sees ‘no philosophical
or theological danger in affirming that God and human beings are both members
of the set of existing things and the set of individuals’; that he rejects the view
that God never passes through successive states; as well as rejecting the view
that God does not experience pain; and that, in short, while he finds Theory A
‘deeply intriguing and in many ways attractive,’ it is ‘in the end indefensible’ (all
remaining citations from p. 166).
It may seem somewhat perverse to spend more space in this review describing
the ‘minority report’ than the essays that constitute 90% of the volume, but I have
done so for two reasons. First, it is both fair and useful to hear directly from
the ‘accused’ rather than to rely on perhaps unreliable second-hand sources; and
second, the readers of this journal are likely to be more familiar with the tradi-
tion of Thomist or Thomist-inspired thought that animates the chapters between
Phillips’s introduction and Helm’s paper. But these chapters are all worthwhile
and illuminating in various respects, as indeed is Helm’s, and I at least learned
a great deal from each of them (without, of course, agreeing with everything
they claim). And they all, in diverse ways, some more explicitly than others, set
themselves against the sort of views articulated by Davis above.
So, just two closing thoughts. First, the subtitle of this volume is somewhat
misleading: it should probably be The Nature of Belief in ‘God’, in that the focus
of most essays is the concept of God that is – or should be – believed, rather
than the nature of belief itself. That is, this book is concerned with philosophical
theology proper, rather than religious epistemology. Second, Davis is doubtless
right that although his perspective is a minority report within the context of this
particular book, it is in many ways more representative within the context of
contemporary philosophy and theology (outside Thomist circles), particularly in
its emphasis on God’s capacity to suffer with us. As Davis says, ‘in the past
100 years, not just most analytic philosophers of religion, but virtually the entire
Western theological world (with the exception of those who embrace Theory
A) has moved to the notion that God qua God suffers. It is now a virtual
commonplace. (That does not make it true, of course.)’ (p. 166). Although they
are not all concerned with the topic of divine impassibility, the other chapters in
this book present a very strong case for Theory A to be taken more seriously as,
if not true, at least the normative tradition by which Christians have understood
the grammar of ‘God’.
ROBERT MacSWAIN OGS


C The author 2009

Journal compilation 
C The Dominican Council 2009