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The Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol. 0, Pt 0, February 2020

The Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology. Edited by

LEWIS AYRES and MEDI ANN VOLPE. Pp. xxxiv þ 962.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. ISBN 978 0 19
956627 3. N.p.
WERE we dreaming, half a century ago, when we took Catholic
theology for a demi-paradise, watered with rich streams of trad-
ition, into which flowed also the insights of other churches and
religions; when bold spirits such as Rahner and Schillebeeckx
joyfully mapped new horizons and a bright creative future
seemed assured; when theology seemed ‘the most beautiful of the
sciences’ (Barth) and the one in which the greatest discoveries
remained to be made (Teilhard)? If any vieilles barbes cling to
such dreams, this massive Handbook will be a chill awakening for
them. A long list of ‘sources’ (pp. xvii–xxx)—the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, the dogmatic compendium of Denzinger, the
works of Aquinas, the decrees of Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II
(listed again on p. 783), and 74 papal documents—warns all who
enter that theology has become a grimmer affair. The garden has
shrunk to a defensive enclosure, under surveillance, leased out to
restorers who have disfigured it beyond recognition, with ‘tomb-
stones’—the Handbook is much too heavy to carry by hand—
‘where flowers should be’.
Is Scripture ‘the soul of sacred theology’, as Vatican II urged?
Only if one disparages modern biblical scholarship and defends
‘the centrality of premodern exegetical emphases’, fondly recall-
ing the work of the Pontifical Biblical Commission from 1909 as
‘a particular version’ of modern methods (Ayres, p. 37), and urg-
ing integral, spiritual reading as taught by Brevard Childs and de
Lubac (Matthew Levering). Not Scripture but Vatican docu-
ments are the primary text of Catholic theology, and the chapter
on Scripture itself is devoted to a Vatican document, Dei Verbum.
Aquinas held that ‘the act of the believer does not terminate in
the enuntiable but in the thing’ (S. Th. II–II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2), but
here all paths lead to some Roman document and terminate there.
Thus Mary Healy parses Vatican II on inspiration and inerrancy
and makes much of Benedict XVI’s apostolic exhortation Verbum
Domini (2010), before urging a more self-consciously theological
exegesis, modelled on the Fathers. The Handbook’s one-page
‘Scripture Index’, which gives only the titles of the biblical books,
is very thin for a thousand-page volume on theology. As the doors
softly close on all the insights generated by engagement with real

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biblical scholarship, Catholic theology is ushered into a hermen-

eutical dead end that depletes every theme taken up.
The flat list of magisterial documents could give the impression
(welcome to the SSPX and right-wing Catholics whose once mar-
ginal rants are now entering the theological mainstream) that
such items as Mirari vos, Quanta cura, Diuturnum illud (all world-
ly power derives from God), and Mortalium animos (dangers of
ecumenism) are on the same level of authority, continuing rele-
vance, and centrality as more recent documents that were thought
to have left them far behind. The omission of Paul VI’s
Populorum progressio and Octagesima adveniens and Pope
Francis’s Evangelii gaudium chimes with the general neglect of
Catholic social teaching. The Catechism is treated throughout as a
supreme reference, with no discussion of its degree of authority
or its limitations. Aquinas is discussed on at least 132 pages, in a
bid to give him back the central place from which Vatican II dis-
lodged him. That choice is justified by papal documents dating
from 1879, 1914, and 1923, the latter two producing Freudian
typos: ‘Doctoris angelis’ for angelici (pp. xxv, 658, 958) and
‘Studiorem ducem’ for Studiorum (pp. xxv, 656, 958). The title of
Denzinger is also graced with a typo, and the Freudian imp has a
short way with Modernists: ‘Albert’ Loisy (p. 53) and George
‘Tyrell’ (p. 654).
The essays on fundamental theology leave the hermeneutical
options of the volume unclarified. Lewis Ayres emphasizes the re-
ligious vocation of theology: ‘through this thinking we advance
towards one who reveals himself as transcendent, mysterious, and
glorious beyond our comprehension’ (p. 6), and under the head-
ing of ‘speculation’ he talks mostly about the use of ‘analogy’ and
‘arguments from fittingness’, all of which is redolent of Radical
Orthodoxy’s neo-medievalism. His reassurance that
‘engagements with new fields of human thought is a good’ is im-
mediately accompanied with ‘anxiety that the real newness we
seek be obscured’, i.e. ‘the radical nature of God’s work in Christ’
(p. 27). This note of anxiety recurs throughout the volume, per-
haps reflecting the clamp-down of Ad tuendam fidem (1998).
Philosopher William Desmond is summoned to give analogy a
boost. He admits that analogy tends to weaken or even disappear
in modern forms of reason (p. 78), but nonetheless attempts to re-
store its centrality by the claim that Romanticism harbours ‘a se-
cret employment of analogical thinking’ (p. 80) and that Kant and
Hegel are entangled with analogy too. Bal
azs Mezei’s Thomistic
defence of reason ignores the philosophical pluralism blessed by
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John Paul II in Fides et ratio (1998). The authors match Radical

Orthodoxy in assurance if not in flamboyancy, apparently believ-
ing that their drab brand of Thomism is the ‘cutting edge’. Thus
Francesca Aran Murphy claims that ‘Garrigou’s philosophical
writings are a Thomistic analogue to Edmund Husserl’s Logical
Investigations’ (p. 654).
The sections on dogmatic, sacramental, and moral theology do
not venture any ‘cutting edge’ speculation, and it is hard to find
much in them that could not have been written fifty years ago. At
least we are spared the bad speculation that has been rife, and the
noise of shrill polemics. John McDade, after a nihilistic start—
‘What is the world for, the young Condren wonders, if not to im-
molate itself before the infinite holiness of God?’ (p. 98)—draws
on G. M. Hopkins to imagine creation as a drop of blood pressed
from the ‘stress of selving in God’ (p. 99), and makes the most of
Aquinas’s grounding of creation in the intra-Trinitarian proces-
sions. Without this Trinitarian reference creation tends to be
understood in a deist way, he thinks. Yet the mature Aquinas dis-
cusses creation with only slight Trinitarian reference, which
allows him to share with Jews and Muslims a theological vision of
creation in the second book of the Summa contra gentiles, leaving
the Trinity to the fourth. McDade finds more substantiation in
Balthasar’s vision, wherein God ‘lets go of his divinity and, in
this sense, manifests a (divine) god-lessness (of love, of course)’
(quoted, p. 116), yet he respects Rahner’s rejection of such talk
and acclaims him as ‘a great interlocutor with Augustine . . . and
Aquinas’ (p. 121).
Covering the same topics, Thomas G. Weinandy finds the
philosophical foundation of creation in God as pure act of being
and the doctrinal foundation in the persons of the Trinity as sub-
sistent relations that are also pure act. But it would be more
Thomistic to find the doctrinal foundation in the divine attrib-
utes. Emmanuel Durand highlights ‘Aquinas’s Decisive
Contribution’ on the Trinity (p. 156), but admits that such specu-
lation is ‘on ice’ in the thought of Barth and Rahner. The unease
of theologians with natural theology is seen in his remark that
‘every approach to God begins with revelation’ (p. 156), which
forgets Thomas’s rehearsal of Aristotle’s proofs for God.
Paul McPartlan refers to Scripture only as confirming the
Catechism’s teaching on the four marks of the Church, etc.
Nicholas E. Lombardo tells us that Catholic theology has made
‘very significant progress’ on original sin, but refers only to
Vatican documents. Daniel Keating’s essay on mission again
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follows the development of thinking in papal and concil-

iar documents.
The essays on feminist theology, Liberation Theology (focused
on Vatican documents about it), Asian and African theology, ecu-
menism, and interreligious dialogue treat these topics as if they
were marginal and experimental enterprises to be viewed with
caution. Yet each of these names a complex field of inquiry that
has transformed the landscape of theological thought. Danielle
Nussberger celebrates very mild work by women on such topics
as the Trinity, Mary, and the saints, and glances away from sharp
feminist critiques of church tradition and structures. Curiously,
several of the feminist theologians she cites are not
Roman Catholic.
On ecumenism, Paul D. Murray makes much of obstacles pre-
sented by women’s ordination and ‘the divergent formal policy
concerning people of homosexual orientation’ (p. 906, also pp.
914–15). He claims that ecumenism today is marked by ‘a wide-
spread sense of tiredness, disappointment, and even disinterest-
edness’ (p. 914), but urges that the churches continue to learn
from one another. How little has been learned from the
Lutheran–Catholic dialogue is seen in the fact that ‘Grace and
Justification’ are treated under the rubric of moral theology (sum-
marizing Catechism, Trent, Augustine, Aquinas, Rahner), be-
cause that is where Aquinas located them, even though Protestant
and much Catholic theology have followed Augustine for the last
half-millennium in giving them doctrinal centrality.
Peter Joseph Fritz on the Catholic reception of Heidegger cau-
tions against the enthusiasm of Bernhard Welte and the early
Jean-Luc Marion (who in fact was closer to Balthasar), and lauds
Balthasar’s ‘defence of the metaphysical tradition . . . in oppos-
ition to Heidegger’s dismissal of all of it except for H€ olderlin and
Eckhart’ (p. 857). In fact, Heidegger devoted most of his teaching
to depth-readings of the metaphysical tradition and did not class
H€ olderlin and Eckhart as metaphysicians. Again, defensive anx-
iety prevails.
The guild of Catholic moral theologians is slighted (no
McCormack, Curran, Keenan, Fuchs, Auer, etc.), and we get lit-
tle sense of the critical acuity of this discipline, as shaped by tra-
ditions of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries at a time when
Thomism was in abeyance. In close interaction with the accom-
modations of pastoral theology (a discipline not discussed in the
Handbook) moral theology in the tradition of Liguori is upsetting
for neat metaphysical orderings of moral experience. The bland
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metaphysics of virtue and natural law stumbles when faced with

thorny topics such as artificial contraception. Natural family
planning is deemed good in that it demands the cooperation of
both spouses and implies a discipline of chastity (pp. 431–2)—a
vain effort to soften the biology-based prescription that every
sexual act must remain open to the transmission of life.
The historical essays are the most interesting in the volume,
even if they break its frame and even if their bearing on contem-
porary theology is unclear. They include Wayne Hankey on
Pseudo-Dionysian traditions, Rik Van Nieuwenhove on piety
from Ruusbroec to B
erulle, Trent Pomplun on early modern the-
ology, and of course essays on Aquinas (of whom we can never
get enough), notably John T. Slotemaker and Ueli Zahnd on his
shift of focus from the Scriptum in Sententias to the Summa
Theologiae, which reminds us what a creative and revolutionary
figure he was. Declan Marmion on transcendental Thomisms
might have further illustrated this, but what he says of Joseph
Kleutgen’s influence on Vatican I and Aeterni Patris, Joseph
Mar
echal’s demonstration, against Kant, that the mind implicitly
affirms absolute Being, and Karl Rahner’s stress on ‘the implicit
affirmation of God in every act of judgement’ (p. 710) unfortu-
nately leaves the impression that this inspiring movement is a
spent force. Gabriel Flynn claims that Blondel moved ressource-
ment thinkers to overcome the ‘rupture between theology and life’
(p. 685). Triumphant at the Council, what is the present impact
of this movement? Has its ‘revitalization of the models of the
Church as People of God and as communio’ (p. 697) met contem-
porary needs and questions?
Gavin D’Costa treats common perceptions of Vatican II as lib-
eral distortions and reads its texts restrictively, giving precedence
to post-conciliar Vatican ‘clarification’ (p. 784) in documents such
as Apostolos Suos (1998), one of a series that diminish the theo-
logical standing of episcopal conferences. Conciliar innovations
are presented as ‘development of the teaching of Vatican I’ (p.
785); Lumen Gentium on the infallibility of the faithful cannot
mean that ‘the faithful’s acceptance of a teaching in an actual cri-
terion for authentic teaching’ (p. 785), so the non-reception of
Humanae vitae (p. 796) has no theological significance. The
‘debate about whether other religions are “salvific means” was
addressed by the CDF’s Dominus Iesus’ (p. 786), which plays
down John Paul II’s generous vision. Again, ‘the affirmation of
Judaism in Lumen gentium and Nostra aetate needs to be balanced:
Israel’s Scriptures were inspired in so much as they point to
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Christ as their fulfilment’ (p. 788), as Benedict XVI’s revision of

the traditional Good Friday prayers in the restored 1962 liturgy
indicates. ‘Middle-class Catholics were mobilised’ by Vatican II,
but ‘forty years later these groups . . . were leaving the Church’
(p. 792). The ‘discontinuity’ thesis is attributed not to Lefebvrite
nay-sayers but to liberals and the Concilium journal, as well as to
the history of Vatican II edited by Giuseppe Alberigo. D’Costa
cites Cardinal Ruini’s absurd comparison of this work with Paolo
Sarpi’s Istoria del Concilio Tridentino, helpfully volunteering the
information that ‘Sarpi was placed on the Index of Forbidden
Books’ (p. 797). Roma locuta est! The Bologna historians’ presen-
tation of the Council as ‘an “event” that signalled a paradigm
change’ (p. 792) is rejected in favour of the disillusionment of
Ratzinger, de Lubac, Maritain, Dani
elou, Balthasar, and Dulles.
D’Costa promotes doubt about the Council rather than expand-
ing its positive vision or what Paul VI called, on more than a hun-
dred occasions, its ‘spirit’. The note of anxiety and melancholy in
this Handbook finds its consummate expression here.
In place of vibrant dialogue with modern pluralistic literary,
philosophical, or religious culture, the Handbook offers an
inward-looking rehearsal of Vatican fears. Published in the sev-
enth year of Francis’s pontificate it bears not the slightest trace of
his influence, and some contributors have elsewhere accused him
of promoting confusion, or what Weinandy calls ‘doctrinal and
moral chaos’ and a ‘schismatic element as the new “paradigm” for
the future Church’ (First Things, 7 March 2019; National
Catholic Register blog, 7 October 2019). That Vatican II provides
the seminal inspiration and the theological framework for
Francis’s apostolate, and that he in turn may give a new lease of
life to the exploratory and dialogical Catholic theology born of
the Council, are possibilities not contemplated in this Handbook.

doi: 10.1093/jts/flaa033 JOSEPH S. O’LEARY

Tokyo, Japan
josephsoleary@hotmail.com