DOI:10.1111/j.1741-2005.2006.00137.

Reviews

INTRODUCTION TO THE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE OF THOMAS AQUINAS BY

JOHN OF ST. THOMAS, translated and introduced by Ralph McInerny,
St. Augustine’s Press, South Bend, Indiana, 2004, Pp x+182, $27.00 hbk.

AQUINAS’S SUMMA: BACKGROUND, STRUCTURE & RECEPTION BY JEAN-

PIERRE TORRELL, O.P., translated by Benedict M. Guevin, O.S.B., The Catholic
University of America Press, Washington D.C., 2005, Pp x+156, $17.95 pbk.

Introductions to the Summa Theologiae are most successful when they recognise
that St. Thomas’s desire to offer a brief and clear introduction for beginners in
sacra doctrina is qualified ‘. . . in as far as the matter allows’ (ST Prooemium).
Thus multiplication of unnecessary material and repetition is to be avoided and
likewise the order of instruction is to be followed; nevertheless, one who ap-
proaches the Summa will not find thoroughness and completeness sacrificed for
pedagogical utility. A good introduction to the Summa then will, whilst not nec-
essarily covering all the things one needs to acquire to understand the Summa, at
least cover some of them, without at the same time inhibiting the acquisition of
the rest of the material one needs to master. Of the two books to be considered
here, McInerny’s succeeds in this task whilst Torrell’s does not.
McInerny’s book is a translation of an essay by John of St. Thomas written to
explain the order and connections of all the material in the Summa Theologiae.
Collected together with two other essays, it formed an extended introduction to the
same author’s Cursus Theologicus. Here McInerny presents it on its own, again
to help explain the order of material in the Summa, though one also suspects that
if in addition to its usefulness for understanding the Summa, a reader also felt
moved to consider John of St. Thomas’s further work, the translator would not
be distressed.
The book is divided into two parts; the first considers why there are three parts
to the Summa and how the individual treatises in each part are related. The second
part looks at the three parts of the Summa in more detail. All the major topics
of the Summa are considered and reading it one acquires a good overview of
the work as a whole. Most likely to prove surprising to today’s reader is John
of St. Thomas’s division of the Summa into God considered in himself (Ia Q2-
43) and God’s causal activity distinguished as efficient (Ia Q44-119), final (IaIIae
and IIaIIae) and redemptive (IIIa). However, since this model is compatible with
Chenu’s exitus-reditus schema, it is unlikely to prove objectionable. Insofar as
the book only intends to set forth the order and connections of the material in
the Summa, it succeeds in its objective and does so without prejudice to any
further material the student will need to master. Indeed McInerny’s comment that
the Summa ‘. . . was written for theological, though not philosophical, beginners’
(p. x) is a recognition both that material other than this book will need to be
acquired and a suggestion of what else will have to be included in that material.
On these grounds then the book fulfils the requirements of an introduction and is
to be recommended.
Torrell’s book is the more ambitious of the two. Not limiting itself to a discus-
sion of the Summa’s structure and order, it also attempts to situate it in ‘. . . its
historical, literary, and doctrinal settings’ (p. ix). Beginning with a brief account


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of St. Thomas’s life, it then offers two chapters on the structure of the Summa. A
fourth chapter discusses various types of medieval literature, relates the Summa
to them and considers some of Thomas’s sources. The last two chapters dis-
cuss the history of the Summa from the death of St Thomas to the present
day.
Whilst there is much to admire in Torrell’s book – indeed all the chapters con-
tain useful information – nevertheless on certain points of detail his explanations
are inadequate. For example how does Thomas’s ‘strong personality’ (p. x) bring
unity to his sources, and what type of claim is being made here? What criteria
are being used to determine the importance of the sources? Hence, why is it that
Thomas only ‘discretely disagrees’ (p. 74) with Augustine on occasion but does
not ‘. . . hesitate to depart from Aristotle when he deemed it necessary’ (p. 76)?
It might be that Thomas is more the Augustinian than the Aristotelian but that
claim needs substantiation. Specifically, it needs to consider work done in the
English speaking tradition (O’Callaghan, Klima and Haldane for example) on the
decidedly non-Augustinian character of Thomas’s epistemology and its role in
Thomas’s semantic theory.
However, Torrell’s fundamental error stems from his assessment of the role of
philosophy in the Summa. I want to make four comments: Firstly, why is it that
knowledge of the living God of the Bible ‘. . . is not attained until he has been
understood as a trinity of persons’ (p. 21) ? The thing to which ‘the living God
of the Bible’ refers is the same thing as is investigated by reason alone and since
sacra doctrina includes within itself those truths about God accessible to reason
alone and is used by Thomas interchangeably with sacra scriptura (ST Ia Q1
art 8), there is no need to limit knowledge about the living God of the Bible to
understanding him as a trinity of persons. Secondly Torrell’s deist/living God of
the Bible contrast is ill-judged. It seems to identify a philosophical account of
God with ‘deist philosophers’ (p. 21). However, no scholar investigating those
things that can be known about God by the use of reason alone thereby takes
a deist position in an objectionable sense. Rather the objectionable character
of deism depends on its limitation of God’s involvement in the world, a posi-
tion no Thomist qua Thomist, whether of a philosophical persuasion or not, can
adopt.
Thirdly since sacra doctrina is true, arguments offered against it cannot be
demonstrative (ST Ia Q1 art 8), and its claims then cannot be incoherent or else
in principle contrary demonstrations would be possible. One way of showing that
a claim is not incoherent is to try to demonstrate its truth, as Thomas does for
example in the Five Ways and which, if successful, negates the charge of inco-
herence. Another way is to offer support for one’s view by refuting the arguments
offered against it. However, in both cases philosophical reflection is required and
in neither case is the character of sacra doctrina negated. As Thomas describes
sacra doctrina (ST Ia Q1 art 8), it is philosophically robust enough to withstand
that form of assessment.
Fourthly Torrell frequently criticises what he terms a ‘deductive method’ for
theology (p 51–2, 102, 113), preferring instead an ostensive one. The derivation
of the general resurrection from Christ’s resurrection in ST Ia Q1 art 8 is cited as
an example of this ostensive method (p. 52) and a correlation is made between
ostensive theology and the Latin term ‘ostendere’ (p. 51). It is not obvious what
Torrell has in mind here but if the intention is to use a derivative of ostendere to
draw a distinction between deductive and ostensive methods, the passage quoted
does not support it. There Thomas compares other sciences and sacra doctrina.
No science proves its own principles, rather it argues from these principles to
other matters in the same science and sacra doctrina is said to be no different.
However, given that Thomas uses ‘ostendendum’ to describe the derivation of
conclusions both in the other sciences and in the science of sacra doctrina, then


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since the other sciences will include demonstrations within their derivation of
conclusions, the ostendere derivative must include demonstrations within its in-
tension. Moreover, since demonstrations are types of deductions, then deductions
are included within the ostendere derivative a fortiori. That being the case the
passage cannot distinguish a deductive method from an ostensive one but only as
one type of ostensive method.
To get the best from Torrell’s book one needs to ignore what he says about
philosophy in the Summa and matters related to that. To the extent that the book
is wrong on the role of philosophy in the Summa, it inhibits the reader from
mastering the material they need to acquire and as such fails as an introduction.

DOMINIC RYAN OP

SCATTERING THE SEED: A GUIDE THROUGH BALTHASAR’S EARLY WRIT-

INGS ON PHILOSOPHY AND THE ARTS by Aidan Nichols OP, T & T Clark ,
London, 2006, Pp. vii + 266, £60 hbk.

In 1955 Hans Urs von Balthasar considered all of his writing to date (with the
exception of his compilations of Augustine) ‘as an attempt not to underestimate
the utterly mysterious step that revelation takes beyond the eschatology of the
Old Covenant (which must be understood prophetically!) into the eschatology of
the New and eternal Covenant’ (My Word in Retrospect, p. 25). Nichols here
turns to Balthasar’s writings on philosophy and the arts from 1925-1946, thereby
shedding light on this early, all-consuming theme of eschatology. The principal
appeal of this volume for an English-language audience lies in its summation
of untranslated and often ignored material. Eight of the thirteen chapters, for
instance, painstakingly present the lineaments of a study on eschatology many
Germans consider unreadable, viz., the three-volume Apocalypse of the German
Soul (1937-1939). Anyone unwilling or unable to work through this text in partic-
ular will highly prize Nichols’s latest. Surreptitiously, the lack of existing English
translations permits Nichols’s humour and clear prose to shine more evidently
than in previous volumes where he was perhaps too reliant upon bulk-quotations.
This makes wading through the murkiness of early balthasariana more enjoyable,
even if the reader is confused at times – as when reading Balthasar – just whose
voice one is attending to.
Chapters one (pp. 1–8), two (pp. 9–15), and three (pp. 17–32) summarize single
essays beginning with Balthasar’s first publication at the age of 20, The Unfolding
of the Musical Idea: Attempt at a Synthesis of Music (1925). It is often cited for its
use early use of Gestalt theory so central to his later Christology. Complementary
to Nichols’s analysis here are two articles by Francesca Aran Murphy, ‘The Sound
of the Analogia Entis’, New Blackfriars 74 (1993), pp. 508–521, 557–565. Next,
the key to ‘Art and Religion’ (1927) is shown to be the word ‘Hingabe’, for it
shows the twofold nature of ‘surrender’ to objectivity of the Absolute and the
beautiful; united through the subject’s response, together they most fully enliven
human subjectivity and so creativity. Lastly, Nichols interprets ‘The Fathers, the
Scholastics, and Ourselves’ (1939) as Balthasar’s via media between the excesses
of the nouvelle théologie and the Thomism of the strict observance on the subject
of which epoch stood most normatively for Catholic theology. His answer: no
epoch of the Church entirely trumps another, so let us take what is best, even
from modernity, in order to express truth more fully.
Chapter four (pp. 33–44) introduces Apocalypse of the German Soul. According
to Balthasar, ‘Eschatology can be defined as a teaching about the relation of
the soul to its eternal destiny, whose attainment (fulfilment, assimilation) is its
apocalypse’ (Apokalypse I, p. 4; Nichols, p. 36). He uncovers the often unstated


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‘apocalypses’ of his interlocutors in order to judge their visions according to the

degree that they remain open, or even anticipate, Christian teachings concerning
the eschaton.
Chapters five (pp. 45–67), six (pp. 69–108), and seven (pp. 109–132) cover
volume one of Apocalypse. Enter the Prometheans: Lessing, Hamann, Herder,
Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Novalis, Hölderlin, Goethe, Jean Paul, Hegel,
Hebbel, Wagner, and an assortment of lesser playwrights and literati. Balthasar
ends this volume with a chapter entitled ‘The Dual of the Idea’. In what Nichols
calls a ‘daring comparison’, Balthasar dubs the dualists Nietzsche and Kierkegaard
‘two flames’ and, like the two eschatological witness of the Johannine Apocalypse,
‘he hails them as ‘judges of time’, two witnesses to the Last Day’ (p. 129). Also
called ‘Dionysus and the Crucified’, they represent the two ultimate options for
the human soul.
Chapter eight (pp. 133–178) is a compendium of volume two, subtitled ‘Un-
der the Sign of Nietzsche’. This ‘sign’ stands generally for Lebensphilosophie,
hence the inclusion of Henri Bergson amongst the Germanophone literature. Un-
fortunately Nichols/Balthasar perpetuates the rumour that Bergson underwent a
death-bed conversion to Catholicism (p. 135). (Truth be told, he died not long
after marching onto the streets of Paris to register himself a Jew, choosing the
public indignity of suffering with his people over his attraction to Catholicism.)
From Bergson, Balthasar assesses Ludwig Klages, theoretician of the Narcissus-
problem, along with George, Beer-Hofmann, Spitteler, Keyserling, Rilke (only
partially in the world of Lebensphilosophie), and most importantly Nietzsche and
Dostoevsky. Balthasar plays Nietzsche and Dostoevsky off against one another in
order to permit one truth to emerge: ‘it is their willingness, in a situation which
may broadly be termed “mystical”, to ask after the essence of love’, despite their
failures to allow love its full flowering (p. 173).
Chapters nine (pp. 179–202), ten (pp. 203–229), and eleven (pp. 231–244) pol-
ish off volume three, subtitled ‘The Divinization of Death’. After evaluating a
series of War Poets for their reactions to the judgment of humanity exercised
in the Great War, we get Balthasar’s depiction of Scheler, the fallen-angel of
1920s European Catholicism. Heidegger and Rilke are then paired based upon an
early claim by the former that the Duino Elegies ‘put into poetic form the same
thought that I have laid out in my writings’ (p. 203). Rilke is judged the sounder
visionary due to his coupling of lamentation with song, suffering with joy in the
ambiguity of poetic form. Yet the paradoxical unity of life and death evident in
both Heidegger and Rilke’s work cannot lead to the Christological mystery: in
Christ alone the eschaton is realized (p. 228). Karl Barth’s recovery of Christocen-
tricity provides Balthasar with this much-needed graced transition. Penultimately,
Balthasar reflects on the ‘mid-point’ of history, the Christ-event, in terms of myth,
utopia, and kairos. In Christ, myth became fact, and the ascending history of man
meets the descending history of God in a truly utopian fulfilment of time. Impor-
tantly, readers are alerted to the fundamental thought-form guiding this study by
Balthasar: the Thomistic ‘real distinction’ between essence and existence (p. 241).
Finally, invoking the hermeneutical spiral and anticipation of the beatific vision,
Nichols/Balthasar ends Apocalypse with words of the angel from Hofmannsthal’s
‘Kleine Welttheater’: ‘Up then! Go before the Master’s face!/Prepare yourselves
for enormous light’ (p. 244).
Chapter twelve (pp. 245–252) moves to an essay published in 1946 entitled
‘On the Tasks of Catholic Philosophy in our Time’. Nichols hopes that this chap-
ter will serve as a transition piece to his forthcoming fifth and final volume in
his ‘Introduction to Hans Urs von Balthasar’ series. Like the essay examined in
chapter two, this essay belongs to the period dominated by la nouvelle théologie.
It is interpreted as Balthasar’s answer to Labourdette’s worries about the under-
mining of Scholasticism via overly Hegelian readings of patristic theologians.


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Corroborating the work of Peter Henrici SJ, Nichols argues for the primacy of
Aquinas’s influence on the paradox Balthasar identifies as central to a balanced
understanding of the relationship of nature to grace: ‘the natural desire for the
vision of God belongs to a spiritual nature created by God which, without be-
ing able to make any claim to grace, is ordered to a uniquely supernatural end
unattainable, however, except by God’s free gift’ (p. 251).
Chapter thirteen (pp. 253–254) remains true to its title; it is ‘A Very Summary
Conclusion’. We are told that perhaps the entirety of the study furnishes evidence
for Balthasar’s conviction that the human ‘measure’ so valued by modernity ‘has
collapsed’. The best paganism, to the contrary, ‘always knew that man was “gir-
dled by an ultimate measure that gives him his being and his spirit” [Balthasar]. I
am thought, therefore I am’ (p. 253). Given that Baader’s anti-Cartesian polemic
(cogitor ergo sum) is only now being rediscovered lends weight to Nichols’s
judgment that Balthasar indeed treaded presciently in his early work (cf. p. vii).
English-speaking Balthasar enthusiasts owe Nichols a debt of gratitude, for as-
suredly he has granted access to material that would otherwise have sat heavily,
and ever-so-quietly, upon library shelves.

CYRUS P. OLSEN

SEXUAL VIOLATION IN THE HEBREW BIBLE: A MULTI-METHODOLOGICAL

STUDY OF GENESIS 34 AND 2 SAMUEL 13 by Mary Anna Bader [Studies in
Biblical Literature vol. 87], Peter Lang, New York/Oxford, 2006, Pp. x + 206,
£45 hbk.

In the experiences of Dinah (Genesis 34) and of Tamar (2 Samuel 13) the Hebrew
Bible records two instances in which a young, unmarried woman was violated
and subsequently the man who had violated her was killed. Mary Anna Bader ad-
dresses the broader parallels between the two accounts, observing that the women
are daughters of patriarchs, Jacob and David, and that, contrary to modern ex-
pectations, it is not the women’s fathers but their maternal brothers who killed
the violators. Previously the two histories have been paired in just two essays,
by Yair Zaikovith (1985) and David Noel Freedman (1990); a full study of these
two accounts examining their affinities and diction is new.
Synopses of the two accounts may be useful at this point. Dinah, the daughter
of Leah and Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land. Shechem saw her
and violated her. He desired to marry her, and his father Hamor, the local ruler,
went with him to Jacob and his sons to seek to arrange this. Jacob’s sons, angered
because their sister had been violated, feigned agreement, requiring Shechem and
all the men of the city to be circumcised. Shechem and Hamor persuaded the
men to agree, urging that by intermarrying they would own Israel’s possessions.
When the men were recovering from their circumcisions, however, Simeon and
Levi, Dinah’s maternal brothers, slew Shechem and Hamor and took Dinah from
the city; the other brothers killed the rest of the men in the city. The account
concludes with Jacob rebuking his sons for endangering the entire extended family
by exposing them to reprisal from the regional peoples, and his sons countering
that they could not allow their sister to be used as a whore.
Tamar, the daughter of David and Maacah (cf. 2 Samuel 3:3 and 2 Samuel
13:1), was beautiful. Her half-brother Amnon desired her, and his cousin Jonadab
devised a ruse for trapping her: Amnon told his father that he was ill and asked
that his sister Tamar be sent to him to bake bread for him to strengthen him.
Innocently David and Tamar complied, but Amnon declared his desire for Tamar
when they were alone. She pleaded with him to ask their father for her and
repeatedly she resisted Amnon, but he was stronger and overpowered and violated


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her. Afterwards, his lust changed to hatred and he had his servant send her out of
the house. Distraught, Tamar encountered her brother Absalom, who was angered.
David also was angry, but evidently did not punish Amnon. Two years later
Absalom arranged the death of Amnon to punish him for having violated their
sister.
The main contribution of Bader’s volume is its first chapter, her analysis of three
terms critical not only to analysis of the two biblical accounts which are the focus
of the book, but to the broader subject indicated in its main title, namely the nature
of sexual violation and the responses to it as indicated in the Hebrew Bible. Bader
argues convincingly that ‘anah is well translated ‘violate, dishonour.’ While the
word’s meanings include rape, as in the case of Tamar, it evidently also includes
illicit sexual congress, even when consensual, as in Deut. 22:24. The thirteen
passages using this verb in contexts involving sexual relations with a woman are
analyzed by Bader; in only eight does the word mean ‘rape’: Deut. 22:28-29;
Judges 19:24, 20:5; 2 Samuel 13:12, 14, 22, 32; Lam. 5:11. Bader convincingly
analyzes Deut. 22:28-29 as concerning rape, refuting the views of Freedman and
Lyn Bechtel on this score (p. 12). Other instances of this verb include Ezekiel’s
declaration that men have ‘violated’ women by having intercourse with them
during their menses (Ezek. 22:10-11). Significantly, because of the range of ways
that sexual intercourse can constitute ‘violation’, the term by itself does not imply
rape and thus does not indicate whether Dinah consented to the violation or was
a victim of force.
The point is timely for, since 1982, biblical scholarship has ‘challenged’ the
‘more traditional interpretation of Gen 34 as an instance of rape’ (p. 10). Bechtel
and Ralph W. Klein in particular have held that, because Dinah was interested
in meeting the women of the land (Gen. 34:1), she must have been ‘receptive’
to Shechem the Hivite. Bader astutely doubts that this is ‘either a logical or a
textually based conclusion’ (p. 11, n. 8). Commendably, she holds to the evidence
and concludes that the text appears ambiguous on the issue of whether Dinah was
raped or a willing partner.
The other two Hebrew terms Bader analyzes systematically are nebalah, which
Bader deems ‘heinous offence,’ and cherpah, which she renders ‘disgrace.’ Other
lexical comparisons are included throughout the book. For instance, an intriguing
dictional parallel is adduced by Bader between the account in Judges 19 and the
account of Tamar: The Benjaminite householder ‘overpowered’ his concubine and
‘made her go out’ to the lecherous men of the city whose gang-rape caused the
woman’s death, and Amnon is reported to have ‘overpowered’ Tamar and then,
after raping her, had his servant ‘make her go out’ of his house (vv. 11, 18;
pp. 20–21).
The volume’s other two chapters analyse the two biblical accounts, first es-
tablishing a fitting English translation and then giving ‘narrative close readings’
focused on rhetoric and characterization (p. 81). A specific focus is to examine
how the narrators developed the characters (p. 85). Bader engages much pertinent
scholarship including the work of Robert Alter, Mieke Bal, James Barr, Adele
Berlin, Shimon Bar Efrat, Phyllis Trible, and Gordon Wenham. The strength of
these two chapters is their careful textual notes: each chapter opens with Bader’s
translation of the account, abundantly annotated to show Hebrew, Greek, Syriac,
and numerous other variants and their implications. For instance, the order of
words in Gen. 34:13 may be more correct in the Syriac than in the Masoretic
text (p. 88), and a possible omission in 2 Samuel 13:21 (concerning David’s
motivation) may be due to eye-skip (p. 129).
A notable aspect of Bader’s analysis is her attention to how word-echo can nu-
ance meaning. For instance, she shows how the same term for ‘strong’ is used first
in the statement that Amnon was stronger than Tamar (v. 14) and then reprised
when Absalom commands his servants to be strong (v. 28) and slay Amnon


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(pp. 158–59). Implicitly, the echoed word suggests the justice of Absalom’s ret-
ribution.
Throughout the volume, Bader holds that the two biblical accounts indicate
‘different family dynamics than the legal material of the H[ebrew] B[ible] would
suggest’ (p. 75). The biblical authors devoted ‘inordinate time, space, and detail’
to the actions and motives of the sons, in Bader’s view, but ‘not . . . much time or
energy’ to ‘explaining the fathers’ reactions’ (p. 85, see also p. 171). The two ac-
counts perhaps ‘cast doubt’ on the honour of Jacob and David, ‘significant doubt’
on their abilities to manage their families (pp. 177–78). It would be interesting to
draw on the many other passages in Genesis which treat Jacob (Bader draws on
one such passage, pp. 65–66) and also the passages in Samuel which treat David
to see if the overall presentations of these men clarifies their actions in the two
chapters under discussion.
Hebrew narrative is laconic, and the order of actions and selection of details
recounted are always significant. Often Bader is sensitive to this, as when she
notes how each woman is initially presented. In a monographic study of the two
passages, however, one expects more of such analysis. For instance, the fact that
Hamor had sexual relations with Dinah (v. 2) before he is said to have loved her
(v. 3) and desired to marry her (v. 3) is a morally disordered sequence deserving
comment; it is surely a case of rhetoric indicating character. Similarly, although
Bader presents as positive the fact that Hamor was ‘cooperative with his son’
(p. 108), she neglects to note that this cooperation occurred only because he
shared his son’s immorality. Even if one wishes to prescind from moral comment
and simply state that Hamor shared his son’s inculturation, which was at odds
with the ‘socio-religious norms’ (e.g., p. 35) of Jacob’s household, the point would
have been worth making: to be cooperative in what is wrong is not a virtue.
Because the subject of biblical women who were violated is easily exploited
for ideological ends, it is important to note that Bader has conducted her study
fairly. Just treatment of men is shown, for instance, in her accurately identifying
the behaviour of Potiphar’s wife as ‘sexually harassing Joseph’ (p. 18). Only a
few passages are marred by an uncritical use of modern jargon. Referring to a
sentence that mentions only women as ‘gynecocentric’ and to another that makes
a man the grammatical subject as ‘androcentric’ (pp. 90, 91) adds very little. In
what sense were Jacob and his sons ‘vying for control of the young woman’
(p. 121)? It seems instead that Jacob considered Dinah to have taken herself out
of his control and he had decided it would be dangerous to his entire household
to try to recover her (Gen. 34:30).
More analysis of the presentation of the women in the narratives would be
welcome, both in the chapters on their histories and in the chapter of conclusions.
Certainly Bader’s study with its provision of well-annotated texts can facilitate
further research on the accounts and the women in them. A dictional element apt
for study is the use of the word ‘daughter’: Bader notes that Dinah’s brothers refer
to her as ‘our daughter’ and that Hamor refers to her as ‘your [plural] daughter’
when speaking to Jacob and his sons (pp. 120–22). Does the Hebrew Bible have
comparable uses of the word ‘daughter’ to describe a woman’s relationship to her
brothers? Further, it would be useful to consider the absence from the narratives
of the mothers, Leah and Maacah. Where Bader treats ‘the gaps’ in the biblical
accounts, they are always construed as concerning details of the actions of those
whose actions are described (e.g., p. 101).
Also, a critical contrast between the actions of Dinah and Tamar warrants
consideration: Dinah of her own free will chose to go outside her community to
visit the women of the land, and, whatever her intention, it was her own action
which made it possible for a foreign prince to violate her. The two laws Bader
adduces in her first chapter pertain to the presumed guilt of a woman who does
not cry out when accosted in the city and the presumed innocence of a woman


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who was accosted in the country, for perhaps she cried out but no one was there
to hear her (Deut.22:23-27; in either case the man is guilty). These laws imply
that a prudent woman would not go alone outside her community. Certainly later
commentators found Dinah’s walking abroad alone a significant error on Dinah’s
part (e.g., Albert the Great, Comm. Daniel 13.7). In contrast, Tamar was within
her own extended household, bringing bread to her half-brother at the request of
her father, and the prince who violated her was her own half-brother, who ignored
her pleas and physically forced her. Dinah was at least imprudent in putting herself
beyond the hearing of those in her household who could protect her, while Tamar
had cause to think she was safe.
Moving beyond the biblical text, the reception of the histories of these women
also invites analysis. An intriguing parallel between Tamar and Christ is perhaps
suggested in Lorenzo Lotto’s choir at Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo (1524-
1530). Types of Christ in this extensive iconographic program include Susanna and
Judith as well as Jonah and David. Although to date I know of no text explicating
Tamar as a type of Christ, at Bergamo Tamar and Absalom are depicted within a
prominent, entirely typological section of the choir, making it quite possible that
Tamar bringing bread to Amnon is a type of Christ about to be betrayed by Judas
who had partaken of the bread of the Last Supper.
Of lasting use in Bader’s well-indexed study are her analysis of critical terms
pertaining to violation/dishonour, heinous offence, and disgrace, for they help
elucidate not only the understanding in the Hebrew Bible of rape itself but also the
broader topic of sexual violation. Bader’s well-annotated texts and the gathering
together of pertinent scholarship will also stimulate further research on Tamar,
Dinah, and other biblical women.

CATHERINE BROWN TKACZ

FAITH AND SECULARISATION IN RELIGIOUS COLLEGES AND UNIVERSI-

TIES by James Arthur, Routledge, Abingdon, 2006, pp. xiv + 178. £75 hbk.

This is a book which asks awkward questions about the mission, history, and future
direction of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish centres of higher education. It details in
particular the response of Catholic and Protestant colleges in the second half of the
twentieth century to the forces of post-Enlightenment secularisation, where this is
understood as ‘pressures that attempt to remove religious authority and influence
over higher education’ and the steady ‘erosion of religious identity and mission
of religiously affiliated institutions’ (p.24). Its author draws upon a wide body of
research to examine the differing fate of tertiary colleges, the identity of which can
be classified as either ‘fundamentalist’, ‘orthodox’, possessing a ‘critical mass’ of
religious adherents, intentionally pluralist, or accidentally pluralist (pp. 30–31).
The study looks at curricula, governance, staffing, and student membership. What
lies behind the rhetoric of diversity and the high-sounding ideals of many mission
statements put out by universities and colleges in Europe and North America is
revealed as in large part a sorry tale of lost identity, of pluralist institutions that
are religious in little more than name only.
Different factors are identified to explain this process: the need to secure
adequate funding from secular sources; concerns for academic quality despite
the lack of hard evidence that secularization in fact enhances quality (p.73);
concerns for academic freedom from what was perceived as unwelcome con-
trol by external ecclesiastical bodies; the declining presence of religious sis-
ters and brothers as teachers or administrators within colleges founded by their
congregations; and beliefs about the virtues of a pluralist centre of higher ed-
ucation (p.36). James Arthur also notes, however, the resurgence of interest in


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‘orthodox’ and ‘critical mass’ institutions that refuse to separate faith from knowl-
edge, and which seek to ground appropriate academic freedoms within the frame-
work of authoritative traditions, teachings, and clerical structures. He examines
especially the attempts in the Catholic Church to renew the vision of John Henry
Newman’s Idea of a University as that has been re-articulated and developed
in the 1990 Vatican document Ex Corde Ecclesiae. It is clear that the author’s
sympathies lie with these attempts and with such ‘orthodox’ and ‘critical mass’
institutions.
Readers may question this account at several points: the diocesan hierarchy
and the Roman curia are described as ‘the Church’ (e.g. p.111), which appears
to confuse the part with the whole, even if we agree that they are parts with
a determining role in what counts as Catholic; and the ‘authoritative teaching’
or magisterium of the Church is assumed to be wholly external to the univer-
sity, something to which an institution adheres, or measures up to, rather than
something which it might help to construct. There is little sympathy for religious
orders (especially the Jesuits) as the bearers of distinctive theological traditions,
nor much consideration of how orthodox belief develops in part through disputed
questions. However, this reader, at least, is convinced by James Arthur’s view
that religiously affiliated institutions have a positive role to play in the future of
higher education and that it is ‘orthodox’ and ‘critical mass’ institutions which
will successfully play that role.

RICHARD FINN OP

THE WAYS OF JUDGMENT by Oliver O’Donovan, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids,

MI, 2005, Pp. 356, £19 hbk.

In The Desire of the Nations (CUP, 1993), Oliver O’Donovan defended the po-
litical and theological relevance of Christendom as the idea of a ‘professedly
Christian secular order’ (p.195). Even though that order was only imperfectly re-
alised during the Middle Ages it nonetheless came into being not by the Church’s
seizing alien power, ‘but by the alien power’s becoming attentive to the church’
(p.195). In Desire of the Nations the author outlined the shape of a Christian ‘po-
litical theology’ by showing how political concepts embedded within Jewish and
Christian speech about God’s redemptive action did once – and still should – gen-
erate definite expectations for political life. In the concluding pages of that book
O’Donovan assumed a further obligation: to set forth a Christian political ethics
whose agenda would be delivered by political, rather than theological, questions.
The Ways of Judgment fulfils that obligation masterfully.
True to its aim, the book begins from political practices (e.g. lawmaking, pun-
ishment, economic exchange) and proceeds to show how Christian theology illu-
mines their meaning more than do secular accounts. Turning over page after page
I felt as though I had entered into a vast laboratory where politics was the study
and where present and past events were the experiments I was being taught to
interpret. By careful and detailed analysis the author leads us to consider how the
U.N., the European Court at Strasbourg, and the problematic doctrine of ‘human
rights’ can best be interpreted, corrected, and, where necessary, defended in the
light of theological concepts and practices. His introduction makes clear the ur-
gency of this task: ‘Western civilization finds itself heir of political institutions
and traditions which it values without any clear idea why, or to what extent, it
values them. Faced with decisions about their future development it has no way
of telling what counts as improvement and what as subversion’ (p.xiii). Pushing
social theory beyond the tedium of ‘critique’ the author indulges in neither decon-
struction nor simple legitimisation but rather assumes the properly theological task


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of educating a people in the practical reasonableness required for their political

acts (cf. p.xv).
Based upon his 2003 University of Oxford Bampton Lectures the book contains
16 chapters, many of which are revisions of previous oral and written communica-
tions, and is divided between 3 parts. The first explores the nature of ‘judgment’
as the paradigmatic political act. It is an act of moral discrimination which ‘pro-
nounces upon a preceding or existing state of affairs to establish a new public
context’ (p.7). In its essence, political judgment is responsive to societal struc-
tures immanent within the order of creation; man does not invent society, nor is
human will the efficient cause of its coming into being. Rather, political judgment
responds to goods that include, but are not exhausted by, those routinely identi-
fied within popular legislatures and political assemblies. Christians must learn to
re-conceive the possibilities of politics ‘within a transcendent horizon’ (p.237).
This means political judgment must keep before it a range of goods that liberal
society typically relegates to the private and non-political. In the case of religion,
liberal society has too long acted like a clumsy judge who refuses the defence
an opportunity to call its own witnesses to the stand. On the author’s view, the
Natural Law, the teachings of the Church and the testimony of Holy Scripture
are all relevant witnesses that political judgment must take into account. Political
judgment is responsive in another sense too. If in essence it responds to goods
given within the natural and supernatural orders, in its form political judgment is
responsive to wrongs done. Echoing Romans 13, the author conceives the act of
judgment as a response to ‘injury to the public good’ (p.59). Political judgment
does not constitute society (as if anything but God could accomplish that!); it
simply defends it. O’Donovan calls this the ‘reactive principle’ and with it we
touch upon the anti-totalitarian impulse that has beaten all through the history of
Western politics.
In these chapters O’Donovan’s explorations are exciting, though exacting. He
puts great expectations on his readers and navigates us over a wide terrain. Yet for
all this, one wishes he would have done more with the other great political theme
in the New Testament, the Petrine. In 1 Peter 2 the apostle portrays government’s
task not only as being responsive to harm done but as actively praising those
who do good. Does this not add something to Paul’s vision of government? Or
is it simply a restatement? Perhaps this might have been made clearer for the
rest of us who have not spent as much time considering the political implications
of these texts. In any case, in the author’s view all human judgment, though
necessary, is provisional. Steering clear of both idealist and realist tendencies,
O’Donovan represents the Christian interpretation of the act of political judgment
as always standing under the final judgment of Christ. Our judgments anticipate
the judgment of God – echoing but never fully enacting the perfect justice which
faith apprehends and love calls us to imitate, however imperfectly, in this present
age (cf. p.27).
Part 2 describes in what sense political institutions are ‘representative’. With
repeated reference to the history of political philosophy and Ian Brownlie’s
Basic Documents in International Law (OUP, 2002) individual chapters, ‘Politi-
cal Authority’, ‘Representation’, ‘Legitimacy’, ‘The Powers of Government’ and
‘International Law’ lead us through a web of contemporary political institutions
and legal decisions to draw out the lines of argumentation whose intelligibility
can be grasped only, so the author contends, with reference to Christian theology.
Given the complexity of political realities, this is ambitious. One example illus-
trates the scope of the author’s élan. In his scintillating chapter ‘The Powers of
Government,’ O’Donovan tells us why the British Parliament decided to incorpo-
rate the European Convention of Human Rights within the framework of Scottish
and English law. He then goes on to explain how, unless we transcend the lim-
its which the early modern doctrine of the Three Powers (the tri-fold division


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of the branches of government into the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial)

imposed upon us, liberal democracies will continue to encourage an unhealthy
autonomy of the courts; and further, that this sickness, presently experienced
within Canada, is soon to spread unless the contagion is bottled – unless, in other
words, we recover what Christian societies have understood but secular ones do
not, namely – the significance of ‘the judicial character of all the powers of gov-
ernment’ (p.198). All this and more convincingly delivered within the space of
five pages. The book is packed. How good its arguments are will, in one way, be
determined by how clearly its explanations ring true for those who know what to
listen for.
The third Part identifies ‘communication’ as the clavis opening the door to
our understanding of social life. The climatic final four chapters describe hu-
man society as it exists before, after, and apart from, judgment (p.242). Al-
ready indicated in Part 1, judgment is but a moment in the life of social com-
munication. Even the judgment of God is provisional insofar as it is not the
last state. That belongs to happiness. And with the pilgrims of the Van Ey-
cks’ Adoration of the Lamb we too by God’s grace will experience the fullness
of sight in the Heavenly City (p.232). In other words, the Church’s hope for
heaven has implications for social theory. Even the distant view of Zion tells
us a lot about what London ought to look like. As O’Donovan claims, a soci-
ety which finds itself under the influence of the Church, the only truly catholic
community, ‘will be restrained from universalising its own local experiences and
perspectives’ thereby gaining for itself ‘a continual stimulus to reflect on the
meaning of its local traditions’ (p.291). The Church refuses society the indul-
gence of blind traditions. This includes, pertinently for us, the tradition of to-
tal criticism (of the Marxist, Feminist, or Postmodernist varieties), that tide of
disbelief that presently threatens to submerge the defending-walls of our social
institutions.
To sum up, the movement between the three Parts of the book goes something
like this: O’Donovan has led us through the two fundamental political acts of
judgment (Part 1) and representation (Part 2) out to the other side of temporal
social existence only to shine the light back into the cave (Part 3). Household
and city, the Church, the meaning and value of property, work, and Christian
conscience, are all looked back upon in the new vision afforded by the light of
the Gospel. After having passed through the ways of judgment, even our own
judgment, we are able to look upon the shape of social existence with the hope
of an eschatological vision but suffering from none of the idealist’s fever. What
do we find? Genuine sociality: constituted not by an absolute bestowal, as once
argued François Fénélon, nor by a simple exchange between persons, as today
John Milbank argues (pp. 245–46). Rather it is the holding together of common
goods; the social act of sharing goods material and immaterial ‘as a common
possession’ (p.244). Readers familiar with his Common Objects of Love: Moral
Reflection and the Shaping of Community (Eerdmans, 2002), or directly with De
Civitate Dei XIX, will find in these final chapters a stimulating reworking of this
central Augustinian theme.
The Ways of Judgment is the most recent instalment of a project which intends
to initiate an entire educated class into a forgotten tradition of Christian moral rea-
soning. If O’Donovan is correct, ‘Christendom’ is nothing other than the practical
political consequence of the Gospel’s proclamation. And it’s well worth reviving.
Christendom so understood can take on many forms. Its latent possibilities were
by no means exhausted during the millennium and a half during which it ani-
mated politics in Europe. Unlike many modernity critics, however, O’Donovan’s
best contribution may well be his refusal to allow our vision to be blurred by
the abstractions common to those who so often fail to attend to the realities they
wish to dismiss. As the author has modelled for years, the true vocation of the


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Christian intellectual ends neither at deconstruction nor at legitimisation but at the

recovery of sound vision. For in this and every age of present darkness the light
of the Gospel fails not to shine forth with all the resplendence of eternity, and
not the least through the structures of our political life. If only we would have
eyes to see.

RYAN TOPPING

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