While the adage “You can't judge a book from its cover” remains mostly true, sometimes a cover can reveal a book's content. Stephen Fields’ exceptionally erudite, albeit dense, theological treatise, Analogies of Transcendence: An Essay on Nature, Grace, and Modernity, is one such book. Concerned with the perennially thorny “nature-grace” problem within Catholic theology, its dust jacket shows The Ascension of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the Baroque masterpiece adorning the ceiling of St. Ignatius in Rome. From cover to cover, Fields’ “essay” is saturated by what might be termed a “Baroque spirit.”
As Fields correctly notes, the nature-grace problem lies in finding a conceptual way of understanding how a natural reality (nature) possesses a drive and direction toward a supernatural reality (grace) while maintaining a degree of autonomy. Catholic theologians, especially since Aquinas, have wrestled with this, each positing in their own distinctive, yet Thomistic way how humans possess a natural desire for a supernatural reality, aka the beatific vision.
After first “probing” how the “fracturing” of the post-Tridentine/Baroque harmony/synthesis of nature and grace devolved in modernity to a theory of “pure” nature, in which nature is divorced (nuptial images abound in this text) from the realm of grace, Fields then notes how it further devolved into “the dominant secularism” of today with all its moral ills (see 250 for a list). He next considers strategies of reunion attempted by late nineteenth–early twentieth European Catholic thinkers Möhler, Blondel, Seckler (via Schillebeeckx), and Rahner. Part I wraps up with Fields’ positive appraisal of John Paul's and Benedict XVI's efforts to remarry the two—nature and grace—in their papal encyclicals and other writings.
“Sacramental Causality,” part 2's sole chapter, reveals Fields’ solution to the Nature-Grace problematic: he proposes a creative formulation of the key Catholic principles of analogy and sacramentality. For this he turns not to Rahner's theological anthropology of the supernatural existential, which like many he finds problematic, but rather to Rahner's Realsymbol. Here Fields summarizes the earlier, excellent treatment from his 2000 monograph concerning the most underappreciated aspects of Rahner's theology: his theology of symbol. Adapting his fellow Jesuit Rahner's supposition that all modes of being are posited/expressed in an “other,” thus producing a kind of “reciprocal causality” (115), Fields develops a series of analogies along the lines of a neo-Aristotelian hylomorphism, in which a greater/prior reality gives “itself away” in another subsequent reality. That is, spirit is to matter as form is to nature as grace is to nature as redemption is to creation as sanctifying grace is to prevenient grace. “Nature might be termed grace's own other … by means of it, to become itself” (117). Thus, nature and grace are now brought into an “integrally distinct rather than equivocally disjoined” relationship for which a “pure” theology of nature cannot account. Space does not permit further elaboration of part 3 where Fields tests his sacramental analogies in a series of cases over three chapters: aesthetics and God's simplicity; an Ignatian-inspired understanding of God's relation to creation; and interreligious theology.
To his credit, Fields’ theology stands firmly within the Catholic theological tradition of making sacramentality and analogy foundational. At the same time, I find the “Baroque spirit” pervading his work, in terms of conceptualization, theological method, and writing style, substantially limits the efficacy of his project. The philosophical framework and method here is Baroque in its neo-Aristotelian a priori and syllogistic logic, metaphysics of substance, and causation theory—philosophical commitments few contemporary theologians ascribe. In keeping with that shortcoming, and like Baroque theology itself, the method here is analytical, abstract, formalistic, defensively apologetic, along with being neglectful of biblical traditions, historical analysis, and inculturated realities. And perhaps most importantly, Fields’ methodology is disconnected from real life pastoral concerns and ecclesial issues, considerations theologies of today must take into account. Such critiques remind me of what the French Dominicans at La Saulchior (Chenu, Congar, and Féret) found problematic in the prevailing Catholic theology of their day, which they labeled “Baroque.” Finally, like Baroque art, the writing here, while intended to transport readers into heavenly realms of theological thought, feels overly intricate, convoluted, and ornate; there is simply too much going on in the prose that overwhelms the reader. That, combined with an excess of subordinate clauses and the absence of flow between paragraphs, makes reading this text an arduous process. Yet, at the same time, the agenda of each chapter is clear, and the text is well indexed.
One would be hard pressed to put the text on a graduate, much less undergraduate, syllabus. Theological libraries should acquire a copy, while only interested academics and specialists in the field of theological anthropology may want to consider adding it to their personal collections.
