A convert from Lutheranism to Roman Catholicism, past president of the Academy of Catholic Theology, and currently professor of Christian theology at Duke Divinity School, Reinhard Hütter, with this collection of essays, confirms his status as a major scholar of Thomistic studies in the United States. For the most part consisting of previously published essays (mainly from The Thomist and Nova et Vetera), this book is more than another contribution to the recent resurgence in Aquinas scholarship. It boldly advocates the enduring value of Thomas Aquinas as a normative guide to theological wisdom and as a powerful antidote to the fragmentation of contemporary theology.
Focusing on theological anthropology, the book is appropriately bracketed by essays on faith and reason at the beginning, and on Christology at the end. The nine remaining essays are gathered into four sections. The first section comprises the only previously unpublished essays in the collection: a helpful piece on human affectivity that draws on Aquinas's reflection on the passions to chart a middle path between biological reductionism and disembodied spiritualism; and a finely delineated articulation of a “theologically enlightened, genuine liberalism” (10) that recognizes society's need for religious expression.
The second section of the book explores the disputed question of the natural desire for God in two essays. The first, for aficionados, is a searching analysis of the recent debate between Lawrence Feingold and John Milbank, while the second, drawing on Marie-Joseph Le Guillou's 1950 response to Henri de Lubac's Surnaturel, is a fair-minded, perceptive, and clarifying contribution to this vexed issue.
The third section, on grace and the theological virtues of faith and hope, examines the fulfillment of that natural desire for God. The essay on grace situates Aquinas's synthesis of divine initiative and human freedom between, on the one hand, Luther's theologically sound but philosophically hamstrung account and, on the other, Erasmus's humanistically understandable but theologically unsound reaction. The remaining two essays extend Thomistically the recent papal invocations by Benedict XVI and John Paul II on the objective nature of faith, which grounds and unifies the theological enterprise, and on the eschatological goal of hope, which orders and perfects ordinary human hopes.
The fourth and final section treats the theme of wisdom in the context of the analogy of being and of the university (as with the first section, this pairing is somewhat forced). The essay on analogy defends Aquinas's position against Wolfhart Pannenberg's and Eberhard Jüngel's diametrically opposed critiques, once again offering helpful insights into the perennial value of Aquinas's metaphysically informed theology. The final essay on the Catholic university nuances Alisdair MacIntyre's recent trenchant reflections with Benedict Ashley's more expansive and hopeful vision.
This book is a must-have for college libraries. Advanced undergraduates who have had some exposure to Aquinas but wish to take their studies further will find it profitable and challenging. Many of these essays could be assigned alongside primary works of Aquinas as models of careful engagement with his thought and, more generally, as powerful examples of the value of metaphysical analysis within theology.
Whether one judges Hütter fully successful in achieving his broader aim of recommending Aquinas as the source of a contemporary renewal of Catholic theology will probably depend on the extent to which one agrees with his recurring critique of “late modernity” and the “inherently patricidal monster of ‘modern philosophy’” (384). No doubt Aquinas will play a critical role in that renewal, but it would be helpful for students to be exposed to other Thomistically inspired thinkers who offer a less agonistic approach. The later works of Bernard Lonergan, for example, advance alternative visions of how to respond to theological fragmentation (by carefully attending to method) and maintain objectivity (by authentically appropriating interiority). More broadly, the wholesale criticism of modernity could be tempered with the insights of contemporary “Catholic Hegelians,” such as Charles Taylor, Michael Buckley, and Nicholas Boyle. By showing the dialectic emergence of modern atheism from the imperfect theological strategies and ecclesial practices of Christians themselves, these thinkers remind us that any renewal of Catholic thought must offer more than lament in its assessment of modernity.
