This book continues the Muirhead Library of Philosophy series. It is a sequel to Trethowan’s own Absolute Value, to which frequent reference is made by the author. Together with that work, it comprises the lectures the author delivered in the Department of Religion of Brown University in 1969. It is chiefly a work of theological reflection: Trethowan is seeking new conceptual models for the Christian experience of God. In this vein, he devotes the bulk of the book to explorations of (...) the nature of faith and of the At-onement effected in the experience of God by the Christian mystics. An interesting treatment of the mystical experience of the Absolute concludes the book. This is not to suggest that Trethowan’s work will not be of interest to a general philosophical audience as well. The author begins his investigations with a discussion of contemporary positions which are opposed to metaphysical and theistic claims; within this context, Trethowan’s suggests some useful criticisms of Flew’s position. Searching for an experience of the Absolute that can serve to ground theistic claims, Trethowan examines the formulations of Coreth and Marcel; in the author’s estimate each yields an important emphasis, although some criticism must be directed to their respective accounts. The author’s own solution surfaces in the course of his treatment of faith. Its inspiration is largely Blondel’s "logic of action" : man’s experience of his own range of action leads him to an "option" in favor of the Absolute, an option which includes assent to the Christian experience of the Absolute. Trethowan also indicates a theory of signs, in which signs mediate but also are dynamically directed toward an experienced Absolute. The author’s treatment of Blondel has the advantage of providing the reader with lengthy citations from Blondel in translation.—W. L. P. (shrink)

As one might expect of a book of this modest size which bears such a title, this work concentrates upon only one of the many topics subsumed under the rubric "supernatural." After some reflection, the impression develops that this focus is on a colloquy between scholastic and contemporary formulations of the personal relationship between God and man in the process of divinization by grace. Kenny seems to offer the theory of "created actuation by Uncreated Act" as a particularly valuable model (...) of explanation for this personal union. The genre of this work is too technical in its language to be described as popular and perhaps too brief and unnuanced to appeal to a technical audience. The mode under which Kenny approaches his problem is historical. Nonetheless, the author excuses himself from treating antecedent formulations, although he averts to the different way in which the question has been posed in Eastern Christianity. Kenny opens his own account with a brief precis of some "constants" in Catholic grace-doctrine. It is regrettable that William of St.-Thierry and Peter Lombard were not treated more extensively, for the formulation of deifying grace in terms of its "uncreatedness" received a new slant in their works. This slant can be illuminated considerably if one recalls that these theologians had at their disposal only an impoverished, "Platonizing" schema of causal explanation, plotted only on the axis of formal causality and its intentional-exemplar modes. Lacking such a preface in twelfth-century formulations, the author’s treatment of "high Scholastic" grace-doctrine largely from the perspective of Thomas’ and Bonaventure’s insistence on "created grace" seems to be rather abruptly introduced. However, this sense of abruptness disappears if one correctly grasps the thesis toward which Kenny’s argument is aimed. Chapter Four treats the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century nominalist formulations, with Ockham and Biel as examples. Kenny is highly critical of the subversion of the doctrine of grace as intrinsic divinization and as personal union which these theologians effected. Chapter Five is billed as a survey of the theme of supernatural union in post-Tridentine theology. Curiously, the bulk of the chapter is expended on an amicable presentation of the De la Taille-Rahner explanation of graced divinization in terms of quasi-formal causality. Chapters Six and Seven are reworkings of previously published materials. The book includes a selected bibliography. (shrink)