In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:' CHRISTOLOGY FROM ABOVE' AND ' CHRISTOLOGY FROM BELOW' TIE TERMS ' Christology from above ' and ' Chrisogy from below' are much used today, nort only or en primarily in the serious literature of teology, hurt rather in V'aJiious polemical contexts, both theological and ecclesiastical. Here they often serve as symbols which distinguish one's own Chrristological position from those with which one disagrees. In this way they have (...) become practically equa.ted with two other terms, ' high ' Christology and ' low ' Christology, the former representing a position in which the divinity of Ohrist is stressed (its opponents often holding that this is to the detriment of the humanity), the latter a position in which his humanity is stressed (its opponents often holding that this is to the detriment or even exclusion of the divinity). 'Dhe position taken in this ess·a.y will be that such use of the terms ' Christology from above ' and ' Christology from below' is indeed a misuse, that it is an error,to equate them w~th ' high ' Christology and ' low ' Christology respectively. Rather, our position will be that ' Christology from above' and ' Christology from below' should refer both to an initial process from which Ohristo1ogy originates, as well as to a method for elaborating Ghristology on the basis of that process, while ' high ' Christology and ' 1ow ' Christology refer to the possible terms of Christologies ' from above ' ·and ' from below '. 'Christology from Below' The Process, or the Proximate Ground of Christology ' Christology from below ' as a process refers to the proximate origins of Ohristology in the apostolic response to Jesus of Nazareth, and in the deV'eloping understanding of the implications of that response in the history of the early Church. Although God's action in t:he Incarnation preceded in absolute priority the public ministry of Jesus •and the apostolic re- ~99 300 EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, O.P. sponse to it, that action was only fully understood in all of its implications in a gradual historical process thait took place over many years. In a re.al siense, the foundation or proximate source of Ohristian faith is the apostolic witness to God's salvific actions, rather than those actions themselves (which aire its ultimate source). Christofogical faith is an apostolic faith that has its origins in a historical process which began with the public ministry of the Lord, and which was developed and clarified over many centuries. 'Christology from Above' The Process, or the Ultimate Ground of Christology The final term of 1 the process 'Christology from below '-the ' high ' Christology of ithe Church-brought to light the ultimate ground of the historical phenomenon that was Jesus of Nazareth. It made possible the insight that Christology really did not begin at the public manifestation of Jesus (his baptism ), but rather began in the eternal moment when God decided to send his son into the world, and had its first decisive tempmal moment when the humanity of that son wais conceived in the womb of Mary. In other words, the historical process, 'Christology from below', was grounded in an ontological reality-the hypostatic (or personal) union (or identificrution ) of Jesus with the eternal Word of God-thait preceded it. In this sense the ' above ' in ' Christology from above ' refers to God's actions in the Incarnation, and the ontological result of that action (the hypostatic union), whereas the ' below ' in ' Christology from below ' refers to the gradual process by which the ·apostolic understanding of that action developed. As a process, ' Christology from above ' holds absolute priority over ' Christology from below.' 'Christology from Above:' The Method Only when the final term of the process of ' Christology from below' was reached-a 'high ' Chrisrtology thait recognized both the full humanity and the full divinity of Christ-was it possible to recogn:ize the :actions of God which were prior to the ' CHRISTOLOGY FROM ABOVE AND BELOW ' 301 historical public manifestation of Jesus. It was only at this point that it became possible to ' trace', as it were, the ultimate origin and ground of Jesus Christ in the Godhead and the ontological 'process' of t·he Incarnation. Only now was it possible to evolve a method for the academic construction of a... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 503 sufferings of Job, which she finds instructively different from the sort of account which would come naturally to people of our own time. We are apt to wonder how a good God could possibly permit the many and frightful evils which infest the world. Aquinas, however, believed that all human beings are afflicted with "a terminal cancer of soul," for which pain and suffering are the (...) divinely-appointed remedies (340). If we are not cured, we will lose for ever the ultimate bliss of communion with God. At this rate we are to expect that the best people are precisely those who are liable to suffer the most (342). Aquinas would agree with Pope Gregory, who says that it is frequently difficult to understand the ways of providence, but never more so than "when things go ill with good people and well with bad people" (343). Stump concludes that what Aquinas's interpretation of Job, and his overall account of evil, has to show us is "that our approach to the problem of evil is a consequence of our attitude towards much larger issues, such as the nature of human happiness and the goal of human life" (356). The reader will have inferred that this is a remarkable volume. None of the contributions is to be sneezed at, and some are very impressive indeed. HUGO MEYNELL University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada Christ the 'Name' ofGod: Thomas Aquinas on Naming Christ. By HENK J. M. SCHOOT. Nijmegen: Peeters Leuven, 1993. Pp. 231 (Paper). The hiddenness of God in Christ and "the relation between the Word Incarnate and human words for this Word" animate this study of Aquinas's christological epistemology; it is a study of Aquinas's understanding of "the mystery of Christ, and [of] human ways of signifying him" (1). And because "all human understanding and signification fails [sic] to reach Christ as he is," Schoot believes that all christological knowledge is primarily negative and heavily reliant on analogy (1). He applies to the names of Christ what another author (Mark Jordan) has applied to the divine names: "the surest approach to the divine is by the scrutiny of linguistic failure" (153). The structure of the book reflects these insights. In the first chapter the author stresses the negative character of christological language by reflecting upon Aquinas's use of mysterium in christology. The second chapter is an analysis of his use of "the concepts of signification, supposition, predication and reduplication," in the context of the most current knowledge of medieval grammar and logic (7). It is here that the author stresses Aquinas's strongly linguistic approach to christology, as well as the distinction between supposition ("standing for") and predication ("sig- 504 BOOK REVIEWS nification"), which will be crucial to his analysis of the hypostatic union in later chapters. In fact, "the whole of christology is built on the distinction between signification and supposition" (55). Schoot believes that Aquinas, following medieval "modist" grammarians, thought that "a fundamental parallel exists between different modes of signification, modes of understanding and modes of being" (43), and hence a linguistic approach is often a decisive entry into questions of theological (and christologiocal) epistemology and metaphysics. In this context, the author examines the distinction Aquinas made between a number of modes of signification. Chapter Three is devoted to Aquinas as a biblical theologian. His use of biblical names of Christ {over ninety in his commentary on Isaiah alone) suggests that "a large part of Aquinas' treatment of the person and life of the Word Incarnate is devoted to a discussion of names" (104), and that the fact that Christ is a mystery "is rooted in (his] being the 'name' of God" (105). Schoot finds that "Aquinas employs the same rules concerning signification examining those names as he does concerning the divine names" (193). Chapter Four applies the key insights of Aquinas's "theory of supposition to the theology of Christ incarnate" (194). Following an analysis of such key concepts as first and second substance, esse, suppositum, singularis, particularis, and individuum, Schoot concludes that The subject-term having both signification and supposition expresses a linguistic unity that Aquinas deems analogous to the... (shrink)

In 1992, James Keenan put forward a renewed interpretation of the development of Aquinas’s thought to the effect that he shifted from an intellectual determinism in his early works, to an understanding of the autonomy of the will in the Prima Secundae of the Summa theologiae; this autonomy is the ground for Keenan’s (and others’) distinction between moral goodness and moral rightness. The present essay analyzes Keenan’s interpretation in terms of the body of criticism that it has generated over the (...) past ten years. In particular, it highlights five important implications that Keenan draws from his theory of the will’s autonomy: the separation of volition from knowledge in the dynamic of freedom, the virtue of charity as formal and non-specific, the moral neutrality of the acquired virtues, the two measures of moral action, and sin as moral “badness.”. (shrink)