Charged with Grandeur

 Where did you go to, if I may ask?' said Thorin to Gandalf as they rode along.

To look ahead,' said he.

And what brought you back in the nick of time?'

Looking behind,' said he.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

Yesterday I finished Tracey Rowland's book Catholic Theology which I wrote a bit about here.    Rather than write out a summary I will link to two reviews both of which describe the layout of the book.   

Review by Dr Pravin Thevathasan

Review by Dr Joshua Furnal

 Dr Furnal is a Catholic theologian, and from scanning his published works it looks like he is interested in Kierkegaard, Thomism, and possibly ecumenism.    From the details of his criticisms, he thinks she is unduly negative about Consilium-style theology and dismissive of Pope Francis's thinking.     

Dr Thevathasan's review is more like the review I would write if I did write one.   

The part I think everyone agrees on, that she sketches out in the course of the book, is the basic genealogy of the theologies that we see nowadays in their downstream effects.    Before Vatican II, the default theology of the Church was Thomism, but there were undercurrents embodied by theologians who desired to engage with Protestant theologians and secular philosophies. 

Thomism itself branched out into several schools after it received a new lease by Pope Leo XIII.   The basic official school was what she calls First Stream or Strict Observance Thomism.    In the view of Rowland and many other Thomist and Communio scholars, this strain was unduly affected by a specific kind of rationalism.    Basically Communio scholars and many Thomists would say that Scotus and Cajetan, notable Thomist commentators, pulled the Aquinas project off balance.  

Thomism still has a lot of life, though, and has continually been reaffirmed by various papal communications.    

Rowland divides post-Vatican II theology aside from Thomism into two streams:  Communio and Concilium.    This terminology comes from the two theological journals with the same names.     Communio was founded by Ratzinger, de Lubac, and Balthasar who broke away from Concilium which was founded after the Council and was headed by Schillebeecx, Rahner, and Kung among others.  

Her tracing out of the taxonomy of different schools of thought as well as her outlining of some of the essential differences in thoughts on fundamentals like nature and grace were the most rewarding parts of the book for me.    As a bonus, throughout the book she points to names of resources and thinkers for further study.   The book is definitely conceived as more of an overview or quick tour, from a Communio perspective, than an in depth treatment.    As such it is a good read for the beginner theology student or interested layman, but it's not intended as a definitive treatise.    

One overriding takeaway from the book for a convert such as myself is the marked robustness of the Catholic faith through all the turmoil.    Another is an almost unavoidable lacuna in any theology book discussing theological issues and concerns.  A theology book can mention praxis, "Juan Pablo" or the ordinary Joe, literary religious works, doctrine, liturgy, and the like -- can describe them accurately, can provide examples -- but all this is only the map, the verbalization of things that go deeper and higher.

It's not that Rowland ignores this -- indeed, one of the things I like about Communio theology is that it does bring in the importance of all human things.   The primary principle of Communio theology as such is Christological and thus incarnational.  Thus, humans are in dialogue with God in every part of life.   This is blazingly clear in all salvatiin history.  There is no neutral ground; everything is infused and permeated or as GM Hopkins (a Jesuit poet, not a Communio scholar) says:  "charged with the grandeur of God" 

However, in speaking of this we to some extent must speak of the ineffable, and so with theology of any sort, at the end it must become inarticulate and fall silent, and take off its shoes.    There's a tendency if one doesn't realize this to think of theology as kind of an intramural sport, or perhaps a clash of forces in the sky, to use the Star Wars metaphor Rowland introduces.    Aquinas carefully notes this at the beginning of his Summa, and it is important to keep in mind as a preamble.  

 This is a concern I want to bring out not in criticism of Tracey Rowland's book or any other theological work, but just as a reminder that the theological enterprise itself rests on a received and changeless truth, an interior and liturgical life whose true territory is the eternal.   This underlies, I believe, everything Rowland says, and yet it bears mention as a source and summit of Catholic thought on revelation.