Exploring
Catholic Theology: Essays on God, Liturgy, and Evangelization. By Robert
Barron. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015. Pp. xv + 250. $24.99.
Robert
Barron, newly appointed auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, is probably best known
for his acclaimed series of DVDs, Catholicism,
with its accompanying book. The series has been successfully used in RCIA
programs, in parish continuing education programs, and in undergraduate classes
devoted to Catholic theology. I, along with many others, can attest both to the
aesthetic attractiveness of the series and its pedagogical effectiveness.
It
soon becomes apparent that the accessibility of B.’s work does not come at the
expense of theological substance. A coherent and compelling theological and
philosophical vision animates the
Catholicism series, as well as his other multi-media offerings. B. is not
only a first-rate evangelist and communicator, he is a most impressive
systematic theologian.
That
comprehensive vision has been articulated in such fine works as And Now I See: A Theology of Transformation
(1998), The Strangest Way: Walking the
Christian Path (2002), and most fully in The Priority of Christ: Toward a Postliberal Catholicism (2007).
Each of these displays B.’s ability to join seamlessly theology and
spirituality, the intellectual and affective, as he draws richly from the
classics of Christianity’s theological, literary, and artistic traditions. These
qualities are abundantly present in this new collection: Exploring Catholic Theology: Essays on God, Liturgy, and Evangelization.
The
range and depth of B.’s theological ancestry, revealed in these essays, is
noteworthy. Irenaeus and Augustine, Aquinas and Newman, Balthasar and
Ratzinger, Lonergan and Dulles do not receive only passing mention. They are
vital conversation partners from whom B. continues to learn and cogently
incorporate into his own theological synthesis. For him, as for them, ressourcement and aggiornamento are inseparable and perennial dimensions of the
theological task at the service of the Church’s liturgy and life.
The
present essays develop a number of the key insights and sensibilities that
structure B.’s previous writings. The book’s four sections display his primary
concerns and commitments: the Doctrine of God, Theology and Philosophy, Liturgy
and Eucharist, A New Evangelization.
B.
draws upon Thomas Aquinas in his insistence that “Deus non est in genere:” God is not a member of a class, albeit the
highest. God is “ipsum esse subsistens,”
the personal Power that brings into existence and undergirds all finite
reality. In addressing the “new atheists,” B. assumes a mystagogic stance,
seeking to lead beyond a truncated concept of God, towards the Mystery in whom
creation lives and moves and has its being.
But
the uniqueness and originality of the Christian revelation is that this God of
Infinite Mystery interacts intimately and personally with our human world. In
Jesus Christ God has drawn near and assumed our human nature, not to overwhelm,
much less annihilate, but to consecrate and transform.
B.,
however, goes beyond merely affirming that the Incarnation is the distinctive
“Idea” (in Newman’s sense) of Christianity. He probes that claim to maintain
“the epistemic primacy” of Jesus. Such an affirmation bears both methodological
and missionary implications. Jesus is not the supreme instance of a generic
type: one of a class of savior figures. The salvation he brings in his Person
is not constricted, but catholic.
B.
contends that the liberal tradition in theology, beginning in nineteenth
century Protestantism and embraced by many Catholic theologians in the
aftermath of Vatican II, promotes a reductive understanding of the Christian
tradition. Revelation tends to be
absorbed by human experience, Christology by anthropology, the mystical by the
moral. Thus B. advocates a “postliberal” or “postcritical” approach to the
craft of theology, one in which Jesus Christ is the measure and not that which
is to be measured. For this reason B. is wary of appeals to a “method of
correlation” in pursuing the theological task. He recommends, instead, what he
calls (following Newman) a “method of assimilation,” wherein the Catholic
theologian appropriates “whatever is true, honorable, just, pure” (Phil 4:8) in
a given culture. But such critical discernment always transpires in the light
of the Gospel and is normed by Jesus Christ who alone is Lumen gentium.
Moreover,
without a firm sense of the absolute novum
of the paschal mystery of Christ and of the surpassing joy of his Gospel,
missionary activity becomes anemic. As Pope Francis insisted, in the very first
homily after his election as Bishop of Rome: “without Christ and his cross at
the center, the Church becomes only a charitable NGO!” B. concurs completely. Only
the conviction that Christ is, in truth, lumen
gentium can spur and sustain a mission ad
gentes.
Tutored
by Aquinas, Newman, and Lonergan (as well as by Robert Sokolowski to whom the
book is dedicated), B. opts for both theology and philosophy, both the biblical
narrative and speculative metaphysics. In this regard I would single out his
essay, “The Metaphysics of Coinherence: A Meditation on the Essence of the
Christian Message.” In typical fashion,
B. introduces his subject by evoking a work of art: here the intertwined and
inter-connected patterns of the Book of Kells. The “coinherence,” the multi-faceted
unity and participatory sensitivity so graphically displayed in the manuscript,
finds its ultimate ground in the union of God and man in the Incarnation and
the extension of that saving communion to all creation through the Eucharist.
The
essays in this collection were composed prior to the appearance of Pope
Francis’s encyclical, Laudato si’.
Yet reading the two works concurrently reveals a striking complementarity. A
key theme of the encyclical, of course, is that “everything is interconnected,”
“interrelated” (#138); that there is an urgent need for “a spirituality of that
global solidarity which flows from the mystery of the Trinity” (#240); and that
“the Eucharist embraces and penetrates all creation” (#236). At the same time
the Pope realizes that these insights require fuller theoretical grounding.
Hence his repeated call for “a new synthesis” (#s 112 and 121).
I
suggest that B.’s work offers rich resources for such a synthesis.
Robert Imbelli
Boston College
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