Introduction to Scholastic Theology by Ulrich G. Leinsle (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 649 Przywara’s mistake is to leave little autonomy to nature, and thus to philosophy. A “revealed theology” without nature in the end destroys the foundation for ecumenical dialogue that it wishes to establish. This may be precisely the reflection the editor intends the reader to take away from this remarkable book. PAIGE E. HOCHSCHILD Mount St. Mary’s University Emmitsburg, Maryland Introduction to Scholastic Theology. By ULRICH G. LEINSLE. Translated by MICHAEL J. MILLER. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010. Pp. 392. $30.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1792-5. Introducing a topic as rich and diverse as Scholastic theology is an ambitious undertaking. Readers of Ulrich Leinsle’s Introduction to Scholastic Theology, originally published as Einführung in die scholastische Theologie (Paderborn: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 1995), will realize with great clarity just how ambitious this undertaking is. Leinsle’s study, with varying degrees of emphasis, covers roughly one and a half millennia, moving briskly from patristic antecedents and inspirations of Scholastic theology to nineteenth-century Neoscholasticism. The text’s introduction characterizes this undertaking not as ambitious but as ambiguous, as offering an external guide that renders itself obsolete by preparing the reader to engage Scholastic theology further on his or her own. Leinsle achieves this basic goal admirably but selectively. The initial task of framing Scholastic theology proves the most difficult. The introduction surveys various attempts to define the subject together with the various shortcomings of these definitions. Rather than define the essence of Scholasticism or Scholastic theology, Leinsle profitably focuses attention instead on identifying its chief characteristics, the most important of which is its scientific, rational character. This turn to chief characteristics allows Leinsle to “understand Scholastic theology not as a defining, univocal term, but rather as a collective name for the theology that was developed along various lines in medieval schools and universities and to some extent was still pursued or renewed in the early modern period” (14-15). Such a purposefully broad ‘collective name’ explains the historical breadth of Leinsle’s study and his topical focus within different historical phases of Scholastic theology. After framing his task in terms of intellectual history, Leinsle turns to the background of Scholastic thought in chapter 1 (“How Did Scholastic Theology Come About?”). Augustine occupies a place of prominence and occasions the introduction of several ideas extremely important for Scholastic theology. Two of the most crucial ideas are auctoritas (supporting authority) and ratio (reason). BOOK REVIEWS 650 These ideas or concepts weighed heavily in the on-going debates about the relationship between philosophy and theology that informed the procedures and scope of Scholastic theology. Augustine crafted a synthesis of auctoritas and ratio in which reason served to confirm and to enrich authority, leading from belief to understanding. Crucial though Augustine’s insights were for Scholasticism, it is Boethius and the ‘scientific’ procedure of his De hebdomadibus that offer the clearest glimpses of Scholasticism’s scientific and rational character. Leinsle presents Boethius in terms of the axiomatic method taken from geometry, according to which conclusions are logically drawn from axioms functioning as self-evident propositions. To Augustine and Boethius, Leinsle adds Isidore of Seville, whose Sententiae offered an early model for the systematization of theology among Scholastics. Having summarized this distant background, Leinsle skips ahead to the tenth to twelfth centuries and the development of schools where Scholastic methods and forms were forged. He attends to the diversity of these schools while elucidating common instructional content and patterns. Of particular interest are the systematic teaching forms of lectio (closely reading and commenting upon a text) and quaestio (systematic disputation), which he introduces and concisely traces through to their uses in high Scholasticism. The underlying content of all these methods, forms, and procedures came from the Bible, and so Leinsle devotes due attention to questions of exegesis and the senses of Scripture. Medieval theologians were well aware that earlier thinkers often expressed different interpretations of Scripture and different judgments about theological questions. With its impulse of systematization,Scholastictheology generally came to view the inheritance of theological authorities as diversa, non adversa (diverse, but not conflicting). All in all, Leinsle does an admirable job...