Engrafted into Christ: A Critique of the Joint Declaration by Christopher J. Malloy (review)

500 BOOK REVIEWS ethical criterion" (212). The notion of natural law, then, is necessarily based upon the interplay between nature and the will of God. There can be no natural law without God because the obligatory character of the natural law-what makes the natural law to be law-is the fact that the natural order that is discoverable by human reason is also known to be created by God and subject to his will. Although there has been a broad revival of interest in natural-law thinking in recent years, the theonomic character of St. Thomas's doctrine has largely been obscured or forgotten. God and the Natural Law can help us recover the theological foundation ofAquinas's natural-law doctrine and thereby appreciate its deeper meaning. The argument of the book is at times hard to follow, perhaps because the book is translated into English from the Italian original, but it is well worth the effort for any serious student of Thomistic natural law. Thomas Aquinas College Santa Paula, California JOHN GOYETTE Engrafted into Christ: A Critique of the Joint Declaration. By CHRISTOPHER J. MALLOY. New York: Peter Lang, 2005. Pp. 408. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 08204 -7408-8. In Engrafted into Christ, Christopher Malloy offers a deep, honest, and critical view of the 1999 JointDeclaration on Justification between the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation GD). As the Preface says, this book is the result of five years of work. The book has four parts: (1) The teachings of the Reformation Era: historical view of Protestant and Catholics positions in the 16th Cent. (17-122); (2) Contemporary attempts at rapprochement: Hans Kiing, the Finnish School (Tuomo Mannermaa, Risto Saarinen), Wolfhart Pannenberg (123-92); (3) Critical analysis of the Joint Declaration (193-313); (4) Evaluating the divide (315-87). This review will concentrate on parts 3 and 4, which are obviously the heart of the book. Malloy studies the history of successive drafts ofthe JD, and comments on the evolution, "No one can doubt that the editorial changes to the various drafts witness a trajectory towards vaguer expressions. The reason for the trajectory seems to have been appeasement of ongoing Lutheran concerns" (277). On top of that, the author warns the English-speaking readers of the JD: "The German text frequently enjoys a more pronouncedly Lutheran ring than does the standard English translation" (222). BOOK REVIEWS 501 One of the points on which the JD does not dissolve the disagreements is the understanding of concupiscence: "First, Catholicism teaches that concupiscence is not a willful act but only a tendency towards sin. It can be called 'desire' only in the sense of a spuriously spontaneous, non-willed inclination. Second, Catholics believe that concupiscence incurs absolutely no punishment and that venial sins incur only temporal punishment" (280). Another delicate point is the possibility or not of an increase of grace and of degrees of participation in grace: "Trent is clear: The just can merit an increase in justifying grace, the attainment of eternal life, and an increase in eternal glory. This teaching rests upon the acknowledgment of only one formal cause of justification, the infused justice of God, by which the justified is bound to Jesus Christ, empowered by him to act as God's child, and entitled to receive the inheritance of a child" (306). This new creation, by grace, far from diminishing God's glory, shows divine power. On that point, the author considers that "The contents of the Joint Declaration .. . are not merely flawed in isolated cases; they are in organic fashion contrary to the integrity of Catholic faith" (306-7). A typical question that has been at the very heart of debates ever since the beginning of the Reformation is the possibility of human cooperation. Malloy (cf. 294-95) sees a contradiction between paragraphs 20 (cooperation is possible as an effect of grace) and 24 ("God's gift of grace in justification remains independent of human cooperation") ofthe JD. Such an ambiguity in the JD will be reflected in different interpretations. In his last part, Malloy identifies five crucial issues: "First, I investigate the eschatological implications of divergent understandings of the formal cause. Second, in...