Christian Anthropology and Sexual Ethics by Benedict M. Guevin (review)

492 BOOK REVIEWS philosophers who know and appreciate scientific knowledge from within, who can defend its claims for truth and certainty" (53). Thomas Russman offers a readable historical reconstruction of British philosophy starting from the replacement of Bradley's idealism at the turn of the twentieth century by Russell's and Moore's initial realism, which soon became phenomenalism. He explains the logical constructionist impulse, including the proposed, and failed, logical foundations ofmathematics and the logical atomism of Russell and Wittgenstein. He goes on to describe the logical positivists of the Vienna Circle, and the more general phenomenalistic verificationism of A. ]. Ayer, the development of confirmation theory, and Popper's proposed falsifiability criterion of meaningfulness. There is a brief exposition of the turn to ordinary language and Wittgenstein's "meaning- is-use" idea, though I don't think the real point or importance of Wittgenstein's work is presented, particularly not its (beneficial) consequences for mathematical, aesthetic, and religious knowledge, or its consequences for accounts of linguistic meaning generally and its evading skepticism in particular. Russman observes, "British philosophy of the later twentieth century has at times exhibited a crab-like drift in the direction of epistemological realism," but he doesn't illustrate this. The expository device of contrasting the developments as responses to idealism that all eventually fail ("suffered rejection in turn" [30]) while interesting, seems like an imposed plot. The writers were much more concerned, in my opinion, to accommodate science and achieve a new standard of clarity of expression and rigor of thought. Russmanconcludes, "Phenomenalismofthe traditional Britishempiricistsort has been at a low ebb in Britain for the last 35 years at least"(ibid.), and observes that it was succeeded by "a wider and wider range of philosophical discussion characterized by careful attention to the uses of language and the problems that arise form its misuses" (ibid.). University ofPennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ]AMES ROSS Christian Anthropology and Sexual Ethics. By BENEDICT M. GuEVIN. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2002. Pp. 240. $35.00 {paper). ISBN 0-7618-2382-2. Originally written to be part of a series of introductory works in moral theology, Christian Anthropology and Sexual Ethics also works well as a freestanding volume. As the title ofthe work suggests, its subject matter is the human BOOK REVIEWS 493 person. The aim of the moral life according to Guevin is the divinization of the person through participation in grace. The book is arranged in a highly symmetrical pattern. The first five chapters focus on the person in light of the mystery of creation, focusing on the body person, sexuality, and moral growth. The remaining five chapters return to these topics from the vantage point of the mystery of the Incarnation and grace. Part 1 opens with a brief introduction which identifies the origin and end of the human person as the Trinity. The first chapter begins with a reading of the biblical creation accounts. Guevin highlights the fact that the Old Testament creation accounts describe human beings as the result of God's free decision, not as a result of procreation by sexualized gods and goddesses as in other Ancient Near Eastern creation myths. Genesis presents women as the equals of men, seeing them as ordered to one another in a communion of persons. However, this vocation to communion with God and one another was ruptured by sin. The second chapter continues this biblical focus through a closer look at the body. The Old Testament, Guevin asserts, holds that men and women "do not have bodies; they are bodies" (15; emphasis in original). Included in the biblical affirmation of the oody is its sexuality, which like the rest of creation is designated by God as "very good" (Gen 1:31). Sexual activity and procreation are blessed by God as reflections of his own creative action. As a dimension of humanity's creation in the image and likeness of God, sexuality is not an extrinsic attribute of the person but is a "constitutive dimension of him or her" (17). Guevin turns in the third chapter to a close examination of natural law in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. While everything that exists has a specific nature, human...