Restoring Faith in Reason ed. by Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (review)

472 BOOK REVIEWS given in experience" (505). A careful reading of Aquinas, however, shows that he begins not with being under the aspect of experience, but with being as such: "It is certain and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion" (STh I, q. 2, a. 3), not that some things are experienced as being in motion. Blanchette's example of a pool player who hits a ball which sinks another ball is a helpful illustration of a cause that causes the motion of another, but it does not seem an adequate representation of the "per se subordinated moving causes" required in the first way (508), where the last in the series cannot act unless the first is presently active. In his discussion of transcendence and immanence, Blanchette is concerned to show the limits of philosophy. While theology may have God as its subject, metaphysics attains God only as the principle of its subject. He clearly explains that philosophy is not able to know what God is, but then suggests that theology is capable of such knowledge: "Let us think back to the notion of theology we have already referred to as the science that would have God as the subject of its consideration. We have argued that metaphysics, by itself as the science of being as being, cannot give rise to any kind of positive theology of this kind, since that would have to presuppose that it can give us an account of what God is as God, which, as we have also argued metaphysics cannot do" (551). For Aquinas, however, even theology cannot give an account of what God is: "By revelation of grace in this life we cannot know of God what he is," and "[n]either a Catholic nor a pagan knows the very nature of God as it is in itself." (STh I, q. 12, a. 13, ad 1; STh I, q. 13, a. 10, ad 5). Blanchette has produced a book of colossal breadth and depth of erudition, and the criticisms raised here in no way diminish that accomplishment. It is a work that solidly establishes the metaphysical enterprise at the beginning of the third millennium. All contemporary philosophers will surely find profit in its careful study. Dominican School ofPhilosophy and Theology Berkeley, California MICHAEL]. DODDS, 0.P. Restoring Faith in Reason. Edited by LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING and SUSAN FRANK PARSONS. London: SCM Press, 2002. Pp. 320. $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0334028418. The bulk of this book (pp. 1-173) consists of the Latin text of the 1998 encyclical letter Fides et ratio, together with a facing-page English translation. This is followed by a commentary on the encyclical by James McEvoy (175-98), and then by seven essays on various aspects and implications of the letter. The BOOK REVIEWS 473 essays, by Wayne J. Hankey, Laurence Paul Hemming, Eilert Herms, Nicholas Lash, Aristotle Papanikolaou, Robert Sokolowski, and Janet Soskice, are mostly by Catholic philosophers and theologians, but Orthodox (Papanikolaou) and Protestant (Herms) Christianity are represented as well. There are, in addition, name- and subject-indexes to the encyclical and the interpretive materials. The volume is presented by the editors as "the first in what we hope will be a number of studies which, in different ways, and from a variety of perspectives, will pay generous heed to the questions which Fides et ratio has raised" (xii). The latin text provided is the same (save one or two misprints) as the official text published in the Acta apostolicae sedis; but the English translation, made by Anthony Meredith and Hemming (with, the acknowledgments suggest, some help from others), differs in many minor and some major ways from the official version, released in 1998 and now available in many printed forms and at the Vatican website (www.vatican.va). The editors write that they do not intend this new English version to supplant the official translation (v); but they provide explanation neither of just why they thought a new English version necessary or useful, nor of the principles by which it was made. Discussion of these matters would have been useful and interesting. It is, after all, far from usual...