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BOOK REVIEWS 145 Christian Faith and the Theological Life. By ROMANUS CESSARIO, 0.P. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996. Pp. 197. $34.95 (cloth), $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8132-0868-8 (cloth), 0-8132-0869-6 (paper). The most important moral question underlying all the debates that have evolved since Vatican Council II is the question of the existence of a Christian morality. In other words, does faith make a new contribution to morality, and does it exert a direct influence on the life of Christians and on their response to the moral problems facing them? Or does Christian teaching propose a purely human and rational morality, placed within a spiritual, Christian context which supports and confirms it? The title of Romanus Cessario's beautiful book clearly expresses his perspective. He proposes to show how faith penetrates the moral life of the Christian and transforms it to the point where it can be called theologal, which in no wise prevents it from being human. Christian life is truly "a life of faith," guided and inspired by faith, hope, and charity. Cessario's exposition is set in the framework of the moral theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. The moral textbooks of recent centuries, on which many moralists have relied, focus their moral material on an explanation of the Ten Commandments, the source of moral obligation and the principle of the division of special morality "at the categorical level" (according to a modern phrase). They take the theologal virtues for granted and in fact study them only from the viewpoint of the obligations they impose. While preserving, with the Decalogue, the chief and indispensable basis of the moral life, this teaching is in fact more rational and humanistic than theologal and Christian. St. Thomas' Summa Theologiae, in keeping with patristic tradition, presents a morality of virtues which form a living organism, the theologal virtues being its head and heart. In his special morality the Angelic Doctor begins with the treatise on faith and studies it less from the point of view of its precepts than its dynamism, precisely as a virtue that enlightens the other virtues so as to order them to the sovereign Good which it reveals, the cause of man's perfection and happiness. For Thomas faith is the first virtue of the Christian life, giving it a properly theologal dimension. Faith is a practical virtue. We would have to call it dead if it did not generate virtuous acts. Furthermore, a certain separation was set up in post-Tridentine theology between dogma, which treated questions of faith, and morality, considered as the domain of obligations and claiming autonomy in regard to the other branches of theology. Morality was specialized and given a technical vocabulary all but incomprehensible to the uninitiated, even if they were theologians. In adopting St. Thomas's views on the basic unity of "sacred science," Cessario has reestablished a close bond between dogmatic theology, which treats of the triune God and of Christ, and morality, which studies man's response to God's gratuitous call to happiness. 146 BOOK REVIEWS While basing his exposition on the theology of the Angelic Doctor, Cessario also calls on the saints, those witnesses to Christian experience, and particularly such Fathers of the Church as Augustine, Cyril ofAlexandria, and Maximus the Confessor, as well as other spiritual writers , ancient and modern, including Tauler, Nicholas of Flue, and in the Carmelite school John of the Cross, the two Theresas, and Elizabeth of the Trinity. Cessario skillfully combines a rigorous theological consideration, presented in the Scholastic manner, with the experience of the life of faith as described by spiritual writers in their more concrete and imaginative language. The effect of this is to provide us with solidity of thought and to help fill in the gap that still lies between theological reflection and spiritual experience. Cessario's research extends likewise to the present day through the theological problems he evokes and through recourse to the great documents of our time: the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a veritable catechetical synthesis, and the encyclical Veritatis splendor, both of which have solidly reestablished the foundations of Christian morality by...

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