God’s Grace and Human Action: “Merit” in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Joseph P. Wawrykow (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Perhaps the best place to begin is with the elementary observation that the word "god" is not a proper name. It is the common name for whatever people worship, whatever people take to be divine. And "being divine" is not like being fat or thin, being British or being short-sighted. It is more like being heard or seen. Something is divine if someone worships it. (30-31) Where God is, is not God; this sanctuary of God's presence is, however holy, not divine. (61) 153 Now taken alone, the first passage can seem too easily Tillichian with its airy assumption that everyone has an "Ultimate Concern" which is "god" for that person but of course isn't "God" to real monotheists. But from previous citations, we know that this cannot be Lash's meaning. This emerges even more clearly from the second quote above, for God is always to be distinguished from the revelation-and even the very presence-of God. If Lash has indicated to the reader how he would best try to resolve this dilemma that he has so effectively outlined, it is probably in chapter 7, on Michael Buckley's At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), which he rightly lauds for its fascinating tour d'horizon of Enlightenment atheism but also scores (again rightly in my opinion) for its genealogy of that same atheism, which makes Thomas Aquinas's proofs for the existence of God at the beginning of the Summa Theologiae the fons et origo of atheism. Lash quite correctly points out how this is fundamentally to misunderstand the neo-Platonic structure of the Summa with its schema of exitus-reditus, within which the proofs are meant to do their work. As is true of any collected edition of essays, Lash's chapters must be read in terms of each other if the reader wants a cohesive point of view to emerge. But alertness to that gradually emerging point of view brings rich rewards, not least a therapeutic reward; Lash's command of the tradition furnishes him with an admirable wisdom and a learned perspective to be able to point the way out of theology's many contemporary dilemmas. As he says, "the surest approach to the divine is by the scrutiny of linguistic failure" (130). EDWARD T. OAKES, S.J. Regis University Denver, Colorado God's Grace and Human Action: "Merit" in the Theology ofThomas Aquinas. By]OSEPHP. WAWRYKOW. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995. Pp. x + 293. $39.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-268-01031-5. JosephWawrykow contends that most twentieth-century efforts to interpret Thomas Aquinas's theology of merit have been deficient in at least two 154 BOOK REVIEWS respects. First, they have presume:d that his position on merit is essentially the same in all his writings, with the result that differences between parallel discussions in earlier and later works are downplayed or simply overlooked. Second, and even more important, they have relied too narrowly on the texts in which Thomas treats merit explicitly, as though what he says on that subject could be adequately understood without considering what he says about the related topics of creation, providence, predestination, and grace. Such methodological cutting of corners has inevitably produced impoverished and misleading accounts of the role merit plays in Thomas's theology. Wawrykow persuasively argues that any effort to remedy this situation must approach Thomas's teaching on merit as a developing element within a developing theological synthesis. Wawrykow does an impressive job of gathering the data needed to meet this challenge. He examines and critically appropriates the historical studies of Henri Bouillard and Bernard Lonergan, who earlier in this century traced a series of developments in Thomas's understanding of God's creative and redemptive presence in the world. Their insights help establish the context within which Thomas's notion of merit is situated. Furthermore, while researching this project Wawrykow adopted the strategy of reading practically all of Thomas's theological writings. In this way he hoped to gain a "[s]ensitivity to Thomas's concerns" and "a feel for the texture and flow of Thomas's theological argument...