In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

146 BOOK REVIEWS God, this truth about our humanity is drawn up into "the very revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love." Authentic humanism, for Wojtyla, cannot avoid being theocentric. Chapter 5 offers a concluding assessment of Wojtyla's philosophical project , summarizing and weighing essential elements of his anthropology. One of the most prominent themes to emerge here is that of the momentous shift to subjectivity with the advent of modernity, and Wojtyla's appraisal of it. Wojtyla is intensely aware of this shift, not only as a shift towards subjective consciousness as a kind of apotheosis of the experiencing subject, but also as a shift away from a classical metaphysical apprehension of being, including the being of the human subject. He offers a detailed analysis of the shift. He is critical of the way it has drained off the interior content of things, converting knowledge into "meaning," good into "value," and reality into "objectivity." He is critical of how it has eclipsed the divine "interiority" of things-the ontological connectedness of all beings with their Source. He is critical of how its absolutization of "mind" has denatured "matter," setting "nature" as an object over against "mind," divesting it of its interiority, and augmenting a culture of materialistic self-aggrandizement. But he is also appreciative of certain positive developments that have accompanied this shift, such as a new appreciation of the subjective, experiential dimensions of human existence. Even if modernity is misguided in the way it has conflated interiority with subjectivity, Wojtyla regards its insights into consciousness and "lived experience" as vital for understanding personal subjectivity. Metaphysics "takes up human interiority in the medium of being," as Schmitz notes, "but not in the medium of experience." For such reasons, in Redemptor hominis, John Paul calls upon the Church neither wholly to endorse nor wholly to condemn modernity. Something can be learned from it. PHILIP BLOSSEH Lenoir-Rhyne College Hickory, North Carolina Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics. By THOMAS F. TORRANCE. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995. Pp. 439. $49.95 (cloth). This book brings together twelve essays on patristic hermeneutics written over the course of several decades. In so doing it provides valuable access in a single volume to studies of great merit, and one can hope that these essays will thus receive the wider attention they certainly deserve. Although the individual studies can be consulted each in its own right for the hermeneutics of the authors in question, it is not difficult to discern an BOOK REVIEWS 147 underlying interest and concern that unites all of the essays around a central set of themes. Clearly Athanasius of Alexandria and the hermeneutics that are developed around the Nicene controversies form not only a large part of the book (four essays covering nearly half the book) but they are also an important key for Torrance in determining what would constitute a legitimate biblical hermeneutic. The other fathers studied-Athenagoras, Justin, Irenaeus, Melito, Clement, and Hilary-are all examined for how they shed light on the themes that emerge with particular force in the studies on Athanasius. "The account of Athanasius' theology usually advanced by patristic scholars is one that takes its departure mainly from the thought associated with the Catechetical School in Alexandria, and in particular from the teaching of Clement and Origen" (p. 179). But for Torrance, this emphasis is clearly unbalanced. He looks rather to the episcopal tradition of Alexandria, going back through Alexander and his predecessors, and to the Alexandrian scientific tradition (as a guide for what constitutes appropriate theological reasoning) for the decisive influences on Athanasius. Apart from Athanasius, Alexandrian Christianity never managed to confront Gnosticism with the same critical force that we find in Irenaeus, and for Torrance it is in a tradition like that of Irenaeus that we must locate Athanasius. "Athanasius entirely rejected the cosmological and epistemological dualism of Hellenism, Gnosticism and Origenism" (p. 181). These were not suited to measure the full force and significance of the incarnation, for not even Origen had managed to overcome the Platonic divide between noetic realities and the world of sense. Once the Logos is placed clearly on the side of God and it is this...

pdf

Share