On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and her Personnel by Jacques Maritain (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 661 Again like Abelard, Griffin rejects the notion of a moral stain in human nature needing restoration. Hence Griffin can propound an essentially Pelagian view of salvation in which God merely persuades and man ultimately creates himself anew in each moment of immediacy. Viewing the essence of Christianity in terms of Revelation is, of course, essential to Griffin's concern to, render Christianity rational. Unfortunately Christianity is not rational, at least not in Griffin's sense, while the Christ of Griffin's Christology is not the Christ who died and rose to save mankind . A Christology that pretends to be " rational," " adequate," and " selfverifying " might satisfy the criteria of seventeenth-century Deism but not the criteria of St. Paul: "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles." (I Cor 1:22) Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. TERENCE J. KEEGAN, 0. P. On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and her Personnel. By Jacques Maritain. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973. Pp. 315. $9.95 cloth, $3.95 paper. Maritain considers this book a series of meditations on the mystery of the Church. And just as a meditation is not a simple act, but a complex one, combining elements of the rational and the intuitive, the past and the present, consolation and desolation, so this book is a complex one, bristling over with all of these elements and more. The most one can hope to do in a review like this is to isolate various elements, in the hope that the reader's imagination will hold the whole together. First, Maritain has written this book as a man. I think this needs saying, for Maritain has not written this work simply as a certain kind of NeoThomist philosopher, easily categorized and interpreted according to our own a priori views of Neo-Thomism. He has written as a man, that complex being who just won't so easily adjust himself to our categories, who is neither simply " black" nor " white," but "gray." As he puts it, this is "the last testimony of a old solitary," (241) someone who thinks that this book " has been written by an ignorant one for ignorant ones like himself ." (vi) In other words, this work is written by a fellow human, and anyone with an inkling of how complex man can be will not be surprised to find that complexity manifesting itself in this book. And so we find a love of the Church's past and a basic openness to its future; an appreciation for its humanity and sinfulness, and an awe in the presence of its offer of Christ's grace and the ability to share in the communion of saints; 662 BOOK REVIEWS a critical spirit, reminding one of the prophets, and a docile spirit, ready to submit itself to the Magisterium. To the extent that someone is a man, he can surely appreciate this book. Secondly, Maritain has written as a philosopher. And by this he does not mean a servile ancilla to the theologian but someone who exercises his critical faculties with the aim, perhaps, of proposing " to the competent doctors new views." (v) This shows up clearly when he mentions Cardinal Journet as his ecclesiological guide: at times he will depart from the Cardinal on some point, as he departs from Aquinas, for " a true disciple is a free disciple, is he not? " (10). And true to the critical philosopher, few are spared criticism: he speaks of clerics who are "first-rate simpletons ," (40) only seeing sin and weakness in the Church; of the Papacy and Roman Curia, about which he says: "... there is still in Roman circles a good deal of progress to be made" (65); and of theologians: "Too many theologians" are destroying the Church's intellectual treasure, " throwing it to the four winds; blessed be the others. . . . Experts are useful and necessary informants; they are not worth much as counselors; they are not worth anything at all if they claim to present themselves as doctors" (89; cf. his comments on some of the Vatican II periti...