Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays ed. by R. A. Markus (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 697 can only result in a deadly schizophrenia. With this premise Macquarrie proceeds to the second half of the book which is avowedly and necessarily autobiographical. Continuing the theme of worship as unifying faith and action Macquarrie sees clearly the problem confronting liturgists, bringing together the transcendence and immanence of God in ritual. He is especially conscious of the pitfalls confronting the liturgists who attempt renewal without a true historical perspective. The great sadness of this volume is that in Chapter VIII, while confessing the unique presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, Macquarrie's own theological ambiguities about the true doctrine of transubstantiation leave him naked about the central mystery of worship, the Mass. Given his doctrinal uncertainty, one can readily understand the distortion of a volume which, while emphasizing the centrality of worship, devotes one entire Chapter to Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament (IX), but none to the Mass! The final Chapters, X, XI, treat of the Office and Stations of the Cross. All Christians are grateful to Macquarrie for sharing his faith and worship with others. As a Roman Catholic who has the profoundest respect for him, I shall earnestly pray that his evident openness to the Holy Spirit will guide him to a deeper understanding of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. REGINALD MASTERSON, 0. P. Director of Renewal Archdiocese of Dubuque, Iowa Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. by R. A. MARKUS. New York: Anchor Books. Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1972. Pp. 439. $2.50. As the title suggests, this is a collection of critical essays on the thought of Augustine. Save for two exceptions, these essays are collected from articles appearing in publications on both sides of the Atlantic as far back as 1950. These authors of the English-speaking world, with some exceptions, consider insufficiently the continental Augustinian scholarship, whether French or German. Nor is there consideration given to the Quellenforschung into Augustine's thought, certainly a vast part of Augustinian research today. Many of the articles, e. g., the three contributions of Gareth B. Matthews, the essay on foreknowledge and free will by William Rowe, and the essay on empiricism and time by Hugh M. Lacey, are written by linguistic analysts. Augustine's intricate and flowing terminology contrast rather sharply with the precise propositional forms of these men. Further, the spirit of 698 BOOK REVIEWS Augustine's works, open to the metaphysical, the mystical, and the theological as they are, largely eludes the grammatical analysts. Surprisingly , these linguistic analysts do not find it necessary to comment critically on Augustine's Latin. Though there is a certain contribution that these men have to offer philosophical and historical research, this reviewer cannot help but think that in these articles we learn more about the thought of the authors than about the thought of Augustine. Needless to say, as in any collection of essays from various authors, the quality varies from piece to piece. There are, however, some excellent articles by some of the best Augustinian scholars in England and America. The reprinting of Armstrong's St. Augustine Lecture of 1966 from the Villanova Series, comparing Augustine with Christian and non-Christian Platonists previous to him on the questions of the divinity of the soul, attitudes toward the material universe, and the universal will to save all mankind, represents, by and large, the high quality of work that we have come to expect from him. Likewise, I found the article " The Theory of Signs in De Doctrina Christiana" by B. Darrell Jackson, reprinted from the Revue des Etudes Augustiniennes, to be good. Neither time nor space allows me to comment in detail on many of the articles which are worthy of critical comment in the sufficient depth that they deserve. However, the article of F. Edward Cranz, "The Development of Augustine's Ideas on Society before the Donatist Controversy," deserves special attention since it has raised issues which are still current in Augustinian research, although it was published some eighteen years ago. I will therefore spend the remainder of this review commenting on some issues raised by his article. The purpose of Cranz's contribution is to follow the evolution of Augustine...