The Presence and Absence of God ed. by Christopher F. Mooney, S.J. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 80S has borrowed and built upon ancient Greek philosophy. His very criticism of the process doctrine of God (it gives us a limited God and emphasizes process over God) is made by my Thomist friends. In fact, whenever he says that the key theological problem today is the nature of God, he indicates a tendency to ask Greek questions; after all, it was Aristotle who led us to ask about natures. Sontag notes that the Bible does not give us a. comprehensive picture of the nature of God. This should not surprise us; after all, the Bible is not a. Greek document using Greek categories of thought. Whatever question and problems I have raised here are not meant as criticism of this book. I am convinced that men like Frederick Sontag can do much to bridge Protestant and Catholic theologies. He notes that contemporary Catholic Biblical scholarship can serve to free Protestant theology from some of its unwitting philosophical assumptions. I would tell Professor Sontag that his call for a metaphysical theology can guide Catholic thinkers back to that realm, away from many of the philosophies with which the Protestant theologians have already experimented and are now rejecting. I urge him to continue his thinking and writing; his s·ervice is needed and is most welcome. Dominioon House of Studies Wa8kington, D. C. WILLIAM J. FINAN, 0. P. The Presence and Absence of God. Edited by CHRISTOPHER F. MooNEY, S. J. New York: The Fordham University Press, 1969. Pp. 189. $6.00. This attractively produced volume presents us with the first series of the Cardinal Bea Lectures given at Fordham University by representative Christian thinkers with a hope to " mobilize those forces which are in agreement at least in their general ideas about belief in the existence of God " (Card. Bca). The ten lectures reproduced here were given between the years 1966 and 1968 and mark out the general contours of the massive theological problems in the areas of theory and communication which confront all thinking men at the present moment. Of the ten lectures printed here six are by Catholic authors and the remainder by well-known Protestant theologians. The themes are grouped in two parts: I The Phenomenon of Unbelief and II The Contemporary Problem of God. Each part has five lectures. There seems to have been no dialogue between the lecturers, as there well might have been, nor any record of discussion that arose in response to the serious questions that are posed. However, any needless repetition of material has been avoided by keeping each lecturer to a fairly well-defined area. 804 BOOK REVIEWS R. Johann begins with his "Creativity and Unbelief." (pp. S-18) This is a rather brilliant piece in which he delves into the conditions of genuine creativity for man, isolates in a succinct manner the paradox that theism almost demands that man live atheistically in that any objectivization of the absolute is necessarily a distraction from the true indeterminate absolute that founds life. Are we not left with the sole demand to act intelligently in all circumstances and merely within the limits of the present human existence? If faith as allegiance to any value comes into the picture, it is precisely as faith in the capabilities of intelligence to orientate man to an ever more human future. (pp. 13 f.) After sketching this prevalent mentality, he goes on to show with considerable force that, in fact, the only way to prevent humanistic ideal of creativity from becoming distorted is a practical theism. Here he asks the question, " To whom is man responsible " in all his creativity. If man is responsible to no one, human crettivity will lapse into an amorphous, levelling collectivism, or a subjectivism that will exploit rather than contribute. (pp. 15-18) James F. Gustafson in his" Faith, Unbelief and Moral Life" (pp. 19-30) explores wittily the relation between the cerebral and the visceral in the moral life and points to the necessity of reasoned intellectual convictions in human commitment. He has in mind the present student generation with their spontaneuus and uncritical acceptance of rather indeterminate values. In this area he makes for a readily intelligible...