The Beginning of Eternal Life: The Dynamic Faith of Thomas Aquinas, Origins and Interpretation by James A. Mohler, S. J. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 367 especially among intellectuals whose temptation is pride. Indeed, it is strange that in this book nobody mentioned the need of humility, except in the act of ridiculing St. Augustine for demanding " an abject, infantile stance of dependence." In a book on faith, even to college students, one would have liked to hear quoted: " unless you become as little children." In the same essay it is stated that: "we must admit the obvious morality of many non-believers and must assent to the fact that their approach has often flowered in more concrete loving activity in the world than has been furnished by a trans-temporal Christian faith." (p. 121) But, why should we foul our own nest in this way? After all, it is God's Church. Has Fr. Carroll reflected on the complete failure of the unbelieving world even to tackle the problem of poverty and disease? Is it just to make such a statement without mentioning the martyrs of charity in the Catholic Church? I put these questions not to damn a book of many merits but to express my disagreement with these loose and inaccurate ways of speaking. Perhaps they gain the passing sympathy of a particular audience, but they do not witness to the truth. In the end, that is what matters. St. Charles' Seminary Nagpur, India JEROME ToNER, 0. P. The Beginning of Eternal Life: The Dynamic Faith of Thomas Aquinas, Origins and Interpretation. By JAMES A. MoHLER, S. J. New York, Philosophical Library, 1968. Pp. 144. $4.95. Students always need exposure to solid learning from the Christian tradition by their contemporaries. Father Mohler steps forward with his offering to satisfy this need. The scope of his work is highly restricted. He is presenting here only the teaching of St. Thomas on faith, bagically the content of the first seven questions of the Secunda Secundae. Each of the four expository chapters begins with a sketch of the sources used by St. Thomas (generally by indicating the thought of a few significant Fathers, and digesting the thought of the earlier scholastics); he then concentrates on summarizing the thought of St. Thomas on the subject matter. The main points exposed are the definition of faith in Hebrews 11: 1; Augustine's description of faith as cogitare cum assensu; the object, act, and habit of faith; and faith as a virtue. Each chapter concludes by inquiring into the peculiarity of St. Thomas's contributions to the theology of faith. These are seen to be: an appreciation of the dynamically eschatological dimension of faith, i. e., faith already introduces us into the 368 BOOK REVIEWS dimension of the eternal by uniting us to the First Truth; a refreshing and original balancing of the cognitive and affective elements of faith; and a precising of the relation of charity to faith. The final chapter provides a brief summary. Much of the work amounts to a re-organized and interwoven translation of the Summa and the De Veritate, with the addition of a fair sprinkling of the Commentary on the Sentences. On the whole, the book is not remarkable for its originality. It is basically a paraphrase of St. Thomas (and, on occasion, an overly literal one). It is valuable for making accessible in a usable English form the teaching of Aquinas, and for providing the original version of the texts cited. Users of the book are presumed to have some background for handling the baldly presented scholasticism. Terms such as agent intellect, possible intellect, end in common, and formal reason of the object (a distressingly inadequate translation of ratio formalis object·i) are used, for the most part, without a word of explanation. A notable contribution of the work, however, is the thorough documentation and the Latin texts (especially for the early scholastics) in the fortyseven pages of footnotes, plus a good bibliography. This work would be a valuable source for a course on faith. Students could cover much of the basic course information by reading, and lectures could then focus on interpretation. All in all, a useful product. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. JoHN A. FARREN, O.P. Evolution and the Doctrine of Original...