The Grace of God, the Response of Man by J. P. Mackey (review)

134 BOOK REVIEWS The Grace of God, the Response of Man. By J. P. MAcKEY. Albany, New York: Magi Books, Inc., 1967. Pp. 19!il. $3.95. James P. Mackey, a professor of dogmatic theology in Ireland, is known to many from his frequent articles, especially in the Irish Theological Quarterly, and from his recent book The Modern Theology of Tradition. His present work, The Grace of God, the Response of Man, which appeared in Ireland in 1966 under the title Life and Grace, treats, in a series of connected essays, four central theological themes: Grace, Morality, Tradition , the Fall. The first two are concerned with Christianity's relation to the individual; the last two deal with the communal element in Christianity. A rather lengthy introduction and concluding remarks help give the book a greater unity. The essays are not concerned primarily with replacing traditional formulas but with giving a new and more profound understanding of truths frequently presented in an unsatisfactory way. Modern insights into the human condition, the contributions of personalism and existentialism , an evolutionary world view-all of these are incorporated into Father Mackey's wide ranging essays. They hint at an extensive knowledge of contemporary thought: literary, philosophical and theological. A consideration of one of these studies may give a better indication of the nature of the work. The chapter entitled " Grace " begins with a criticism of the view of grace as a tripartite structure superimposed on a "three storied" human nature; substance, powers, and activity. The conception seems to make grace foreign to man, with no meaning for his nature. He agrees with Rahner's insistence on an intimate connection of nature and grace but warns about compromising the uniqueness and gratuity of God's gift. Mackey considers that Rahner's own view has not sufficiently avoided the superstructure way of thinking. He turns instead to Emil Brunner's stress on the theology of the Word of God and describes grace in terms of an interpersonal relation of God and man. Grace, then, is God's self-revelation to man in word and action. On man's part it is the knowledge or faith that results from this self-revelation, the love and hope that grow from this knowledge. No one can doubt the value of using the most perfect human realityinterpersonal union in knowledge and love-as the analogue of man's graceful relation to God, but this reviewer has several reservations about Fr. Mackey's essay. Can we define sanctifying grace in terms of the activity of faith, hope, and charity? Does not this activity presuppose some reality in us that makes this loving encounter-dialogue possible? A· second reservation: without attempting a defense of the manuals and monographs on grace, I find Fr. Mackey's strictures a bit severe. Is their description of grace quite the dessicated skeleton that he proposes? For instance, he criticizes Van Noort and others for giving an inadequate BOOK REVIEWS 135 definition-grace is a quality of the soul-although this statement is not intended as a definition but only as a generic notion, as one author explicitly notes (Van Noort, De Gratia Christi, p. 145). He chides these authors for affirming a position with no attempt to explain how the statement is verified; yet in the application of his own views to the grace of Baptism and the Eucharist he attempts no solution of the problems advanced but merely indicates the need for further theological research. The uneven and sometimes difficult style provides another obstacle. The sentence structure can be quite involved: a ninety-eight word sentence can be difficult to follow. A provocative book in the questions that it raises and the insights that it provides; and in another sense, in the questions that it glosses over and the positions which it oversimplifies. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. 0. RoBERT J. HENNESSEY, 0. P. Hamann's Socratic Memorabilia. A Translation and Commentary by JAMES C. O'FLAHERTY. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Pp. ~~9. $7.50. Some of the more outstanding individuals influenced by Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788), religious thinker of the Age of Goethe, were Herder, Goethe, F. H. Jacobi, Jean Paul...