A Companion to the Summa, Volume III—The Fullness of Life by Walter Farrell, O. P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS A Companion to the Summa, Volume ITI-The Fullness of Life. By WALTER FARRELL, O.P. New York: Sheed &Ward, 1940. Pp. viii+ 530, with index. $3.50. This is the third of four volumes, the second to appear, in which the author attempts to restate the thought of St.. Thomas' Summa for the modern layman. The critical questions are three: first, what kind of transformation has Father Farrell made; second, for whom did he make it; and third, is the transformation effective for that audience. Father Farrell says in the Foreword: "This whole work is not a book about the Summa, but the Summa itself reduced to popular language." " Reduced to popular language," might mean a translation of the whole Summa, or of certain parts, into modern English. But A Companion to the Summa is neither of these, for there are many additions as well as subtractions . These, together with the manner of expression, would seem to indicate that Father Farrell's transformation of the Summa is rhetorical. The specifica.tion of the paraphrase, then, lies in the additions, subtractions and the style. It is a paraphrase of the entire Summa, insomuch as all the important conclusions from the body of the articles are asserted. However they are rhetorically argued, not demonstrated, and sometimes they are only asserted. The Summa, then, is reduced scientifically and dialectically in accordance with the rhetorical intention. Like the modern mathematician, Father Farrell takes the Euclidian figures of St. Thomas and stretches them into shapes recognizable to the modern man. And as in Topology, the formal relations in a certain sense are preserved. The entire architectural structure of the Summa is vaguely present, and the questions and articles of St. Thomas merge into each other receding to the intelligibility of a confused whole. Thus the objections and answers of St. Thomas are often omitted, and new and fewer objections are answered in a variety of ways. But the foundation for the answer is often only a striking example,· and the objections are quickly dismissed, e. g., "Some men have described faith as an exaggerated optimism, a kind of super-confidence; but that was because they did not know the purpose of faith. Others have reduced faith to emotion; and that was because they did not know what faith was. Still others have cynically put under faith every bit of our rational knowledge of God; and that was because they did not know what man was " (page 4} . Frequently the objections are not stated explicitly, but are worked into the answers, so that, almost before the reader knows it, whatever truth there may have been in the objection has been reverted to the doctrine , e. g., " The fact that charity is not from nature, nor doled out in pro880 BOOK REVIEWS 381 portion to natural capacity for love, does not mean that there is nothing for us to do about it. A man cannot sit back and wait for something to happen, half-expecting, perhaps, that some morning he will wake up and, to the astonishment of his wife, suddenly be a saint"· (page 71). But again an objection is clearly stated with the distinctions necessary to resolve it, e. g., " The point here is that such a discovery of a morality distinct froin religion is quite possible. Religion is not the product of authority nor the radical explanation of morality, at least not on the natural plane. It flows from man's nature and is itself a command of natural law, not the foundation of natural law. A community with morality, a moral code, but devoid of religion, would be a community where the natural law was operating but not perfectly, where one of the commands of natural law had dropped out of sight" (page 251). Thus it would seem that whereas St. Thomas' treatment of objections was determined by scientific necessity, Father Farrell's method is determined by his intention of effectively communicating the doctrine as a whole. The vitality of The Fullness of Life is different from the vitality of the Summa. The present work is very dramatic, stirring, hair-raising, humorous , consoling, where the Sttmma is sober and preeminently ordered...