Preface

As Logos approaches its tenth year of publication it is helpful to reflect on the meaning of our enterprise: What is an interdisciplinary journal of Catholic thought and culture? What coherence ought we to seek among inquiries addressed to a wide variety of academic disciplines and cultural components? What kind of ongoing intellectual inquiry ought to emerge from the recurrent explorations of a journal that has persisted down its path every three months for nine years with the intention of renewing its efforts indefinitely into the future? Every aspect of our mission poses a challenge: How can we be interdisciplinary without becoming merely eclectic? How can we respond to the challenges of the day (as the etymological sense of the word "journal" suggests we ought to do) without being merely of the day? How can we be true to a Catholic vision of life without being sectarian? How can we discover the continuity of thought across the discontinuities of language and modes of inquiry that mark the separate academic disciplines? How can we open ourselves to the richness of cultural diversity without falling into cultural relativism?

The short answer to these questions—an answer that requires thoughtful development—is that we can achieve what is good in our mission and avoid reductionist deficiencies by living up to what we experience as our calling as a Catholic journal of thought and culture. The coherence among disparate academic disciplines is to be discovered from within the unity of a Catholic vision of life. Addressing the questions and needs of the day must reflect the emergence of fresh aspects of the fullness of truth. The claims to universality (catholicity) of the Catholic tradition must be manifested. The unity of the created order must be seen as the source of the complementarity of different modes of inquiry. The symphonic nature of cultural diversity must be seen as emerging through diverse cultural forms.

Clearly we are demanding much guidance from the Catholic intellectual and cultural tradition. Can Catholic tradition live up to such high demands? Each issue of this journal attempts to show that such expectations can indeed be met, but providing a theoretical response to such a challenge would obviously require a scope that far exceeds the capacity of this or any journal. Nevertheless, we find a concise and profound demonstration of such qualities of unity and continuity in one of the most famous and significant strands of Catholic intellectual tradition—Thomism—in a new book by Romanus Cessario, OP, A Short History of Thomism.¹ While explicitly eschewing any claim that Thomism is the "only approved theology recognized by the Christian Church" (34), Cessario demonstrates the continuing vitality of Thomism, its capacity to address new theological questions that emerge in changing historical and cultural circumstances, and its capacity to address the variety of concerns that stand at the heart of diverse academic disciplines. Although this journal is not dedicated exclusively to exploring the many dimensions of Thomistic theology—other journals fulfill that need admirably, as noted by Cessario when he praises the inception of the English edition of the international theological journal Nova et Vetera (to take but one example)—the concrete demonstration of the continuity and vitality of Thomism exemplifies the unity in the midst of ongoing development in Catholicism as a whole.

Cessario faces up to the charge that Thomism reached a point of exhaustion and is significant today only as a matter of intellectual history—a charge not unlike those made by various cultural critics over the last 150 years concerning Christianity as a whole. It would be a typical modern attitude to regard any tradition with roots in the Middle Ages and earlier as necessarily outmoded, rendered obsolete by the dialectic of history and significant only to the extent that it might have provided the context and preceding stage for contemporary forms of thought. Cessario shows that Thomism continues to flourish throughout the world and continues to be "an active force that has shaped the minds of clerics as well as of lay and religious scholars in a most personal way" (94). He sees such vitality in the continuity...