Thomas von Aquin und die Liturgie by David Berger (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 499 Thomas von Aquin und die Liturgie By DAVID BERGER. Cologne: Editiones Thomisticae, 2000. Pp. 120. ISBN 3-89811-286-1 (paper). This modest study of St. Thomas's texts and motifs relevant to the Church's liturgical life is designed to reassure those who suspect that the liturgy played no serious part in his theological vision. Aside from a shortish conclusion, the book consists of four chapters which consider in turn Thomas's authority and the value of his thought today, the role of the liturgy in his life and spirituality, the liturgy as a locus theologicus in Aquinas's theological argumentation, and, finally-and here, if the texts adduced are familiar the concept under which they are brought is, in this context, an unusual one-St Thomas's "liturgics." Berger's account of Thomas's ecclesial standing covers well-trodden territory from Baronius's comments on his influence atTrent to PopeJohn Paul H's Fides et ratio. The section on Thomas's actuality is more interesting. By repackaging the philosophical Thomas as a modern avant la lettre, Transcendental Thomism succeeded in making him boring, for what could be less interesting than someone who simply states what all enlightened people know anyway? If anything is to be liberating about Thomist thought it will be what makes it different in some respect. The question then naturally presents itself in a book with such a title as the present one: what by way of useful dissonance from contemporary assumptions does Thomas have to say to us on the liturgy? Two planks of the author's platform must be put in place first. Thomas's "spirituality" was deeply liturgical; he treated the liturgy as theologically authoritative. Unless these claims can be substantiated (this appears to be Berger's thinking), the mystagogical and epistemological preconditions for taking seriously anything thought-provokingly different in Thomas's liturgiology will be absent. It can hardly be said that the Christian thinking of St. Thomas is as thoroughly liturgical in its inspiration and content as that, say, of Blessed Columba Marmion. Still, it is not difficult to show that the pertinent preconditions are metby this Eucharistically oriented, fervent friar, brought up among the "sons of St. Benedict," a doctor who in the prologue to his Postilla super Psalmos gave it as his opinion that the Psalter "contains the whole of theology at large" and in the Summa Theologiae ascribes maxima auctoritas to the sacramental consuetudo &clesiae. Given all this, it was probably unnecessary for Berger to make so much of St. Thomas's allegorical defense of the numerous signs of the Cross required of the celebrant over the Gifts in the pre-modern Roman Rite (44-51). That is part and parcel of the author's attempt not only to tie such liturgical principles as we can infer from St. Thomas's corpus to that liturgy (a proceeding which is of course historically correct) but, further, to insinuate that those principles are incapable of informing the theological awareness of a Western Catholic using the modern rites (with their enfeebled ability to stimulate contemplation, 500 BOOK REVIEWS exaggerated emphasis on subjectivelyexperienced needs, and reduced emphasis on the identity of the sacrament of the altar with the mystery of the Cross). These criticisms certainly apply de facto to much contemporary celebration; whether they can be laid at the door of the Pauline Missal simply as such is another question. It would, however, be a pity if the deficient sympathy of many readers for the author's liturgical preferences stopped them reading on and reaching his valuable statement of Thomas's "liturgics." Here he brings together a number of principles, discussed at some length by Thomas in the two Summas, and capable of acting as building blocks for the theology of the liturgy Thomas never got around to constructing. Within an "analectic" reading of Thomas's intellectual vision as characterized by deliberate balance, comprehensiveness, and interconnection, Berger sets out in brief compass such themes as: theocentricity; man's physical-spiritual nature as a worshiping being; the return of man to God through the instrumentality of the humanity ofJesus Christ, the High Priest whose continuing action the liturgy is...