On the Last Day: The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas by Bryan Kromholtz (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 168 substantial bibliography helpful, although I could have hoped for an index (2 pp., only proper names) with more detail. Nevertheless, this is and will remain a solid reference work for scholars of Scholastic theology. KEVIN L. HUGHES Villanova University Villanova, Pennsylvania On the Last Day: The Time of the Resurrection of the Dead according to Thomas Aquinas. By BRYAN KROMHOLTZ. Fribourg: Academic Press Fribourg, 2010. Pp. 548. 92 CHF (paper). ISBN: 978-2-8271-1683-6. Kromholtz’s thorough study of Aquinas’s answer to the question of when the resurrection of the dead occurs is not about our resurrection’s calendar date, which Aquinas thinks cannot be predicted or known by us, but how it is positioned in relation to other events such as an individual’s death or the general judgment. A principal virtue of Kromholtz’s thesis is that what might appear to be a narrow, even peripheral question is shown to be one of considerable range and reach throughout Aquinas’s thought. He concludes that, despite the obsolescence of Aquinas’s natural science, his philosophy of nature and theology of man within the universe retain enduring insights. Kromholtz draws out these insights against the background of a more recent tendency among theologians (e.g., Rahner, von Balthasar, Greshake) to locate an individual’s resurrection at the moment of death, thereby discarding any intermediate state of a disembodied soul. He notes that while some of these theologians were concerned in their theories to protect the unity of the corporeal human being, the notion of “resurrection in death” has been accused of risking an overly individualized and spiritualized understanding of the resurrection. Ratzinger’s criticisms of these more recent tendencies are taken by Kromholtz as an indication that the debate is hardly closed, and this gives him the opportunity to introduce Aquinas into the discussion. Kromholtz shows that, in contrast to these tendencies, Aquinas situated a simultaneous general resurrection temporally relative to events at the end of the world, the return of Christ, and his universal judgment. The reader is left in no doubt from the beginning that the resurrection held chief place in Aquinas’s eschatology. With admirable clarity, order, and precision, Kromholtz attains his goal not only of establishing Aquinas’s answer to his question but also of exposing its links to Aquinas’s theology of the cosmos and of Christ, and to his theological anthropology, collective as well as individual. The first chapter helpfully reviews relevant background topics in Aquinas’s thought, including his teaching on the eschaton, man, death, history, time, and BOOK REVIEWS 169 the resurrection itself. Kromholtz observes how, throughout Aquinas’s various works, the resurrection held priority in the structure of his teaching over both the end of the world and the last judgment, a fact explained by the theological importance Aquinas granted to God as the end of creatures, especially man. Kromholtz finds in Aquinas an implicit theology of history, with significant temporal elements in his understanding of man and the cosmos. That the question of the time of the resurrection is not alien to Aquinas’s thinking Kromholtz shows by briefly summarizing his understanding of eternity, aeviternity, and, temporality. Chapter 2 offers a full examination of three key texts where Aquinas addresses Kromholtz’s question directly (IV Sent., d. 43, q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 1; In Job 19; and In Jn 6, lect. 5). The first is the earliest, from the Commentary on the Sentences, and gives the question’s most extensive treatment, asking “whether the time of the resurrection ought to be delayed until the end of the world so that all may rise at the same time.” Aquinas’s answer is that all will rise after Christ, and this will be delayed (with some exceptions) until the end of the world with all rising simultaneously. Much of the corpus is taken up with the relationship between the resurrection and the world’s time. The incorruptibility of the body is given as a reason to reject a resurrection before this time’s end. Kromholtz underlines the link with Aquinas’s theological anthropology: should the resurrection occur before the end, Aquinas thinks, one would have...