The Word Has Dwelt Among Us: Explorations in Theology by Guy Mansini, O.S.B. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 332 texts too strongly slanted towards a kind of universalism that he favors, one may ask whether too much weight is placed upon these texts in the first instance. Christ the Conqueror of Hell offers a bracing presentation of the mystery of Christ’s descent to Hades and an erudite argument for the theological consequences that flow from it. Orthodox theologians will have to address Archbishop Hilarion’s use and ranking of the liturgical texts, as well his conclusion that the prayer of the Church can change the eternal destiny of those already in hell. For Western readers this volume offers an invaluable view into the Eastern tradition’s reading of the Descent that Archbishop Hilarion so ably displays. As he rightly maintains, Christ’s descent to Hades was not merely a mopping-up operation, intended just to clean up what had already happened, but was the final, decisive episode in Christ’s work to defeat the powers of sin, Satan, and death. Though differences between East and West may remain, the West has a great deal to gain by exposure to the East’s joyful proclamation and celebration of this mystery. DANIEL KEATING Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, Michigan The Word Has Dwelt Among Us: Explorations in Theology. BY GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. Ave Maria, Florida: Sapientia Press, 2008. Pp. 276. $26.95 (paper). ISBN 978-1-932589-45-0. This is an impressive work of speculative theology by the Benedictine Guy Mansini. Composed of several previously published essays, the manuscript is divided into two sections: Christology (and soteriology), and ecclesiology and sacramental theology. As the author expresses it, this work “treats mainly either of Christ and his work or of his presence in the Church through the sacrament of Orders” (vii). Identifying the “unifying threads” of the essays, the author continues by stressing the view “that theology has guidelines and boundaries in the dogmatic teaching of the Church, and that theology makes its way most handily by consciously appropriating the metaphysical realism implicit in that same Catholic dogmatic tradition” (viii-ix). On this front this manuscript more than delivers. Containing seven essays spanning a variety of approaches to the mystery of Christ, the Christological section’s most impressive quality, in my mind, is its engagement both with classical Christology (principally that of Aquinas and of the soteriology of Anselm) and with modern Christology (especially that of the twentieth century’s most influential theologians, namely, Rahner, Balthasar, and BOOK REVIEWS 333 Lonergan). The author devotes separate essays to both Rahner and Balthasar, and then in a third he puts the two in dialogue with each other. For the essay on Rahner (“Quasi-formal Causality and ‘Change in the Other’: A Note on Karl Rahner’s Christology,” 15-16), the author focuses on the Jesuit’s claim that the Logos is “quasi-formally related to the Person of Christ” (23), with the result that only the second person of the Trinity could have assumed a human nature. While attempting to give the best voice possible to Rahner’s position, the author nonetheless comes down negatively on Rahner’s attempt to find reasons of necessity for the Incarnation: “Often enough, Rahner proceeds, as did St. Anselm, seeking necessary reasons for the facts of the economy of salvation where St. Thomas [in his reasons for fittingness, conveniens, of said economy] sought merely the intelligibility of the facts. . . . [To attempt the former] is to risk an inflation of the theological currency” (25). Turning to Balthasar (“Balthasar and the Theodramatic Enrichment of the Trinity,” 27-44), the author examines the Swiss theologian’s view that “the drama between God and man [is] also constitutive of the inner-Trinitarian drama” (27), and that this drama opens a path to overcoming the opposition between the immutable God of the philosophers and the God of myth who is involved in and reactive to the world. This essay offers a handy and accessible overview ofBalthasar’s theology. Despite wishing to defend Balthasar’s claimthat the Cross “enriches” the Trinity, which would imply a kind of change in God, the author opts to side with Aquinas on God’s absolute immutability: “It is hard to see...