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BOOK REVIEWS 471 These are issues of no small concern for contemporary Scholastic philosophers. If studies of the Renaissance have labored to cast off the yoke of past prejudices, it is all the more amazing how easily Catholic theologians and philosophers indulge in these very prejudices. Many Aristotelians have long imagined that Scholasticism is a worldview entirely sufficient for understanding all aspects of human society, while many humanists have just as easily imagined that thinkers of the caliber of Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, John Duns Scotus, or Francisco Suarez have nothing to offer the modern Catholic philosopher. But restorationist and progressive alike share a myth of the socalled "waning" of the Middle Ages; indeed, the only thing that separates the one from the other is that they have reversed the terms of an otherwise identical genealogy. For the one, Thomas Aquinas is the summit from which all fall away; for the other, he is the nadir from which all struggle to escape. With such an aggressive rhetoric overdetermining both side of the contemporary debate about Scholasticism, a sensible book on its interaction with humanism during the Renaissance is a welcome balm. Loyola University Maryland Baltimore, Maryland TRENT POMPLUN Nouvelle theologie and Sacramental Ontology: A Return to Mystery. By HANS BOERSMA. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 336. $120.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-19-922964-2. In this book, Hans Boersma argues that various currents of twentieth-century thought encompassed by the term nouvelle theologie can all be understood as attempts to argue for a "sacramental ontology." What is at issue is not the theology of sacraments, but the sacramentality of ontology, that is, the capacity of all of reality to contain and lead to the divine. The author's thesis, expressed in clear and penetrating prose, is that the nouvelle theologians (in particular, Henri Bouillard, Marie-Dominique Chenu, Yves Congar, Jean Danielou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar) all wanted "to recover a sacramental ontology" and so to promote a "return to mystery" (viii). This sacramental pattern is found in a number of different fields of theology and is expressed in a variety of ways: the literal meaning of Scripture sacramentally contains the figurative; secular history sacramentally contains the sacred; nature sacramentally 472 BOOK REVIEWS contains the supernatural. Boersma holds that these nouvelle theologians were promoting this sacramental ontology in opposition to what they regarded as neoThomist "extrinsicism," which included a theology of grace that builds on nature while remaining extrinsic to it, instead of elevating and perfecting it from within. This group of theologians, in their methodological return to classic patristic and medieval sources (ressourcement), held that with this extrinsicism, neo-Thomism (unlike St. Thomas's own work) had unwittingly conceded to the Enlightenment the notion of an independent realm of nature (5). This in turn made belief in God difficult for people in the modern world by relegating him to a remote realm that is irrelevant to life in the world. For Boersma, the nouvelle theologie wanted to save the faith from rationalism, at times by saving St. Thomas from neo-Thomism. Although the author does not present his book primarily as an exposition of his own theological opinions, he clearly has sympathy for the overall outlook of the nouvelle theologians and for many of their views (though he critiques some of them). In particular, the ideas of Henri de Lubac seem to be particularly favored, providing the leitmotif of the book. De Lubac is discussed in every chapter (unlike any of the other five figures), and is spared even mild or oblique criticism, unlike Bouillard (113), Chenu (116, 144-48), or Danielou (180, 190). Viewpoints opposed to the movement are presented soberly and fairly, albeit rather briefly. Boersma's aim is to explain the nouvelle theologie, including the contexts of the disputes surrounding it, not to offer full coverage of all sides of those disputes. The book has eight chapters. The first and introductory one, "The Rupture between Faith and Life," presents the main concerns of the nouvelle theologie as well as a concise account of the principal controversies surrounding it. Among the insightful analyses that the author offers is the contrast...

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