Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition ed. by Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 501 Christ's passions and defects are deprived of any soteriological significance except exemplarity. This implies that exemplarity has to be literal: Christ must experience life in absolutely the same way as we do; otherwise his example would be insincere. Then a final step comes: the parting of soteriology from Christology. All said and done, did the mediaeval theologians sever from their patristic predecessors as Madigan asserts? Did a shift occur in the doctrinal history of Christianity? I think that the so-called shift is merely a kind of optical illusion created by the use of flawed theological lenses. Madigan has assembled texts and organized them in a clever thematic synthesis. Needless to say, he must have spent a lot of time becoming familiar with them. In spite of all this effort, it is amazing that something of great importance remained unperceived by him: in their attempt to organize the many quaestiones fueled by their biblical teaching, twelfth-century theologians were relying on patristic anti-Arian material, but they were no longer tied down to the Arians' agenda. For many reasons the passions and defects were to be studied in medieval treatises for their own sake, each one in particular, and were related to both the Incarnation and the Passion. This shift from the vantage point of the Fathers allowed for a clarification of the distinction between the natural reality of passions and defects in Christ and their soteriological significance (in more or less satisfying ways, but this is another matter). Through rewriting and reverent exegesis, this makes for continuity with the patristic period and constitutes a development. Madigan knows the texts: he quotes them; he comments upon them, and shows that he understands them; but something prevents him from grasping their thrust and the continuous line they were drawing. It is as if he was a still prisoner of the Arians' perspective. His inability to integrate the consideration of nature in a consideration of the person of Christ keeps him from perceiving one of the most fascinating progressions in the history of Christology. Beauty can deceive. Dominican Studium Toulouse, France EMMANUEL PERRIER, 0.P. Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition. Edited by MATTHEW L. LAMB and MATTHEW LEVERING. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xxiv + 462. $29.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-19-533267-9. This collection of essays answers to the call of Pope Benedict XVI for a reading of the texts of the Second Vatican Council within a "hermeneutic of continuity," for which, as a matter of course, conciliar documents are interpreted by way of anamnesis (i.e., against their de facto doctrinal background in the 502 BOOK REVIEWS tradition) and not by way of prognosis (i.e., in terms of their possible contribution to a speculatively constructed future). The address of the pope to the Roman curia on 22 December 2005, which suggested this desideratum, is printed here as a kind of preface to the whole work. The task the editors have set themselves is certainly both desirable and necessary. Firstly, it is desirable because too many versions of what the council said or intended have assumed the alternative-a hermeneutic of rupture, with consequences often unfortunate for the life of the faithful. Secondly, it is also necessary because what Benedict XVI requested is simply the normal way to proceed when handling such texts in an intellectually responsible manner. No historical theologian, or Church historian, should treat Vatican II as a sketch for a hypothetical Vatican III. What should we make of a student who decided to interpret, say, the two-wills doctrine of Constantinople III, not against the background of Chalcedon and Constantinople II, but in terms of a proleptic account of Trent on justification, or even, for that matter, of Nicaea II (the council immediately following) on the portrayable character of the hypostasis of the Word incarnate? At least Nicaea II and Trent have a measurable reality quotient, which is more than can be said for Vatican III. A substantial introduction by the editors ascribes the lacunae of much commentary on the council texts not only to Church politics but also-and more profoundly-to the loss of a sapiential...