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BOOK REVIEWS 169 German. Still, Truth in the Making tells a compelling story. Readers interested in early modernity and the relation between knowing and making will find many gems in Miner's work. GRANT KAPLAN Loyola University New Orleans, Louisiana Natural Law Reconsidered: The Ethics of Human Liberation. By STEPHEN THERON. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Pp.213. $35.95 (paper). ISBN 08204 -5414-X. The thesis of this book is that there is a need to transcend a legalistic approach in ethics by emphasizing the role of charity and creativity in the moral life. The book seeks a liberation not from human nature or human indination but rather from the false constraints of human law and misconstruals of the natural law. In coming to his condusions, Theron draws on a wide variety of sources including Old and New Testaments, twentieth-century analytic philosophy , and contemporary continental philosophy. Theron's primary authorities in this reconstruction are Aristotle and Aquinas but surprisingly also Nietzsche. For Theron, Nietzsche's role is to help deconstruct moralistic and legalistic understandings ofthe natural law that have crept into the interpretation of some Thomists, such as Grisez and Finnis. Theron seeks to integrate the various components of Thomas's construal of the moral life into a coherent whole. His wide-ranging work treats subjects in applied ethics such as legal and moral debt (ch. 7), eros (ch. 8), murder (ch. 9), and the beatitudes (ch. 11), as well as handling more theoretical topics such as natural law (ch.1), virtue (ch. 2), consequentialism (ch. 3), and natural inclinations (ch.14). A central daim of the book is that natural law is, for Thomas, not really a "law" in the proper sense of the term, since Thomas links natural law to human indinations and flourishing rather than what Theron calls an a priori moralism. "There are many ... indications of how far Aquinas is from attaching any literal legality to natural law, which he defines as a reflected divine light, something rather distant from any usual notion of law, to say the least'" (13). A law, for Thomas, is a dictate of reason for the common good promulgated by the one who has care of the community (STh HI, q. 90, a. 4). Theron insists that natural law should not be considered truly a "law" because, among other reasons, the divine promulgation of a natural law would be akin to a divine command theory of ethics (51). Theron also holds that Jesus' command of love discretely discards the old ethics oflaw and obedience for a new ethics of love and creativity. "One 170 BOOK REVIEWS acts according to natural law when one's action is in tune with reality, especially the reality of one's needs" (12). He sees then a great disjunction between the emphasis of the New Testament and that of the Old. In this, he believes he follows the lead of Thomas. "Aquinas, after a preliminary nod at the Old Testament, declares that the new or gospel law, the one that counts, is nothing written at all, but, rather, a grace or charity infused into the human heart" (13). Certain difficulties for this quasi-Marcionite approach present themselves when one considers the Summa Theologiae as a whole. The Summa makes much more than a preliminary nod at the Old Testament; indeed the discussion of the Old Law is much longer than the discussion of natural law, human law, or the new law. Although subsequent interpreters give it much attention, Thomas's treatment of the natural law is relatively brief. The Decalogue plays a prominent role in Thomas's treatment of the moral life, especially his treatment of the virtue of justice. Nor is the importance of the Old Testament limited to "moral" issues. In Christ's Fulfillment of Temple and Torah: Salvation According to Thomas Aquinas (a book appearing after Theron's), Matthew Levering argues convincingly that Thomas sees Christ as fulfilling the Hebrew Scriptures in an unsurpassed and unique way. He came not to destroy the original covenants between God and his people but to fulfill them. In various sections, Theron's book addresses the relationship between freedom and law, and love and law...

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