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Littérature et théologie: Une saison en enfer by Olivier-Thomas Venard, O.P. (review)
- The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 68, Number 4, October 2004
- pp. 651-653
- 10.1353/tho.2004.0010
- Review
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
BOOK REVIEWS 651 Litterature et theologie: Une saison en enfer. By OLMER-THOMAS VENARD, O.P. Geneve: Ad Solem, 2002. Pp. 505. 47 €.ISBN 2884820051. In the years immediately following Vatican II, Thomists often despaired of Aquinas having any further influence on Catholic thought. In fact, more recent years have seen a remarkable rediscovery of Thomas Aquinas himself, and of his relevance to our intellectual milieu. An integral part of this fresh appropriation has been theological as well as philosophical; indeed, most recently (underJosef Pieper's inspiration) we have put pay to that bifurcation of theology and philosophy which bedeviled neo-Thomism and has been institutionalized in Catholic colleges and universities in North America. We have seen how closely such a reading was tied to a modernist bifurcation between reason and everything else. The merit of postmodern reflection has been to restore Newman's reminder {bolstered by Gadamer) that all inquiry is at root fiduciary, so faith can count as well as a mode of knowing-provided it profits from that critical assessment which each Abrahamic tradition has espoused in its better moments. Olivier-Thomas Venard's amazing work fits into the genre just described, moving it astutely in the direction ofliterarystudies: a second subtitle reads "Thomas Aquinas: Poet Theologian," while the principal subtitle is taken from the masterwork of Rimbaud. Briefly, the intent ofthe author-a Dominican teaching at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem-is to recover the literary potential ofAquinas's composition of his theological inquiry, notably in the Summa Theologiae, and to do so by facing off his mode of expression with the poetic oeuvre of Rimbaud. This requires him initially to show how theological inquiry must be literary through and through. He accomplishes this by deftly deconstructing the conceptualist ethos that dominated neo-Thomism, and doing so from a careful clarification of the sense in which Aquinas himself purposed to establish theologia as a scientia. We have come to eschew translating those terms precisely to keep readers from importing contemporary notions into a medieval discourse. And it turns out that medieval discourse proves far more congenial to the postmodern sensibility in which we all live, even if it may take a work like this to persuade us of that fact. While Venard's guides are multiple, two especially reflect the dimensions ofthis work: Marie-Dominique ChenuandGeorge Steiner (notablyhisRealPresences). Chenu insisted on historical appropriation ofAquinas in the face ofideological retrieval, while Steiner has effectively reminded poststructuralist literary critics how their attempt to erase the author is rooted in their original denial of a creator. In fact, Venard's work is designed to show how Aquinas's literary strategies, especially in the lapidary prose of the Summa, can be compared to poetic composition in the way they succeed in manifesting what cannot be expressed directly. Along the way, Venard shows how Aquinas's analogical use of language employs metaphor effectively and judiciously to make its point, thereby deconstructing the wayin which conceptualist Thomists needed to sever analogy from metaphor. In fact, this reminder could encapsulate the entire thesis of Venard's exploration: analogous discourse in divinis must always retain a hint of 652 BOOK REVIEWS metaphor, since the primary analogate--God-resists conceptualization, as does the res significata of any divine name. That means, of course, there can be no "theory of analogy" short of a set of judiciously assembled reminders: in a postmodern reading of Aquinas sensitive to its medieval setting, Wittgenstein prevails! Philosophers wedded to a conceptualist mode have never been able to make sense of "analogy"; the literary maneuver proposed here (in an astutely philosophical mode) could help enlarge their appreciation of medieval modes of inquiryby showing howattention to literary composition can effectively improve an inquiry of philosophical theology. That will, however, require sustained work-not simply because conceptual univocity offers a handy default mode for philosophers, but also because this study is a demanding one, as a summary of the sections reveals. The book is unabashedly theological in tone, tracing a sustained attention to verbal composition to the emanation of the Word in God. It is this focus that legitimizes the author's literary scrutiny of the Summa in the initial section: "From Theology...