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666 BOOK REVIEWS Christologie im Horizont der Seinsfrage: Uber die epistemologischen und metaphysischen Voraussetzungen des Bekenntnisses zur universalen Heilsmittlerschaftfesu Christi. By MICHAEL STICKELBROECK. Miinchener Theologische Studien, II. Systematische Abteilung, 59. Band. St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2002. Pp. 713. 68 €(cloth). ISBN 3-8306-7133-4. The ubiquitous phenomenon of globalization poses a heretofore unknown challenge to every world religion: namely, to reconsider more "radically" (in the literal sense of the word: going to the roots) the epistemology upon which it is built. Religious pluralism, the acceptance of which is characteristic of the postmodern mind frame, fails to address the internal way a particular faith tradition arrives at its belief. Christologie im Horizont der Seinsfrage takes up this challenge head on and attempts to uncover anew for the twenty-first century the epistemological basis for Christian belief in the divine Logos who became incarnate and redeemed all of humankind. In this voluminous study, Michael Stickelbroeckdiscusses from an ontological perspective the basis for Christological dogmas and lucidly examines the epistemological and metaphysical prerequisites for claiming the universal mediation of salvation by Jesus Christ. The study achieves two objectives: (1) preventing Christian faith from falling into the trap of mere myth and (2) evidencingits credibilityin confrontationwith the decisive philosophical criteria: namely, reality and rationality. The author teaches systematic theology at a Catholic college in Austria and wrote thisHabilitationsschrift under the direction of the recently appointed bishop of Regensburg Gerhard L. Muller, professor of dogmatics at Munich University and member of the International Theological Commission. Stickelbroeck observes, in the wake of profound upheavals in philosophy and a subsequent rephrasing of Christology in the second half of the twentieth century, a crisis of plausibility and a lack of acceptance of classical dogmatic Christology. He claims that the inner connection between Christology and a metaphysical view of concrete reality-and thereby between philosophy and theology-fades from view. Without a proper philosophical and more precisely epistemological basis the New Testament and early Church statements, up to Nicaea and Chalcedon, concerning Jesus Christ cannot be understood, let alone retrieved. An antimetaphysical option in favor of a Kantian epistemological skepticism leads in Stickelbroeck's view to a rejection of natural theology (Bultmann) and, as a consequence, to postmodern agnosticism. He probes how Christology could be reconciled to current plausiblities and finds the answer in the appropriation of metaphysics. Stickelbroeckinvestigates the conditions requisite for human beings to accept in faith God's "absolute self-revelation" in history. How is "the coincidence of God and humankind in the person ofJesus Christ" accessible to cognition? What are the natural premises one must presuppose for faith to come about? How might a human person become the mediating center for revelation and salvation? BOOK REVIEWS 667 Stickelbroeck considers Descartes's turn to subjective consciousness and Kant's reduction of speculative human reason to the realm of sense objects as major impediments to metaphysics and therefore to understanding Christology. He questions whether indeed human experience is unable to grasp more than what human sense perception allows. Using the difference in German between Wirklichkeit (= the realm of cause and effect) and Realitat (= all of reality) he offers an epistemology that is not only able to apprehend actual reality but that is also a metaphysical, overarching concept enabling a realistic appreciation of Christological creedal sentences. For this he draws heavily on Thomas Aquinas. The principle similitude rei intellectae enables grasping a matter as it is in se. This Thomistic formal principle for insight explains the viability of an extrapolation from general sense content to the inner intelligibility of the totality of reality (= Realitat). Stickelbroeck apprehends Thomas's view of the inner intelligibility of being as overcoming skepticism with respect to metaphysical insight. Thomas holds that the human mind is able to abstract from sense experience something like a sweeping and all-encompassing meaning. The intellectus agens is capable of investigating sense experience and accessing thereby an intelligible object (= intelligere in sensibus). By virtue of the lumen naturale the human mind is capable of abstraction, that is, it is able to arrive at insight into essence. While Kant poses the question of the conditions for possibility of insight, Thomas's point of departure is the incontrovertible fact...

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