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BOOK REVIEWS 327 In chapter 4, Ashley asks whether there is any office equal in dignity to the priesthood for which only women are qualified. He recalls that only women qualify for the role of consecrated virgin because only women are able to symbolize Mary (the New Eve, the Mother of God and of the Church) and the Church itself as the Bride of Christ. He contends that this vocation to a life of virginity dedicated to contemplative prayer is equal in dignity to the priesthood. He reflects on the other ways women participate in the Church (as prophets, teachers, theologians, vowed "active" religious, wives and mothers), and suggests it might be possible to ordain women to offices that correspond to the present lay ministries. His final recommendation, however, is that women "be consulted on all important matters of Church policy, and that their prophetic role in the Church be highlighted" (165). The reader should be warned that the book is marred by many typographical and other errors, for example, "Christ" for "the priest" (81 n. 31), "Scotus" for "Bonaventure" (89 n. 48), "Athanasian" for "Nicene" (113), "Christ" for "the Bride" (118), "hypothesis" for "hypostasis" (199 n. 13). An author index would also have enhanced its usefulness. Nevertheless, I recommend this book very highly. It is a wonderful exercise in theological analysis and a well-reasoned, well-informed effort to set out the logic of Catholic teaching which sheds new light on the question. Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, Illinois SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. God ofAbraham. By LENN E. GOODMAN. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 324. $49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-508312-1. The author of OnJustice: An Essay inJewish Philosophy here offers the fruit of twenty years of reflection on issues in philosophical theology, nourished by a prolonged study of Hellenic philosophy and its medieval Muslim and Jewish transformations, at the hands notably of Saadiah and Maimonides. With the stated aim of articulating "the nexus between God and values" (viii), the initial three chapters incorporate the author's earlier monograph Monotheism, considerably recast, while the following four chapters articulate, in turn, the relation of person to community (chap. 4), the issue of the plurality of goods (Saadiah) in tension with a unity of focus for action (Maimonides) (chap. 5), and the particular ways in which the Torah, oral and written, contributes to embodying this vision, first in principle (chap. 6) and then in practice (chap. 7). This extended inquiry is then concluded by a more metaphysical reflection on 328 BOOK REVIEWS time, inspired by Bergson and animated by his critics, so as to allow ancient Muslim and Jewish arguments for creation as the "best explanation" to come to life with methodological astuteness: [A]bsolute creation will never be verified or falsified conclusively.... The most we can say of any transcendental claim is that it is confirmed or disconfirmed by the evidence, harmonious or inharmonious with the consilience of experience. In these terms we can say that the findings of cosmology and physics tend to confirm the world's origination and to disconfirm its eternal, steady state existence--whatever construction is put upon these facts. (262) A closing peroration discloses the rabbi in the philosopher, reminding us of the leitmotif of this inquiry: "the complementarity of reason and revelation" (184). Spelled out extensively in chapter 6, "Monotheism and Ritual," and illustrated in an exemplary way in chapter 7, "The Biblical Laws of Diet and Sex," this practice of allowing a faith tradition to direct and illuminate our inquiry, without at any point explicitly arguing from authority (viii), marks this work as at once post- and premodern. For the medievals, whom the author knows well and uses so adroitly as intellectual coworkers, certainly proceeded in the same dialectical fashion, letting faith provide a vision for reason ceaselessly to test. Such a program hardly exemplifies the modernist caricature of medieval philosophy, yet is profoundly congruent with the postmodern discovery that all inquiry is at best fiduciary. In conventional tc;;rms, the first two chapters, with the last, are exercises in philosophical theology, while the five central chapters lead us into ethics. But the separation is artificial; if in fact...

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