Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian by Benedict Ashley, O.P. (review)

168 BOOK REVIEWS Santurri, on the basis of the overall argument he constructs, would certainly say that no genuine dilemma exists in this case. Obligations to God must be taken to trump all others, and so one is confronted neither with a conflict in the natural law nor between specific divine commands. Nonetheless, one is left, as in the point made above, with the question of what responsibilities are incurred both by God and by human agents when moral obligations are set aside, if indeed they are, for religious ones? These questions need to be addressed for reasons additional to comprehensiveness . They are central to the project Santurri has undertaken , which as I take it is to show that the moral life is coherent and not self-frustrating. Now, there are at least two ways in which the moral life can founder. The first is the one Santurri so ably discusses. It might he that the moral universe is structured in such a way that one cannot avoid doing wrong in doing right. The second is suggested by the questions asked immediately above which he does not address. It may he that, in setting aside one obligation for another, additional obligations are engendered which might possibly make the living of the moral life after either self-defeating or exhausting or both. Perhaps moral or religious/moral tensions do not contain genuine dilem· mas, hut suppose they generate fearful moral debts that simply con· tinue to pile up? It is the mark of a good book to leave its readers with questions they did not have when first they picked it up. The questions I have just put are intended to suggest what a fertile field Santurri has begun to plow and what a fine job he has performed in doing so. The General Theological Seminary New York, N.Y. PHILIP TURNER Theologies of the Body: Humanist and Christian. By BENEDICT ASHLEY, O.P. Braintree, Mass: The Pope John XXIII Medical Moral Center, 1985. Pp. xii + 770. $20.95 (paper). This is one of those rare books which can truly he called a master· piece, the sort of book to which one can (and indeed must) return time and time again for instruction and enlightenment. To do justice to it in a short review is impossible, but I hope to call attention to the features that make it so exceptionally worthwhile and important. It is, first of all, a work of immense learning, packed with informa· tion and extensive documentation. The author's mastery of contem· BOOK REVIEWS 169 porary science and of the historical development of both philosophy and theology is amazing. But more than this, Ashley knows how to go to the heart of the matter, to sift the incidental from the essential. Serenely confident that the precious truths of Christian relevation are compatible with the truths that can he known through scientific and philosophic inquiry, Ashley offers readers a work that in very many ways can be described as a contemporary apologetic, one that shows the reasonableness and intelligibility of Catholic faith. For while the central focus of the book is on anthropology, on the meaning of the human person, its ultimate goal, so it seems to me, is to show the rea· sonableness and credibility of the Christian understanding of the human person as a bodily being, made in God's image and redeemed by the death and resurrection of the Word, who for love of humankind he· came flesh. The work is divided into four parts. Parts One and Two, " Science, the Body, and Humanist Theology" and "Christian Theologies of the Body," are, to a great extent, massively erudite discussions intended to prepare the way for the author's thoughtful and thought-provoking articulation of a philosophically sound account of the human person and of the human person's divine vocation in Parts Three and Four, " A Radical Process Interpretation of Science " and " A Process The· ology of the Body." In Part One Ashley first provides readers with a fascinating sum· mary of what modern science has to tell us about human beings as bodily entities. His conclusion is that modern science has by no means...