Modern Theology, A Sense of Direction by James P. Mackey (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Modern Theowgy, A Sense of Direction. By JAMES P. MACKEY. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Pp. 200; cloth $26.00; paper $8.95. This small volume is a serious, often profound, theological proposal. It is part of a series (edited by Keith Thomas, Alan Ryan, and Walter Bodmer) which aims to have experts write for students and the general reader to provide "concise, original, and authoritative introductions to a wide range of subjects in the humanities and sciences." But it is this and more. James P. Mackey is a Roman Catholic theologian, not yet widely discussed in the United. States. He is Thomas Chalmers Professor of Theology and Dean of the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Edinburgh. Among his more recent books, two suggest the shape of his theology: Jesus the Man and the Myth (London: SCM Press and New York: Paulist Press, 1979) and The Christian Experience of God as Trinity (London: SCM Press Ltd., 1983). Mackey makes no claims to be doing a "systematic theology"; these titles are simply clues to a theology serious about Jesus Christ and the triune God through taking seriously our human experience. The present text is, in one way, a survey of theological topics, from prolegomena (c. 1 and 2) to ethics (c. 6) . Chapters 3 and 4 are a Christology-one discussing the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, and the eucharist, and the other the life of Jesus. Chapter 5 is an ecclesiology , leading into a discussion of religions and the problems of war in the final chapter. Thel'e is scarcely a topic on which we need "a sense of direction " that is not touched. It is one of those rare intro· ductory texts that will proVie instructive, even for professional theologians . Indeed, I would even say primarily for professional theologians, for (despite the standard ordering of chapters) Mackey presents a daunting argument-probably much too daunting for the general reader or even most students to decide whether this is the direction he or she wishes to go. Perhaps this is the price one must pay for a text in a series that aims to be both introductory and original. In any case, the book is challenging not because of the technical thinkers he discusses. (It might be hard to find a more clear and witty summary of Heidegger.) The problem is this-,the first chapter begins with three ways of handling 787 738 BOOK REVIEWS "the problem of Jesus's relationship to the Christian religion"; the quest for the historical Je:;ms, general discussions of the relationship between faith and history, and most importantly European philosophies which discuss the " temporality of being " in the shadow of Hegel (Heidegger, Gadamer, Merleau-Ponty). We all, it conveniently turns out, have a primordial faith which " takes the form of an act of his· torical imagination" (30). But such imagination, it also turns out, is founded in emotions like love and fear, "the springs of all human action" (32), and this leads Mackey to investigate "humanist praxis," particularly Marx' " practicalist thesis " (c. 2) . The key prolegomena! axiom is eventually stated this way: " the truth of any particular way lies not in its conceptual claims and their argued supports, but in its proven ability to lead humanity to a better condition" (164,) Here is more than a " sense " of direction: it is a firm one--" authoritative " if not " original," for clearly stands in a modern tradition which would have us " begin with faith rather than revelation , with the man rather than the God" (24). There are two major ways to reject this direction. One rejects it simpliciter, arguing that God's revelation is such that there is no to from to get there; in its we argue in Anselmian fashion that we cannot even conceive of this sans God. Another simply does not know what to make of the choice between faith and man and God. We-I include here-reject Mackey's direction not simplicter but secundum quid. anthropological starting point (somehow) leads him into three concentric points of access to Jesus: the biblical the deaths of the martyrs, and the ritual drama of the eucharist (61...