Chiesa e Utopia ed. by G. Baget Bozzo (review)

328 BOOK REVIEWS judge the living and the dead." But of the three great creeds-the Apostles' creed, the Athanasian and the Nicene, the author says: " the acceptance of these creeds by long tradition in the Church has given them considerable authority as witness to Christian belief." (p. ft9) Symbolic and nonsymbolic interpretation loop the loop, and one is not sure in the end what is the meaning of the Resurrection of the Body. The author comments on Romans 8: ft1, but St. Paul's fifteenth chapter to the Corinthians is not mentioned in that context. Heaven as a reward slips away; we build it up for ourselves by the grace of God. Merit is not mentioned. Sin and grace are always in inverted commas, as if we Christians had no right to give a new meaning to words as to life itself. There are good things in this book and useful insights into Christian morality, for instance, a timely plea for community prayer for the souls in Purgatory. But I wonder is it fair on the part of the Editor of this series to engage authors who are not competent to deal theologically with their subject. Of course, apart from that consideration, the book in itself is worth reading, keeping in mind that it is dominantly pure Ethics. St. Charles' Seminary Napur, India JEROME TONER, o. P. Chiesa e Utopia. Edited by G. BAGET Bozzo. II Mulino: Bologna, 1971. Pp. 209. Lire 2.900. The author was involved from the very beginning in political activity in the Christian Democrat Party. He contributed to the monthly review " Terza Generazione " and directed " Ordine Civile," a review whose aim was to harmonize Christian values with the political dimension of society. Afterwards he studied theology and was ordained in 1967. At present he is the Director of " Renovatio," a review of theology published in Genoa. Bozzo attempts an interpretation of our time from a Christian point of view and, on the other hand, an interpretation of Revelation in the light of the present cultural situation. It is his claim that our epoch assures a better possibility of understanding Scripture, since the language and vision of the universe we have acquired today is closer to that of the Bible. The book opens with a view of anthropology in which the crisis of the noetic ideal since Kant is examined. "Western anthropology," Bozzo writes, " is an anthropology of the individual, of the individual as rational. The cosmological and collective aspects are out of the picture in Western culture." (p. 16) An attempt to propose a new image of man is undertaken by two types of anthropology, which the author calls " anthropology of the BOOK REVIEWS 329 future," those of Marx and Nietzsche. This anthropology of the future, however, has failed to provide a sufficient rational ground and has led to the restauration of metaphysics under the form of existentialism. Bozzo thinks that the idea of an anthropology of the future was the determining factor in the atheism of the masses. The author then deals with the "crisis of theology." Focusing on the philosophical foundations of theology, he analyzes the relationship between biblical and Greek concepts. The hellenization which took place has led to an impoverishment of the biblical message. Radical theology has given the death blow to liberal theology and has brought out the extreme consequences of the principle of radical separation between the divine and the human through the rejection of the concept of analogy. A following chapter is dedicated to the categories of time and space from the philosophical as well as biblical point of view. Both the concept of mankind as it constitutes one subject and the sense of history are stressed. At this point Bozzo presents an insight of the Church. In the perspective of the relations between history and eschatology the Church is defined as eschatology in history. The Church is also, as the "Corpus Christi," a public, social, and visible reality; hence the "political" aspects and implications of the "corpus christianorum." The fifth chapter is more related to the title of the book. Moving from an historical view of the concept of person, it deals with the transcendence of...