Summa Theologiae, Volume 57 (3a 66–72). Baptism and Confirmation by St. Thomas Aquinas (review)

328 BOOK REVIEWS Pentecost? allows us to see a bishop, within the frame of his composition, offering a personal testimony before the Church. He presents the experience and insight of a fellow-Christian, not suppressing awareness of that finitude by which each of us belongs to a given " generation." (p. 2) He is a courageous listener. He hears appreciatively what "rank and file Christians " (p. 107) say and what theologians think. (pp. 48-49, 63-64, 104, etc.) He is, in fact, uniquely encouraging to theologians, by continually and publicly longing for the understanding which they seek. His ecumenism begins in the specifics of what he has learned from the East, from the Ortho" dox, from Episcopalians, and from Protestants. For him even " prayer is becoming more and more a listening." (p. 218) He has a sense of the limitations of institutional elements in the Church, but a conviction of their necessity as well. He summons his fellow-bishops to catch up with the charismatic renewal (p. 91); they, and theologians too, must study the phenomenon by being part of it. (p. 104) He does not wait for directives, but he indicates how his leadership falls within the programmatic lines of papal utterances. He is not slow to admit to handicaps and to previous error. This bishop-author is a stimulating sign. When such a writer says he sees signs that the winter of the post-Council era is changing to spring, he is easy to believe. As we become acquainted with him, the question-mark of his title vanishes. Saint Mary's University Halifax, N. S., Canada EMERO STIEGMAN St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 57 (3a 66-72). Baptism and Confirmation. Commentary and translation by JAMES JusTIN CUNNINGHAM, 0. P., with two Appendices on the Liturgy by GERARD AusTIN, 0. P. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. and London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1975. $12.50. This recent addition to the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae is a welcome one. Father Cunningham has rendered a readable translation of the Leonine text which admits of no major textual variants. The accompanying apparatus is helpful, particularly iJl. that it offers references to Mansi's monumental work on the Councils. The author is a Professor of New Testament, and the footnotes, together with the :first three appendices , are especially sensitive in analyzing and often amplifying St. Thomas's use of Scripture, always with an eye to contemporary biblical exegesis and theology. Father Cunningham's presentation of the biblical roots of baptism, the problem of infant baptism, and the relationship of faith to baptism commend this volume to the reader concerned with an BOOK REVIEWS 8~9 up-to-date and exact survey of these current issues with reference to Aquinas. It is unfortunate that Father Cunningham was unable to have at his disposal the preceding volume of the series, yet unpublished, entitled "The Sacraments" ('De sacramentis in communi '). Undoubtedly, this accounts for the failure of this work to note St. Thomas's expansions upon his previous introductory questions on the sacraments in general. Several instances of what might have been done come to mind. St. Thomas's twofold manner of seeing the sacraments as " cultic " and " sanctifying " (III, Q. 60, art. 5) might have served as two poles of perspective ordering the appendices and enabling the author(s) to have brought to better light the internal connections between baptism and confirmation in the Summa. Also, mention might have been made of the fact that St. Thomas's treatment of sacramental efficacy has been considerably deepened in his elaboration of the effects of baptism and confirmation, now seen as intimately linked with incorporation into Christ and the mission of the Holy Spirit. Another case, though not entirely neglected, is Aquinas's view of the general relationship between faith and the sacraments. It is only when St. Thomas treats of baptism that the actual order of redemption is seen to require neither faith alone nor sacraments alone, but faith and the sacraments for justification. What has been hinted at in the previous treatise is made explicit here. This point obviously has significance if for no other reason than to round out Aquinas's general...