Thomas and Bonaventure: A Septicentenary Commemoration. Proceedings of The American Catholic Philosophical Association (review)

164 BOOK REVIEWS deficiencies-obvious perhaps because one expects so much-it does lead to a gospel understanding of reconciliation and evangelization in our secular age. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D. C. JoHN BURKE, O. P. Thomas and Bonaventure: A Septicentenary Commemoration. Proceedings of The American Catholic Philosophical Association, Volume XLVIII. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America, 1974. 344 pp. Scholars teaching in Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the United States have contributed to this septicentenary volume. Their thirty-one papers are grouped under six headings: "The Nature of Philosophy ,"" Man and Knowledge,"" God and Religious Knowledge," "Ethics," "Law," and " Texts," followed by a commemorative oration by Robert J. Henle, S. J. The concluding section of the volume contains the presentation of the Aquinas Medal by W. Norris Clarke, S.J., to Cornelio Fabro, C. P. S., and such Association business as committee reports and minutes of meetings. Not all of the papers are directly on Bonaventure or Thomas. Some are on relevant problems or historical background. For example, the first paper, by Thomas Langan, presents a conception of a Christian philosophy that provides a place for both metaphysics and historicity. Louis Dupre, in " The Mystical Experience of the Self and Its Philosophical Significance," explores what mystical experience contributes to the knowledge of the self as such. Adolfo Munoz-Alonso and A. Robert Caponigri discuss St. Augustine, who was a master to both Bonaventure and Thomas. Munoz-Alonso, in " The Idea and the Promise of Philosophy in St. Augustine ," by showing that Augustine does not detract from nature or human intelligence to exalt the role of faith, helps the reader to see him more clearly as the forerunner of Thomas Aquinas. Caponigri, in " Contemporary Neo-Augustinianism," thinks Augustine speaks directly to contemporary man and notes that Catholic scholars like Munoz-Alonso, Blonde!, Sciacca, have renewed for our time the thought of Augustine. John McNeill, S. J., in " Blonde! on the Subjectivity of Moral Decision Making," sees Blondel's philosophy of action as the most powerful presentation of the Augustinian tradition in contemporary philosophy and theology. Julian Gervasi, in "The Integralism of Michele Frederico Sciacca," relates Sciacca's concept of objective inwardness to Augustine's experience both of inwardness and openness to transcendence. Of the papers directly on the theme of the volume, those on St. Bona- BOOK REVIEWS 165 venture are outnumbered by those on St. Thomas Aquinas, but they should not be neglected by students of Franciscan philosophy. John 0. Riedl, in" Bonaventure's Commentary on Dionysius' 'Mystical Theology,'" gives a careful textual analysis of those portions of the second of the Collationes in Hexaemeron in which Bonaventure speaks of Dionysius the Areopagite, whom he names as a guide, along with Gregory and Augustine. Bernardino Bonansea, 0. F. M., in "The Impossibility of Creation from Eternity According to St. Bonaventure,'' compares and contrasts the position of St. Bonaventure with that of St. Thomas on this admittedly difficult question and tries to show the reasonableness of Bonaventure's position. Ewert Cousins, in "God as Dynamic in Bonaventure and Contemporary Thought," and Leonard Bowman, in "A View of St. Bonaventure's Symbolic Theology ," would bring Bonaventure into dialogue with twentieth century man. Cousins, seeing the God of Bonaventure's Trinitarian doctrine as a dynamic, self-diffusive source, suggests the fruitfulness of comparing his metaphysics of fecundity with the thought of Whitehead and Teilhard. Bowman, noting that Bonaventure described material creatures from above as footprints of the Trinity, asks what these vestigia would look like to twentieth century man who describes phenomena from below. Seeing them as gifts to our consciousness which disclose a giver of infinite fecundity, Bowman finds Bonaventure's symbolic theology not too different from some things said by Heidegger, Karl Rahner, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Ignatius Brady, 0. F. M., in " The Opera Omnia of St. Bonaventure Revisited," discusses four points on the Quaracchi edition and later developments : 1) the background of the edition and its preparation; ~) problems of the edition or items open to criticism; 3) the question of whether or not pieces found since the edition can be attributed to Bonaventure; 4) things that still remain to be discovered. The Bonaventure scholar...