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77~ BOOK REVIEWS La Legge Nuova: L'Elemento Esterno Della Legge Nuova Secondo San Tommaso. By EnwARD KAcZYNSKI, 0. P. Rome: Libreria lnternazionale Edizioni Francescane, 1974. Pp. 184. Few questions in Christian moral theology are so fraught with complexity as the problem of the fundamental sources of moral obligation. What speaks to the conscientious Christian in the concrete situation of daily life? Are there objective norms which address themselves to his conscience from the outside? Or, is it not rather the inner, immediate voice of the Spirit which he is to heed in his decisions? The divergent answers have led to a conflict between what has been called an inhuman legalism, on the one hand, and a mindless illuminism, on the other. Not spawned by the Reformation, but certainly nurtured by it, the discussion seems to gather in intensity in our times. And the disagreement between Protestant and Catholic schools of thought sometimes seems less wide than the differences between various members of the same confessional background. On the Catholic side, so great has become the diversity of theological expression on the matter that the hierarchy of the Church in the United States sees the need for a statement from the bishops on moral norms. Professor Kaczynski's study brings into this many-sided discussion a voice whose dispassionate accents introduce a needed note of serene sagacity. The book is an examination of St. Thomas' much-neglected short tract on the New Law (Summa Theol., 1a2ae, qq. 106-108), in which he studies the external element of the New Law in its relation to the inner element, the reality of grace acting within the soul. The work does not pretend to give immediate and all-inclusive answers to what is a whole series of questions in contemporary moral teaching. But it does bring into the discussion, whose various parties appeal to St. Thomas for arguments, elements of the Angelic Doctor's writings which have been largely overlooked. In this sense, it has an offering to make to contemporary moral theology. The study begins with a short history of the attention which Christian thought has devoted to the theology of the New Law, almost to the present day. Here the author highlights an unexplained anomaly, the commentators' neglect of St. Thomas' treatment of the subject. The author, then, outlines his own procedure and, wisely, sets careful limits for himsel£; what he undertakes is an exposition of the three questions on the New Law, enlightened by St. Thomas' teaching on Law, in the Summa Theologiae and in parallel places mostly in the Commentary on the Sentences and in the Summa contra Gentes. His aim is simple: to present the thought of Aquinas on the external element of the New Law. He does not intend 3. mere reconstruction of St. Thomas' thought, nor does he intend to address all the problems presently germane to that thought. To set forth St. Thomas' thought on the subject, placing it in its context, is a singular BOOK REVIEWS 773 service, granted that its applications must be made by those who treat of the practical aspects of moral theology in the modern world. Following the short introduction on history and on his own methodology, the author enters quickly but carefully into the heart of his subject. The question is set within its own proper context, in the general framework of St. Thomas' thinking. Once having established the close relationship between Law and Revelation, on the one side, and between Law and Salvation History, on the other side, the book proceeds to its main argument, the teaching of St. Thomas on the exterior element of the New Law (chapters 3 to 6). Grace, in its transcendence, in its divine origin, is obviously external to man; but when, concretely, grace is operating within man, it is (pace Luther) rightly called internal to man. And, related to this sanctifying reality of the New Law, its proposal is, really and just as obviously, external , i. e., " any writing that is external to man, even that of the moral precepts such as are contained in the gospel" (Summa Theol., la!ilae, q. 106, a. !il). These, the internal and external elements of...

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