Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting Against Reason is Contrary to the Nature of God ed. by Matthew L. Lamb (review)

What is the relationship of human reason to faith? Of philosophy to theology? Essays in this anthology—many of which originated in a conference held at Ave Maria University on February 10–12, 2011, "Philosophy in Theological Education," and which became owing to circumstances a posthumous tribute to the life and work of Ralph McInerny—explore the "universality of the God-given light of human reason" in its relation to the Catholic faith to meet "the intellectual challenges we face at the dawn of Catholicism's third millennium" (xi). Matthew L. Lamb's introductory essay, "The Need for Reason in Theology," locates the historical root of these contemporary intellectual challenges in fourteenth-century nominalism, which, "in exalting the will over reason, broke all living continuity with the great philosophical and theological traditions of the past" (xiv). In evacuating nature of its intrinsic intelligibility, nominalism brought into play the modern "dualism between mind and body, between subjects and object, between empirical science and theoretical wisdom" (xiv–xv). And yet, Lamb responds, the "universality of reason is oriented to the universality of being" (xii). This is why, he notes, "recent popes have shown that the intellectualism of an Augustine and Aquinas provides us with ways to correct the distortions caused by nominalism and voluntarism" (xiii). In this vein, the essays in this volume seek to illustrate the important contributions metaphysical realism can make for Catholic theology in the present day.

The essays in this volume are grouped topically into five parts. Essays in the first part seek to illustrate the general need for a sound philosophy interior to theology. Essays in the second part focus on the role of a metaphysics of nature and the natural knowledge of God in theology. Essays in the third part elucidate the relation of human reason to divine revelation. Essays in the fourth part examine the place of philosophy in systematic theology and those in the fifth, moral theology.

Given limitations of space, not all of the many worthy essays in this volume can be mentioned in the course of this review. Nevertheless, the following overview will hopefully serve to provide the reader with a sample of the riches this anthology has to offer.

In the first essay, "All Theologians are Philosophers, Whether Knowingly or Not" (3–18), Charles Morerod, O.P., argues that the rejection of philosophy, tacit or otherwise, is simply impossible for a theologian. Theology is intrinsically bound up with the issues tackled by philosophers, hence the theologian who engages in a program of dehellenization usually ends up swapping out metaphysics for other philosophical commitments, many of which impinge upon the proclamation of the Gospel (4–5). Morerod takes as an example Rudolf Bultmann's deployment of an existentialist philosophy to explain the substance of the Gospel to modern man, who, so Bultmann alleges, can no longer acknowledge miracles (6). For Bultmann, discourse about God must give way to the "personal-existential dimension" (6). "More or less consciously," Morerod notes, "Bultmann is influenced by a Kantian view or, more generally, modern anthropocentrism. Bultmann is clear: What matters is the human being, what we do, what we are. Not what God is in himself, but how he acts with us. We are the center" (7). In this way, God is displaced from the center he used to occupy as the traditional center of theology. What particularly concerns Morerod about this procedure is that theologians act so quickly to adopt the philosophies of their age without seemingly "caring about their compatibility with Christian faith" (9). Much the same is true if theologians adopt the philosophical underpinnings of postmodernity. While the benefit of postmodernity is that it undermines the metanarrative that supports atheism, it likewise undermines the metanarrative that supports Christianity: "interpretation has been substituted for truth" (10). In sum, Morerod notes, "the point is not whether we...