Knowing, Seeing, Being: Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore and the American Typological Tradition by Jennifer L. Leader (review)

of Thomas as written in the Summa, the diverging paths of its reception, and the later scholastic use of Aquinas. No student of Thomistic thought should proceed without reading the discussion that begins on page 127 concerning the radical misunderstanding of Thomas’s doctrine of esse that has been the majority position of Thomists since his earliest popular interpreters. So prevalent is this misreading, indeed, that McGinn quotes Teresa of Avila’s confessor Banez as saying that ‘‘this is what Thomas calls out so often and Thomists don’t want to hear, that existence is the actuality of every form and nature’’ (153). Perhaps most important for the development of modern Western thought, McGinn points out that the prolific and influential Salamanca School Jesuit and commentator on Thomas, Francisco Suarez, ‘‘broke with Thomas and came closer to Scotus in teaching that being is a general category embracing both God and creatures and in denying the distinction of essence and existence in created beings (155–56). With this background in mind, the appeal and limitations of the Thomistic revival in the 19th century make better sense, while the variety of engagements with Thomas among the ressourcement thinkers and Christian explorations of existentialism and personalism in Thomistic perspective suggest that it remains possible to suggest a way forward in reading Aquinas. In no sense has this review exhausted the merits of the book. An excellent choice for a graduate seminar reading list and, I think, an incredibly useful text for any student of the Angelic Doctor, McGinn’s work will not disappoint. If he occasionally concedes too much to a modern sense of distance from the past, this seems like a mere rhetorical flourish by comparison with the broad flagstone path he has carefully laid down to help us close it. Peter G. Epps Oklahoma State University Knowing, Seeing, Being: Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore and the American Typological Tradition. By Jennifer L. Leader. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. ISBN 978-1-62534-180-8. Pp. 246. $28.95. Typology is a central structure through which Christianity and literature engage each other. Among the foundational topics since the earliest Christian centuries, typology as exegetical procedure informs Christian discourses theologically as well as textually. It is central to defining the ties that bind the Old and New Testament together, and indeed instrumental to the inclusion of Hebrew Scripture as the Old Testament in the Christian canon and ultimately to the Christian conception of history and of God’s presence in it. In early English North America, typology emerged into still greater prominence in defining the Puritan mission in America as part of not only secular, but also sacred history. This is the core promise of typology: to construct history as at once Book Reviews 329 linear but also as designed within an eternal pattern, connecting events in time to the divine plan. Typology, thus, is integral to religious questions of relation not only between time and eternity, but between materiality, the body born into time, and soul or spirit. In exegetical terms, these relations have been marked as ‘‘literal’’ compared to ‘‘figural’’ senses of Scripture; the ‘‘literal’’ as Hebrew scriptural events, then, if properly interpreted, prophesy Christic events, revealing in Christ the eternal design that governs time. Jennifer Leader in this study investigates the tradition of typology in three major American authors: Jonathan Edwards, Emily Dickinson, and Marianne Moore. While typology has long been a topic in interpreting Edwards, if with considerable argument and disagreement, discussing Dickinson and Moore in a typological framework returns their writing to a religious discourse that has been long neglected , but is now reemerging. For each of the three authors, Leader offers valuable biographical and bibliographical backgrounds concerning the religious discourses that situate each one’s personal, cultural, and intellectual contexts. Leader details the religious milieu, reading, and influences on each author both personally and culturally. The excellent scholarship uncovering Dickinson’s rich access to Edwards is especially welcome, filling in a topic that has not received the treatment it deserves. Leader similarly fills in Marianne Moore’s religious milieu through family and pastoral discourses, notebook entries, biblical classes, and...