A Gift of Presence: The Theology and Poetry of the Eucharist in Thomas Aquinas by Jan-Heiner Tück (review)

Tück begins by recognizing that today "it is possible to receive a diploma or Master's degree in Catholic theology without ever having read one article of the Summa theologiae" (1). The gulf between contemporary Catholic theology and the theological work of prior generations is widening. He therefore proposes to undertake a retrieval of Aquinas's Eucharistic theology, even as he differentiates his project from "current efforts to establish a new iteration of Thomism" (5). Unfortunately, his representation of these "current efforts" is dated: he cites only the work of David Berger. At the same time, he insists that "the theological heritage of Thomas Aquinas" is not "obsolete" (6). He finds in the historical work of Jean-Pierre Torrell and others the insight that Aquinas's theology can be investigated to expose the connections between theology and spirituality and also, constructively, to "think with and through a paradigmatically speculative penetration of the deposit of faith" (7).

To my mind, such labor actually does produce "a new iteration of Thomism," and there is no reason to be apologetic about this. Part of Tück's "new iteration" is his careful attention to Aquinas's Eucharistic hymns, which he argues constitute "a poetic distillation of the Eucharistic theology of Thomas Aquinas" (9). Thus, Tück belongs to the school of Thomism that, with Torrell, emphasizes the unity of his theology and spirituality. The only question is whether this "new iteration" will present itself solely as a historical retrieval rather than as a constructive contribution to contemporary dogmatics. Tück makes clear that he intends to do the latter.

In Part A, Tück examines Aquinas's general sacramental theology. As a point of contact with contemporary Catholic sacramental theology, he notes that in many ways Aquinas offers "an anthropologically oriented sacramental theology" (52). In this regard, he rightly proposes, "With Thomas, we ought to hold fast to the sacraments' Christological foundation, which tends to recede somewhat when the sacraments are spoken of as 'self-performances of the Church'" (53; the interior quotation is from Karl Rahner). He defends Aquinas's deployment of instrumental causality on the grounds that—much more than the medieval Franciscan approach—it allows for real appreciation of the bodily-material dimension of the sacraments. Aquinas's theocentrism, too, ensures that the sacraments cannot be perceived as human magic.

Tück does think that the ecclesial character of the sacraments does not receive sufficient attention from Aquinas. But he emphasizes, against Johannes Betz, that Aquinas pays rich attention to "the remembrance of the saving deeds of Jesus Christ" and to Christ's actual presence (today) in the sacrament (57). He adds that even if the medieval focus on the consecration was one-sided, it fruitfully energized medieval Eucharistic spirituality. He finds Aquinas's account of transubstantiation, with its articulation of the "sacramental mode of presence" (66), to be helpful in avoiding overly symbolic and overly realistic (or physical-spatial) extremes, as well as in avoiding the local motion of Christ's body implied by impanation or consubstantiation. He considers Aquinas's treatment of the words of consecration to be helpful in showing that "Aquinas bases his thought on the givens of the Bible" (77). Moreover, Aquinas is clear that the author of the Eucharistic conversion is Christ himself, acting through the priest who speaks in persona Christi: "Jesus Christ himself as the eternal high priest institutes ever anew the reminder of his self-surrender in the stream of time" (95; cf. 128-37).

Tück examines Aquinas's soteriology in some detail, pointing out that Christ's Passion flows from God's love for us rather than from the need to placate an angry God. With utter mercy, Christ freely...