Abstract
Robert Barron—now bishop—is treasured by the Catholic Church as both a scholar and effective communicator of the richness of Catholicism’s doctrines, dogmas, and statements of faith. Exploring Catholic Theology, a collection of articles and lectures by Bishop Barron, aims to achieve this synthesis of academic quality and direct, accessible style.
The collection consists of four parts: ‘Doctrine of God’, ‘Theology and Philosophy’, ‘Liturgy and Eucharist’, and ‘A New Evangelization’. The guiding idea of the collection, as Barron implies in the preface, is Sokolowski’s notion of God’s ‘noncompetitive transcendence to the world’—‘that God is so radically other than creation that he can enter into what he has made in a nonintrusive manner’ (p. xiii)—which Sokolowski used as the basis for his understanding of creation, divine agency and providence, and the sacraments. Following Sokolowski and almost certainly Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica, Bishop Barron gives primacy to the ‘doctrine of God’, or theologically-guided metaphysics, with the first part of the collection so entitled. As with the Summa Theologica, the subsequent parts concretise and illuminate practically what are established as core Catholic beliefs, in turn leading back to them as their lived significance becomes evident.
While parts three and four are of a decidedly more personal and pastoral feel, the whole collection centres around the need for a correct conception of the Christian God, and a recognition of the metaphysical, epistemological, anthropological, and ethical implications of the deity of Jesus Christ. Employing the writings of Church Fathers such as Irenaeus and Augustine and also of key modern Catholic thinkers such as Newman, Balthasar, and de Lubac, Bishop Barron positions himself as a neo-Thomist, and aims to bring to light the errors of philosophers and theologians which have distorted our conception of God and God’s relationship to human beings and which carry through to our day. The univocal conception of being adopted by Scotus and Ockham – as opposed to Aquinas’ analogical conception—and Descartes’ radical subjective and foundationalist epistemology are the targets of sustained attack in many of the essays, perhaps uncharitably, despite repeated discussion. Despite some degree of philosophical caricaturing and some repetition—perhaps inevitable in such a collection—however, the essays are enjoyable to read and, suitable for students and scholars alike, offer valuable insights into the development of Christian thought and the Catholic tradition from one of its most gifted minds and honoured champions today.