Abstract
In Rethinking the Medieval Legacy for Contemporary Theology, contributors seek to draw out the significance of medieval insights in response to contemporary issues in theology. Each author is committed to retrieval of the medieval tradition in theology for our times. The volume is the fruit of a conference held at Claremont Graduate University in April 2010 and it ranges over a variety of topics. Each article seeks to produce an encounter between an important medieval insight and a compelling contemporary issue.
In ‘Exchanging Hearts: A Medievalist Looks at Transplant Surgery’ Barbara Newman offers a theological reflection on questions of personhood and identity. She focuses on the issue of organ transplantation and anchors her discussion in the doctrine of perichoresis, coinherence, mutual indwelling or being-within-one-another, which historically was first applied to the Trinity and later to the mystical body of Christ and the communion of saints. For Newman such a theological perspective has much to offer by way of enriching contemporary discussion of personhood and individuality. Against the post-Enlightenment atomistic view of the human being as self-sufficient, medieval Christian theology offers a vision of the personal as fundamentally inter-personal and so Newman proposes the retrieval of a perichoretic anthropology for our time. Newman’s contribution is beautifully crafted and compellingly expressed, complete with allusions to medieval literature and modern film. Perhaps the retrieval of the perichoretic perspective could be accompanied by a retrieval of key medieval anthropological insights into personal identity (as unitary and holistic) and the metaphysics of presence (of, for example, soul in body, as well as Eucharistic presence). While it is important not to reduce personhood to individuality and to avoid seeing organ transplantation merely as an exchange of ‘body parts,’ individuality is a constitutive part of being a person and the challenge is to account for it in a non-reductive way which does more than pay lip service to the inter-personal dimension. The fundamental philosophical questions remain concerning how to account for personal identity while acknowledging development and above all the possibility of change.
In ‘Friendliness, Divine and Human’ Marilyn McCord Adams returns to her principal concern in recent years: the problem of evil or, more precisely, the problem of God and ‘horrendous evil.’ This time Adams approaches her subject having surveyed the significance of friendship as a social institution in the ancient world and its philosophical development in the Roman writer Cicero. She also retrieves medieval theological perspectives on friendship such as the application of friendship as a model for the Trinity in Richard of St Victor, for the relationship between Christ and the church in Aelred of Rievaulx and for the loving relationship between God and the sinner in Julian of Norwich. With these medieval theological perspectives in mind, Adams addresses the fundamental question of how might it be possible to claim that God is friendly and good given the suffering of those who experience horrendous evils. How can theological sense be made of such evil in the world? Adams suggests that horrors are beyond human recognition and control because they are systematic by-products of the material world. The suffering experienced as a result of apparently dysteleological evil is a stumbling block to belief and even leads many to hatred of God. Adams suggests we would do well to recoup insights into divine friendliness from Julian of Norwich. Julian proposes an eschatological perspective, rooted in notions of divine friendliness. Despite our sin and despite horrors in the world all will be well in God, all will be made right at the eschaton. God’s perpetual friendly love ultimately compensates everyone for their suffering. All will be glad to have lived their lives on earth in light of God’s friendship, not glad for the harms they have done, but for what God has made of them. The friendship is mutual: God acknowledges our role in the divine project and we offer all that we have been in a friendly gesture to the divine Friend. Adams’s paper represents a timely contribution to contemporary discussion of the problem of evil and the philosophy and theology of friendship. It also resonates with the overall aim of the volume: that of showing how a return to medieval theology can pay dividends in the context of contemporary reflection.
In ‘Can Precritical Biblical Interpretations Cure the Ills of the Critical?’ Kevin Madigan addresses the challenge to Christian theology coming from the historical-critical method which at times, he contends, tends towards an over-emphasis on authorial intention and historical context at the expense of a wider and deeper hermeneutic. Madigan returns to medieval exegesis and highlights two major contributions it makes. First, medieval exegesis recognizes a plurality of meanings in biblical texts. Secondly, in the Middle Ages the exegetical practice was to read the Bible with the tradition. With John Cassian Madigan revisits the four medieval senses of scripture: literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical. Madigan goes on to argue that medieval hermeneutics can have a truly restorative and curative effect on the historical-critical method in two ways. First, the medieval perspective helps theologians and biblical scholars to assert that a biblical text has a surplus of meaning and multiple senses; this is in keeping with both Jewish and Christian traditions in hermeneutics. Secondly, the medieval tradition in exegesis puts an emphasis on ‘reading the biblical text with the dead,’ that is in the light of the tradition of interpretations and commentaries of the past, accepting their authority, not in an unthinking way, but as sources of potential meanings and relevant questions. Madigan does not recommend an outright rejection of the historical-critical method but suggests it can benefit from the ‘ministrations’ of the medieval theologians.
In ‘Possibile Absolutum: The Theological Discovery of the Ontological Priority of the Possible’ Ingolf U. Dalferth addresses the challenge that has come to Christian theology from thinkers such as Martin Heidegger. Heidegger asserted that possibility is higher than actuality but that Dasein is radically limited to the contingent facticities into which it is already thrown. On the basis of a retrieval of medieval reflections on the absolutely possible (possibile absolutum) Dalferth seeks to challenge the Heideggerian view. Medieval theology of creation introduced, for Dalferth, nothing short of an ‘ontological revolution’ in locating the absolutely possible (as far as this world is concerned) in the only actuality relative to absolute possibility, namely God. As far as this world is concerned there is an ontological priority of the possible over the actual but such possibility is founded in the actuality that is God. This is the basis for Dalferth’s contention with Heidegger. There is, for Dalferth, no need to absolutize Dasein’s possibilities of being in the radically finite and contingent structure Heidegger attributes to it. This structure is neither self-explanatory nor self-grounding. It is not its own creation in any absolute sense. Dasein is dependent on possibilities put in its way from outside, on conditions prior to itself. The possible need not be limited to the factical possibilities of a Dasein thrown and projecting into a contingent world. For Dalferth, medieval theology (particularly that of Thomas Aquinas) with its ‘ontological revolution’ can help us towards a true appreciation of the absolutely possible which is grounded in God.
In ‘Can We Talk Theologically? Thomas Aquinas and Nicholas of Cusa on the Possibility of a Theological Understanding of Islam’ Pim Valkenberg attempts to discover a ‘faint prefiguration’ of interreligious understanding in medieval thought. He begins with Aquinas before moving on to Nicholas of Cusa. On one level Aquinas does not engage with Islam. For him there is no theological common ground between the Christian and the false prophet. However, on another level (in terms of natural reason) there are grounds at least for apologetic, for defending the Christian faith on key points against the objections of Muslims. But Aquinas’s is not a positive understanding of engagement with Islam. Valkenberg turns to Cusanus and to the latter’s two works De pace fidei and Cribatio Alkorani. In De pace fidei Cusanus appeals for unity and peace among religions on the basis that behind differences there is only one faith: una religio in rituum varietate. In the later Cribatio Alkorani Cusanus employs a pia interpretatio that suggests that the more scandalous (to the Christian) passages of the the Qur’an can at least be seen to force Christians to have a better understanding of their own faith. Cusanus suggests two things. First, that Christians can read the Qur’an in a way which does justice to the monotheism which is common to both religions without at the same time compromising on the centrality of Christ. Secondly, Cusanus suggests that Christians should pay attention to the tradition of interpretation of the Qur’an within Islam in order to better understand the text’s religious function. In this, Cusanus’s later approach, Valkenberg sees guiding principles for genuine theological encounter with Islam today.
In ‘The Humanity of Theology: Aquinian Reflections on the Presumption and Despair in the Human Claim to Know God’ Anselm K. Min, as contributing editor of the volume, seeks inspiration for a contemporary articulation of a theology of hope from the reading of medieval texts, principally of Thomas Aquinas. With Aquinas Min presents the human being as ‘hylomorphic’ (as a composite of matter and form) and dwells on the nature and limits of human knowledge in general before focusing on the limits of human understanding in relation to God. For Min a medieval perspective such as that offered by reading Aquinas helps us to find a ‘virtuous middle’ in our knowledge of God, one which is neither too much nor too little, neither despairing nor presumptive. Min concludes his article by highlighting five ways in which contemporary theological reflection can fail in attaining this ‘virtuous middle.’ For Min the greatness of Aquinas lies in both his systematic sensibility and in his faithfulness to the humanity of theology as witnessed in his understanding of moments of analogical predication as moments of inherent tension which nonetheless avoid both despair through agnosticism or fideism and presumption through rationalism or intuitionism.
The volume is attractively produced and includes a helpful bibliography. It does not claim to be comprehensive. Part of its achievement is that it leaves the reader longing for more, fully convinced that contemporary theological reflection can benefit greatly from reading the medievals.