Abstract
David Tracy, known for his learning and creativity, has amply provided them in these two volumes of essays. The title of the first volume, Fragments, is deliberately chosen to signify that theological reflection does not entail nor aim to be a closed and total system. Quite the contrary! Fragment, rather than system, is at the core of theological reflection. One aims for truth not through a comprehensive work articulating that system but rather through a set of diverse historical, hermeneutical, and critical reflections.
Tracy gives examples and refers to the importance of “fragment” in several distinct fields, from classical, biblical, archaeological studies to literary theory, philosophy, and theology. What is most important for him is that by shattering the totality of closed systems a fragment discloses difference and opens one to otherness. Fragments as events need to be retrieved. Reality is an event and not a substance, “The ultimately Infinite Real (whether named Void, Open Being, Creativity, Good, gods, God) is event and not substance” (I, 2).
T.’s emphasis on fragment expands his earlier work in which conversation and dialogue are much more constitutive of theology than argument. His awareness of the limitations of knowledge, the importance of hermeneutical retrieval, and the need for open dialogue with diverse philosophical and theological perspectives permeate all the essays in these two volumes. Whether the author under discussion is a classical author or contemporary partner, T. thoughtfully engages and dialogues with them. He seeks an interpretive retrieval not only of past classical authors but also of contemporary figures. His engagement with this task and his hermeneutical retrieval sets a model for the demands of dialogue. Where he disagrees, he also seeks to retrieve; where he retrieves, he also shows points of disagreement.
His essays are rich and insightful as he moves through the diverse topics of the volumes. The first volume is divided into thematic sections that deal with the following: the existential situation of our time, hermeneutics, the publicness of public theology, and religion, theology, and dialogue. In his analysis of the situation, he brings up the question in terms of the infinite absolute and suffering. In the hermeneutics section, he gives an analysis of Gadamer’s dialogical approach, correctly observing that Truth and Method could have more appropriately been entitled truth or method. Tracy brings in the significance of Derrida’s emphasis on the difference and Ricoeur’s notion of limit. He shows how the ethical and religious dimensions have moved hermeneutics beyond its original, more limited formulations. However, T. undercuts the importance of the fusion of horizons. That is puzzling because the fusion of horizons becomes central when dealing with different cultures and time periods, and it challenges our own time and culture. In the section on the public nature of theology and the importance of dialogue, he rightfully points to the weaknesses of the earlier work of Habermas with his locus of religion within an evolutionary view of modern religiosity. T. underscores the importance of spiritual exercises and mystical theology for praxis.
The second volume consists of treatments of historical and contemporary theologians and religious writers. Historical figures from Augustine to Martin Luther and Michelangelo make up the first section, whereas the treatment of twentieth-century figures comprises the following four sections: Niebuhr, Tillich, Lonergan, Dupre, Gamwell, Lindbeck, Marion, Cohen, Gutiérrez, Cone, Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, T.S. Eliot and others.
In developing the meaning of fragment in the first section of volume 1, Tracy sets the thematic and intent of the volumes. He distinguishes two distinct but interrelated aspects. “Frag-events” (explicitly named as a neologism) refer to fragmentary and fragmenting events. The fragment comes to the fore in the responses to suffering and in the opening to the infinite. Fragments are important for those caught in oppressive economic, political, and cultural (including religious) totality systems. As such, they shatter the system, underscore difference and suffering, and engender a hope beyond present condition. Fragments as events also open to infinity. The move from reality as substance to reality as event fosters an understanding of the infinite that goes beyond a mere numerical understanding of the Infinite. A basic question is: how do the two different aspects of fragment relate to another?
In this section, T. has two chapters on “The Ultimate Invisible: The Infinite” and “Metaphysics, Theology and Mysticism.” In these two chapters he suggests that the absolute infinite is the ultimate invisible. He suggests that Plotinus of Alexandria is the most original philosopher to advance the notion of the absolute infinite as the ultimate invisible reality. For Plotinus, no adequate name can describe the ultimate invisible. In the absolute infinite, Plotinus combines philosophy as a theory to philosophy as a way of life. “Plotinus’s ethic is based less on a desire for civic justice than the boundless desire for the invisible infinite good” (I, 54).
These two chapters on infinity bracket two chapters: one dealing with responses to horror, suffering, and tragedy, and another dealing with Christianity and suffering. T. surveys the western philosophical and religious response to tragedy and horror, and its distinct dimension gives a detailed analysis of tragedy and underscores the importance of Luther’s theology of the cross within Christianity. In comparison to the ancient classical understanding of tragedy as a necessity over which one has no control, the scandal and stumbling block of the theology of the cross in God’s own suffering for us reveals a God who is love. The theology of the cross can be recognized as the principal response of our fellow human, Jesus of Nazareth, who is at the same time God as loving and suffering.
In Tracy’s treatment of the invisible Infinite, he promises a future book in which he hopes to develop his position more fully. Here he notes that Thomas Aquinas includes the Infinite as one of the divine attributes and that Duns Scotus considers it the principal divine name. Yet he does not discuss the fact that Thomas, in his introduction to his treatment of the divine attributes, writes, “we cannot know how God is, but only how he is not; we must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist.”
The attribute of infinity, therefore, for Thomas, illustrates a way in which God does not exist. One can question whether the categories of “invisible” and “infinity” are adequate to deal with the transcendence. The emphasis on suffering and tragedy in the other chapters brings out the complexities of human experience within the world. One has to ask how one integrates categories of “invisible,” “absolute,” and “infinity” with a theology of the cross based on the historical event of the crucifixion of Jesus.
The second volume, entitled Filaments, starts in the first section with classical authors, from Augustine to Luther. Four sections follow, dealing with the mentors, dialogue partners, and prophetic voices of the twentieth century. Among the prophetic voices are feminists, Jews, African American, and others.
Tracy's treatment of Augustine exhibits the “irenic” tendency present in his theological writings. Faced with the conflict between a nature–grace paradigm or a sin–grace paradigm, Tracy argues that the nature–grace paradigm is more fundamental. It can, however, function as inclusive (only?) if it includes the increasing significance of the anti-Pelagian sin–grace paradigm. Tracy distances himself from an overemphasis on original sin as transmitted primarily by sex. Instead, he suggests that the human condition should be interpreted as human but also as tragic, for humans are not responsible for all evil. The tragic character of the human condition is such that not all evil can be attributed to humans.
Paul Tillich’s method of correlation is often criticized as correlating what cannot or should not be correlated. Tracy goes at length to show how Tillich’s use of the method of correlating is much more diverse and subtle than his actual formulation of the method of correlation. He formulates it as “an interpretative correlation of the questions and answer of the message with the questions and answers of the situation” (II, 214). Tracy’s intent is to show that Tillich’s method is much more in line with the hermeneutical character of much of contemporary theology.
In his treatment of Lonergan, Tracy recalls Lonergan’s emphasis on the challenges that modernity posed through its turn toward the subject, the rise of the scientific method, and the emergence of historical consciousness. But, as Tracy notes, our times also acknowledges the priority of praxis and its implications. He turns, as he does in other essays, to Pierre Hadot’s interpretation of ancient philosophy, especially Plotinus, with Hadot’s emphasis on ancient philosophy as a form of intellectual and spiritual praxis. Tracy suggests that Lonergan’s Method in Theology should be read not just as a form of psychological and therapeutic exercises but as a form of “spiritual exercises” in the way that Pierre Hadot does. This would recapture what is exemplified in Anselm’s Proslogion, in which prayer and reflective thought are internally related to spiritual exercises.
This interconnection is an important emphasis. Yet Tracy does not mention in this context the importance of Karl Rahner’s written reflections on Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises, which have influenced not only Johann Baptist Metz but also Ignacio Ellacuría, a Latin American liberation theologian. Hans Urs von Balthasar (ordained as a priest and a Jesuit, though he left the Order later) also commented and drew on Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises as an inspiration for his theology. Among three twentieth-century Jesuit theologians, contemporary to another, two developed their theologies (Rahner and von Balthasar) cognizant of the importance of Ignatius’s spiritual exercises for their theologies. One need not propose a new reading for them. One can pursue the question further by pointing to Joseph Ratzinger’s early essay showing how Augustine follows Plotinus on spiritual ascent, but introduces significant differences to bring out what should be specifically Christian. In a similar but different fashion, Ellacuría argues that the Ignatian spiritual exercises represent a tradition of spiritual exercises that differs from Plotinus because of its roots in a spirituality influenced by Saint Francis and the Franciscan tradition with its inclusion of the concern for the poor in society. This difference has implications for Tracy’s project of relating the two fragments—that of suffering and oppression and that of the Absolute Infinite inspired by Plotinus—through an emphasis on spiritual exercises. One has to take into account the differentiations from Plotinus in Augustine and the Franciscan tradition, as Ratzinger and Ellacuría have argued.
Tracy’s essays contain many treasures. The essay on Michelangelo and the Catholic Analogical Imagination brings to the fore the centrality of Tracy’s own work on analogy and imagination. His interpretation of T.S. Eliot, especially his work on Four Quartets, establishes Eliot as a major modern religious thinker, and not simply as a conservative Christian apologist. Eliot is much more complex than G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis. Tracy’s essay on Iris Murdoch deals with her emphasis on the platonic and spiritual exercises. His essays on Simone Weil show some of her idiosyncratic opinions but also her singular dedication and contribution.
The two volumes of essays are interrelated. The more topical essays of the first volume find much in the second volume that supports and complements them, and vice versa. The two volumes bring out the best of David Tracy’s dialogical reflections over the past decade. Reading them should spur all to further theological reflection.