Another forthcoming Herbert McCabe volume

Over the past few years the good folks at T & T Clark/Continuum have done us the wonderful service of republishing the work of Herbert McCabe and with the help of Brian Davies we now have at our reading disposal dozens of McCabe’s sermons and short essays. McCabe was an English Dominican theologian who identified himself as something of a Wittgensteinian-Marxist Thomist. In the 1960s he was a contributor to Slant a Leftist Catholic magazine associated with the University of Cambridge and the Dominican Order in England. He was also an editor of New Blackfriars.McCabe is simply a joy to read. He’s funny and witty and brings Thomas to life.

So, I am happy to announce that yet another volume of McCabe’s work–I believe the sixth since McCabe’s death in 2001–is set to be released this April. Here is a brief description of God and Evil in the Theology of St Thomas Aquinas:

What should we mean by words such as ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘being’, ’cause’, ‘creation’, and ‘God’? These are McCabe’s main questions. In seeking to answer them he demonstrates why it cannot be shown that evil disproves God’s existence. He also explains how we can rightly think of evil in a world made by God. McCabe’s approach to God and evil is refreshingly unconventional given much that has been said about it of late. Yet it is also very traditional. It will interest and inform anyone seriously interested in the topic.

The Princeton Theological Review and the analogia entis

The Spring 2009 issue of the Princeton Theological Review, devoted entirely to the analogia entis, is now available online for free. The issue includes articles by Keith Johnson, author of the forthcoming Karl Barth and the Analogia Entis, Joshua Davis, as well as my own article, “The Importance of Eberhard Jüngel for the analogia entis Debate.” To download a PDF of the issue click here. Also, for a recent discussion of my contribution to the issue, see Matthew Milliner’s post, analogia entis revisited.

Person and Being: Key Points

On the basis of the majority of my posts, it might come as a surprise to hear that I actually spend a great deal of time studying Thomistic metaphysics. After all, as I’ve mentioned before, I attend one of the most Thomistic divinity schools in the country. Anyway, I’ve been reading Person and Being written by the late Thomistic philosopher theologian and Jesuit W. Norris Clarke, SJ. and I’ve decided to post his key points as I read through it.

1. One theme that is overlooked in Aquinas, but is nonetheless central to his ontology is that being is “intrinsically active and self-communicating” (6). Furthermore, for Aquinas, the telos, the natural goal of being itself is dynamic self-expression and self-communication. Being through action is oriented toward communicating itself to others.

2. All beings possess intrinsic dynamism toward self-communicative action because “they are all diverse modes of participation in the infinite goodness of the one Source, whose very being is self-communicative love” (11). In Clarke’s view, this is grounded in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. The Father communicates and gives his whole being to the Son and in an act of mutual love the Father and Son bring forth the Spirit. The inner life of God as self-communicative love flows into creation.

3. Relationality is “a primordial dimension” of being that is inseparable from the substance of being. Although they are distinct from one another, relationality and substantiality “go together.” Just as being is intrinsically oriented toward self-communicating activity, so is being as substantiality oriented toward relationality.

4. Although substance and relation are both primordial to being, substance is nevertheless logically prior to relationality. As Clarke notes, “the very meaning of relation implies that it is between two terms that it is connecting, between two relateds” (16). Substance is the in-itself of being and is logically necessary for any conception of relationality—for it is substance that is in relation.

5. If being is intrinsically self-communicative, then it must also be intrinsically receptive. If being is communicative there must be a receiver, a listener, for it to be meaningful at all. In Clarke’s view, this is evident especially in the persons of the Trinity. The Father is the giver and the Son is the receiver. The receptive nature of the Son does not signal anything lesser about the Son. The notion of receptivity as essentially a passive and negative attribute must be rejected. All being-in-relation involves a complex dynamic of self-communication and reception in order for it to be meaningful.