Rossi, Philip J.

English

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteTheology Faculty Research and Publications Theology, Department of9-1-2005Review of "Denying and Disclosing God: TheAmbiguous Progress of Modern Atheism" byMichael J. Buckley, SJPhilip J. RossiMarquette University, philip.rossi@marquette.eduPublished version. Theological Studies, Vol. 66, No. 3 (September 2005): 717-718. Permalink. © 2005Theological Studies, Inc. Used with permission.SHORTER NOTICES 717 AUGUSTIN DANS LA PENSEE DE PAUL RICOEUR. By Isabelle Bochet. Paris: Facultes Jesuites de Paris, 2004. Pp. 122. €12. In her deeply appreciative and evoca-tive reading of Ricoeur's interpreta-tion of Augustine on evil, time, Scrip-ture, and memory—the four main areas where Ricoeur has called on Augus-tine—Bochet is struck by the delicacy with which Ricoeur treats Augustine's unabashedly theological point of depar-ture on these topics. As a philosopher in a post-Enlightenment world, Ricoeur cannot start with Augustine's faith. Yet, throughout his life, he has been inter-ested in these liminal topics that for Au-gustine presupposed revelation. As a philosopher Ricoeur was determined to stay within a philosophical frame-work. In listening to Augustine, he transformed these boundary topics into points of disclosure of inescapable enig-mas and aporias of thought. B. shows Ricoeur's profound indebtedness to Augustine for thinking at the bound-aries of philosophical thought. While B.'s concern is the mode, style, and validity of Ricoeur's interpretation of Augustine, the underlying theme of the slim book is modernity's distinction between philosophical and theological discourse. For Augustine this distinc-tion was unthinkable. In Ricoeur, as shown in his decision to leave out a scriptural hermeneutics of the self from the published text of his 1986 Gifford Lectures, B. sees a certain nostalgia for the historical unity between philosophy and theology (99). For Ricoeur the split between the two discourses in today's academy jeopardizes the unity of the self as testimony. The attesting self is left with a question mark as to the source or referent of the attestation. On the positive side, the embargo of the academy has permitted Ricoeur to dis-close in these four areas a surplus of meaning, an enigma of reality or an aporia in thinking as residues of theo-logical reflection. B. 's generous in te rp re ta t ion of Ricoeur's Augustine reawakens the de-sire to rethink the relationship of phi-losophy and theology beyond the suspi-cious and all-too-narrow portal of mod-ern rationality. She has done a real service by bringing together Augustine who so dominated the premodern sym-bolic framework of the West and Ricoeur's inflected interpretation of Augustine in a time when we succumb too easily to the disjunctive siren of late modernity. JOHN VAN DEN HENGEL, S.C.J. Saint Paul University, Ottawa DENYING AND DISCLOSING GOD: THE AMBIGUOUS PROGRESS OF MODERN ATHEISM. By Michael J. Buckley, S.J. New Haven: Yale University. 2004. Pp. xviii + 173. $35. This expansion of Buckley's D'Arcy Lectures of 2000 adds significant high-lights to his claim advanced in At the Origins of Modern Atheism (1987) that "the dialectical genesis of modern athe-ism" (xi) lies in the theological apolo-getics that engaged the worldview, emergent from the new science, of mechanistic principles governing a uni-verse of matter and motion. After providing vignettes of the "three distinct settlements negotiated between the new knowledge and the an-cient faith" (23) by Galileo, Kepler, and Newton, B. responds to John Milbank's criticism of his dialectical claim by sketching three "great 'theological ex-periments.' " (29) These further illus-trate the pattern of contradiction by which "atheism as an argument and a theory was generated by the very intel-lectual forces enlisted to counter it" (28). Since the core of the contradiction lies "in the bracketing of the religious" (46), B. then addresses the charge, para-digmatically articulated by Tillich, that Aquinas bears major responsibility for blazing the path on which affirmation of God is mediated theoretically by infer-ence rather than experientially in reli-gious encounter. B. argues that close textual reading shows Aquinas's view to be that "God was not primordially reached as a conclusion . . . but as a presence" in which "[t]he first moment is given by human longings and loves" (62). B. then puts 19th- and 20th-century critiques of "the divine as the antithesis of the human" and "the di-718 THEOLOGICAL STUDIES vine as projection . . . of the human" (100) in creative interplay with a re-newed 20th-century interest in contem-plation, mystical life, and apophatic the-ology (108). Both approaches radically call in question "the self-projection in-escapably present in religious ideas" (110) so that, paradoxically, "the secret revealed by nineteenth-century atheism had been recognized for centuries by a tradition of radical spirituality" (121). B. concludes this elegant set of essays by proposing a further negation of the dialectic of religious argument that is-sued in atheism: retrieval of a "religious intellectuality" (xv) that acknowledges cognitive weight in "the claim of God" (133) disclosed in the witness of holiness in human lives, and in the absolute claims of truth, beauty, or justice upon our human attention and assent. PHILIP J. Rossi, S.J. Marquette University, Milwaukee NES DE DIEU: ITINERAIRES DE CHRE-TIENS ENGAGES: ESSAI DE LECTURE THEOLOGIQUE. By Etienne Grieu. Cogi-tatio Fidei, vol. 231. Paris: Cerf, 2003. Pp. 518. € 35. In this sizable volume, Etienne Grieu of the Centre Sevres in Paris proposes a fundamental theology that starts not solely from revelation nor from per-sonal experience but from the milieu of one's existence. For G. this means ex-amining faith in the fuller context in which it arises: in the midst of the life of the Christian believer. He thus begins his work by interviewing 33 committed Catholics actively involved in both church and society in France (e.g., Action catholique ouvriere, Jeunesse etudiante chretienne, Confederation francaise democratique du travail). Each is asked to tell, in his or her own words, how they came to believe in God. The resulting "life stories" be-come the primary material on which G. bases his work. The book is structured into three parts, each exploring a different aspect of one's relationship with God. Filiation is the common theme. Part 1 focuses on recognizing and accepting oneself as God's son or daughter. Part 2 turns to one's relationship to others and the pos-sibility of welcoming others as brothers and sisters. Part 3 examines the believ-er's experience in relation to the world. In each part, G. uses biblical texts from both Old and New Testaments and con-tributions from such contemporary theologians as Metz, Rahner, and Til-lich to illuminate his argument. Nes de Dieu is a creative endeavor; its approach is not entirely new, but G. ar-gues that it has been somewhat forgot-ten. In recent years, he says, theologians have been more concerned with either the origin of faith or its goal but not in the way believers express their faith. Those interested in the relationship of revelation and faith, its discernment and transmission, are encouraged to con-sider this work. MICHAEL ATTRIDGE University of St. Michael's College, Toronto AFTER SUNDAY: A THEOLOGY OF WORK. By Armand Larive. New York: Con-tinuum, 2004. Pp. 198. $21.95. Larive articulates a theological un-derstanding of work modeled on the work-related characteristics of the Trin-ity. His overall theme is that everyday human work has a metemphatic value that incorporates not only humanity's concerns, but also God's. Unfortu-nately, this metemphatic value has been virtually ignored by both Christian clergy and scholarship, even though it forms the basis for the theological sig-nificance of human work. In the opening chapters, L. offers contemporary views on work, demon-strates the "firewalls" constructed by Christian theology to undermine the significance of secular work, and intro-duces a framework from which the laity can begin to recognize their work as a vocation. These chapters are helpful be-cause L. draws from the social sciences to help bridge the often experienced disconnect between faith and everyday life. He also persuasively argues that the life and work of the laity need to be afforded a "primary identity" status within the Christian Church. In the next three chapters, L. explores 

Review of  Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism  by Michael J. Buckley, SJ

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Review of Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism by Michael J. Buckley, SJ

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