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The Downside review | 1936
Christopher Butler
FR O M before the sixteenth century till the Great War the drift of European culture—politics, economics, philosophy, art and letters, the whole fabric of our natural activity—was away from the Church and the deep-seated vital energies which she dispenses. For most of that period the Church herself was in defenxad sive entrenchments, guarding with the tenacity of a mother her essential trust, while she watched with helpless eyes the ravages of secularised humanism outside the domain of dogma. The Catholic renascence began more than a century ago, but it is especially since 1918 that, in face of the visibly accelerated crumbling of the structure of de-Catholicised society, and the threat of the creation of a new still more radically secular culture, the Church has begun to adopt once more the offensive. And the standard under which she is conducting this new phase of her uninterrupted warfare is—we must not evade the fact—that of Catholic Action. Catholic Action is the great characterising preoccupation of the present Pontificate :
The Downside review | 1966
Christopher Butler
left us a picture of him poised miserably on the fringe of the fairground crowd about the anguished figure on the cross; and of his recollections of that one of the seven words, the only one to be found in Marks Gospel, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? We have only one more comment to make on this wonderfully told story. In writing any account of Simon Peter it is difficult to avoid polemics. Lord Elton has obviously desired to do so. Only in one paragraph, which occurs in the second section of Chapter vii, hashe been influenced by them. Those who deny that a permanent and particular succession to Peter was now being established are on surer ground where they point out that neither in the New Testament, nor in the earliest history of the Church is there any evidence for it. It is surely enough to place beside this a passage from a later chapter: Even after Pentecost apprehension would grow gradually, rooted in the spiritual experience which in Christian theology has always preceded the formulation of doctrine. Does he not here provide the explanation of what the earlier paragraph suggest to be an inconsistency? AUGUSTINE JAMBS
The Downside review | 1962
Christopher Butler
the sixth and concluding part seeks to deepen the idea of the Church by reflection upon it and to examine the possibilities that the future may hold in store. Perhaps every generation needs such a book as this, to interpret the Catholic fact in terms contemporary with the age. What Kar l Adam did for a previous generation with The Spirit of Catholicism, Guitton has done for our own, and it could hardly have been done better; or so it seems to this Catholic reader. One would like to know how the book strikes the contemporary non-Catholic mind, and especially the mind of the Anglican or Protestant reader. I t is very well translated, and I have only one small criticism to offer: on p. 169 we are told that entrance into the Church is so important that the absence of a priest should not prevent i t ; an ordinary believer is therefore invested with the power to baptize. But in fact baptism can be validly administered not only by an ordinary believer but by an unbeliever, lay or ordained, provided that he intends to do what the Church does. This is important, since a believer is not always available. ( I wonder whether the reason is as utilitarian as Guitton suggests. Might it not be that, since baptism logically comes before any Church membership, it cannot be made dependent on the existence of Church members?)
The Downside review | 1962
Christopher Butler
THAT the Scriptures are inspired is an article of Catholic faith. The meaning and implications of this dogma are part of the professional concern of dogmatic theologians. And what they have to say about these matters is, in its turn, something which concerns Scripture scholars, who will , I think, welcome this essay by Prof. Rahner as an attempt to rethink the dogma, in some of its aspects, within the context of modern speculation and contemporary scholarship. Briefly, it may be said that the central issue raised by Prof. Rahner here is whether we are to be content to see the infallible magisterium of the Church and inspired Scripture as two sources of truth interrelated a priori only as having both been instituted by the one redeeming God. For himself, he is not content with the brute factualness of such an attitude, and he puts forward the suggestion that a link may be found in the view, generally held, that the apostolic age (whose terminus coinxad cides with the lower limit of the age of inspiration of scriptures) was a unique age in the history of the Church. The first generation of the Church had a unique, irreplaceable function . . . Later events, in spite of their development and unfolding, always exist only because they derive from the given origin, the Apostolic Church, and not only from the originator, God. They derive from the foundations, and not only from him who laid the foundation. This foundation, however, is not Christ alone, but the community which he himself had gathered round him, and on which he bestowed his spirit on the first Pentecost. T o contest such a view of the uniqueness of the apostolic age would be, we are told, to deny implicitly that revelation was terminated with the death of the last apostle. The Apostolic Church . . . is that which, because it is still becoming, is not her own guide nor the governor of her course but, therefore, in a unique and eminent sense, the work of God : Deum habet auctorem . . . Theologically speaking, we are not entitled to hold that the Church was already complete on the day of Pentecost. I n fact, the birth of the Church was not instantaneous but had a duration measurxad able by physical time. During that extended period of coming-intoexistence (as distinguished from the subsequent continuing in existence and growing), the Church must have a capacity for pure self-expression and clear and univocal delimitation, and this in a unique measure, since she was not yet in possession of a complete Canon of Scripture.
The Downside review | 1960
Christopher Butler
political expediency. And when, on one occasion, David did sink to the level of oriental despotism, his repentance, and it was a repentance which would have been inconceivable in the case of neighbouring rulers, was immediate and utterly sincere. On the other hand, his superb loyalty, his personal attractiveness, his achievements and above all his unshakeable devotion to Yahveh, are duly emphasized. He is presented to us as very human, very great and very lovable. The last chapter but one of the book, which is headed Absalom, sums up the whole character and all the work of David, which has been dealt with in detail in earlier pages. It is a most adequate summary. In discussing David as a psalmist and considering the problem of authorship, Mr Parmiter very wisely leans on the authority of the late Monsignor Kissane, one of the greatest exegetical authorities on the Old Testament and in particular on the Psalms. He has, however, made his own translation of the more important Davidic poems. If these do not altogether satisfy us it is because of our familiarity with earlier English versions. Our modem English does not adapt itself so readily as that of past times to the expression of a true poetic spirit. By way of epilogue, Mr Parmiter gives us, again in his own translation, the first thirty-nine verses of the second chapter of St Lukes gospel. For indeed the completion of Davids work, the end to which, however dimly recognized, his life was directed, the fulfilment of the wellremembered prophecy of Nathan, are to be found in a cave, used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem.
The Downside review | 1960
Christopher Butler
his analysis of the Critique of Pure Reason will, on the whole, serve admirably as introduction; it clears the way for an accurate appreciation of what Kant is trying to do, by showing often in terms of present day language just what problems are under consideration. The same is true of the Opus Postumum. With regard to the Ethical works Fr Coplestons gift for clarity of exposition appears somewhat less successful. This is a pity, since it obscures Fr Coplestons exposition of the basic unity of Kants thought: an original attempt to solve the problem of reconciling the two realms of necessity and freedom, not by reducing the one to the other, but by finding the meeting point in the moral consciousness of man. There is a concluding review evaluating some of the main features of philosophical thought in the period covered by the trilogy. Fr Copleston also promises to show how the transition from the critical philosophy of Kant to idealist metaphysics took place in his next volume. We await it with interest. DOM JAMES MITCHELL
The Downside review | 1960
Christopher Butler
THE subject of this book is the biblical notion of corporate personality a term coined by the late Wheeler Robinson and applied by him in a number of important contributions to biblical scholarship. For the Old Testament thinkers, a sort of identification, or at least extreme physical cohesion, between the group and a given individual leads to the individual being the representative par excellence of the group. The life of the community is concentrated in him; and inasmuch as he represents the community the community can speak in his name, using the pronoun I . The notion is basically the same as that of St Thomas: princeps personam gerit communitatis; but the life of the Old Testament notion is deeper than the juridical level. For the Old Testament, the leader really is in some sense the personification of the community. We know how in Shakespeare the king of France can be referred to simply as France; the Old Testament writers would have held that the king of France in a very real sense is France. For the Old Testament, it is not only the leader who represents the community; every member of the group carries the whole group within him, and his own individuality is extended into the group as a whole. Moreover, the notion is applied not only horizontally to the group and its contemporary members, but vertically to the ancestor of the group and to the group as his progeny. Israel is at one and the same time the individual patriarch, the son of Isaac, and the people that regards itself as in descent from him. Adam is man in general, and this perhaps before the application of the term as a name of the first man; to be a son of Adam means to be a man, just as to be a son of the prophets means to be a prophet. Nevertheless, turning to the New Testament, P. de Fraine holds that in the Epistle to the Romans Adam is conceived to be an individual (precontaining the whole human race), over against the individual second Adam. The Son of Man (one like unto a son of man?) in Daniel vii is, it is argued, at one and the same time the saints of the Most High and an individual who stands to the Messianic community in the relation of a king to his people. Similarly, P. de Fraine thinks that the question: Is the Isaianic Servant of the Lord an individual or a collectivity? is a false question; the Servant is both an individual and the embodiment of Israel he is the prophetic remnant at its point of ultimate concentration.
The Downside review | 1958
Christopher Butler
supply the Catholic public with an account of Genesis, not artificially harmonized but naturally harmonious. This was made possible by the authors acceptance of the theory of documentary sources. With the emphasis on traditions rather than on documents Père de Vaux published his masterly fascicule for the Bible de Jérusalem in 1951. The thoughtful reader of Genesis has always been aware of its doublets and variants; at last he is being given an acceptable explanation.1 Father Vawters work has the distinction of being the first Catholic book in English to appreciate fully the need for source-distinction as a principle of interpretation. The author is not afraid to confess that he has shamelessly borrowed from Catholic biblical scholars (from Chaîne, de Vaux, Schildenberger, Clamer). Why should he be? He has read widely, borrowed prudently, presented readably and with economy. The result is order from chaos. Behind it is a mind of integrity and breadth, sensitive not only to historical and archaeological truth but also to the urgency of theological doctrine.
The Downside review | 1957
Christopher Butler
board to an understanding of the simplicity of the creature-God relationxad ship. Through the eternal generation of the Word the child is ever with us, quite hidden indeed,butneverabsent.Thoughwehaverestricted the vertical, interior life of the child and have expanded into complex, exteriorized logicians and remain for the most part oblivious of our innermost nature and the simplicity of all that is, we are, in truth (and hence metaphysically), children of God. Now it is as children of God that the notion of being, for instance, is natural to the intellect, not as an innate idea in the sense of something clearly known before the mind knows anything else, but in so far as it is in being. The common or generalized notion of being, the logical abstraction of the sophisticated mind, obviously has some use as a rational convenience. But it is not the notion of the source of intelligibility, not the metaphysical abstraction of the childlike, Godactualized and God-dependent mind. And for this primogenital mind significance is found, not in what it abstracts from but in the principle according to which it makes abstraction : esse, the light by which the mind renders things intelligible to itself. According to Siewerth the transition from sophisticated thought to the smgle-mindedness of the child is the transition from a logical to a metaphysical understanding of being. Metaphysically the intellect is not a power which sets man in movement out of himself, but a pure potency. It is being as being that authorizes it for itself and for truth. Indeed, being is that which is most interior, both in the mind and in things. And if, as St Thomas says, all conceiving is of being, then all true knowing is a certain identity with being in the sense that identity expresses negatively the negation of distinction. It is not the otherness of knowledge which makes the knowing, but the being of it which the knowing is, for in truth Gods presence to his effects is wholly immediate, whether in the order of being or of knowing. The divine essence is the propria ratio singularum. In a childlike way being is the first thing we know and is involved in all our knowing, but it in itself is not fully realized until we reach the end of the minds excursion. It is for us, then, a work of discipline to undo all that we have done to retard this simple, innermost knowing and loving, a discipline which implies a remembering of who we truly are, yet one in which the necessary work of grace is already operative. When the child is permitted to awake, then: to be is to know indeed! It is certainly encouraging to find a metaphysician like Siewerth engaged in the task of reinstating St Thomass doctrine of the primacy of intellectus. DOM PLACID KELLEY
The Downside review | 1956
Christopher Butler
transmitted Gospel. They are in a sense identified with their message as having been companions of Jesus (Mark iii, 14); but by their apostolic commission they are identified with the tradition which they transmit. It is perhaps worth mentioning that to have known Christ after the flesh is in itself of no supernatural value; blessed are they who have not seen and yet have believed. Professor Reids suggestion that, if the episcopate were essential to the Church, the New Testament evidence for this fact ought to be less ambiguous raises two questions. In the first place, is it necessary that the claim that something is essential should in every case be supportable by evidence for it found directly in the Scriptures? Secondly, who is the judge of the contents of Scripture and traditions? Is it the critical historian as such, or is it the Holy Spirit indwelling the Church and guiding it into all the truth? I think that though Professor Reid would probably wish to reject all non-Scriptural tradition so far as it claimed to convey items of faith not discoverable in the Bible, he would at the same time probably agree that ultimately the judge in matters of faith is the Holy Spirit in the Church. In that case we should be driven back once again to the question: What and where is the Church? It is the burning question in all ecumenical discussion and it would be interesting to know how Professor Reid answers it. It is proper to remark that this valuable essay is immediately concerned not with Catholic defenders of the apostolic succession but with the argument as it is being pursued among non-Catholics in these islands. I think I am right in saying that he mentions no Catholic author of later date than the Fathers of the Church. Among right-wing Anglicans he mentions Farrer, Ramsey, Mascall, and frequently refers to The Apostolic Ministry. He does not mention Jalland (The Origin and Evolution of the Christian Church), whose fifth chapter (The Emergence of Christian Organization and Institutions) has a good deal that is relevant. Two small points of detail. (1) The fifth and seventh sentences on p. 34 seem to be in verbal contradiction with each other. (2) I think that there is more to be said for Farrers distinction between receiving one that is sent and receiving a little child than Professor Reid allows; and the fact that Matt, x, 40 is attached to the preparation for the first, temporary, mission of the disciples may be due to Matthaean editorial processes; my impression is that the latter part of chapter x looks beyond the horizons of the first mission. DOM CHRISTOPHER BUTLER
