Thanks to Cyril O’Regan for his detailed and perceptive review article on my book Conventional and Ultimate Truth (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015) in Modern Theology 35 (2019):382-92. I’ll cite the whole review here and insert replies here and there:
“In the long silence since the last of David Tracy’s major volumes, a Catholic correlationist theology that is truly ecumenical and open to other religions, fully embraces the contemporary moment, values religious experience, but also recognizes that experience is necessarily linguistically and symbolically mediated, has lacked a champion. With this book by the Irish theologian, Joseph O’Leary, a correlationist theology has, arguably, found its champion.”
REPLY: I don’t use the word “correlationist.” Of course theology must be in dialogue with culture and with other religions, but “correlation” might suggest some kind of reductive processing of Christianity through a secularizing or relativizing prism.
“Conventional and Ultimate Truth is a disciplined, sophisticated, and eloquent construction of a fundamental theology largely in the phenomenological and hermeneutic key of the early Tracy, and like Tracy convinced of the value of philosophical expertise and the necessity of theological method, and persuaded that a way forward in our contemporary situation must be found for a Christianity whose dogmatism, authoritarianism, and identity anxiety has essentially made it a mausoleum.”
REPLY: An example of the “identity anxiety” at work is the new Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology, which obsessively parses Vatican documents while shunning that to which those documents intended to point: Scripture, liberation theology, social teaching, pastoral and moral reality.
“The current situation has prerogatives over the past which, if it provides contemporary theologians with something to work with, cannot be uncritically received. Thus, the need of diagnostic tools to see where and when theology has been blocked, original experience covered over, and productive insights repressed. If the scholarly level throughout is extremely high, the erudition impressive but also always pressed into argument, the writing unusually pleasing, what comes through most clearly in the text is its extraordinary level of assurance. Although no cheap polemics mar Conventional and Ultimate Truth, nonetheless it is transparent that propositionalist forms of theology are ruled out from the start.”
REPLY: Maybe my arguments are unconvincing, but I went to great trouble in Religious Pluralism and Truth as well as in the present book to defend objective propositions about the Incarnation and the Trinity, such as those of the Nicene Creed. Contextualizing these propositions goes a long way, but does not abolish their truth. I used the slogan “fides attingit ad rem” to mean “the proposition of faith touches the thing itself.” Aquinas says: “Actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile sed ad rem” (The believer’s act of faith does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities which they express), adding that “We do not form statements except so that we may have apprehension of things through them. As it is in knowledge, so also in faith.”
“And it is definitely the case that O’Leary is not only not on the side of Benedict XVI when it comes to the theology of religions, but that his notion of theology differs toto coelo from Benedict’s ecclesial form. Even more, throughout his text O’Leary indicates that he is not on the side of Patristic-loving Ressourcement theologians such as Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, especially the latter, who in his view accords scripture and tradition far too much weight and accords far too little to the contemporary situation and the experiential conditions of reception in this particular moment.”
REPLY: Certainly, I deplore the dampening effect of Benedict’s interventions, including the persecution of Jacques Dupuis, SJ. But “theology of religions” has also been rather dampening. Much better is the open-ended practice of comparative theology, interreligious dialogue, or interreligious theology. I am not against Patristic-loving Ressourcement, since I am very Patristic-loving myself; I admire Balthasar on Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus, and the work of Daniélou, Chenu, and Congar. I dislike de Lubac’s glorification of medieval exegesis, since it goes hand in hand with a dulling or even rejection of the entire modern opening up of the full diversity of Scripture and of the Hebraica veritas which shapes all living theology today. But I admire de Lubac on the Supernatural, on the Church, and on Buddhism. I dislike the smothering influence of Balthasar in the Catholic theological world for decades, at the expense of progressive thinkers such as Rahner and Schillebeeckx. I think his trinitarian theology is a mythological fantasy.
“Conventional and Ultimate Truth is an ‘essay,’ by which O’Leary means to suggest that what he presents is (a) more nearly a program than an exhaustive rendering of a fundamental theology, while also being very much a symbol of the whole, and (b) that the fundamental theology presented is an original synthetic act performed by a theologian who wishes to speak persuasively to all Christians and not on behalf of any particular Christian confession. While the author is himself Catholic, the book is self-consciously ‘trans-denominational’ (46) and in consequence can serve as a clearing house for any of the Christian confessions.”
REPLY: Yes, the book does not centre on Catholic positions, but only on the basics that all Christians share. Can a Catholic theologian write from such a general Christian standpoint rather than the specifically Catholic one? Is it licit to touch on Lutheran, Calvinist, Anglican sources of illumination with the same respect as one has for Catholic ones?
“The essay fulfills the requirement of a fully outlined fundamental theology in that it takes on the issue of the sources and resources of theology, thus the questions of the nature and status of scripture and/or revelation, tradition, and experience, and their complex relations, the understanding of reason and faith, and the proper relation between the two, and also the question of whether or how other religions bear on Christian self-understanding. At the same time, this is fundamental theology that refuses to be pure. This is true in the standard sense that in most fundamental theologies of a correlationist bent over the past fifty years — of which this is an up-to-date example — anthropology is foregrounded, even if it is taken to be provisional and to require refiguring on the basis of revelation. But it is also true with this text that, more than most fundamental theologies of a correlationist kind, O’Leary devotes a considerable amount of space to treating Christology (347-68) and Trinity (336-47).”
REPLY: Anthropology is foregrounded in theologians like Rahner and Schillebeeckx, and I follow them by studying modernist literature as an anthropological and theological resource. To cover all the topics listed here would take thousands of pages, and the final discussion of Christology and Trinity probably breaks the frame of a treatise on fundamental theology though it may be permissible in an essay, as an attempt to show how the investments at the level of fundamental theology play out in doctrinal practice.
“If, however, there is a truly distinguishing feature of Conventional and Ultimate Truth, then it is the comparative dimension displayed throughout the text. This should hardly surprise. O’Leary’s expertise in comparative theology is evident in Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (1994), and in this respect this book is very much its companion and successor. In this review essay, I would like to do two things. First, I offer an appreciative reading of a book that offers a sophisticated account of a phenomenological-hermeneutical fundamental theology in the tradition of the early David Tracy. Second, I submit O’Leary’s correlationist model to critique. This critique has a double focus: on the one hand, exhibiting tensions in O’Leary’s account and, on the other, suggesting criticisms from the point of view of Ressourcement theology which is under attack, both directly and indirectly, through O’Leary’s text.”
REPLY: The book is a successor to ones on how Heidegger’s overcoming of metaphysics and Derrida’s deconstruction can be critically received in theology (as opposed to the uncritical reception of some other theologians and philosophers). Ressourcement theology is not a major targer. Some Ressourcement theologians are a help and some an obstacle to the kind of thinking attempted. The Ressourcement side of Ratzinger and Balthasar is not what is opposed, but the rigid aspect of their hermeneutics.
“1. O’Leary’s Correlationist Fundamental Theology
“Rather than attempt a sequential analysis of O’Leary’s very rich, yet very compact, text, I propose to analyze four of its basic elements: (1) O’Leary’s understanding of the current situation and the task and method of theology (chapters 1-2); (2) the necessity of critical tools to free the Christian tradition from impediments largely of its own making. These tools include Heidegger’s overcoming of metaphysics (chapter 4; also chapter 1), Derridian deconstruction (chapter 4; also chapter 1), Buddhist and Hindu traditions of unsaying, and to a more limited extent the tradition of negative theology (chapter 7). The main target here is the Christian theological tradition (chapter 9); (3) the crucial importance of experience as a source of theology and revelation, as its correlative also comes in for discussion (chapters 5, 6); and finally, (4), O’Leary’s conviction that deep investment in other religions is intrinsic to the self-understanding of, even identity of, Christianity. I will discuss each in turn.
“1.1. Theology as a Dynamic and Adaptive Self-Critical Enterprise
“In the first two chapters of his book, O’Leary sets forth the raison d’être of his elaboration of a fundamental theology as well as presents its basic form. The most basic desideratum of a fundamental theology is that it should take account of the contemporary situation and critically assess what impediments stand in the way of articulating a theology that would be adequate both to the contemporary moment and to Christian faith. Structurally speaking, then, the form of fundamental theology articulated in Conventional and Ultimate Truth is correlationist. There is a heavy emphasis on our contemporary situation and the obligation to take due account of it.”
REPLY: If that’s what correlation means, isn’t it exactlly what Vatican II says theology should be? We must read the signts of the times, and bring the light of the Gospel to bear on them convincingly.
“To be adequate to one’s contemporary situation involves recognizing and accepting the prerogatives of autonomy and critical reason. Epistemically, our situation is irreversibly post-Kantian, even if over the past two centuries freedom has been further refined and critical reason further calibrated (6-15). In addition, in a recall of David Tracy, the contemporary situation is characterized by plurality and ambiguity (5). This in turn means that we are to think of the relativity of our positions as an intrinsic good (33-4). This responsiveness to our situation, however, ensures that the kind of correlationist fundamental theology elaborated by O’Leary will necessarily be interventive and critical. There are pathologies of theological reason to be overcome. These include sectarianism, bureaucratism, and obsession with orthodoxy (15-28), all of which, according to O’Leary, still bedevil the contemporary theological landscape. On the authority of Karen Kilby, Balthasar is named as one such theologian who is obsessed with orthodoxy.”
REPLY: I did accuse Balthasar of slighting and bypassing the method of the Council (28), quoting Kilby’s sharp critique, but my basis was not that book but my observation of the decades-long influence of Balthasar and his Communio theology in its opposition to the Concilium theology. I suppose the showdown Cyril orchestrates is a Communio-Concilium one and he identifies my list of pathologies as typical of the Communio ‘side.’ I hope they reach farther than that, however. I’m loth to be dragged back into a somewhat jaded and outdated discussion.
“Reminding of the liberation theologian Juan Luis Segundo, O’Leary appeals to an open faith, which is critical and which also continually adjusts to new experiences. ‘Judgment’ is central, according to O’Leary, to the theological task. Despite his connecting of judgment with method (39-45), it is Newman who is evoked (32) rather than Lonergan to get a sense of the dynamism of intellect and the open horizon of revisability. Still, one has the sense that both Lonergan’s Insight and Method in Theology are still very much in play in a text that proceeds, in chapter 2, to insist that the best that we can expect with regard to ultimate reality, given our situatedness and our finitude, is asymptotic approximation. Thus the guiding heuristic of conventional and ultimate truth in chapter 2. Both the vocabulary and the meaning of this pair is carried forward in this text from O’Leary’s previous work. Carried forward in particular is the particular binocular way in which O’Leary makes the distinction: examples from the Vedanta and Buddhist epistemology complement Western post-Kantian epistemology. Although O’Leary is, arguably, a bit more comfortable with the language of ‘relativism’ than is helpful (33-9), in his talk of ‘convention’ he is not really favoring the Sophists over Plato. ‘Convention’ is not falsehood; it simply means less than full truth, which is metaphysically impossible for human beings and a dangerous aspiration in a plural and combustible world.”
REPLY: My notion of ‘judgement’ is based on Kant’s reflective judgement (developed in his third Critique), whereas in Lonergan that kind of judgement plays second fiddle to the determinative judgement that has such a crucial role in Insight. The epistemological issues of that book are not really a concern. Perhaps reflective judgement comes up in Method in Theology, but I never found much inspiration in that work.
“1.2. Critical Tools: Reliable and Not So Reliable
“From the Preface to the very last chapter, O’Leary is constructing a fundamental theology that aims to be appropriate to the contemporary period characterized by autonomy and critical reason. As has been the case from the time of his first book, Questioning Back (1985), both Heidegger and Derrida are considered to be solvents with respects to blockages in the metaphysical tradition, but also with regard to the Christian traditions to the extent to which they are given to making propositional and apodictic claims.”
REPLY: They are solvents of blockages, and can be used to liberate theological traditions as well as philosophical ones. “Making propositional and apodictic claims” is not something I oppose.
“O’Leary is persuaded that this has been a default throughout the history of Christianity, but is endemic to Catholicism which, in his view, is riddled by authoritarianism and dogmatism. To these two solvents O’Leary adds Christian negative theology and Buddhist and Vedantist explications of unsaying (chapter 7). As one might expect for someone who has labored in the field of theology of religions for over thirty years, O’Leary is splendid when it comes to the equivalents of apophasis and aphaeresis in Asian religions, and in this respect the text continues the dialogue between religions regarding strategies of negation that are traceable back at least to Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (1994), which may still be O’Leary’s most polished and fully argued text.”
REPLY: The latter book used Derrida to overcome fixations and so on, but it also argued against Derrida’s reductive treatment of the notion of truth.
“This is not to say, however, that the critical ratio of each of these solvents is equal. With respect to the first pair, the advantage has to be given to Heidegger. Chapter 5, in which both Heidegger and Derrida are most in play, takes as its title “overcoming metaphysics.” This suggests that, as the pair functions in O’Leary, Heidegger provides the base of a style of criticism of the Western tradition of philosophical and theological discourse that gains subtlety and amplitude in deconstruction. This is a somewhat more conservative position than that of Caputo who thinks that Heidegger does not go far enough and should be replaced by Derrida, and somewhat less conservative than the likes of Thomas Sheehan and Laurence Hemming, who do not see how Heidegger can be improved on.”
REPLY: Some Derrida scholar called me a “detractor” because I called Derrida a footnote to Heidegger. I came to Derrida via hermeneutics, notably via the first book on Derrida (apart from a Japanese one), Jean Greisch’s Herméneutique et grammatologie (CNRS 1977).
“Not only does O’Leary think that at the very least Heidegger needs to be supplemented by various forms of postmodern thought — for example, Lacan, Foucault, Žižek, and especially Derrida — he is prepared to actually criticize Heidegger from time to time. It might be noted in passing, however, that any rebukes are minor and in any event do not favor the philosophical tradition that Heidegger critiques or Catholicism, which is O’Leary’s main culprit in the misalliance between philosophy and Christianity. In Conventional and Ultimate Truth, although O’Leary has taken on board Heidegger’s critique of ontotheology and professes an allergy to any hint of reifying the ultimate, whatever the philosophical or theological tradition, nonetheless, it does not serve as the key. Rather, this role is served by the early phenomenological-hermeneutical Heidegger who is deployed to unveil religious phenomena covered over and thus covered up by rational superstructures.”
REPLY: No, the Heidegger I am influenced by in my theological hermeneutics is the later Heidegger, who steps back from ontotheology (metaphysics) to approach the phenomena in a new style of thinking. But the early Heidegger was influenced by Luther and Harnack, in their step back from metaphysically shaped theology to hearing the Word anew.
“The difference between the primary level and the secondary level, illustrated in the fundamental theology of Rahner (143-55), a Heidegger student, and Schleiermacher (139-42), a thinker to whom Heidegger was attracted in the years prior to the writing of Being and Time, provides a basic template for O’Leary’s form of criticism. The primary level simply has prerogatives that the second level does not, and it is by forgetting this that theology, as well as philosophy, has gone astray over the centuries, if not over the millennia. In this respect, Luther has significant advantages over Aquinas here, and some advantages over Augustine who, nonetheless, displays more signs of metaphysical infection than a supporter like Marion is prepared to admit.”
REPLY: Marion made some rash claims about Augustine’s alleged indifference to ontology and metaphysics, which have been widely rebutted. Augustine is, after Aquinas, the most significant architect of metaphysically shaped theology, and is the primary object of study in my reflection on “overcoming metaphysics in Christian tradition.”
“In Heidegger and Derrida, and also in Buddhist and Vedantist views of negation, O’Leary is convinced that he has found critical tools up to the task of scouring the Augean stables of propositional forms of theology that are incapable of making transparent the originating experience that gave rise to the need of discourse.”
REPLY: Again, I am not opposed to dogmatic propositions.
“The status, however, of negative theology as a critical tool is, according to O’Leary, far more ambiguous than in the case of Heidegger and Asian religions. O’Leary’s ambivalence with respect to negative theology at least goes back as far as Religious Pluralism and Christian Truth (1994) and is coded in his studied preference for Heidegger and Derrida over Marion. Conventional and Ultimate Truth does not prove an exception to the rule. In the longest (90 pages) and singly most rewarding chapter (chapter 7) in the book, O’Leary illustrates his enormous competence in a field which he articulates with theological revisionists such as John Caputo as well as luminaries of another persuasion such as Erich Przywara, Balthasar, and above all Marion. He demonstrates a synoptic grasp of the entire spectrum of the Christian apophatic tradition, shows significant expertise in Augustine, Nyssa, and Pseudo-Dionysius, and displays a keen grasp of the religious epistemological issues involved in the techniques of unsaying. O’Leary is prepared to grant that under certain circumstances negative theology in the Christian tradition can function to chasten theological claims to competence. Nonetheless, on O’Leary’s account, much of the unsaying of negative theology is inscribed in an economy of Neoplatonic metaphysics in which God or Godhead becomes available in language or concept.”
REPLY: Again it’s the metaphysical (ontotheological) shaping of discourse on God, rather than discourse or conceptul labour as such, that I push against.
“For him, negative theology has critical value only to the degree to which — at its best — it helps to rescue Christian thought from metaphysical and logocentric inscription. O’Leary is capable of fine distinctions: if just about all forms of negative theology in the Patristic and medieval periods are infected to some extent by metaphysics and logocentrism, they are not infected to the same extent. In a very interesting discussion, which shows off his facility for close intelligent reading, O’Leary makes a good case that the negative theology of Gregory of Nyssa (226-38) is far less metaphysically inscribed than the equivalent negative theological discourse in Pseudo-Dionysius (245-54). Interestingly, just as Pseudo-Dionysius is elevated by Balthasar and Marion, to the same extent he is downgraded by O’Leary. All unsaying (apophasis) and withdrawal of attribution (aphaeresis) in Pseudo-Dionysius occurs within a metaphysically flush Neoplatonic economy with a superessential unitary Godhead as the top of the pyramid. Not for O’Leary then is Alexander Golitzin’s interpretation of Pseudo-Dionysius as expressing a liturgical rather than a metaphysical sensibility. Given the importance of Pseudo-Dionysius as both something of a summation of the Patristic tradition and the font of the medieval negative theology tradition, O’Leary’s objections have a fairly broad scope: they definitely apply to Aquinas as a reader of Pseudo-Dionysius, probably to Bonaventure, maybe to Nicholas of Cusa, and possibly Meister Eckhart, even if in the latter case to considerably lesser extent. Pseudo-Dionysius is especially objectionable, according to O’Leary, not only because of a highly defined metaphysical enveloping, and thus alienation from grounding experience, but also because of an ontological hierarchy with the potential for an invidious elitism. O’Leary does not underscore the famous Derrida-Marion debate — which he, undoubtedly, is aware of — but he clearly takes Derrida’s side in lodging what are essentially political objections to the Dionysian hierarchy.”
REPLY: I don’t think this political aspect loomed large. I’m more influenced by Luther’s turn against Dionysius, whom he saw as missing the full reality of the Incarnation. A full study of the presence of Proclus in Dionysius could bear this out more fully, along the lines of the critique of Otto Semmelroth, SJ.
“Moreover, he reinforces his alignment to Derrida by demonstrating a studied preference for Eckhart who, despite his henological pre-dilections, opens up the groundless abyss of reality. Still, Eckhart is not the only exception in negative theology to metaphysical infection. In a reading of Nyssa marked by subtlety and nuance, O’Leary demonstrates that the experience of the ultimate comes through the metaphysical enveloping and thereby to a significant extent regulates his mystical discourse. With regard to Nyssa, there may or may not be a measure of dependence on the philosophy of Plotinus. But even if there were, it would not be as noxious as Pseudo-Dionysius’ dependence on Proclus since, for O’Leary, Plotinus is far closer to an original experience of origin and thus less covered over by metaphysics and hierarchy.”
REPLY: Yes, the pristine nature of Plotinus’s thought, which awakened Augustine to the nature of God, gives him a special status. The cumbersome structures of more elaborate Neoplatonist speculation have had a less “original” and more “scholastic” impact.
“1.3. Experience as a Source of Theology
If Luther advocated sola scriptura and the Council of Trent in reaction insisted on scripture and tradition serving as the twin sources of Catholic theology, Liberal Protestant theology — and especially Schleiermacher in his Glaubenslehre — promoted the claims of religious experience. While there are few theologians who would unilaterally repeat Schleiermacher, it is certainly the case that just about all correlationist models in recent decades make a fundamental decision in favor of experience as a source, indeed, to a significant extent the source. O’Leary follows this trajectory, and while he provides intimations that the source is communal and could be found in forms of liberation theology, the register of this source in his book seems to be largely individual. Experience, in turn, has two sites: the original experiential site or site of conversion that served as the crucible for the emergence of Christianity; and the corresponding contemporary site.”
REPLY: “Corresponding,” in what sense? The writers, such as Joyce, Beckett, or Rilke, whom I discuss, put questions to theology and invite theological commentary. But does this mean they pose a question to which theology bring the corresponding answer, or that they project a vision that can be correlated with the gospel vision or that of mystical theologians? I would be misstrustful of such schemas and prefer to talk of dialogue and mutual deconstruction, letting the texts of secular and religious experience speak for themselves and interact freely, let the chips fall where they may.
“Together they can function critically against modes of Christianity becoming sclerotic (186). O’Leary is too much of a hermeneutic philosopher to suppose that experience is entirely unmediated: the experience of ultimacy in Christianity, as in other religions, will necessarily be tied to particular modes of expression from which it cannot be absolutely separated. But, according to O’Leary, this does not mean that it is impossible to make any distinction or that the grounding experience cannot find another and related idiom. This is a point made explicitly by Rahner, for example, in his reflection on the hermeneutics of doctrines, and it has largely been carried forward in the kind of correlationism represented by the early Tracy. O’Leary makes it clear that experience — presumably of the non-thematic kind — has critical purchase over against the theological tradition from the opening pages of Conventional and Ultimate Truth, and he pursues this theme throughout, which pursuit culminates in his account of the necessarily critical appropriation of Nicea and Chalcedon in chapter 9.”
REPLY: “The non-thematic kind” is misleading. I think of experience as “the phenomena” or “the matter itself” (die Sache selbst) that phenomenological hermeneutics wrestles with.The quest for something of comparable centrality in Scripture and theological classics uses methods comparable to those of phenomenology. That “something” should be a quite concrete, historically anchored, phenomeno, and not an abstract non-thematic awareness.
“The immediate issue is whether such doctrines can be anything other than fossils of a previous era of Christian reception, and what are the conditions under which they can speak to us now. For O’Leary the news is not entirely bad: doctrines are not obviously constative, that is, have direct referential function: they contain metaphors to indicate participation rather than full grasp, and fragments of narrative to evoke community identity, and even the propositional statements could be read as rules. In raising this prospect of treating doctrines as rules, O’Leary is —although without attribution — more nearly following Rahner and his distinction between “ontological” and “ontic” senses of doctrine than the post-liberal theologian George Lindbeck, although, arguably, both might plausibly trace the rule sense of doctrine back to Newman’s Development of Doctrine. It is not irrelevant that one of the two doctrines that come under scrutiny is that of the Trinity. Nicea itself is not discounted by O’Leary for the above reasons, although some of the theological constructions which might have lain behind it and many a theological construction that have had it as their theme doubtless are. O’Leary also seems to follow Rahner and his followers in positing salvation history rather than Trinity in se as the correlative of the willing and knowing subject. Given this decision, both the Trinitarian theologies of Augustine (341) and Aquinas (338-40) are found deficient. To focus on the immanent Trinity, as the classical tradition has been wont to do, is not to take due account of the finitude of the subject and to risk metaphysical infection. At the same time, other non-classical forms of Trinitarianism — for instance, those which posit a social Trinity — are similarly discounted (336-37). A reduction, or in O’Leary’s Heideggerianly spiced language, a “step back,” is also advised when it comes to Christological doctrine. Once again Christological doctrine as such — that is, Chalcedon — is not per se mischievous. “The technical language of Chalcedon,” O’Leary writes, “is a major advance of the scholastic spirit in theology” (352). This statement turns out, however, only to be conditionally true. It remains true only as long as Chalcedon is understood to provide a generous frame for the centrality of Christ in salvation history, and it ceases to be true if the focus narrows to the ontological status of Jesus Christ, which narrowing is all too typical in Catholic theology. This is bad metaphysics but, of course, “bad metaphysics” is a pleonasm. If the historical value of the doctrine lies in its overcoming of positions that would separate the humanity and divinity of Christ or confound them, the more probative value of Chalcedon lies in its ability to be received and more especially its ability to be received today (366-67). Reception turns out to be constitutive of validity and to that extent the truth of the doctrine.”
REPLY: I don’t think metaphysics is bad. Like Heidegger I think that ‘metaphysics is true.’ But I do think there is a lot of bad metaphysics in contemporary trinitarian theology, including Process Theology, Moltmannism, Balthasar, etc. Also Christology is liable to frreeze when one approaches it in primarily ontological terms ( see my critique of Rowan Williams’s Christ the Heart of Creation in JThS 70 (2019):928-32).
“When it comes to both theological constructions and doctrine, the reduction to experience is highly mediated. In O’Leary’s series of “step backs” or reductions, the reduction to experience is preceded by the reduction to scripture and in particular its rendering of God’s relation to creation and salvation history. This is a crucial point in chapter 9, although one anticipated in chapter 5 in which we find O’Leary’s express treatment of scripture as a relatively adequate translation of the human response of the opening up the transcendent mediated by Jesus of Nazareth. The separation O’Leary authorizes between revelation and its scriptural encoding is quintessentially Catholic.”
REPLY: It’s also very Barthian, in that Scripture attests but does not embody exhaustively the Word of God.
“Still, chapter 9 makes clear that scripture has critical purchase over both theological construction and doctrine. There is no commendation of Trent’s two-pillar view of scripture and tradition, with tradition favored in the last instance.”
REPLY: It’s for the sake of bringing tradition alive that I would see it expposed to the critical purchase of Scripture. But Scripture in today’s Catholicism is no longer subordinate to tradition.
“Moreover, when it comes to the operations and findings of biblical exegesis, O’Leary is prepared to go well beyond Dei verbum, which although it endorsed historical-critical method, did so with the restriction that this method deepen rather than come into competition with more ecclesial forms of reading. O’Leary makes it clear that not only should we recognize the inherent plurality of the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ, but that we should row against the current of Catholicism’s systemic favoring of John over the Synoptic Gospels.”
REPLY: The same fruitful tension I just mentioned as prevailing between Scipture and Tradition and also be found between the Synoptics and John — for their mutual benefit. The “systemic favoring of John” is often of a metaphysically misinterpreted John, or of a mystical John that misses the grit of the Jewish and historically concrete side of John.
“ Although the profound reflective merits of the Gospel of John cannot be gainsaid, nonetheless, the Synoptic Gospels should be prioritized since they are far closer to the originating event.”
REPLY: I’d see John as contemplative rather than reflective. Certainly it is the deepest vision of Christ that can be found. Still it needs to be set in dialectical interaction with the “historical Jesus” insofar as he emerges from under the monopoly of Johannine vision.
“1.4. Theology of Religions as Constitutive of Christian Self-Understanding and Identity
“The first thing to be said is that O’Leary’s reflections on the necessity for Christianity to engage in religious dialogue is not confined to chapter 8, which is the chapter that deals explicitly with interreligious dialogue as a topic. While the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth elaborated in chapter 2 is from a philosophical point of view a post-Kantian one, the distinction as it plays out in Asian religions in general, and Buddhism in particular, reinforces the philosophical perspective that Christian theology is advised to interiorize. In addition, in the chapter on religious experience (chapter 6), the centrality of religious experience or mysticism in both Vedanta and Buddhistic forms of thought functions therapeutically by reminding Christianity of religious experience as primary, thereby handing it a critical instrument to scour Christianity and rid it of conceptual accretions. Similarly, in the chapter on negative theology (chapter 7) forms of Vedantic and Buddhist negation are not only allowed into the same critical space as Heidegger and Deconstruction, but enjoy supereminence in terms of their resistance to metaphysical coding.
“It is the burden of chapter 8, however, to make the case both for the necessity of religious pluralism, which the classical Christian theology of religions position rejects on the grounds that it has the one and only map (299-301), and also for interreligious dialogue as essential to the shaping or reshaping of Christian identity (303-08). The bulk of the chapter, however, represents an examination of the post-Vatican II attempts in Catholicism to come to terms with religious pluralism. Praised is the repeal of nulla salus extra ecclesiam, and the far greater “hospitality”—in the Levinasian and Derridian sense — of Catholicism towards other religions (311), which shows itself in dialogue rather than proclamation becoming central to the definition of mission (312).”
REPLY: The “repeal” is contested by the SSPX but in fact is presented by the Church not as a repeal but as a positive interpretation: rather than say that all non-Chatholic miss salvation it is now made to mean that they all have access to salvation but throught the mediation of the Church—in short a step from an exclusivist to an inclusivist interpretation, rather than a repeal.
“Dominus Jesus (2000) represents a major setback to what is largely a story of Catholicism’s progressively coming to recognize something like the ‘parity’ of other religions (313-25). O’Leary’s critique is stringent rather than strident. Benedict XVI — or then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the CDF — is the major object of critique, but O’Leary also involves Balthasar whose Christological focus or Christomonism proves singularly unhelpful (323) in times when Christian overclaims have no phenomenological (317) or empirical (322) traction and are a cause of offense. Dominus Jesus is a text produced by a Vatican unreasonably anxious about Christian identity in the modern world and blind to the prospect of richer, more complex forms of identity (317). The positions advanced by Dominus Jesus regarding the Christological specification of the kingdom of God (321), the intrinsic re-lation between the eternal Word or wisdom from Christ (319, 323-24), and the intrinsic relation between Spirit and Christ (319) are summarily dismissed. These are expressions of Christian imperialism vis-à-vis other religions. O’Leary does not spend much time lambasting, as others have done, the reactionary spirit of the document, largely because he thinks it emblematic, as Jacques Dupuis had before him, of Ressourcement theology, which it turns out is the ultimate, if not proximate, target.”
REPLY: Again, I don’t think Ressourcement theology loomed so large as an adversary. In fact I am sympathetic to De Lubac who correlates the Buddhist Dharma-body with the divine Logos and who correlates the glorifies transfiguration or resurection body with the the Buddhist sambhoga or bliss body. I champion a Logos-inclusivism, best expressed in a sentence Dupuis quoted: “The incarnate Logos goes in search of itself in all of history: evangelization or dialogue consists in this encounter of the Logos incarnate in a contingent history with the universal Logos sown in every human heart (which does not imply any separation between Jesus and the Logos)” (La vérité chrétienne à l’âge du pluralism religieux, Cerf, 1994,, 280; quoted in Dupuis, Vers une théologie chrétienne du pluralisme religieux, Cerf, 1997, 499).
“2. To Be or Not to Be A Correlationist
“There is no denying the sophistication of Conventional and Ultimate Truth and the elegance of the writing. Indeed, I have barely done it justice: the voice is superbly confident, the mapping of a coherent correlationist position is as clear as one would want, and the position articulated has a ready-made audience to receive it. The latter is true, even if various modes of political and liberation theology have tended to displace the kind of correlationist model exemplified by the early Tracy, and thus narrowed the space available to O’Leary. O’Leary’s main achievement is to have brought the correlationist model back into circulation and to force the question whether theology should move forward with this update and leave behind the Ressourcement model as an irritating regression in theology and annoying occupation which has happily proved temporary. Given that the author is Catholic and the essay abounds in comments about Vatican II, it is difficult even in the context of a trans-denominational theology to excise the question as to how the Council is to be received. The proposal made by O’Leary is clear in what it refuses as well as what it affirms. O’Leary resolutely opposes Ressourcement theology and its carry-over in the post-Vatican II period, and is prepared entirely to dismiss the concerns of a Benedict, a de Lubac, and a von Balthasar.”
REPLY: I do reject the anxiety of these three theologians in their suspicion of Vatican II, and I think Pope Francis has brought back the more creative hermeneutic that saw Vatican II as an event to be continued in vital openness rather than a set of texts to be retrictively parsed.
“In this part of the review essay, I would like to question back — using the title of O’Leary’s earliest book — and do so in two registers, the first internal, the second external. In the first register I interrogate tensions in O’Leary’s book. In the second, adopting the point of view of non-correlationist Ressourcement theology, I expose a number of serious flaws in O’Leary’s construction of a fundamental theology or at the very least point to misplaced emphases.
“There are a number of internal tensions in Conventional and Ultimate Truth, although to be fair none of them amount to a contradiction. Anxious as he is to oppose non-correlationist modes of theology, and especially those of Ressourcement thinkers, O’Leary seems to consistently let down his critical guard and assume that any enemy of my enemy is necessarily my friend. Among other things, this means that O’Leary pays hardly any attention to the differences between modern secular reason with its emphases on intellectual responsibility, transparency, and the prerogatives of scientific method and the far more radical Heidegger whose entire work is predicated on offering an alternative. In Conventional and Ultimate Truth, Heidegger sits uneasily alongside Kant or Poincare. Again, while it makes sense to enlist Heidegger and Harnack as solvents of “sclerotic” forms of theology, nonetheless, it seems strange to cast them a pair, when in tone and substance Heidegger is as just about as much an apocalyptic thinker as Harnack is not.”
REPLY: Heidegger diligentlly studied Harnack and Kant, and would have been versed in philosophy of science of the sort represented by Poincaré.
“ A fortiori with regard to the joining of Derrida and secular forms of reason, when Derrida’s chastening of secular reasoning as “logocentric” is overall far more conspicuous than his chastening of Christian negative theology. Other conjugations are equally problematic. How does Žižek, who is enlisted against non-correlationist forms of theology, naturally align with Heidegger and for that matter Derrida, whom he abjures?”
REPLY: There is no call on me to correlate the various things those thinkers have said.
“ Relatedly, and against his more refined contextual and particularistic instincts, O’Leary consistently seems to subscribe to something like the ‘Protestant Principle’ such that Heidegger, Bultmann, and Harnack can be thought to repristinate Luther. There are obvious problems with this position. It is true that Heidegger is far more sympathetic to Luther than to medieval Christian thought. Since, however, he does not have a substantive theology, it is not clear what exactly — if anything — is being repeated. And if Heidegger is somehow repeating Luther, perhaps in a covert form, then we have to face the other horn of the dilemma: does this mean that Heidegger is a crypto-theologian and not a philosopher, even though he makes an essentially Kantian cut between them?”
REPLY: The methodological gesture of the step back is inspired by Luther but in an exclusively philosophical application.
“This is not all by way of tension. Left suspended also is the status of the biblical text. On the one hand, O’Leary gives the biblical text extraordinary critical leverage over theological constructions and even over doctrines. But it is not evident that the biblical text is normative: it seems to regulate only to the extent to which it rhymes with the experiences of individuals and communities over time. In form at least this is a very Schleiermachian position. Still, there is some reason to think that O’Leary’s position is more radical than that articulated by the Schleiermacher of the Glaubenslehre. There, if not necessarily in his earliest work, Schleiermacher accepts some version of the incommensurability thesis, that is, the theologian and religious believer is obliged to affirm the Bible’s uniqueness, even in or especially in a complex context in which one feels equally obliged to affirm the value of the discourses of philosophy, science, and literature. O’Leary differs from Schleiermacher in that we find no unambiguous embracing of the thesis of incommensurability. Indeed, there is much in Conventional and Ultimate Truth that counts against it. For instance, in chapter 3 O’Leary elevates the disclosive potential of literature to such a degree that it seems to be on the same level as the biblical text.”
O’Leary’s probing and illuminating readings of Proust and Joyce suggest that literature is a particularly privileged means of exposing a complicated and vertiginous world and a pluralized self that dogmatic and authoritarian forms of Christianity cover over. Obviously, the biblical text has this power also, but it may very well need literature as a charger and refresher of words that have gone stale. If this is in fact O’Leary’s position, then it lifts up for our attention a point that has been a typical feature of correlationist forms of theology from Tillich to Tracy. For the Schleiermacher of the Glaubenslehre, just as the biblical text has no discursive rival, in principle — if not necessarily in fact — experience is not allowed to have critical leverage over it, even if only for the reason that the biblical text is itself cast as a form of experience. O’Leary, however, seems to follow the example of the early Romantic Schleiermacher in imagining a distinction between the biblical text as expression and the funding experience, and though experience and expression are tied together, it is experience that is decisive in the last instance. The challenge to the incommensurability of the biblical text by literature has everything to do with the fact that all great literature is drenched in experience.
REPLY: As an instrument of salvation Scripture is of course incommensurable with secular literature. This does not override the tension between historical and literary study of Scripture in its actual texture and the theological perceptions born of its used in worship and prayer.
“There is just one further tension worth pointing out. Throughout Conventional and Ultimate Truth O’Leary proves to be a major supporter of historical-critical method, while at the same time being a supporter of hermeneutics and deconstruction. These are not obviously compatible interpretive regimes. For example, in his application of general hermeneutics to the biblical text Ricoeur, on whom Tracy depends so much, proves to be no admirer of historical criticism which he thinks deluded in seeking the referent behind the text. And deconstruction is at odds not only with all forms of referentialism, but also with the hermeneutic search for meaning and meaningfulness.”
REPLY: I would see inbuilt tensions here, of the sort that Gadamer brooded on, but I don’t see any crippling problem.
“Despite the fact that correlationist and non-correlationist forms of theology in the post-Vatican II period are united both in their opposition to propositionalist forms of theology, it makes sense that O’Leary would construct Ressourcement theology as his foil. Not only was Ressourcement theology highly influential in the documents of Vatican II, arguably, with the relative eclipse of correlationist forms of theology in the past few decades, Ressourcement-style theology has essentially shared the stage in Catholic theology with liberationist forms of theology.”
REPLY: Again, I do not reject “propositions.” And surely there have been plenty of “correlationist” theologians at work in recent decades, theologians in dialogue with modern culture and philosophy? Claude Geffré is a name that comes to mind.
“It would stand to reason then that a ‘comeback’ of correlation theology would involve displacing it rather than liberation theology with which O’Leary asserts common cause. O’Leary finds just about everything in non-correlationist Ressourcement theology disagreeable. On the substantive front, Conventional and Ultimate Truth refuses to authorize the high Christology of Ressourcement which elevates the Gospel of John, questions the epistemic responsibility of its Trinitarian reflection which conceives the economic Trinity to be grounded on an ontologically vibrant divine, and refuses its high view of the Church. On the more formal level, Ressourcement theology represents a refusal of method and the obligation of critique, and overvalues the theological tradition and Church authority. How might a Ressourcement theology, which is an object of both direct and indirect attack throughout Conventional and Ultimate Truth, reply?”
REPLY: Of course the economic Trinity is grounded on an ontologically vibrant divine; to say otherwise would be the epitome of all heresies. The question is the mode of access to the divine and the limits on an autnomous speculative discourse on the Trinity-in-itself (here Newman is a restraining influence just as Barth and Rahner are). Of course the high Christology of John must be retrieved; but metaphysical misreading of the text must be replaced by contemplative phenomenology; and interaction with Vedanta is helpful in that. The functioning of dogma and authority must be brought into convincing perspective.
“The following are just a few pointers whereby to criticize the critic. The basic differences already pointed to are absolutely fundamental. Advocates of Ressourcement theology would say that correlationalist forms of theology are beset with post-Kantian methodologism which invariably domesticates revelation, and equally invariably will try to justify Christ, Christian belief, and scripture, before the bar of reason or before a jury of hermeneutic and postmodern discourses. While not denying that the theological tradition continually needs to be questioned with regard to its adequacy and that the Church continually needs to examine itself with regard to the carrying out of its mission, it does ask that both be given the benefit of the doubt and that the hermeneutic of suspicion not go all the way down.”
REPLY: I ask that hermeneutic subtlety go all the way down, but not in the guise of a skeptical demand that the data of Revelation justify themselves at the bar of autonomous reason. Modern thought has been at work on the Christian message for three centuries, and has had salutary as well as destructive impacts. But the realities of faith have come through more clearly due to this purgative ideal.
“The gap is equally continental when it comes to the apprehension and comprehension of Christ. Relative to Ressourcement theology, O’Leary’s Christology is low, his marginalization of the Gospel of John problematic, and the prospects of doxology slim.”
REPLY: It’s a Christology from below, but seeks to rejoin John and Chalcedon and finding a language for them today. It’s a critical retrieval of both the Jewish humanity and the divine phenomenality of Christ.
“Even more problematic from a Ressourcement form of theology would be the view of the Church, at once extremely thin and a relentless object of criticism. And with regard to the biblical text Ressourcement theologians would take issue with O’Leary’s lack of commitment to the incommensurability thesis.”
REPLY: I do not discuss ecclesiology, but I assuredly embrace fully the ecclesiology of Lumen gentium.
“ All in all, Ressourcement theologians would regard the updated correlationist model to be as guilty as the previous one in capitulating to modernity and modern reason in particular.”
REPLY: I do find most of the polemic against “modernity” sustained in particular by Radical Orthodoxy very overdone. There are lots of blessings in modern art and thought for which we should cultivate gratitude and appreciation.
“My sympathies lie significantly with Ressourcement theologians such as de Lubac and Balthasar. Still, one must admit that the differences between the correlationist and non-correlationist models of fundamental theology are so fundamental that it is difficult to conceive what would be the criteria to decide between the two frames, since both forms of theology are perfectly capable of generating criteria of adjudication, which would in turn become the subject of argument. I am by no means suggesting that these models are irreconcilable. I am saying that the arguments would be far too complicated to rehearse here, and that the arguments would proceed on different levels.
“Given this, I propose to make some slightly less serious objections to Conventional and Ultimate Truth that might in some sense be regarded as friendly amendments. First, while one has no right to expect O’Leary to take the same critical stance towards the present moment as is the wont of Ressourcement theologians, nonetheless, one might legitimately expect him in the light of the post-modern thinkers he cites to problematize the current ideological dispensation far more than he actually does. Conventional and Ultimate Truth seems to be unfazed by skepticism, relativism, and the evacuation of any and all identity, not simply religious identity.”
REPLY: I attempt to do justice to “identity” as Buddhists do, by restoring to it conventional validity and a salvific expediency.
“
Perhaps even more puzzling is O’Leary’s ignoring of Heidegger’s critique of ‘representation’ and the objectification of reality that is inscribed in it which the German philosopher takes to be absolutely systemic in the scourge that is modernity. Even on Heideggerian grounds, or perhaps especially on Heideggerian grounds, it is not clear that when one calls on modern reason to critique theological and dogmatic renderings of Christian faith we are not dealing with the pot calling the kettle black.”
REPLY: In rejoicing in the blessings of modernity of course I do not overlook the ills of rationalism, materialism, technocracy, and what not, but these are not topics uppermost in my mind. Heidegger the critic of modernity is of less interest to me than Heidegger the subtle hermeneut of the philosophical tradition since Heraclitus and the sensitive reader of great modern poets (who provide modernity’s own remedy for modernity’s ills).
“ In this respect O’Leary’s work, arguably, falls below the level of self-reflexive critique typical of some of the more sophisticated forms of correlationism, where the conceptual grid of criticism itself becomes the object of critique. A second and related problem concerns the inflation of Heidegger with regard to fundamental theology. Heidegger, albeit a Heidegger mediated through Gadamer and Ricoeur, and a Heidegger with a high dose of plasticity capable of emendation by thinkers as different as Derrida and Žižek, plays a huge role in O’Leary’s construction of fundamental theology. While in Ressourcement theology Heidegger is by no means the bête noir that Hegel is, in general he is regarded as a problematic asset. His model of truth as aletheia bears an analogical relation to revelation, and his view of Gelassenheit bears a relation to the mystical attention and receptivity to reality. Still, if Heidegger’s Kant-like separation of philosophy provides one reason for concern, so also does his claim of neutrality for his particular rendition of phenomenology.”
REPLY: Heidegger asks to be read as a phenomenologist and not as an ideologist. I take him at his word and take from his writings only what can be assessed in purely philosophical terms.
“As with Stein and Przywara before him, Balthasar thinks that the neutrality of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology is armed. That is, its finitism is constituted by foreclosures regarding what can be experienced — not anything eternal or infinite — and what can be usefully talked about — not God.”
REPLY: Well, he did bring in gods and “the God” in a bid at a phenomenological natural theology. I don’t have much interest in that.
“ For all the differences, then, between Heidegger and Kant, from the perspective of a theologian like Balthasar, Heidegger is caught in the web of the postulatory finitism of the First Critique. In addition, O’Leary never raises as an issue Heidegger’s constitutive anti-Catholicism which, on the basis of the Black Notebooks, seems to be far more constitutive of his thought than anti-Semitism.”
REPLY: I don’t think either are constitutive, and even if they were the valuable aspecsts of his thought can be extracted from them.
“ Nor for that matter does he submit to interrogation Heidegger’s literally fabulous story of philosophy as the history of metaphysics, which one would think is objectionable even on formal grounds as being so monolithic as to be entirely unbelievable.”
REPLY: It’s a history of the question of being, and is not at all fabulous or monolithic or unbelievable, any more than Étienne Gilson’s. I did criticize aspects of it in Questioning Back and in ‘Theological Resonances of Der Satz vom Grund,.’ in C. Macann, ed., Critical Assessments: Martin Heidegger (Routledge, 1992), I, 213-56.
“Certainly, this is not a story that is accepted by Balthasar, and even less by Marion and Lacoste.”
REPLY: I find Heidegger far more solidly based than these critics, or than Habermas. On Marion see ‘Phenomenology and Theology: Respecting the Boundaries.’ Philosophy Today 62:99-118.
“And lastly, there is Heidegger’s post-Kehre ruminations on the Fourfold, which if supposedly phenomenologically validatable, seems to represent a return to myth and outlining an alternative religiosity. This Heidegger seems to be a little too conveniently put in epoché.”
REPLY: Yes, I don’t find the Fourfold particularly convincing, but I read it in light of the more obviously purely phenomenological emphases in neighboring works.
“A final area of concern is the complacent affirmation of multiple religious identities. Leaving aside reservations in Ressourcement theologians concerning the advisability of multiple religious identities, the question emerges for us in the modern period when every form of identity is being evacuated, whether multiple religious identities would in fact be an illusion and that in fact one would be dealing with no identity at all.”
REPLY: The identities I champion are those of religious traditions established over millennia. I believe they are de iure and not merely de facto (and here Pope Francis clearly disagrees with Dominus Iesus). The individual has the privilege of participating in them in various ways, in practice, in philosophical meditation, and even in theological refutation. Ippolito Desideri, SJ (1684-1733) miraculously learned Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhism in a few years of immersion in the county. He wrote hundreds of pages in Tibetan as well as Italian refuting Buddhism as a diabolical deception, yet he is the founding father of Buddhist-Christian dialogue, acclaimed as ‘a remarkable and very early testament to inter-religious dialogue’ by the Dalai Lama in 2010. The fussing about multiple identity is needless. The Zen practice of Enomiya Lassalle, SJ, or again what Merton wrote to Suuki in 1959: ‘It seems to me that Zen is the very atmosphere of the Gospels, and the Gospels are bursting with it. It is the proper climate for any monk,” are a kind of solvitur ambulando.
“3. Concluding Remarks
“Conventional and Ultimate Truth is a skillfully wrought and bracing book which confidently proposes an updated version of a correlationist theology relevant to all Christian confessions, but particularly so in the case of Catholicism. Relative to the previous iterations of correlationist forms of fundamental theology, its main strengths lie in its economy of expression, its impressive fluency both with regard to the theological traditions and modern critical idioms, and its deep appreciation and knowledge of Asian religions which enables it to construct a fundamental theology within a comparative perspective. O’Leary clearly thinks that if a correlationist form of theology is to return to prominence, it is a Ressourcement form of theology that it replaces.
“Although sometimes impatient and dismissive of thinkers like Balthasar, O’Leary has his reasons, with the lack of a comparative perspective in Ressourcement being perhaps the most important, but still just one of many.”
REPLY: But De Lubac’s three books on Buddhism are a remarkable comparative exercise by the leading Ressourcement figure. Daniélou also had comparativist sympathies.
“ Moreover, some of these reasons represent decisions that are so fundamental that it leaves very little common ground between his correlationist style theology and the non-correlationist theology of a Balthasar or a Benedict. While lack of common ground is not the same as incommensurability, instead of arguing the case for Ressourcement theology, I point to tensions and weaknesses in Conventional and Ultimate Truth that might need to be shored up before the real battle between correlationist and non-correlationist forms of theology begins or begins again.”
REPLY: I really don’t see the need of such a battle.
Thanks also to Thomas Cattoi for his review in Buddhist-Christian Studies 2019. He thinks that I believe classical metaphysics and the traditional doctrinal formulations… have run their course’ and that I place ‘historical theology—alongside with substantialist metaphysics and traditional doctrinal formulations—in opposition to the event of divine self-disclosure.’ Yet I do defend the formulations of Nicea and Chalcedon, and I urge an ongoing critical retrieval of tradition. I do not disagree that ‘the purpose of classical theology is exactly the articulation of this event—not a hubristic attempt to capture the mystery resorting to univocal speech.’ something I never suggested. ‘If one were merely to abide in the intimations of the divine emerging from the Gospel, thereby foreswearing speculative reflection’ (330)—is not quite my ideal, for of course the hermeneutics of the Gospel is a tremendous effort of reflection, and reflection must extend to critical retrieval of the entire tradition as well. The confinement of theology to speculative deployment of analogy along medieval lines is what causes Cattoi to fear I am risking that we ‘abandon the practice of theology altogether.’ Cattoi imagines that I lack a ‘charitable view of classical doctrines’ and do not believe they have an enduring role to play… once their experiential ground and their analogical character have been discovered and appreciated anew.’ (Cattoi finds the word ‘risible’ on p. 317; but it does not occur there or anywhere in the book.)