U.S. copyright law (title 17 of U.S. code) governs the reproduction and redistribution of copyrighted materiality Interlibrary Loan ‘versl ILtiad TN: 395902.0 III Fordham Un Borrower: AVMAR Lending String: “VYF,DCU.8XM,GZQ Patron: Dr. Joseph Trabbic Journal Title: Acta philosophica 17 Issue: 2 Month/Year: 2008Pages: 386-389 Article Author: Stephen L. Brock, Review of Robert Sokolowski Article Title: Christian Faith and Human Understanding, Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the Human Person Imprint: Roma ; Ateneo Romano della Santa Croce, ILL Number: 75018860 {OO Call #: B1.A28 Location: ROSEHILL STACKS Mail Charge ‘Maxcost: $20.001FM Shipping Address: Canizaro Library ‘Ave Maria University 5251 Avila Avenue ‘Ave Maria, FL 34142 Fax: 239-280-1639 mail: library@avemaria.edu Ariel: If you need to request a resend, please do so within five business days. Note any problems below and we will take care of the problem as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience. Problem: a SSS Fordham University Interlibrary Loan Department 4441 East Fordham Road Bronx, NY 10458 Phone: 718-817-5165 Fax: 718-817-3581 Ariel: 150.108.156.223,386 RECENSIONI Roserr SoKoLowsk1, Christian Faith and Human Understanding. Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the Human Person, The Catholic University of America Press, Washington, p.c. 2006, pp. xili + 317, ‘Tus is a collection of nineteen essays, produced over the past twenty years, in which the acclaimed American philosopher Robert Sokolowski applies his distinc- tive brand of phenomenology to a wide range of Christian themes. Each essay is a further contribution to the “theology of disclosure” that Fr. Sokolowski brought onto the scene in his brilliant study The God of Faith and Reason (1982). Each is also a philosophical, theological, and even literary gem in its own right, and together they form an excellent introduction to his thought. ‘To some readers the word “phenomenology” may conjure up something either impenetrably arcane or irredeemably subjectivist, or both, and they may be frighte ned off. That would be a pity. Sokolowski’s phenomenology is emphatically neither. Itis simply «a form of philosophy that pays close attention to the way things appear. It insists that dif ferent kinds of things offer us different patterns and structures of appearance. It also claims ‘that one of the major tasks in philosophy is to describe these patterns and structures, to de- scribe the different ways in which things manifest themselves. Appearances are part of the being of things; they are nor merely subjective impressions... There is... a philosophical intelligibility in the way things manifest themselves, in the way they come to light, and phe- rnomenology attempts to bring out this intelligibility of disclosure.» (p. 76) Notice how effortless the reading is. Its all like that. «Phenomenology is often interpreted as being highly subjectivist and relativistic, as clai- ‘ming that we never get to the realty of things but remain only with appearances, and that these appearances are merely the things seem to us, not the way they are in themselves. So- ‘me writers in this movement may accept this interpretation, but ...| would claim that we can interpret phenomenology in such a way that itcan be used to counteract the subjectivi- sm and relativism of much of modern thought... [an] can revive the kind of realism that ‘marked ancient and medieval philosophy.» (pp. 7677) [At least part of what enables Sokolowski to interpret phenomenology in this way, as letting the appearances of things emerge from and merge into their being, is surely the extent to which he takes it to be concerned with displaying distinctions. « Things are manifested when they are distinguished from things that are like them, from thin. gs that provide their context» (p. 15). This is indeed in continuity with the tradition Of realism. St Thomas in fact says that to know a thing's difference from other things is to know what tis in itself, in its own being ~ its “quiddity and nature” (Summa theo- logiae I, q. §7, a 2), But phenomenology offers its own contribution, by rigorously ar- ticulating the distinctions in the very ways in which the differences of different things are by nature apt to come to light (and to hide). ‘The “theology of disclosure”, then, «tries to reflect on the way the things of our Christian faith come to light, how they are ma: nifested to us, Ie tries to reflect on the appearance of Christian things. 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He might object that this is too extreme a projection of unity. It seems to remove the involvement of diflerence, otherness, ‘multiplicity, relation, and exchange from the highest being, and it seems to remove any sen. se of community from the divine. It seems to remove the tasks that ought to be involved in being .... This is an objection that could be made if the divine were merely distinguished from the world and eft in solitude, But part of the Christian understanding is that commu: nity, exchange, relation, and divergence are to be found within the divine nature, inthe life of the Holy Trinity. The exchanges, relations, and divergences, as well as the community, are not the kind we are familiar with, and in no way do they subordinate God to a need for exchanges with the world; quite the contrary. Because of the abundance of the life of the Holy Trinity, God becomes even more independent in his nature of any involvement ‘with anything that isnot divine. This independence of nature, of course, does not become indifference; rather, it defines both Creation and Redemption as all the more generous and ‘unnecessitated.» (pp. 44-45) Of course the Christian distinction also affects the way we take the world. It brings to the surface a sense in which the world is “unnecessitated” and can be questioned. It “profiles” things against the possibility of not existing at all. However, this possibi- lity is strictly a function of the creator's freedom. The distinction does not make the world look flimsy It does not void the natures or inner necessities of things. And so. it does not undermine philosophy; quite the contrary. This consideration is crucial for Sokolowski’s entire project. Equally crucial is the fact that the distinction itself is something exquisitely intel- ligible. It engages the understanding at the very edge of its natural exercise, the point of entry into the supernatural orbit. It «stands a the intersection of faith and reason» (p.19). Christian faith lets philosophy be itself, but it hardly leaves it alone. Christian- ity both challenges and stimulates philosophical reason in a way that no other reli- gion has or can, He pays a remarkable amount of attention to the ways in which things, and per sons, show themselves in and through language ~ not just by being talked about, but also, and in some respects more revealingly, by installing their own connatural modes of discourse and linguistic performance. Letting these emerge is itself one of the ways in which the linguistic animal exercises his function as “agent of truth” ~ a formula that Sokolowski takes as at once “a good paraphrase for the definition, of the human being” and expressive of the slant that phenomenology takes on man (.77). There are essays on “Christian Religious Discourse”, “Praying the Canon of the Mass” (a must for priests), “Language, the Human Person, and Christian Faith”, and “The Revelation of the Holy Trinity: a Study in Personal Pronouns’. 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