John E Thiel

470 Theology Today
it. Witherspoon eliminated any vestiges of Edwardsean idealism from the

curriculum at Princeton. Edwardsean idealism, he wrote, is a wild and
ridiculous attempt to unsettle the principles of common sense by meta-
physical reading, which can hardly produce anything but contempt in the
generality of persons who hear it. Certainly, Witherspoon would be
shocked to discover that, in the current theological marketplace, moral-
sense philosophy fares much worse than metaphysics. Putting it perhaps
too neatly, the moral-sense philosophy that Witherspoon espoused has
proved too thin to sustain a theology that can deliver and protect the truths
he held dear.
In his final chapter, Tait sees Witherspoon as an exemplar for a more
practical piety. The lesson Witherspoon would have us learn is that we
ought to take his everlasting truths to heart, not to repeat them verbatim
like some detached formulaic mantra, but to find fresh, engaging ways to
talk about sin, grace, justification, and sanctification without compromis-
ing or distorting these basic doctrines. Without question, every generation
needs to learn this lesson, but one wonders whether Witherspoon is the
best person to teach it.
WILLIAMJ. DANAHER
JR.
The University of the South
Sewanee. TN
Senses of Tradition:
Continuity and Development in Catholic Faith
By John E. Thiel
Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000. 254 pp. $39.95.
John Thiel, who teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at

Fairfield University, has written an intriguing book that opens up new
perspectives on Catholic tradition, even as it leaves some crucial questions
by books end. Thiel proposes that there are four senses of tradition,
whose comprehensive discernment constitutes both the continuity and
the development in Catholic faith. These senses as a whole are analo-
gous to the traditional senses of Scripture, although only the first and last
are directly comparable. Thus, the literal sense is the commonplace
understanding of biblical meaning or tradition. But this literal sense can
develop. Here Thiel challenges some modern Catholic notions of de-
velopment by arguing that traditions develop retrospectively rather than
prospectively. A prospective account of tradition locates its meaning in
a finished or completed past. A retrospective account constantly
renews the literal sense from the standpoint of a present perspective
limited by time and space-renews in ways a h n to postmodern allegory,
like a Davidsonian metaphor.
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472 Theology Today
Traditions not only exist and change; they also end and begin. The sense
of the ending of a tradition Thiel euphemistically calls dramatic, and
the sense that a tradition is beginning he calls incipient. By dramatic
development, Thiel means the Churchs change on past matters like
usury, slavery, religious freedom, and the exclusion of non-Catholic Chris-
tians from the Church-and possibly the current Catholic magisteriums
teaching on birth control and the priestly ordination of women. He
proposes criteria for distinguishing such dramatic developments, argues
that the episcopal magisteriums stand on current issues is epistemically
foundationalist, and proposes that a modest use of nonfoundationalist
epistemologies can provide ways of breaking with tradition that are not
tradition breaking.
Traditions are also incipient. A relatively small number of the faithful
begin new traditions, within the larger tradition that changes and period-
ically experiences dramatic ends. His example from the past is the Chris-
tological doctrine of the Father-Son relationship. He names three possible
candidates for such novel development today: theologies of God as Parent,
the preferential option for the poor, and the restriction of priestly ministry
to men as divine revelation. If God (as Barth says) gives us time, then
tradition is a gratuitous duration. This implies, Thiel argues, that tradi-
tions coherence is like the coherence of the novels narrative structure at
any point short of its conclusion.
The question that emerges in the last quarter of the book is (to use my
formulation) a question about the unity-in-diversity of these senses. No
one of these senses has unequivocal priority. How so? Discernment of
tradition is primarily a response to God, specifically the triune God of an
orthodox trinitarian theology. The first two senses of tradition are pri-
marily incarnational, while the last two are primarily pneumatological.
The criteria for the first two are clearer than those for the last two, but
Thiel proposes three traits of faith as pneumatological criteria: the ways in
which faith is the context for reason, shares the incomprehensible divine
life, and is an obscure encounter with the personal God.
What, then, is the relationship between the mysterious clarity of the
triune God to whom we are responsible and our own tentative, uncertain
comprehension of the Spirits work in our tradition? Thiels final chapter
suggests that this is a question addressed by the comprehensive discern-
ments of competing theologies: narrative theologies, associated with the
literal sense (Frei, von Balthasar, and the aging Yale school, including this
reviewer); hermeneutical theology, associated with the second sense of
development-in-continuity (Rahner, Lonergan, Fiorenza, and Thiel him-
self); and critical theology, associated with the third and fourth senses
(Metz, GutiCrrez, feminists, and liberationists). Thiel modestly sides with
the hermeneutical style as a sort of mediator of the other two. Those who
give primacy to his other senses will have persistent questions whether
hermeneutical theology can mediate without sacrificing what it claims to
mediate. But this book displays imaginative powers of synthesis of tradi-
tions whole, and of analysis of its particular parts. Thus, it is an important

474 Theology Today
contribution to a theology of tradition-primarily for the intra-Catholic

debate but also for ecumenical arguments. It even addresses the more
abstract question of how to live in a world of complementary as well as
competing traditions.
JAMESJ. BUCKLEY
Loyola College in Maryland
Baltimore, MD
The Fabric of Hope:

An Essay
By Glenn Tinder
Atlanta, Scholars Press, 1999. 227 pp. $21.95.
Glenn Tinder, professor of political science, emeritus, at the University

of Massachusetts, has presented us a remarkable book on Christian escha-
tology. Written by a nontheologian, it avoids technical jargon. The usual
freight of learned footnotes is also missing, and the book is refreshingly
straightforward. Nevertheless, Tinder is well-informed about theology,
whether it be that of Augustine, on whom he draws heavily, Karl Barth, or
even the death-of-God theologians. He often uses examples from Dos-
toevsky, William James, Marx and Hegel, and the twentieth-century po-
litical scene.
In four chapters, Tinder presents the failure of modern hope, the nature
of hope, the spirituality of hope, and finally the politics of hope. In an
epilogue on hope and civilization, he sums up his main argument. He
begins his prologue by saying, This essay is addressed to everyone
interested in hope, regardless of their religious or philosophical beliefs.
. . . The assumption is that our main source of hope today, and indeed in
all times, is Jesus Christ. The focus is on Christ because, according to
Tinder, he is the only way of coming fully to understand what hope is and
how it is attained. Hope is as necessary to life as light and air, and
hopelessness is a kind of death.
Allegedly modem varieties of hope, such as progress, have been bla-
tantly deficient, because they have overestimated human powers. If hope
has no transcendental dimension, it is superficial. All hope based on the
denial of transcendence-on radical secularism-is false. This applies to
Marxism, to the liberal hope . . . , and to every other radically secular
version of progress. According to Tinder, God is not only the object of
hope but also its basis. Hope, therefore, is not a human attainment but a
divine gift, anchored in eternity. Yet, hope is not otherworldly, Tinder
emphasizes, because true hope is balanced between eternity and time,
eschatology and history, the ultimate and the penultimate. Hope is a vision
of values that are disclosures of the eternal foundations of life and govern
the unfolding of life.

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470 Theology Today

it. Witherspoon eliminated any vestiges of Edwardsean idealism from the

John Thiel, who teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at

Downloaded from ttj.sagepub.com at UNIV OF GEORGIA LIBRARIES on June 8, 2015

Downloaded from ttj.sagepub.com at UNIV OF GEORGIA LIBRARIES on June 8, 2015

contribution to a theology of tradition-primarily for the intra-Catholic

The Fabric of Hope:

Glenn Tinder, professor of political science, emeritus, at the University

Downloaded from ttj.sagepub.com at UNIV OF GEORGIA LIBRARIES on June 8, 2015

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