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Christ, the Logos of Creation: An Essay in Analogical Metaphysics. By John R.Betz. Stuebenville: Emmaus Academic, 2023. Pp. xxi, 556. $59.95.

2024; Wiley; Volume: 65; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/heyj.14374

1468-2265

Graham Ward,

Theology and Philosophy of Evil

As David C. Schindler writes in his endorsement, this work 'is a gift'. I want to endorse that claim from the beginning. It is a gift, from a theologian steeped in the tradition (Greek and Latin), a lover of languages, who recognises that Christian metaphysics cannot be divorced from Scripture, philosophy, and the spiritual/ascetic writings by those often labelled 'mystics'. But it is a gift that needs careful handling because its content and structure is uneven. Much of the material has been published in earlier forms as articles and these are, in some sense, gathered in this volume. The result is that there is a great deal of repetition. So much so that the book is best read in selected parts and not as one concentrated act. The footnotes frequently extend the material to the point that even the author admits the 'essay' is 'bloated'. Fortunately, Betz writes with fluency and enormous lucidity, and that is essential for the book's complex and forensic metaphysical and dogmatic questioning. The book suffers, too, from its over-ambitious scope and panoramic handling of material drawn from the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant traditions, past and present. There are several reasons for such inclusiveness but, in pursuit of a genuinely katholica theology announced by an analogical metaphysics, the reader is both astonished at the range of reading and giddy from the bumpiness of the ecumenical ride. At its simplest, the argument throughout is how 'the analogy of being [i]s something implied by the Christian faith whether one is aware of it or not' (p. 466). It is implied in the incarnation itself. It is implied in the Chalcedonian understanding that it is necessary to hold the two natures of Christ in a manner that both respects their infinite difference while holding to the miracle of their unity. And because the analogical is so essential, indeed an aspect of the trinitarian revelation of God, then Christian theology is bound to metaphysical questioning arising out of existence seeking essence, appearance its reality, and veiling its disclosure. In this way, Christian theology cannot eschew philosophy but must pursue philosophical questions (particularly those raised by Heidegger's rejection of the Kantian rational strictures around the phenomenal, and his influential examination of the question of Being and Truth). But Betz has come to an understanding of 'the indispensability of analogical metaphysics' (p. 470) through his theological work on the Polish theologian, Erich Przywara, and the gift he (with David Bentley Hart) gave English-speaking theologians by translating Analogia Entis (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). So, this volume also serves as an important exegesis and examination of Przywara's theology. This is something very much needed. There is still little introductory material on this theologian whose German is often baroque and many of whose works are not available in English. They have to be scavenged from various places, even in German. Betz wants to make the argument that Przywara's 1932 Analogia Entis 'is arguably the most important work of Christian metaphysics in the twentieth century' (p. 164), and Przywara himself a major Catholic thinker. To that end, Przywara needs to be defended from his critics, his thought embedded in a tradition that includes Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Aquinas, and compared with two other major Catholic thinkers of the twentieth century, namely von Balthasar and de Lubac. Furthermore, following Heidegger's philosophical attack on ontotheology, Barth's theological attack on the analogy of being, and the spectre of Hegel over all of this thinking, Betz is required to: show how philosophy and theology can work together (reinstating metaphysics); show how Heidegger plagiarised and secularised the Christian tradition, misunderstanding, in his ontotheology, the nature of the analogical relation that holds between beings and Being; and show how Barth is both wrong in calling the analogia entis the work of the Antichrist (failing to appreciate what Przywara was demonstrating a posteriori) and was himself indebted to and required some form of analogical relation. This agenda is extensive (though Betz finds support in a number of other studies of Heidegger and Barth). But if the analogia entis is to become not just the focal point for a reconciliation between various theologians, Catholic and Protestant, but an aspect of the salvation and recapitulation of all created things in Christ, then this essay has to reach down into the tradition and Przywara's work to demonstrate the way the analogy of being, as a metaphysical enquiry, operates both horizontally and existentially (forming the basis for a theological anthropology), and vertically towards esse itself (as a trinitarian exercise of ex-isting out of and through love). This horizontal and vertical understanding of the vast dissimilarity that allows for some remote resemblance was, of course, the genius of Przywara's theology. The agenda set, we can now begin to understand the interrelationship between the four parts of Betz's analysis. Part I is devoted to the recovery of analogical metaphysics after Barth and Heidegger (and Marion); part II presents a dogmatica minora (Trinity, Christology, anthropology) as these doctrines are framed by an analogical metaphysics; part III offers some analogical solutions to disputed questions (nature/grace and the humility of God) that have beset modern Catholic theology; while part IV looks towards developing a more Catholic metaphysics by drawing out both the distinctiveness of Przywara's theology with respect to von Balthasar and de Lubac, and its corollaries in terms of Christology, anthropology, and analogy as kataphatic as well as apophatic. The kataphatic is important, since the analogy of being is an a posteriori not a priori key for theological understanding. Chapter 11 is an overlong recapitulation (rather than just summary) of what has been demonstrated. I emphasise recapitulation because it is the work of a theological mind attempting to participate in the gathering of all things created in and through Christ. There is, then, a solid and logical structure to the essay but, at over 500 pages, this often gets lost in the detail and the attempt to realise the ambitious vision for the project. The various parts do fit together in the 'Circle of Analogy' outlined in chapter 10, but not smoothly. All this said, this book remains, nevertheless, a theological gift such as I have not received since the work of Betz's friend and collaborator, David Bentley Hart, and Hart's The Beauty of the Infinite. Why? Because, despite is flaws, it actually does achieve much of what it sets out to do, and with enormous benefits following from a Christian theology that argues and understands the intimate relationship (often denied) between analogy as a linguistic phenomenon and analogy not only at the centre of a doctrine of creation but actually making such a doctrine possible. This is particularly important for fundamental theology that wishes to maintain a critical relationship to philosophy (phenomenological, existential, analytical) and, simultaneously, wishes to embrace a theological metaphysics of participation. Betz's thinking is as clear as it is incisive in his recovery of analogical metaphysics. Allowing Barth to make his critical points, embracing the more authentically Augustinian treatments of Luther, he also opens possibilities for an ecumenism that is not founded upon a notion of the unified body of Christ as some sort of amalgamation. He allows difference to be different and grounds this both Christologically and in terms of a trinitarian theology. Difference can and must be different because it is in this way that the inner diversity of theological debate partakes in a providential work. And, in Betz making these claims on the basis of Przywara's work, he does demonstrate the importance of this theologian for the future of Catholic thinking (where Catholic expresses the broad and embracing domain of being en Christô). These are very significant achievements. Dogmatically, in and beyond internal debates about grace and nature, the kataphatic and the apophatic, and kenosis, this work is also highly insightful with respect to its conception of the Trinity (its essential Being and its operative ex-istence) and Christology (maintaining the two natures and relating these through understanding kenotic humility as a divine property of love). But, fundamentally, this volume clarifies 'what it means to be a human being' (p. 466). Here, I found the workings of a truly wonderful theological mind who understands the corollaries that follow 'because God is so transcendent…God can be so intimate' (p. 262). Retrieving the Pauline tripartite understanding of being human as body, soul, and spirit, Betz points to depths in Christ that psychoanalysis and wellbeing programmes can never reach, can never grasp, only ever treating the symptoms of the abyss between the divine and human. That 'we ourselves are per force [sic.] images per analogiam' (p. 262), recovers also the traditional (and Jewish) distinction between being made in the image of and being fashioned after the likeness of. Christ's descent, so graphically portrayed in those images of the descent from the cross (Caravaggio, Rubens, and Rublev come to mind), operates in us for our formation in Him. We are not the centre of our own actions or desires. Being human is itself an analogical praxis. This is as profound as it is rich in reverberations. Going forward, it is those reverberations that are so important for critical theologies, treating Scripture, tradition, and our ability to think and understand. As Betz writes, theological thinking cannot 'deteriorate into a thoughtless dogmatism' (p. 470). That thoughtlessness has profoundly infantilised Christian congregations on all confessional sides. Spirituality, as living in Christ and being formed by the Spirit, demands openness, honesty, and responsibility in theological enquiry. Such enquiry is never about academic careers or being relevant for contemporary society, it concerns bearing witness to that which operates for the reconciliation and salvation of all things created in God and by God because 'we ourselves are per force [sic.] images per analogiam'. What follows from this is understanding the nature and work of salvation (that is not treated by Betz, though it is by Hart). Such understanding cannot proceed through 'thoughtless dogmatism' or undigested piety. It must enquire into what we understand as sin and death; particularly what dies in our natural deaths, what is transfigured in Christ, and why. Such enquiries will then bring ecclesiology and sacramentality to the fore: what it is to be the body of Christ as lived and providentially led. Always, as Przywara taught Betz, and as Augustine, Luther, and Kierkegaard taught Przywara, there will be the cross. While Christ is the Logos of creation, in creation He is the crucified one. The fulfilment of His being sent (as John's Gospel makes plain) is the cross. The cross is the beginning, and while certainly life does not end there, it is a point from which no simple resurrected triumphalism can be proclaimed by the Church. For the greater glory of God darkens all human understanding and disciplines all consoling lyricisms. That's why we need good critical theology and analogical metaphysics.