Suffering and Salvation: The Salvific Meaning of Suffering in the Later Theology of Edward Schillebeeckx.
McManus, Kathleen
SUFFERING AND SALVATION: THE SALVIFIC MEANING OF SUFFERING IN THE
LATER THEOLOGY OF EDWARD SCHILLEBEECKX. By Aloysius Rego, O.C.D. Louvain
Theological and Pastoral Monographs 33. Louvain: Peeters, 2006. Pp. xvi
+ 363. 22 [euro].
Rego's study of Schillebeeckx's later theology treats the
salvific nature of suffering, God's relationship to suffering, and
the distinction between what Schillebeeckx calls "meaningful"
and "meaningless" experiences of suffering. The initial
chapters, which carefully detail the historical and philosophical
influences on Schillebeeckx's work, will benefit readers new to
Schillebeeckx. R.'s chapter on Christology, the book's
strongest feature, most illuminates Schillebeeckx's theology of
suffering, powerfully articulating a theologia crucis that insists on
the inseparability of Jesus" death from his life and resurrection.
A middle chapter, "Suffering in Schillebeeckx's
Theological Method," analyzes and critiques Schillebeeckx's
understanding of experience. While R. positively renders
Schillebeeckx's insights concerning the authority and salvific
import of the "refractory experiences" of negativity and
suffering, he critiques Schillebeeckx's overall analysis of
experience for its lack of criteria for judgments of truth or falsity.
R. flatly and uncritically appropriates Donald Gelpi's negative
assessment of Schillebeeckx in this regard. Nevertheless, R. goes on to
discuss the mediation of revelation in and through human experience in
terms that would seem to affirm Schillebeeckx's epistemological position, especially with regard to what is revealed in suffering.
R.'s final chapters are the most critically engaging, even as
they perpetuate the fundamental contradiction noted above. He doubts
that Schillebeeckx's distinction between "meaningful" and
"meaningless" suffering is "helpful for developing a
public, objective theology of suffering." Clearly desiring such
objectivity, R. asks: "What are the minimum requirements for human
living and wellbeing? Who decides?" (325). A signal feature of
Schillebeeckx's anthropology, which R. does not engage and which
would seem to negate his question, is the impossibility and
undesirability of defining the humanum. Instead, Schillebeeekx provides
a system of anthropological coordinates, the irreducible synthesis of
which creates the essential conditions for human flourishing.
While R.'s lucid treatment of negative-contrast experience
seems undermined by his persistent questioning of Schillebeeckx's
use of experience in general, his book is to be commended for the
challenge it presents and for its crisp, synthetic presentation of
Schillebeeckx's major theological themes, especially his
Christology.
KATHLEEN MCMANUS, O.P.
University of Portland, Oreg.
