Abstract

This is undoubtedly the most constructive approach to the solution of the God problem to appear in the past decade. The author displays considerable erudition, having assimilated practically all of the significant literature on his subject, and thus is able judiciously to assess both the difficulties in the problem and the limitations of various attempts to surmount them. The focal point of his study is the problem of conceptualizing God on the two suppositions that human knowledge is basically conceptual and that a proper concept of God is forever beyond human formulation. In successive steps, and with enviable clarity, he explains how the "representative realism" of traditional scholasticism gradually gave way to a "symbolic relativism," variously expressed in the thought of Sertillanges, Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and Tillich. He then explains efforts to go beyond the limits of conceptualization under the inspiration of transcendental philosophy, leading to divers types of "theological intuitionalism," of which Maréchal, Rahner, Lonergan, and Schillebeeckx [[sic]] are representative. The critical problem posed by these endeavors leads the author to re-open the question of analogy, using insights from Aquinas but developing them in a highly original way.