Reviews 363

The ambition of William Wood to write “Pascalian theology” is commendable and really worth-
while for several reasons. Here, I just underline the relevance of Pascal’s thought for the ongoing
search for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches. In Pascal’s work someone can find
much inspiration for what Sarah Coakley recently has dubbed theology totale. Although Wood recog-
nizes this tremendous potential of Pascal, he is not able to keep this broad horizon until the end of
the book, as I will argue below. Nevertheless, Wood proves himself a very skillful and precise reader
of Pascal’s texts. Additionally, he is knowledgeable on the Pascal literature, both the English and the
French. The constructive connection of these two worlds of Pascal interpretation is one of the impor-
tant contributions of Wood’s book. The first and especially the sixth chapter show the great insight
of the author in Pascal’s analysis of the dynamics of sin and the construction of a (duplicated and
modern) self. Especially noteworthy is the attention paid to (self) persuasion, as related to Pascal’s
understanding of grace. This is of great value for the relevance of Pascal for actual theology.
The high quality of Wood’s interpretation notwithstanding, it is somewhat disappointing that his
challenging intention to develop Pascalian theology is, at least from my perspective, not satisfacto-
rily fulfilled. With the promising dialogue with Bourdieu and Althusser, Wood makes a great start
to include sociological and political scientific perspectives. Although I agree with Wood that Pascal’s
perspective is theological, in contrast to Althusser and Bourdieu, the author does not really elaborate
on the theoretical importance of this proper Pascalian element. The third way between utopian and
relativist approaches, which Wood claims to be Pascal’s, gets sidetracked in a somewhat opaque
presentation of Pascal’s appreciation of the Church. Although the last chapter of the book bears
some promising elements for a Pascalian alternative in this field, by then, however, Wood seems to
have lost interest in the dialogue with the social sciences. The reinforcement of the understanding of
Pascal’s “moi” through the analysis of Eliot’s character Bulstrode in the next chapter follows another
vein of a theology totale. Wood shows a specific psychological-orientated interest in Bulstrode, yet
without paying attention to the artistic, cultural, and historical elements. Apart from the fact that the
cultural and historical distance between Pascal and Eliot makes Bulstrode a less evident choice than
a character from seventeenth-century French literature (theater!), the importance of the artistic styl-
ing of the characters by both authors is not really taken into account. The narrowing of the focus—
which starts at the end of chapter two—is taken further. In general, Wood’s approach is character-
ized by a lack of attention to the historical context. Yet, the relevance of Pascal’s thought on self-
deception cannot be isolated from the early-modern context and the birth of the modern self. This,
and the content of chapters five and six, makes one think that the real interest of Wood is analytical-
philosophical. What appeared to be a theology totale turns out to be an analytical perspective on the
moral culpability of self-deception. Although the themes mentioned in the final chapter indicate a
broader potential relevance of Pascal’s thought, Wood is not finally able to articulate this systemati-
cally because of the specific focus on human agency in the chapters five and six. Pascal’s expression
that knowledge of our selves is only possible by Jesus Christ, becomes therefore in the first place a
moral principle instead of an epistemological and experimental truth.
“The way back” mentioned in the last chapter indicates a better way to study Pascal’s under-
standing of self-deception without losing the broad perspective of Pascalian theology. This way
begins with Christ and his two natures as the only possibility of obtaining knowledge of the
human self and its sinful duplicity.

Klaas Bom
Senior Researcher
Protestant Theological University
Amsterdam - Groningen
The Netherlands
Email: k.l.bom@pthu.nl

Memory in Augustine’s Theological Anthropology by Paige E. Hochschild (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2012), viii 1 251 pp.

It is well-known that, for Augustine, memory forms an integral part of the triadic structure of
memory, intellect, and will, by which the human soul images God and through which the soul

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is, ultimately, ordered to return to God (De Trinitate 10.11.7–18). Paige Hochschild’s Memory in
Augustine’s Theological Anthropology, a revision of her 2005 dissertation, is a masterful study of
the place of memory in Augustine’s theology and how this theology develops in the African
doctor’s thought. One of the great strengths of this monograph is that even though it heads reso-
lutely to where the reader of Augustine would expect, namely an engagement with the theology
of memory operative in the last books of the Confessions and in De Trinitate, Hochschild devotes
the bulk of the book first to framing the philosophical milieu Augustine inherited and, then, to
interacting with the theological development of Augustine’s account of memory, before finally
concluding with what is undoubtedly the high-water mark of Augustine’s theology of memory
in the Confessions and De Trinitate. As such, Hochschild divides the book into three parts: first,
an analysis of the philosophical tradition Augustine received; second, an interaction with
Augustine’s early writings; and, finally, a detailed exegesis of Confessions 10–12 and De Trinitate
12–14 in light of Augustine’s “memory-based anthropology” (167).
The first part of the book focuses on three dominant figures in the philosophical tradition
who, arguably, most inform Augustine’s theology: Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus. Certainly,
Hochschild does not dismiss other significant philosophical antecedents that shape Augustine’s
thought—the Stoicism of Cicero, for example. To my mind, this selection is the right choice:
“These three ancient writers are central representatives of the mainstream development of
Platonism” (62). Hochschild is clear that she is not defending a precise textual link between
these ancient authors and Augustine, but instead is presenting “a history of ideas” in order to
situate “Augustine’s place within this philosophical trajectory” (63). It is these three philoso-
phers in particular who establish the perennial questions that are at play in this book: the inter-
section of time and memory, the role of the body for the remembering soul, and, most
importantly, the place of memory in navigating the relation of the temporal to the eternal.
The second part of the book focuses on Augustine’s early writings. A recurring issue in the
Cassiciacum dialogues and in Augustine’s broader engagement with the Skeptics is the question
of how the temporal, finite creature can know and love eternal, infinite truth. Hochschild rightly
notes that Augustine hints at a two-fold resolution: first, he leans heavily on the participatory
ontology at work in the Platonic tradition. For Augustine, Plato seems to have come “alive
again” in the writings of Plotinus by restoring Plato’s two-world metaphysic, in which there is a
relation between this world in flux and the eternal, stable realm (86). Memory offers a path to
navigate this bridge. The second element of the resolution is related to the first: the Incarnation
bridges these two realms and functions as a “marriage and reconciliation of the corporeal and
the intelligible” (87). Hochschild, however, maintains that Augustine’s early dialogues are cir-
cumspect about this resolution. The inherently dualistic fault line running through the Platonic
tradition looms large: how can the soul, which is perched at the midway point between the eter-
nal and the temporal and between the infinite and the finite, relate to the body? Although
Augustine’s intimations of the Incarnation and his nascent theology of memory suggest an
inchoate resolution, this resolution awaits its denouement in Augustine’s mature writing.
Memory, in Augustine’s early anthropology, takes multifarious and fleeting sense data and,
by means of judgment, imposes intelligibility, unity, and order. As such, it is memory that over-
comes the soul’s embodied temporal limitations: “Memory gives the mind’s eye perfect periph-
eral vision: present perception, with a remembered sum of experiences, and a sense of
expectation formed by such remembrances” (105). In Augustine’s early writings one begins to
perceive the role of memory in providing unity to past, present, and future experience within a
subjective center. Hochschild writes, “Memory as the ability of the soul to extend in time makes
it possible for the soul to assimilate the multiplicity of what is subordinate to it, and come to
know itself in the simplicity of unified subjectivity—animating, sensing, and knowing” (109).
Augustine’s early discussion of memory remains nebulous, suggests Hochschild, because
Augustine has not yet developed a robust theology of time. Augustine defers a resolution to the
question of how the temporal and embodied creature can know eternal and immaterial truth to
the Confessions and De Trinitate, where a full-blown account of memory and time is presented.
“The mystery of memory,” wrote French philosopher Jean Guitton, “is simply the mystery of
the spiritual person (ego animus), or rather it is the mystery arising from the existence of the per-
son in time” (Jean Guitton, Le Temps et l’eternite chez Plotin et saint Augustin [Paris: Boivin, 1933],
206). Guitton captures the tenor of the third part of this book, which is, inter alia, a commentary
on Augustine’s mature reflections on memory as inextricably linked with the problem of time.

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In the Confessions—the exegesis of which is the central part of Hochschild’s book—Augustine

comes at last “to the fields and vast places of memory, where are the treasuries of innumerable
images of all kinds of objects brought in by sense-perception” (Conf. 10.8.12). Augustine employs
the searing image of memory as a “stomach of the mind” (Conf. 10.14.21). Memory—to work the
analogy—digests the varied, distracted, multifarious objects that sense perception receives by
way of distentio in time (145). Memory brings unity and stability, and even a sense of perma-
nence: “Memory makes the experience of the discursive intelligible; temporal experience, other-
wise, is a flux, an undifferentiated mess” (165). Augustine’s “memory-based anthropology”
allows for a link, even a union, of body and soul, maintains Hochschild. Memory is the power
of the soul that “occupies a middle position, uniting the embodied and intellectual aspects of
human existence” (167).
Nevertheless, the questions Augustine raises in his early writings of how the finite and tem-
poral creature might know the infinite and eternal are still at play. Memory provides an
“artificial permanence” of temporal unity (169) but does not offer the unity of eternity. Grace is
necessary for such a union. Ultimately, it is the “downward” movement of the Word in creation
and in the Incarnation that bridges this chasm. The “problem of temporality” finds some resolu-
tion in the final books of the Confessions: “The ability of the divine to overcome the spiritual dis-
tance, to enter into the human and bring it into union with itself, is precisely the argument
here” (159). Of course, this unity remains penultimate, as it should while we are in via: “There
will always be a live tension for the soul in pilgrimage” (188). Thus, the title of Hochschild’s last
chapter rightly expresses the hope for the “perfection of memory in the vision of God.”
The last chapter contains a rich discussion of Books 12–14 of De Trinitate, particularly of
Augustine’s crucial distinction between scientia and sapientia. The distinction between scientia as
the knowledge and concern with temporal matters and sapientia as the contemplation of eternity
is the ground of much of Augustine’s theology. It is within this paradigm that the distinction is
constructed between what is to be used (uti), namely the temporal, and what is the end to be
enjoyed (frui), namely the eternal. However, the distinction between scientia and sapientia is often
read in too facile a manner, maintains Hochschild. While it is the case that for Augustine all
temporal created goods are to be understood (scientia) and used (uti) in order to ascend to that
which is to be contemplated (sapientia) and enjoyed (frui), Hochshild suggests that we recognize
greater continuity between the two orders. Temporal knowledge (scientia) is not surpassed in an
apophatic flight to eternal wisdom (sapientia). De Trinitate does not counsel an “ascent” that
leaves behind the temporal and embodied in favor of a “wholly ‘speculative’ sort of union with
God” (212). Instead, a union, even a “harmonious marriage,” grounds the two orders (208). It is
in this temporal, finite, and embodied order of scientia that we grow in sapientia.
Hochschild’s book is remarkably compelling, and it has my overall agreement. I would offer
two considerations by way of critique. First, it is not clear how strictly necessary the first section
of the book is to the author’s argument. Certainly, Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus posit memory as
a mode of transcendence, a way of overcoming the limitations of a temporal, embodied creature.
Hochschild convincingly argues that this is a philosophy that Augustine partially endorses, but
one which, ultimately, awaits a developed response in his theology of the Incarnation, with its
corresponding affirmation of embodiment and temporality. However, the first third of the book
does not claim to advance an argument for explicit textual dependence; instead, it presents a
“history of ideas.” As such, it can seem a bit of a circuitous route to introducing Augustine’s the-
ology of memory.
Second, the correspondence between Augustine and his friend Nebridius (letters 3–14) con-
tains twelve letters written between 387 and approximately 391 that are integral to the topic
under consideration. Unfortunately, they do not play a role in this book. Nebridius presses
Augustine for his opinion about the search for the happy life; can one be wise and thereby
happy in this life? Nebridius finds Augustine’s response delightful: “They speak to me of Christ,
of Plato, of Plotinus” (ep. 6.1). Indeed, this heritage suffuses the rich discussion in these letters
concerning the nature of the intelligible realm and its image in the sensible order, concerning
the relation of soul and body, and, most importantly, also concerning the status of memory in
this life. While Hochschild does not interact with this epistolary exchange, it is an essential ele-
ment to full account of memory in Augustine’s early writings.
Despite relatively minor concerns notwithstanding, Hochschild’s overall thesis succeeds in
inviting the reader to look with Augustine to the Incarnation as the model for how temporal

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knowledge is taken up and ordered to eternal wisdom. In Christ the eternal is, in fact, known in
the temporal: “Augustine observes that the focal point of the union of scientia and sapientia is
‘that most important temporal event’—namely, the joining of God with humanity in time” (213).
Ultimately, it is faith as the “temporal ordering” to the incarnate Christ through memory that,
for Augustine, overcomes the limitations of the Skeptics by bridging the chasm of knowing the
eternal while embodied in the temporal.

Gerald P. Boersma
Department of Theology
St. Bonaventure University
3261 West State Road
St. Bonaventure, NY 14778
USA
Email: gboersma@sbu.edu

Dust Bound for Heaven: Explorations in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Reinhard H€
utter
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2012), x 1 511 pp.

The ambitious aim of this book is to offer a reading of Thomas Aquinas that can help to over-
come what H€ utter calls the present-day crises of both reason and faith. In late-modern society,
instrumental reason reigns supreme by its incontestable mathematics and technological suc-
cesses, while reason’s metaphysical and moral competences are totally denied. Faith, on the
other hand, has become separate from reason and caught between the extremes of either indi-
vidualist, subjectivist, experiential fideism—where one might think of present-day evangelical
Protestantism, although H€ utter does not mention a specific group—or of self-asserting, authori-
tative, culture-bound traditionalism—more commonly found among Catholics. H€ utter claims
that a theological ressourcement in the thought of Thomas Aquinas can reconnect faith and reason
and break the stalemate in which the two find themselves nowadays. It can show that Christian
faith and theology are not just another willful positing, another competitor in the market, aimed
at out-narrating alternative narratives, but that they possess an intellectual intuition to overcome
ontological nihilism and epistemological skepticism.
To a large extent, this volume consists of previously published papers, some of which have
been slightly revised. Such collections often suffer from a serious lack of coherence, but this one
does not. There is an implicit, unifying view behind the variety of topics discussed. Sin, nature,
and grace are the three key terms that somehow return in each chapter. The book starts with a
‘prelude’, which explains its aim and argues that Aquinas’s mature view on the connection
between will and intellect and on the liberating reorientation of the latter through grace, can
reestablish our sense of how reason and faith depend on each other. The book ends with a ‘post-
lude’, which intimates Eucharistic adoration as a prefiguration of the beatific vision. The nine
chapters in between are divided into four thematic sections. The first one gives a theological
analysis of the predicament of the individual person and of society in late modernity. One could
read it as an account of the sinful state of humanity, of its wounded nature. But human nature
is not only contrasted with sin, it is also set against its supernatural end. That seems to explain
why the next section discusses the classical question about the natural desire for the vision of
God. The third section is about grace, which respects our natural freedom, heals from sin, and
elevates us into the supernatural life with God. The fourth and final section consists of two
chapters about the analogy of being and about the organization of the university in late modern-
ity. Both might be included under the heading of the nature of the (healed) human intellect seek-
ing (supernatural) wisdom. In this way, it seems to me that the question of how sin, nature, and
grace are interrelated is the underlying topic that gives unity to the whole volume.
In discussing the correlation between these concepts, H€ utter consistently integrates philosoph-
ical, metaphysical, and abstract analyses of human nature and its faculties into the overarching
theological perspective of the concrete providential order of salvation history, determined by the
actual states of either sin or grace. Methodologically, this is a most admirable achievement.
Moreover, he revives and renews the classical neo-Thomism of Garrigou-Lagrange and

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