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divine tmth and its implications for their particular moral and spiritual situation. Furthermore, students of divine tmth must be brought into a pattem of spiritual discipline and liturgical life so that they are made malleable for the reception of divine truth. Kolbet does a masterful job of surveying the classical literature of ancient therapeutic practice and showing how Augustine relates to it at the various stages of his development. Focusing on this theme shows the reader a particular vision of Augustine as a pastor within his Roman and Hellenistic context. Though Kolbet does not draw out the contemporary signiflcance of Augustine's notion of the cure of souls, theorists of pastoral practice would do well to reflect deeply on it. In an era in which pastoral ministry is often shaped by the models and assumptions of modem psychology and psychotherapy, the opportunity to watch a master theologian adapt his own intellectual context to the stmctures of the Christian gospel is awe-inspiring. If contemporary ministers were to follow Augustine, souud pastoral practice would not entertain any suggestion that the minister should act as a spiritual master or physician of souls. Rather, it would necessitate that the minister, in the company of the rest of the worshiping community, seek together to hear the divine tmth spoken in Scripture. Such a vision of pastoral practice would require a form orientated by corporate inquiry into the spiritual and personal implications of the teaching of Scripture. At its foundation, however, such a revision of modem pastoral practice would require a posture of faith in which the ongoing speaking of Cod through his Word is an expected reality.
DUSTIN R E S C H

Briercrest College and Seminary Caronport, Saskatchewan

God and Evil in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. By Herbert McCabe. Edited and introduced by Brian Davies. London and New York: Continuum, 2010. xviii + 205 pp. $24.95 (paper).
The so-called problem of evil arises from fundamental theological misunderstandings. One of the distinct pleasures of studying the work of Herbert McCabe, the late Dominican who (thanks to his fellow Dominican and literary executor Brian Davies) has now published more since his death than he did while alive, is the brilliant wit and insight with which McCabe takes us from theological muddle to the blinding light of mystery. As McCabe notes:

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"When we speak of God we do not clear up a puzzle; we draw attention to a mystery" (p. 128). McGabe's argument derives from a perceptive reading of Aquinas. We need to understand that "good" is not a normal property of things, like "red." A red washing machine and a red skillet have something in common: redness. But two good things do not have goodness in common, because when something is good it is not that it has something else"goodness"added to itself. Rather, a good thing is just succeeding as itself; it has tliose particular properties which that kind of thing is supposed to have. So a good washing machine can get the clothes clean, and a good skillet fries my eggs. I wouldn't normally call my washing machine bad because it fails to fry my eggs. If a good thing has the properties it is supposed to have, then badness or evil is the situation when some of those properties are missing. Evil is a lack in the particular goodness that belongs to the thing in question. This lack, of course, could be because something is missing (my washing machine lacks a belt, say), or it could be because it has too much of something (it might be filled with glue). Either way, the washing machine falls short of being itself. But there is also moral badness, the evil that comes about when rational beings fail to act in accordance with their reason. This is sin, and it has no correlative benefit. It is, McGabe says, the choice of a lesser good over a greater good. What remains is to think clearly about God. Here is the core of McGabe's thought, the fundamental insight that gives his work its systematic coherence. As the creator of all things, God cannot be a being among beings. God gives being to the world, so there is nothing, apart from existence, to which we could point and say, "God did that." In fact, it is misleading to say God "gives being" to anything, as if it made sense to speak of things without being to which, then, existence could be added. Thus to think about God is to face the mystery at the heart of all things and the dizzying realization that, if God causes everything, then God causes my free actions. Since God is not a being in the universe, there is no contradiction in my own free actions being free while still being caused by God. To the question at hand for this volume, the reader should hone in on chapter 2, a strikingly clear exposition of how Aquinas treats being, essence, perfection, goodness, and causation. Then, in the heart of the argument (chap. 4, "The Greator and Evil") we find a comparison of the actions of stones, dogs, and people (pp. 82-85) that sets up McGabe's explanation of moral evil (which stones and dogs cannot perpetrate) as "the defect of not acting in accordance with reason" (p. 86). Yet the question remains: Who causes that defect? So we come to McGabe's final chapter. Aquinas says evil is caused per accidens, that is, as the "accidental" concomitance of some good action. But

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he must also speak of evil done, evil actions perpetrated by free beings like us, to which McGabe insists that God is not the cause of sin. But because "sin plays no part in the perfection of anything"it quite literally has no point "God could have created a world without sin" (p. 125). There would be no contradiction in affirming that God creates free beings who never sin. Why then didn't God create that kind of world? McGabe reminds us that there is no sense in which God can create badly or well. We are left with mystery. Good theology, I deem, gets rid of idols and sharpens our understanding. In his corpus, McGabe has not helped us to see God better, but he has helped us to understand better what we cannot mean when we speak of God. I have used many volumes of McGabe's with adult classes and introductory college theology courses; for such audiences, it would be better to start with his sermons (God, Christ, and Us) or a general collection such as God Matters or God Still Matters. But for the student who wants to uncover the deep structure of McGabe's Thomistie theology, the present volume is invaluable.
VICTOR L E E AUSTIN

Saint Thom/is Church Eifth Avenue New York, New York

Do This: Liturgy as Performance. By Richard D. McCall. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. 195 pp. $28.00 (paper).
In the introduction to his work, McGall makes the observation that "the very warrant for sacramental worship is a verb of performance," that is, "do this" (p. 2). This observation leads McGall to assert that hidden "in that performance is a vision of life in Ghrist that is not a state of being but rather an act, an act of the worshippers who enact a cosmos and a community that is nothing less than God's act of creation" (p. 2). For McGall, the verb "enact" is to be preferred to "perform" in order to avoid "the theatrical overtones" of "performance" (p. 4). Ghapter 2 marks McCall's exploration of the liturgical world of the medieval West and, in particular, the Gallican tradition with its "expansive and poetic language" and "a distinct fascination . . . for what can only he called the dramatic" (p. 17). He argues that this understanding of the liturgical enactment came to be challenged during the Protestant Reformation because

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