Divine Revelation: Salvation and Liberation in Catholic Thought

Anglican Theological Review, Spring 1998 by Schreiter, Robert

Divine Revelation: Salvation and Liberation in Catholic Thought. By Dean Brackley. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996. xxvi 197 pp. $19.00 (paper).

Dean Brackley teaches at the Central American University in San Salvador. This book addresses the question in late twentieth-century Roman Catholic theology of the relation of social justice to transcendent salvation. Brackley argues that one can speak of an integral salvation that encompasses social justice. Moreover, the church has a single integral mission in regard to this salvation as well, with specific roles to play and tasks to achieve.

Brackley sets up the discussion by reviewing Magisterial documentsconciliar, synodal, papal, and episcopal, beginning with Vatican II. He concludes there has been development, but with enough remaining diversity to warrant saying the case is far from closed. He then traces the thought on this question in three prominent thinkers: Jacques Maritain, Karl Rahner, and Gustavo Gutierrez. Maritain he credits with closing the Neo-Scholastic breach between the supernatural and the natural orders on this issue, honoring their distinctiveness yet showing how they might interrelate. Karl Rahner provides a better understanding of how the two orders relate, based on a more adequate theology of grace. However, Rahner's theology remains more individual-centered, and does not account adequately for a social dimension. For this Brackley turns to Gutierrez, who he finds developing a careful balance between divine and human action, and a prophetic eschatology that addresses the question of what may be hoped for within the realm of human history. But Gutierrez does not fully answer a number of lingering issues.

Feminist critique is one that Brackley brings to bear (although not dealing with the recent debates about soteriology in feminist circles). He also works out a more social grounding of philosophical anthropology, using the work of Ellacuria and his mentor, Zubiri. And he addresses the optimism of much liberation theology with a more balanced understanding of sin, human corruption, and the finitude of human achievement in history. The model that emerges out of this refinement of Gutierrez (and Rahner) he calls "God's revolution," which connects the elements of divine and human interaction in a clear and persuasive fashion. In a final step he connects his model to the biblical witness through the recent conversation on the historical Jesus and the symbol of the Reign of God. He concludes with some brief remarks on the role of the Church in the model he proposes.

Brackley gives clear and accurate accounts of the authors with whom he converses. He also advances the discussion of the relation of social justice and salvation in Roman Catholic thought by making appropriate distinctions and connections between the divine and the human, the social and the individual, the historical and the eschatological, and sin and grace in a delicate and persuasive balance. He notes in passing the changes liberation theology itself is undergoing, but unfortunately does not go into them. To have done so would have strengthened his case. This is an important addition and advancement to our discussion of this vexing problem.

ROBERT SCHREITER

Catholic Theological Union Chicago, Illinois