Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology. By MatthewLevering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. x, 331. $110.00.

If Thomas Aquinas appears on reading lists for doctoral comprehensive examinations, the likelihood is that some questions from the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae will be listed. If the student's specialty is ethics, then one may find questions from the Prima Secundae. But, in my years of teaching, questions from the Tertia Pars never appeared. Yet, in the ‘Prologue’ to the last part of his Summa, Thomas claims that it constitutes ‘the consummation of the entire theological enterprise’. For it treats of Jesus Christ as the way of creation's return to God, its Fons et Origo, and of the sacraments that mediate Christ's ongoing salvific and sustaining presence. However, a welcome development in Thomistic studies over the past years is that recognition of the crucial importance of Thomas's Christology has re-emerged. Much credit is due to the works of Jean-Pierre Torrell, especially his Saint Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2: Spiritual Master and his two-volume study, Le Christ en ses mystères: La vie et l'oeuvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d'Aquin. In addition, another important contribution to this emergence has been a new appreciation for Thomas's biblical commentaries that offer a more affective and experiential approach to the person and mission of the Saviour. Matthew Levering's Reconfiguring Thomistic Christology both draws upon and furthers this recovery. Levering, a distinguished Thomistic scholar, is co-editor of the English edition of the periodical Nova et Vetera. One of his explicit aims has been to foster dialogue among two major currents in contemporary theology: the more metaphysically oriented Thomists and the historically minded scholars of the Ressourcement school. The present book is a genial attempt to draw upon the strengths of each in order to advance a Thomistic Christology that draws abundantly upon the biblical and patristic tradition, and takes seriously that tradition's ontological implications. He insists: ‘Modern Christology benefits greatly from attention to the richly biblical, patristic, and metaphysical Christology offered by Aquinas’ (p. 26). Levering's creative ‘reconfiguring’ is to present Thomas Aquinas as heir to and exponent of the figural and typological reading of the Old Testament, prominent both in the New Testament itself and in the patristic tradition. Though it is in his biblical commentaries that Aquinas most notably draws upon this tradition, it is not absent from the Summa. Levering asserts: ‘my “reconfiguring” of Thomistic Christology depends upon the fact that Aquinas's own metaphysical and dogmatic Christology is already figurally rich’ (p. 60). Aquinas understands Jesus's uniqueness as recapitulating and fulfilling the figures of Adam, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, and David. Each figure provides some purchase upon the inexhaustible richness of the mystery of Jesus Christ, like so many bright tesserae contributing to the completed and compelling apse mosaic. The challenge Levering poses to contemporary Thomists, then, is ‘to integrate Thomistic Christology more fully with the New Testament's inaugurated eschatology’ (p. 25), as evident in its appropriation of the Old Testament types in its proclamation of Jesus Christ. Hence, after an important opening chapter on ‘The Revival of Thomistic Christology’, he devotes each of the subsequent chapters to the figures of Christ as new Adam, new Isaac, new Moses, new Joshua, and new David. And he instructively correlates these with their eschatological fulfilment in a Christologically-informed new creation, new Temple, new Exodus, true Promised Land, and eternal Kingdom. Levering quotes approvingly the New Testament scholar, Patrick Schreiner: ‘Jesus is the gravitational force that pulls all things together’ (p. 200). Each of the constructive chapters follows a similar pattern. Levering sets the stage with pertinent introductory remarks, followed by an exploration of the theme in the New Testament and in select representatives from the patristic tradition. He then examines Thomas's use of the traditional figural material both in his biblical commentaries and in the Summa. Crucially, each chapter ends with ‘An Ontological Note’ which, as we have seen, is ingredient to Levering's proposal and project. For, if his challenge to the Thomists is to incorporate into their Christologies the rich resources of a typological approach to Scripture, his challenge to the Ressourcement theologians (and others) is to recognise and elucidate the ontological implications embodied in the New Testament claims. Levering contends that ‘metaphysical analysis serves the task of understanding and communicating the scriptural witness to the radical uniqueness of Jesus Christ’ (p. 65). Thus, he would certainly second the assertion of the New Testament scholar, Luke Timothy Johnson (in his commentary on Hebrews), that ‘because of a distaste for—and ignorance of—ontology, and the flat epistemological monism that shapes modernity, it is difficult for many to hold together the human and divine in Christ, whether in profession or in piety or in politics’. Levering succeeds quite well in advancing the goals he has set himself, challenging both Thomistic and Ressourcement theologians to learn from one another's strengths in order to meet the contemporary Christological crisis. And he uses the figural images of the biblical tradition to illustrate both poles of the challenge: an approach that ponders the key figures of Israel's history and elucidates the ontological implications of their place in and contribution to salvation history. However, it strikes me that there is a further and still more foundational issue that contemporary Christology too often skirts. It regards the very self-understanding of Jesus himself. Not only who do we say Jesus is, but who does he claim to be? Benedict XVI poignantly expressed the theological and pastoral concern which spurred him to write his Jesus volumes thus: ‘intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air’ (Jesus of Nazareth, I, p. xii). Yet such intimate friendship requires true knowledge of the other—not only what I or others may say of the friend, but what he says of himself, both in word and in deed. The issue to which I am gesturing surfaces on the very last page of Levering's volume. He writes: ‘The incarnate Lord, Jesus Christ, eschatologically accomplished the work of these central figures of Israel's Scriptures’ (p. 294). The book has, indeed, argued convincingly that the writers of the New Testament depict and interpret Jesus of Nazareth in light of figures such as Adam and Isaac, Moses and David. But Levering goes a step further. He holds that, ‘[Jesus] understood himself in light of these central figures, or more accurately, he interpreted these figures in light of himself’ (p. 294). On what grounds can he stake this claim? Though, in this volume, Levering does not spell out a response in detail, one can obtain a valuable indication from a point he makes early on. Commenting upon Thomas Joseph White's The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology, Levering writes: ‘appreciation for historical research into Jesus does not here substitute for the gift of faith by which Jesus is known personally’ (p. 2, n. 1). Thus, an historical-critical approach to the biblical text must be integrated within an ecclesial hermeneutic rooted in the Church's liturgy, nourished by its sacramental life, and instructed by its dogmatic tradition. Such a hermeneutic, I suggest, stands at the heart of Levering's engaging study, and fosters an encounter not with a figure of the past, but with the living Lord, experienced and ‘known personally’. Thomas, himself, of course, experienced such an encounter with the Lord—an encounter that gave rise to an ‘experiential’ knowledge. In contrast to a merely ‘speculative’ knowledge of the intellect, such experiential knowledge goes beyond multiple external characteristics to apprehend the true character of the beloved. Such knowledge, imbued with affectivity, is a deeply personal knowledge by ‘connaturality’. In Newman's terms it is not only ‘notional’, but ‘real’. Hence, Levering's welcome contribution, that integrates the metaphysical analyses of the Summa with the figurative considerations of the biblical commentaries, could well be supplemented and enriched by drawing upon Thomas's poetry and prayer. Here the splendid book of Paul Murray, OP, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry, offers an important further dimension and resources. For, in addition to the systematic exposition of the Summa and the scriptural exegesis of the biblical commentaries, there exists the treasure trove of Thomas's prayers and poems that have still not been sufficiently explored. To draw upon an insight of Murray, these ‘bear witness, and with telling force and beauty, to both the apostolic and contemplative energy and passion of St. Thomas’. As Thomas himself avows, citing and extending Paul: ‘I long for you to be in the very heart of Christ Jesus … in order that you may love him intimately, and that you may be loved by him; for human life consists in this’ (Commentary on Philippians). To be loved and to love is the very heart of friendship. And the contemplative experience of God's love in Christ is the wellspring from which Thomas's theological-pastoral labours flow: his passion to contemplata aliis tradere.