Abstract
James F. Keenan, the deeply influential Boston College moral theologian, brings a lifetime of learning to this book. He starts at the beginning, by considering Jesus as the inspiration and foundation of Catholic theological ethics and carries the reader all the way to the present-day. His approach is chronological, not thematic. He describes the project as an attempt ‘to make sense out of why at different times particular ways of thinking about the moral life arose, crested, and ebbed, and why other topics, stances, and methods subsequently replaced them’ (p. xv). The book thus structurally reflects Keenan's argument—that working within the Catholic tradition is ‘fundamentally a progressive work, for progress is constitutive of the tradition’ (p. 288).
The very opening sub-section of the book is entitled ‘Why start with the New Testament?’ Today, anchoring our moral theology in scripture and more specifically in the gospels, seems inescapable. This has not always been assumed within the tradition. For Keenan, a history of moral thought cannot simply be a recitation of events in order through time, but must interrogate our positions ‘against the Christ event, for the truthfulness of the teachings depends on that’ (p. 2). Chapter 1 offers an orientating map for the rest of the book, alluding to places where with particular potency the New Testament texts inspired further ethical reflection. Keenan treats the Pauline writings first, for reasons of chronology as against theological priority, before moving on to the Synoptic gospels (which allow him to unpack some foundational theological concepts) and the Gospel of John. Two resounding points are made at the end of this chapter off the back of the fact that the New Testament texts cannot be marshalled into an indisputable, singular, unitary message; they ‘are not easily assimilated into an identifiable tract’ (p. 33). The first is that it is very good news for theological ethics that the field is increasingly global and home to diversity and the second is that we must always resist the sentimental urge to rewrite history to suit our specific agendas. ‘Moral truth does not escape history’ (p. 2), argues Keenan, and the task of the theological ethicist always therefore involves historical rigour.
The second chapter considers the first five centuries of the church. It considers first the very earliest stage of the church's life as the implications of baptism and discipleship were worked out. Then, as the institutional form of the church takes shape, Kennan considers the role of repentance and Eucharist and the way that beliefs about sexuality came to the fore. There is a focus on Augustine in the closing section of this chapter, not just because of his lasting significance for the field but because of how he brings many of these questions into focus.
Keenan is telling one story through this book. But it is a complex one. And so chapter 3 covers a vast span of time, stretching from the fourth to the sixteenth century as Keenan traces how theological ethics arises within the struggle for holiness. Chapter 4 covers from the twelfth century to the sixteenth century as it surveys scholasticism. And chapters 5 and 6 overlap with these periodisations as well, looking at how casuistry emerges in the sixteenth century. It is a credit to Keenan that the reader is not lost as he offers a guided trip through these tributaries without ever losing track of the main river.
Chapter 3 examines ‘pathways to the moral life and to holiness’ (p. 73). There are four routes explored: the pursuit of holiness in the patristic era, the rise of the Penitential manuals, the effect of the
discovery of self in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and then a focus on two later exemplars in this tradition: Erasmus and Ignatius. It is evident that Keenan is self-consciously seeking to undo the overwhelming maleness of the moral theological project as best he can and the discussion of the role of female mystics in chapter 3 is particularly strong. Having offered a fine, critical summary of the impact of Thomas à Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ, Keenan steps deftly on to the impact of Clare of Assisi whose ground-breaking work was premised on the fact that she had every right to forsake whatever feminine roles were offered to her by default because she was following Christ.
Chapter 4 charts the emergence and development of scholasticism, focusing on Abelard and Heloise, Peter Lombard, and Thomas, before closing with a reflection on how John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham in different ways inhabited this tradition and pointed towards its eclipse. Aquinas rightfully dominates this chapter and Keenan's warm account of the great Italian's legacy is likely to be very useful in the classroom. Over fifteen pages (pp. 143–58) he lays out ten ways in which Aquinas’s central place in contemporary theological thinking is well-deserved. More broadly, his account of the achievements of scholasticism strikes me as being particularly convincing. It is a tradition that is commonly mocked by those unfamiliar with its actual content and Keenan might cause even its harshest critic to question it. If nothing else, he punctures many caricatures in his opening paragraph on the topic by insisting that scholasticism ‘is a tradition very much built on the Scriptures’ (p. 161).
Chapters 5 and 6 trace two pathways to Modernity—casuistry in the former case and the influence of confraternities and the School of Salamanca in the latter. For Keenan, moral theology emerges as its own specific discipline as a consequence of the Council of Trent and one of the methods that emerges at that time is casuistry: that ‘method of moral reasoning that incorporates the particularity of a situation and its attendant circumstances through a short narrative depiction, what we call today, a case’ (p. 169). He contrasts ‘low’ casuistry which deploys a simple (simplistic?) deductive logic to arrive at a conclusion, with ‘high’ casuistry which ‘developed an inductive, analogical form of moral reasoning that brought a specific case to the fore and examined it by always looking to another normative case to serve in the background as a guide’ (pp. 170–71). He traces an arc from John Mair in the 1400s to Francisco de Toledo who died in 1596 to frame this period.
Keenan uses the moral examination of maritime insurance as a way to unpack the significance of casuistry. In the face of changed context, new moral issues were pressed with fresh emphasis. To whatever extent teaching on usury was ever settled, it was certainly disrupted by the development of trans-oceanic trade. Keenan is meticulous in his accounting of how John Mair arrived at his own complexly nuanced conclusion that ‘a usurious contract was different, then, from a morally legitimate contract of maritime insurance’ (p. 182) and such discussions help the reader to better understand why Keenan concludes that the casuistic tradition grew stagnant. Mair and other trailblazers in the field were searching ‘for new lands to explore’ (p. 207). Those who followed them settled for being trustworthy guides to well-documented trails.
At the same time as the casuists were forging their principles, confraternities made up of lay and clergy together were pressing further new scenarios on moral theologians. In the light of contemporary hot-button activist issues it is interesting to note that among the early projects taken up by confraternities we find outreach to sex workers (p. 210), prison abolition (p. 212), and a challenge to clericalism (p. 213). This discussion in chapter 6 is sandwiched together with a reflection on the significance of the School of Salamanca, focusing on Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de las Casas. One is not quite sure how they fit so tightly with confraternities but they are figures of such import that it barely matters where they are treated, just that they are treated. Keenan's even-handedness is again on display as these two figures are considered both for their similarities and their complementary differences.
The penultimate chapter begins with the founder of the Redemptorists, Alphonsus de Liguori, and closes with Humane Vitae. But once again, Keenan takes us across the centuries without leaving us breathless or baffled. One of the ways he achieves this is by going deeper still into the historical record and drawing out how de Liguori draws on and appropriates Ignatius of Loyola to establish his own winsome moral theological project. In a fashion resonant with the chapter on casuistry, Keenan offers here a narrative of decline. De Liguori's brilliant manual won such success and so many imitators and updaters that the original could be bypassed and the tradition it created betrayed. But it is a narrative of decline followed by renewal. For Keenan, the heroes of the day are the European theologians who were raised on the dry, flavourless manuals and found them worse than tasteless in the face of fascism and the Holocaust. Figures like Bernhard Häring and Josef Fuchs were instrumental in displacing the manualist tradition, influencing the Second Vatican Council, and rejuvenating moral theology.
The final chapter gives an account of the tradition as it stands today. Keenan draws out one structurally significant feature and one doctrinally significant feature. The first is how, even just in the last generation, theological ethics has become a truly global activity and is no longer the sole preserve of ordained men. The development is rapid and heartening. Keenan notes how Vivian Minikongo was the only woman in Africa with a PhD in Theological Ethics in 2010. But ‘by 2018 there were more than twenty-five women with doctorates in theological ethics’ (p. 293). The doctrinal turn that Keenan identifies is the centrality of suffering. He names Gustavo Gutiérrez and Edward Schillebeeckx as particularly influential in this turn from engaging with abstract generalisations to the particular human experience. Moral theology today contests ‘against a pious Christian complacency of accepting suffering’, recognising instead that the work of God is ‘to accompany and alleviate those who suffered’ (p. 310).
This final chapter seemed to me to be the weakest in the book. I am strongly in support of the theological trajectory Keenan outlines; indeed, I am a member of the Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church network that he discusses. But his global accounting of the discipline considers South America and Asia, Africa and North America but leaves Europe and Oceania out without an explanatory word. On a petty level, that matters to me as a European theologian but it matters more because one of the historical realities that shapes theological ethics today—around the globe but certainly in Europe—is the on-going revelation of the scandal of sexual abuse within the church. Keenan is consistently brilliant at highlighting the way the discipline responds to societal crises in the modern world. But surely we need to make an account of the ecclesial moral crisis?
This book is an excellent resource for all moral theologians, regardless of how well-versed they are in particular strands that are covered. Keenan's own theological vision is communicated throughout and seeing how he frames thinkers and the impact of their thought is bound to be productive. But it is first and foremost a textbook, and in that it is superb. The combination of lucid writing, apt quotation, and regular recourse to numbered lists will allow students to find their footing across a vast range of conversations. This book is destined to become a touchstone reference for years to come.