Reviewed by:

• Process Thought and Roman Catholicism: Challenges and Promises ed. by Marc A. Pugliese and John Becker
• Robert Nicastro

The Catholic intellectual tradition is a rich and multidimensional history of ideas. At the heart of the tradition is the ongoing challenge to show the integral and irreducible relationship between faith and reason. With the explicit intention to reconcile religion with that of contemporary scientific discoveries, Alfred North Whitehead constructed a metaphysical system in which he grounded the deeper implications of Einstein's relativity theory, quantum indeterminacy, and biological evolution. Utilizing the salient features of Whitehead's framework, many of the authors in this erudite collection of essays discuss how process philosophy can shed new light on theological concepts unique to Roman Catholicism.

Twentieth-century theologian Karl Rahner remarked that the principal task of theology is to present the Christian message coherently. Rather than simply reiterating what persons have thought the Christian message to be in the past, the theologian seeks to provide an interpretation of the Christian message that is relevant and meaningful to each new time, place, and circumstance. The greatest strength of this volume, therefore, lies in its constructive chapters, as they effectively "liberate Catholics from the fear that accepting the ideas of a recent thinker like Whitehead requires rejection of essential Catholic teaching by making it clear that profound Catholic thinkers who have paid attention to their Catholic experiences have come to similar conclusions" (p. xi).

Ilia Delio, for instance, offers an incisive analysis of Duns Scotus's philosophy of univocity and compares it to Whitehead's idea of creativity as an ultimate principle. In a subtle way, she argues that Dun Scotus's work prepared the way for Whitehead's. As Catholic theology has generally been receptive to assimilating ideas from philosophy and science, as Maria-Teresa Teixeria's chapter reminds us, then the nonsubstantial character of Whitehead's corpus should not be an obstacle to thoughtful interaction (p. 75). Teixeria urges Catholics instead to pay attention to his ideas and to reconsider them in ways that are faithful to the distinctiveness of the tradition.

Concerned with the dimension of community as a Catholic priest and theologian, Joseph Bracken's chapter proposes a shift in process metaphysics to focus more on systems thinking. As one's relations to others are constitutive of oneself, Bracken calls our attention "to the kinds of entities (systems) that are generated and their role in shaping us who are members as well as the larger society" (p. xiii). In an effort to display agreement between Whitehead's and Thomas [End Page 294] Aquinas's positions, Palmyre Oomen encourages readers to see them both as furnishing an alternative to the nominalism that saturated the air of the late medieval period and modernity. The implication of her chapter is that, if Aquinas were living today, he would likely be accepting of many points in Whitehead's "philosophy of organism."

Focused on the issue of the plurality of ideas and insights produced by the great spiritual traditions of humankind, John Becker develops Whitehead's idea of the appreciation of difference as an opportunity to grow (p. xvii). Far from dismissing the beliefs and practices of other communities, Becker posits that we have the capacity to make diverse contributions to a shared goal. Finally, Marc Pugliese's chapter scrutinizes the moral philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. Mired in substance thinking and rationality, Pugliese observes that Aquinas's philosophy is unable properly to accommodate the concrete particularity of every entity and instance. As a result, he demonstrates that Whitehead's philosophy, which understands the uniqueness of every event, is a better point of departure (pp. 176–177).

What is most interesting about this impressive, multi-authored volume is its genuinely "catholic" character. At its root, catholicity means "of the whole." As such, this work sounds the clarion call for a renewed sense of wholeness among the three irreducible modes of human knowing: science, philosophy, and theology. Influenced by process thought, these scholars have constructed a cosmology that identifies the persuasive power...

审阅者：

• 过程思想与罗马天主教：挑战与承诺编辑。作者：Marc A. Pugliese 和 John Becker
• 罗伯特·尼卡斯特罗

天主教的思想传统是一部丰富而多维的思想史。这一传统的核心是不断挑战以展示信仰与理性之间不可或缺的关系。带着调和宗教与当代科学发现的明确意图，阿尔弗雷德·诺斯·怀特海构建了一个形而上学系统，在其中扎根了爱因斯坦相对论、量子不确定性和生物进化的更深层次含义。利用怀特海框架的显着特征，这本博学的论文集中的许多作者讨论了过程哲学如何为罗马天主教独特的神学概念提供新的启示。

二十世纪神学家卡尔·拉纳 (Karl Rahner) 指出，神学的主要任务是连贯地呈现基督教信息。神学家不是简单地重申人们过去对基督教信息的看法，而是寻求对每个新的时间、地点和情况都相关且有意义的基督教信息进行解释。因此，本书的最大优势在于它的建设性章节，因为它们有效地“将天主教徒从恐惧中解放出来，即接受像怀特海这样的近代思想家的思想就需要拒绝基本的天主教教义，因为它们清楚地表明深刻的天主教思想家关注他们的天主教经历也得出了类似的结论”（第xi页）。

例如，伊利亚·德里奥（Ilia Delio）对邓斯·司各脱（Duns Scotus）的单义哲学进行了深入分析，并将其与怀特海（Whitehead）的创造力作为终极原则的理念进行了比较。她以一种微妙的方式认为邓·斯科特斯的工作为怀特海的工作铺平了道路。由于天主教神学通常乐于吸收哲学和科学的思想，正如玛丽亚·特蕾莎·泰克塞里亚的章节提醒我们的那样，怀特海语料库的非实体特征不应该成为深思熟虑的互动的障碍（第75页）。泰谢里亚敦促天主教徒关注他的想法，并以忠实于传统独特性的方式重新考虑它们。

约瑟夫·布拉肯（Joseph Bracken）的章节关注作为天主教牧师和神学家的社区维度，提出过程形而上学的转变，更多地关注系统思维。由于一个人与他人的关系是由自己构成的，布拉肯呼吁我们关注“所产生的实体（系统）的种类以及它们在塑造我们这些成员以及更大的社会中所扮演的角色”（第xiii页）。为了表明怀特海和托马斯之间的协议[第294页结束]阿奎那的立场，帕尔米雷·奥曼（Palmyre Oomen）鼓励读者将它们视为弥漫着中世纪晚期和现代性的唯名论的替代品。她这一章的含义是，如果阿奎那生活在今天，他很可能会接受怀特海“有机体哲学”中的许多观点。

约翰·贝克尔专注于人类伟大精神传统所产生的思想和见解的多元化问题，发展了怀特海的将差异视为成长机会的观点（第xvii页）。贝克尔并没有否认其他社区的信仰和实践，而是认为我们有能力为共同目标做出不同的贡献。最后，马克·普格利斯的章节审视了托马斯·阿奎那的道德哲学。普格列斯深陷实体思维和理性的泥潭，他认为阿奎那的哲学无法恰当地适应每个实体和实例的具体特殊性。结果，他证明怀特海的哲学理解每个事件的独特性，是一个更好的出发点（第 176-177 页）。

这本令人印象深刻、多人合着的著作最有趣的地方在于其真正的“天主教”特征。从根本上来说，普遍性意味着“整体的”。因此，这部作品吹响了号角，号召人们在人类认知的三种不可简化的模式：科学、哲学和神学中重新获得整体感。受过程思想的影响，这些学者构建了一种宇宙论，确定了说服力……