Teo-logia: La Parola di Dio nelle parole dell’uomo by

Piero Coda, and: Il Logos e il nulla: Trinità, religioni,

mistica by Piero Coda (review)

Robert P. Imbelli

The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review, Volume 69, Number 3, July

2005, pp. 472-475 (Review)

Published by The Catholic University of America Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tho.2005.0018

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/636519/summary

Access provided at 6 Jan 2020 08:37 GMT from Tulane University

472 BOOK REVIEWS

Although the final chapter is nominally addressed to John Duns Scotus (d.
1308), more than half of it discusses the theories of his Franciscan successors
Jacob of Ascoli and William of Alnwick, both of whom taught at Paris in the first
decade of the fourteenth century. This is because in his surviving writings and
especially in those directed against Henry of Ghent Scotus is more interested in
the epistemological aspects of intelligible or intentional being than its ontological
status. Despite the fact that he was the first to draw a dear metaphysical
distinction between the material and immaterial orders, he does not give a
precise explanation of the relation between intentional being (esse intentionale)
in the intellect and the material, extramental thing that is its object (108-9).
Ascoli and Alnwick were both interested in ontological matters in their theories
of intellectual cognition, however, with AscoH introducing a distinction between
intelligible species having real existence and intelligible things having merely
intentional existence, and Alnwick taking a more parsimonious line by
emphasizing the representative function of intelligible species as distinct from
their mode of existence in the intellect (120-38). Perler does a nice job of
showing how both authors are part of the Scotist:ic tradition, and of laying out
the attractions and drawbacks of their theories for the reader.
This book is a fine introduction to the problem of intentionality in the later
Middle Ages; those who consult it will learn much from its pages. Non-
Francophone readers may be assured that the fluently multilingual Perler writes
French as William of Ockham writes Latin: with prose that is dean, simple, and
direct-not at all weighed down by Gallicisms and other continental literary
flourishes that might get in the way of presenting the argument (a nice example
here is his reduction of Olivi's argument against the intellect's passively receiving
intelligible species into six dear steps [55-56]). Think Anthony Kenny translated
into French.

}ACKZUPKO

Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia

Teo-logia: La Parola di Dio nelle parole dell'uomo. By PIBRO CODA. 2d ed.

Rome: Lateran University Press, 2004. Pp. 466. 26,00€ (doth). ISBN 88-
465-0493-3.
Il Logos e il nulla: Trinita, religioni, mistica. By PIERO CODA. Rome: Citta
Nuova, 2003. Pp. 552. 34,50€ (paper). ISBN 88-311-3346-2.

On visits to Rome, I have been increasingly impressed by the vitality of the

Italian ecdesial and theological scene. Ecdesial movements, such as Sant'Egidio,
Focolare, and Comunione e Liberazione, seem to be flourishing. Bookstores, on
the Via della Conciliazione and elsewhere, burgeon with new theological works,
 BOOK REVIEWS 473

both by Italian authors and in translation. To the happy surprise of some of us

who studied in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, the Pontifical Lateran
University has emerged as a theological center, characterized not only by fidelity
to the Church's magisterium, but by genuine creativity in exploring issues both
traditional and new.
The Lateran has benefited from the leadership of two world-renowned
theologians: the former Rector, Angelo Scola, now Cardinal Patriarch of Venice,
and the present Rector, Bishop Rino Fisichella. In addition, there are a number
of others who are elaborating an approach to theology that is open to the
challenges of the new millennium, even as it is firmly rooted in the tradition and
most especially in the uniqueness of Christ's paschal mystery. A leading and
distinctive voice here is that of Fr. Piero Coda, two of whose works form the
basis of this review.
Born in 1955, Piero Coda earned two doctorates, one in philosophy and the
other in theology. His specialties include Trinitarian theology and the Christian
theology of religions and he has written extensively in both areas. He has also
published studies on Hegel and Bulgakov. Coda also serves as President of the
Italian Theological Association and is a consultor for the Pontifical Council for
lnterreligious Dialogue. Significantly, he has, for a number of years, been the
personal theologian of Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare movement.
Coda's Teo-logia is the revised and updated version of the introductory
course offered to students beginning their theological education at the Lateran.
In the second part of the book, devoted to a brief, but discerning, overview of
the history of Christian theology, Coda says this of the great medieval theologian
St. Bonaventure: "The point of departure and constant reference point of
Bonaventure's theology is the charism of Francis of Assisi, who serves as a true
'theological icon.'" I think, mutatis mutandis, the same may be said of Coda's
theology in regard to the charism of Chiara Lubich.
Lubich's own spiritual journey began in the anguish of the Second World
War, when as a young student she took refuge in a bomb shelter. There,
meditating on the Gospels, she received illuminations that grew into a twofold
realization. First, the culmination of God's revelation is the crucifixion of Jesus
Christ. "Gesu abbandonato" paradoxically discloses the very depths of God's
love. His cry of dereliction from the cross (Mark 15:34) recapitulates and
redeems all innocent human suffering. He is, exclaims, Lubich, "the God for our
time" (I/ Logos, 49: "il Dio del nostro tempo"). Second, the resurrection, in the
power of God's Spirit of love, of the Christ who died forsaken initiates the new
creation. The distinguishing mark of the new creation is the reality of Pentecostal
unity: many divided individuals becoming one in Jesus Christ. This profound
sense of Christ's passion for unity, the "that all may be one" of John's Gospel,
animates Lubich's spiritual teaching. Her "charism of unity" serves as the
continuing inspiration of the Focolare movement.
I think it true to say that Lubich's spiritual vision and mission constitute "the
point of departure and constant reference point" of Coda's theology. His own
philosophical background and interests enable him to bring Lubich's rich
intuitions into conversation with the Western philosophical tradition, especially
474 BOOK REVIEWS

the provocative reflections of Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. In addition,

through his concrete experience in interreligious dialogue sponsored by the
Focolare Movement, as well as through his professional commitment to the
academic study of religions, Coda is fashioning a distinctive Christian theology
of religions whose hermeneutical key is the paschal mystery of Christ. In the
tradition of Bonaventure, Coda presses his reflection beyond the elucidation of
"meaning" to the further question of "truth": beyond phenomenology to
ontology.
II Logos e ii nu/la represents Coda's most sustained presentation to date of
his theological position. Several chapters of the book originate in earlier essays,
but they have been revised and extensively supplemented to form a coherent and
systematic whole. The work is divided into three major parts. In part 1 Coda
examines the new context of Christian theology today: the respectful encounter
with the great world religions. While firmly committed to the universality of
God's offer of grace, Coda seems less persuaded of the need to correlate grace
and revelation in Rahnerian fashion. He may cautiously speak of "revelation" in
nonbiblical religions, but there is always an analogous quality to such ascription.
Part 2 then explores the concrete universality of the crucified and risen
Christ who is the unique Word of God made flesh. In a manner reminiscent of
Balthasar, Coda underscores the "major dissimilitudo" of the paschal Savior. He
is the Measure, the Logos in person, who assumes, judges, purifies, and
recapitulates every authentic religious experience. Clearly, Coda is not offering
a neutral examination of religions, nor even a "comparative theology," if this be
construed solely as an examination and elucidation of texts and symbols. In
effect Coda agrees with Lonergan on the imperative of the move to judgment:
insight alone is insufficient.
The appeal to judgment is an appeal to the truth of reality itself. Crucial to
Coda's theology is that the paschal mystery, the Christ abandoned and raised by
the Father to new life in the Spirit, is the unique way to the acknowledgment
that all created reality finds its true home in the mystery of Trinitarian love.
Hence Coda sketches a Trinitarian ontology, the mystery of gift and reciprocity
in whom we live and move and have our being. The impressive Christocentric
nature of Coda's theology raises no barrier to interreligious dialogue. Instead it
provides the very condition of its authentic possibility. Where the Center holds
firm and luminous, the boundaries may be generous and surprise with
illuminating discoveries.
This becomes further evident in part 3 of Il Logos e ii nulla: "Il Logos che
s'annulla e le vie della mistica" ("The Logos Which 'Nullifies' Himself and the
Mystical Ways"). Here Coda enters into a close reading of apophatic mystical
traditions, both Eastern and Western. He sees them as bearing precious witness
to the sheer Otherness of the Divine and the urgent need for expropriation of
the empirical and ever-imperial ego if union is to be realized.
The gospel meets this profound mystical sensitivity with the proclamation of
the creative and redemptive Word. Logos and nulla coincide in Jesus' kenosis:
his abandonment on the cross. This seeming defeat is, to the eyes of faith, God's
supreme victory. In the trenchant words of Chiara Lubich, which Coda makes
 BOOK REVIEWS 475

his own, the total pouring out of Jesus' life in death reveals the mystery of his
own being: "il Nulla Tutto dell'Amore"-that nothingness which is total love.
As this last quotation indicates, the nothingness in question is not empty
void, but fulness of new life. The loss of self it entails is not impersonal fusion,
but achievement of personhood in communion. It thus opens upon the unending
gift of Trinitarian life: "not the darkness of the ineffable, but the Glory of the
inexhaustible."
An important consequence of Coda's sensitivity to the need to move toward
a Trinitarian ontology is that the soteriology that permeates his work also exhib-
its ontological substance. In the face of so much impoverished exemplarism in
contemporary soteriology, Coda offers a robust theology of salvation. The pas-
chal mystery of Jesus Christ does not merely indicate a way to follow. Christ by
his death and resurrection forges the Way. He himself becomes the Way into the
new creation. Christians are called not so much to imitate the historical Jesus as
to participate in the new life of their crucified and risen Lord, becoming, in the
tradition's pregnant sense, "filii in Filio": sons and daughters in God's only Son.
As they journey on the Way, confronting the challenges of their unique
historical times and cultures, disciples are accompanied and sustained by the
Eucharistic Presence of their Lord who is the living bread, the viaticum for their
itinerarium in Deum. Receiving the Lord's body, they become his body with all
the realism that Paul and Augustine ascribe to Christ's ecdesial body. The "we
are" of the new creation, whose sacrament is the Church, is the created image of
the "We are" of Trinitarian life, destined to be consummated at the end of time
when the Triune God will indeed be "all in all."
A final point worth highlighting in this remarkable theological endeavor, so
redolent of Vatican II's dual call to ressourcement and aggiornamento, is that the
focus upon ontological participation is further exemplified in a theological
approach characterized by noetic participation. In a way that weds Bonaventure
and Aquinas, Coda holds that the "object" of theology is "God in Christ." In the
final part of his Teo-logia, he writes that "Christology is not simply one
theological tract among others, but provides the essential structure of the whole
of theology." Further, this knowledge of God in Christ only becomes possible
through a sharing in the very faith/vision of the living Jesus, in his original and
originating relationship with the Father in the Spirit.
Piero Coda is elaborating a promising approach to theology in which the
invidious dichotomies of faith and reason, spirituality and systematic reflection,
contemplation and action, proclamation and dialogue are sublated into a more
integral and comprehensive understanding of the faith. His work richly deserves
wider attention.

ROBERT P. IMBELU

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts