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G. R. Evans, Essays in Medieval Philosophy and Theology in Memory of Walter H. Principe, CSB: Fortresses and Launching Pads. Edited by James R. Ginther and Carl N. Still. Pp. x + 177. Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005. isbn 0 7546 5041 3. £50, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 57, Issue 1, April 2006, Pages 351–352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flj026
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The problem with Festschriften is always to ensure a degree of literary unity in the contributions. This collection helps itself achieve this end by topping and tailing the essays. There is an introduction reviewing Walter Principe's contribution to the scholarship of historical theology and his work in ensuring that its role as ‘a principal source for theological work’ was better understood, and a concluding essay of a more personal kind written by his brother.
The strong theme here is Thomist, but the contributions to the collection exemplify more broadly an approach to the history of theology which Principe made his own. He recognized that the context in which a theologian writes is as important in shaping his response to a question as the context of controversy in which the Church has made its official pronouncements and in which the consensus fidelium is formed.
In this spirit, Joanne McWilliam writes on ‘Augustine's Early Trinitarian Thought’, considering the lingering influence of Augustine's years as a Manichee; Abigail Young approaches ‘Mission and Message: Two Prophetic Voices in the Twelfth Century’ with a similar eye to the shaping contemporary context of concerns. James Ginther's piece on ‘There is a Text in this Classroom: The Bible and Theology in the Medieval University’ raises questions involving further dimensions. There is a critical meta-level at which the operants upon the text need to be considered.
