Hope and History

Reviews / Votes

With Hope and History, David Collits has done the current and future Church a tremendous service, carefully laying out the fundamental division that arose after Vatican II between the Communio and Concilium perspectives, one that has only become more divisive and will undoubtedly continue to mark the fault lines in Catholic theology for the foreseeable future. The two have long been compared and contrasted, but as the author shows, the choice between them is not simply a matter of taste or emphasis, for they are not theologically, philosophically, anthropologically, or morally equivalent. Collits has traced, in detail, the radically different sources that give rise to divergent trajectories that end in visions of the human persons and their relation to God that are ultimately incompatible. At the same time, it is not simply a question of a contradictory "either/or", as if one must choose, for example, between history or ontology; rather, the Communio perspective sees that polarities point to deeper unities, and that illuminating salvation history under the aspect of eternity is the only thing that gives present history its significance. Thus, this volume makes a vital contribution to the literature on the issue, and, as it unfolds the relation of history to a Christ-centered and Trinitarian eschatological Hope, it is also profoundly beautiful. * Michael Dominic Taylor, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, USA * This book contains the genealogy of Concilium/Communio theology. In these pages we can understand the dialectical perspective (Joachimite, Hegelian, Marxist), and the dialogical one; within these, there is continuity between Christological ontology, history and eschaton, founded in the Paschal Mystery. Collits, in exploring all this, elucidates the theological positions of Rahner, Metz, Schilebeeckx, Gutierrez, Pieper, Ratzinger, and many others. * Pablo Blanco-Sarto, University of Navarra, Spain *