Almost anyone who deals with philosophy and theology, especially in the line inaugurated by Saint Thomas Aquinas, will be sincerely grateful to Franco Manni for writing this book. Although it is unusual to begin a review with an appreciation, I felt that it was only right in the case of a monograph dedicated to Fr. Herbert McCabe OP (1926-2001). Beyond the praiseworthy work of his literary executor, Fr. Brian Davies OP, there are still very few publications dedicated to Fr. McCabe's thought, giving the unfounded impression of its irrelevance. Manni's monograph interrupts the litany concerning the ‘underrated Dominican theologian’ and shows, through a meticulous work of recollection, the reasons for giving Fr. McCabe his due.

Manni collects and arranges the fragments of the McCabian heritage, according to a double register: that of interpersonal relationships and that of philosophical-theological disciplines. As to the first aspect, after recognizing the influence of Fr. Victor White, OP (in the wake of the French Dominican Antonin-Dalmace Sertillanges's interpretation and of Étienne Gilson's so-called Existential Thomism) and of Ludwig Wittgenstein's works, Manni describes Fr. McCabe's disciples (T. Eagleton, D. Turner, B. Davies), kindred spirits (A. MacIntyre, D. Burrell, A. Kenny), admirers (S. Hauerwas, R. Williams, L. Roger Owens, P. Serracino Inglott, S. Ticciati, E. McCarraher) and scholars (S. Mulhill).

The second aspect concerns Manni's attempt to ‘put together the scattered ideas that McCabe expressed in his short, focused writings […] and to show their systematic connection’ (p. 27). Perhaps exaggerating this feature a little too much, with the risk of reifying freely dynamic thought, Manni describes accurately Fr. McCabe's main ideas placing them in a defined neo-Scholastic framework, divided into three sections. The first of these concerns ‘Philosophical Theology’, where Manni describes Fr. McCabe's position on God's existence and knowability, the question of creation and the problem of evil. Here the heart of the matter lies in Fr. McCabe's option for apophaticism, in the attempt to stem the tendency to say too much about God, verging on nonsense. If it is clear that Fr. McCabe's thought encompasses here St. Augustine and Aquinas in a single gaze, it would be interesting to check the influence of two of Wittgenstein's points, i.e. the peculiar mysticism of his Tractatus and the conception of philosophy as therapy. ‘Philosophy of Human Beings’ is the second section written by Manni in order to gather McCabian ideas on anthropology and on ethics. Here, in the context of a critical attitude towards Cartesian dualism, the reader finds fecund arguments about the difference between human beings, animals and machines and language as interpersonal, differently connected to the spirituality of human intellect, the sense of tradition, and the role of community. Also the conception of ethics depends in part on Fr. McCabe's linguistic perspective and on his ideas about law, love, and virtues. After criticising the distortions of the modern understanding of virtue itself, they finally converge towards the opening of ‘a “third way” between legalism and relativism’ (p. 210). This apophatic attitude also concerns the third section of the book, dedicated to ‘Revealed Theology’, insofar as Fr. McCabe's intent is ‘to criticize certain theological “absurdities”, such as: God being within time […]; resurrection as a distinct chronological further step within a series; the risen Christ's presence without a living community; interpersonal presence without an intentional act of communication’(p. 228). Manni demonstrates here his ability to collect different statements on Christology, soteriology, Trinity, church, sacraments, life in grace, and eschatology, even though some of his contextualizations and emphases need further in-depth analysis, especially in relation to the historical-theoretical context. Beyond this point, Fr. McCabe's criticism of the so-called ‘pre-existence of Christ’ from the viewpoint of God's eternity is certainly noteworthy, as well as his reinterpretation of the Chalcedonian dogma's formula, his conception of the sacraments as divine language, and his non-triumphalist idea of the Church as ‘the sacrament of the future united humanity’ (p. 250).

For Manni, Fr. McCabe's peculiar Christocentrism, in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, is ‘the key to maintaining faith […] while slaloming among sciences, liberal capitalism, Marxist revolutions, medieval philosophy, church reform, secularization, and new atheism, and while remaining a loyal member of his church, though acknowledging that this church is morally corrupt and intellectually muddled’ (p. 268). And here, in addition to Manni's several references to Marxism and criticism of the hierarchy, some pages on Fr. McCabe's theological politics would have been particularly appropriate. Very far from being considered as a Jurassic ‘sacred monster of Thomism’, Fr. McCabe was rather a paradigmatic example of what I like to call creative Thomism, especially in his successful attempt to put Aquinas ‘in dialogue with modern thinkers and modern society's needs’ (p. 53). For the proven ability in triggering and supporting the thought of his contemporaries, Fr. McCabe can be a witty travelling companion for philosophers and theologians, who actually want to think. According to Manni, reading McCabe's writing is useful to awaken our desire to understand and explain why God matters, even within a humble but strong apophaticism, or to take seriously the tragedy of human life without losing hope, or finally to consider the problems of today's society in the liberating light of Christian (and Thomist) tradition.

Even with the inevitable limits and the few anachronisms of his writings, the thought of the brilliant and audacious Dominican must become known at least by reading Manni's book. Above all Fr. McCabe's vivid Thomism can be a very effective antidote against the grey neo-Thomism epidemic, found in certain sectors of the Anglo-American philosophical and theological world: ‘In theology, in liturgy, to be truly traditional is not to repeat past formulae (though it is important to know about and be interested in past formulae); it is to be in organic continuity with the worship and forms of understanding of two thousand years of Christian life’ (partially quoted by Manni, p. 19).