Fr. Nicholas Blackwell, O. Carm.’s Reviews > Nothing Gained Is Eternal: A Theology of Tradition > Status Update

The last chapter again offers a disappointing over characterization of history, in which the professor says it’s so important that we enter into the complexity of history. She points at the need to destroy whiteness, while in the same breath talking about how every poor and oppressed person is a saint. How would she grapple with enslaved Irish in America? Her over simplification of colonialism is disappointing.

The professor does a great job, breaking open Balthasar! But again show used terms with such fluidity one find it hard to grasp her framework. She’ll invoke tradition, and then in the chapter on drama should start to use Christian tradition without saying what that means. Also, she’ll invoke good and evil but avoid sin. Nowhere have I seen her talk about sin and its impact on freedom.

She offered some great insights in relationship to the Eucharist in the life of the church near the end of the chapter on revolution. But one of the things that I think in peds, her argumentation is playing fast and loose with Christian theology and then going into Catholic things. She speaks of a global Christianity, but then just focuses on the Catholic perspective.

She does a great job breaking open people like Peguy but again when she gets into her colonialism section, she takes everything to main theologian say a sacrosanct. In her chapter on revolution she also assumes the inevitability of Christ, coming from something like a Franciscan position, but without qualifying why she makes this theological leap. Also, she overly stresses as the notion of the eminent.

Speaking of tradition as something humans have done and do, isn’t really saying much. The book is a bit frustrating at times.

It’s quite disappointing, that she’ll speak in a Catholic way via understanding and theologizing, but when she gets to the part of the chapters regarding colonialism, suddenly, there’s this magical reality of Christian now where she doesn’t respect the historical reality of different Christian sects existing in the world during colonialism. Why does she lose nuance here? …