McCabe - The McCabe Reader

THE McCABE READER

THE McCABE READER

EDITED AND INTRODUCED
BY BRIAN DAVIES AND
PAUL KUCHARSKI

Bloomsbury T&T Clark

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Bloomsbury T&T Clark

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Imprint previously known as T&T Clark

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First published 2016

Herbert McCabe, Brian Davies and Paul Kucharski, 2016

Herbert McCabe, Brian Davies and Paul Kucharski have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the authors.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: McCabe, Herbert, 1926-2001, author. | Davies, Brian, 1951- editor.

Title: The McCabe reader / edited by Brian Davies and Paul Kucharski.

Description: 1st [edition]. | New York : Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2016. |

Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015050509| ISBN 9780567668899 (hbk) | ISBN 9780567668882

(pbk)

Subjects: LCSH: Catholic Church--Doctrines.

Classification: LCC BX4705.M1775 A25 2016 | DDC 230/.2--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050509

Cover design: Terry Woodley

Cover image Getty Images

Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN

Printed and bound in India

CONTENTS

Herbert McCabe was one of the most gifted English-speaking theologians and philosophers of the twentieth century. He had a profound grasp both of the history of Christian thinking and of secular philosophy. In an illuminating way, he especially brought together ideas coming from Thomas Aquinas and Ludwig Wittgenstein while presenting and defending his religious beliefs in a manner that few have equalled. And his influence on thinkers in the United Kingdom and the United States has been notable, especially since his death in 2001 and the subsequent appearance of six posthumously published volumes of his writings. As someone quipped at an Oxford colloquium on McCabe in 2011, Since his death, Herbert has been not so much decomposing as composing.

Many reviews of McCabes work have appeared. And his praises have been sung by a number of distinguished authors: literary figures such as Terry Eagleton and Seamus Heaney; theologians such as Stanley Hauerwas, Fergus Kerr and Rowan Williams; and philosophers such as Anthony Kenny and Alasdair MacIntyre. To date, however, there has been no single book that allows readers to find the best of McCabes writings in one place.

The present work aims to address that need. Following an introduction to McCabes life and works, it comprises a selection of some of his best essays drawn from almost everything by him that has now appeared in print. Of necessity, its contents represent but a fraction of his literary output, a tip of the proverbial iceberg. But we hope that they will provide a useful presentation of McCabe at his finest, both for those who know little about him and for those already familiar with his ideas and his inimitable way of presenting them.

One commentator has said that the best thing to knowing Herbert McCabe is to read him. In what follows, we aim to present a helpful opportunity to read McCabe on his greatest and most lucid form. As an aid to anyone wanting to study his writings in detail, we also provide a list of his major publications, though this does not cite the many, often brilliant, editorials that he wrote on a monthly basis for New Blackfriars during his time as editor of that journal.

We have divided the following text into sections: Philosophy of God and Christian Doctrine, Ethics and Moral Theology, Essays on Aquinas and Sermons. Readers of this volume should, however, recognize that the sections that we employ are, to some extent, arbitrary. That is because, like Aquinas, McCabe had a habit of touching on more than one topic in things that he wrote. Thus, for example, when he writes about God, he often has things to say about ethics, and when he writes about ethics, he often has things to say about God. And the thought of Aquinas is ever present in his sermons and most of his other writings. So, in the sense that many of Aquinass texts often cannot be easily listed as dealing with particular matters, such is the case with the writings of McCabe. We trust, though, that the sections we provide will prove helpful to some extent.

We should note that in what follows we have sometimes edited previously published essays by McCabe with an eye to matters of punctuation and so as to delete some cross-references by McCabe that appear in his book God Matters.

Chapter 1 below originally appeared in New Blackfriars, 94 (1052), July 2013. It is reprinted by kind permission of Wiley-Blackwell. The other chapters appeared in the following books by McCabe: God Matters (London: Geoffrey Chapman [subsequently Continuum], 1987: Chs 3, 4 and 20); God Still Matters (London and New York: Continuum, 2002: Chs 2, 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 17, 18 and 22); God, Christ and Us (London and New York: Continuum, 2003: Chs 19, 21, 23, 24 and 25); Law, Love and Language (London and New York: Continuum, 2003: Ch. 12); The Good Life (London and New York: Continuum, 2005: Chs 10 and 11); Faith Within Reason (London and New York: Continuum, 2007: Chs 5, 6, 14 and 15).

For encouragement on this project we thank Robin Baird Smith and Anna Turton at Bloomsbury.

Brian Davies and Paul Kucharski

Herbert McCabe was born on 2 August 1926 in Middlesbrough, UK. He died in Oxford on 28 June 2001. His baptismal name was John Ignatius. He applied to join the Order of Preachers (better known as the Dominicans) in 1949 and was a novice at its priory at Woodchester in Gloucestershire, where he was given the name Herbert. Aspirants to the Dominicans when McCabe joined them were obliged to accept a religious name on their reception of the habit, and McCabe was surprised to find himself suddenly called Herbert. In 1953, just before his solemn profession as a Dominican, he asked permission to be known as Fabian, but the English Dominican provincial of the day refused the request.

Before becoming a Dominican, McCabe was an undergraduate at Manchester University.

McCabe was happy in his Manchester assignation. After a few years, though, he was transferred to the Dominican priory in Cambridge. The English Dominican records have him noted as being posted there from 1966/1967. Unlike his time at Alan Road, however, McCabes period in Cambridge proved to be difficult and, indeed, traumatic for him.