Jaarboek Thomas Instituut 1995 - Thomas Instituut te Utrecht

12 H.W.M. RIKHOF
dissertation or in his technical articles about Thomas, exactly tailored
to this type of work, but one can also find a personal, impressionistic,
neologistic and at times even funny style, e.g. in his two small books,
that defy the easy categorisation - 'academic-popular': Brieven aan de
Parelvisser, letters about time and eternity, living and. dying, present
and past (31) and Het Onze Vader uitgelegd aan Peter B, a
commentary on the Our Father (39). I particularly like the
commentary on the Our Father for its theological profundity, which is
sometimes moving and sometimes disturbing.
Too little, therefore, but also too late. For publications ask
for reaction and response. The reception proces is not always easily
traced or verified. One of few available instruments to measure the
reception, the citation index, is but a poor and meagre help to discover
what and especially how people read and react. There is a typical
feature in some of De Grijs' articles which underlines even stronger
the need to react. In his subtitles he uses qualifications like 'exercise'
("luisteroefening" , 27, "kijkoefening" , 49) and "some notes" or
"theological glosses" indicating attempt and fragment; qualifications
inviting a reaction. But then these reactions should not just be given
after years and years.
In this case a review article is dangerous as well. For De
Grijs does not like this kind of attention and he thinks theologians, and
certainly students, should not give too much of their time and energy
to writing articles or theses in which they present and repeat thoughts
of living theologians: it is not clear yet whether they are worth the
effort.
So, why did I accept the request to write some kind of review
article about De Grijs? Not because I think I can overcome the
limitations and shortcomings of this type of articles, but because I
think that if I do it in a certain way it can be a form of, or an element
in 'suntheologein': 'Suntheologein' is used by Rahner to indicate a
way of dealing with theologians, especially theologians from the past,
that does not remain on the purely historical level, but that consists in
a joint discussion about the relevant topic, that does not remain in the
oratio obliqua, but that ends up in the oratio recta, using the insights
of the other theologian or theologians. 'Suntheologein' is an ideal De
Grijs refers to (9, pp. 13-14). This means that I do neither attempt to
give a complete overview, nor will engage myself in outlining