The Intersection of Faith and Reason: The Philosophical Underpinnings of Theological Beliefs

This book explores the contribution of Christianity to constitutional law and constitutionalism viewed from the perspectives of history, law, and theology. The historical chapters recount the relationship between the Christian faith and fundamental ideas about law, justice, government, and constitutionalism by focusing on particular eras and the contributions of specific figures at particular times in history. There are chapters on the Old and New Testaments, the patristic era, early Christendom, the High Middle Ages, the Reformation, and modernity. Key people considered in these chapters include the biblical figures of Moses, Jesus, Paul, and John, as well as later historical figures such as Constantine, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Thomas Cranmer, and Roger Williams, reflecting several of the particular theological traditions that have developed within Christianity over time. The legal chapters focus on several of the central and most important doctrines and principles of constitutional law, evaluating them from a range of Christian perspectives. Key topics include sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy, the separation of powers, human rights, conscience, and federalism. The theological chapters then focus on particular Christian doctrines, exploring their constructive and sometimes critical implications for constitutional law and constitutionalism. There are chapters on revelation, the Trinity, Christology, political authority, natural law, subsidiarity, and eschatology.

The statement “he [Christ] descended into Hades” in the Apostles’ Creed has generated theological debate concerning the nature and purpose of the descent and the relationship of Christ to ancestors. Given St. Thomas Aquinas’ outstanding contribution to the development of this doctrine, this article explores Aquinas’ contributions to the doctrine of Christ’s descent into Hades. It then critiques ancestor Christology through the lens of the descent doctrine. A desktop research approach is used to gather and analyse data from journal articles, books, and theses. The article argues that Christ died in place of sinful humanity and bore the total punishment for sin; therefore, there is no sacrifice for salvation except that which Christ offered. This emphasises that salvation is solely through Christ, and no rituals, sacrifices, or ancestors can replaceHis redemptive work. The article also asserts that Christ,as the Son of God, surpasses any human ancestor inimportance and power, making ancestor Christology invalid. It encourages Akan Christians to place their faith solely in Christ.

Reviewed by: Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics by Andrew Davison Rudi Te Velde Participation in God: A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics. By Andrew Davison. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 423. $34.99 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-1087-0404-5. This wonderful book is the fruit of the growing interest among theologians in the notion of participation and the participatory way of thought, not only as found in an exemplary way in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, but more broadly as characteristic of a Christian (biblical and patristic) understanding of God’s creative and saving presence in the world. It is a form of theology that dares to speak freely in a metaphysical register without feeling cornered somehow by the secular presuppositions of modern philosophy. The book shows signs of being influenced by the Radical Orthodoxy movement, with its predilection for Platonic participation. Even though the book does not assume that movement’s full force of a critical and polemical stance towards modern secular culture, it does oppose modern varieties of nominalism, with its individualist ontology, voluntarism, and the modern split between the human subject and the world. The general approach is positive, aiming at setting out a broad Christian vision of the world that has the notion of participation at its heart. The book’s closest parallel, explicitly mentioned as a source of inspiration, [End Page 326] is Hans Boersma’s Heavenly Participation (2011), which has introduced many readers to a participatory account of theology. The author proves himself to be an excellent teacher who in a clear and simple language draws a persuasive and well-informed picture of the Christian participatory view of the world in its relation to God. To the author, participation means first and foremost that the world is approached in terms of sharing and receiving, or of communion. The spirit of participation is recognizable, for instance, in the question posed by the apostle Paul: “What have you got that you did not receive?” (1 Cor 4:7). The double message of participation is that a creature is nothing apart from God’s gift, while at the same time, by God’s gift, it truly exists and has being. The book’s subtitle is “A Study in Christian Doctrine and Metaphysics.” The perspective may be called distinctively theological, even in the sense that the relevant sources used to elaborate the participatory way of thought include biblical texts. The author acknowledges that Plato is the philosophical father of participatory thinking, and that the presence of participation in the writings of the Church Fathers (not least Gregory of Nyssa, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and in the Latin west, Augustine) is due to the comprehensive influence of Platonist metaphysics in the period of late Antiquity. The most prominent source in this book is, undoubtedly, Thomas Aquinas, “the master of the participatory perspective” (7). The author does not intend his book to be a scholarly study about participation in Aquinas; nonetheless it is Aquinas with his broad and consistent participatory vision in the whole of theology who provides the author’s main point of reference. The book is divided into four parts. The first part—“Participation and Causation”—treats of creation, the notion that everything comes from and depends upon God. Creation is approached from the angle of the Aristotelian four causes: God is the efficient cause, the creative agent by which everything is made; he is the (extrinsic) formal cause in the sense that creatures are made “after God’s likeness” and have a characteristic form corresponding with the idea in God; he is the final cause in the sense that creatures are made for the sake of God and have their fulfilment in God; and God is not the matter out of which things are made, but rather creatures are made out of nothing (ex nihilo). In this way, the author describes a threefold pattern of God’s creative causality, which is then linked explicitly with the Trinitarian life in God which is the exemplary model of participatory relatedness and communion. Part 2 is devoted to language—“The Language of Participation and Language as Participation.” It begins...

The paper studies how the long tradition of proving the existence of God is expressed in Protestant theology through the work of Paul Tillich and Alvin Plantinga. It is mainly analyzed which aspects of the works of those two thinkers can be attributed to the proof of the existence of God, to what extent they can be considered systematic and complete, to what type of evidence they relate. In order to thoroughly talk about the proof of the existence of God in the works of those two thinkers, a historical review of the tradition of proving the existence of God is to be made, with an emphasis on “classical” scholastic arguments. Having studied the work of Tillich and Plantinga, it becomes possible to give an answer to the question of how the tradition continued in their theology and can it be generally considered that it found a continuation in it? Paul Tillich is one of the most famous Protestant theologians of the twentieth century, whose work belongs to the neoliberal direction in Protestant thought. Alvin Plantinga is an American analytical theologian, author of one of the most famous modern proofs of the existence of God. It seems that the thinkers have nothing in common. However, both of them worked with the same “material” (Christian doctrine), within the framework of the Protestant tradition in the twentieth century, which offered many unique and sometimes unexpected thoughts in philosophy and theology. The most important point of the study is a comparison of the works of Tillich and Plantinga. Of course, only in the sense in which evidence of the existence of God can be found in their work and that is not on all possible points. Such tasks seem to be very relevant, because a comparative analysis of the work of two Protestant thinkers (almost contemporaries), while referring to different areas of Protestant theology, will help to gain a more complete picture of the intellectual culture of Protestantism of the twentieth century.

This article reviews, and offers supportive reflections on, the main points of Ernan McMullin's provocative 1998 article, “Cosmic Purpose and the Contingency of Human Evolution,’’ reprinted in this issue of Zygon. In it he addresses the important science‐theology issue of how the Creator's purpose and intention to assure the emergence of human beings is consonant with the radical contingency of the evolutionary process. After discussing cosmic and biological evolution and critically summarizing recent solutions to this question by Keith Ward, John Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Alvin Plantinga, and others, who presuppose in different ways that God is subject to time, McMullin compellingly argues for the traditional position, that God is unconditioned by time, and this enables God to work purposefully through contingency, randomness, and chance just as easily as through law‐like regularity.

Summary In the science-religion debate, both scientific and theological approaches suffer from an abstract conception of time and history. This is epitomised by evolution theory and by theological trends trying to match it with biblical and Christian doctrines. On the one hand, thinking in millions of years voids time of any sensible meaning; on the other hand, thinking Darwin and the Bible together compromises both in regards to history. The notion of the “imaginary”, drawn from Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, helps to circumscribe some of the hermeneutical gaps involved, and enables a more nuanced assessment of the respective claims made in the debate. The “Imaginary” points to the necessity of reflecting on the status of one’s own thought in regard to the past. In that sense, both evolution theory and evolution theology are confined to what one may call the “modern imaginary”. An example of the mismatch between evolution theory and Christian doctrine is found in Alvin Plantinga. As the debate largely hinges on hermeneutics, this contribution is part of a broader endeavour to redefine hermeneutics as an ethics.

Among the authors of the 13th century, Albert the Great is perhaps - together with Thomas Aquinas - the one who chose to confront more closely the metaphysical instances of the Liber de causis. The anonymous work, an original readaptation of Proclus’ Elementatio theologica, not only found in Albert one of its most passionate interpreters, but also profoundly shaped his thought. It is difficult to establish whether it was more the Liber de causis that modelled Albert’s philosophical and theological reflection, or Albert’s reading of it that profoundly influenced the posterity of the De causis. One of the best known aspects of Albert’s thought is undoubtedly his metaphysics of flow, and more particularly his attempt to harmonise the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo with the Neoplatonic model of procession and emanation. In this article I jointly analyse: (i) Albert’s definition of the flow; (ii) the way he describes the process of creation by the First Cause; (iii) the different definitions he offers of the first product of the First Cause. In this way, I hope to show that the nature of the flow - considered in its moment of origin (which coincides with the origin of the entire creation) - can be more adequately understood if considered in its relationship to that of the first created product, and vice versa.

Reviewed by: Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. Matthew R. McWhorter Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham by Thomas M. Osborne, Jr. (Washington DC: Catholic University of America, 2014), 250 pp. Thomas Osborne's Human Action in Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, & William of Ockham provides a helpful comparative analysis of three key medieval thinkers with respect to their distinct accounts of human action or theories of "moral psychology" (xvi). These thinkers, Osborne states, "are arguably the three most significant philosophers and theologians of the central period in the development of Scholastic thought" (xiii). His work is written in an accessible style that renders it useful not only as a resource for specialist researchers in [End Page 352] the medieval era but also as a supplemental text for course instruction at the graduate level. While the exact focus and content of this study is unique, it is comparable in approach to other recent volumes in medieval ethics and moral theology such as M. V. Dougherty's Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas (2013), or to the comparative medieval studies of Marilyn McCord Adams, Richard Cross, or Russell L. Friedman. Osborne states that his study aims to provide an overview of the issues with which medieval moral psychology grappled and that this, in turn, will serve to illuminate key philosophical questions in ethics, as well as to provide historical background for understanding Reformation and early modern thought (xvi). While Osborne states that his primary goal is to provide a systematic overview of the three thinkers under consideration, his study also illustrates a contextual historical understanding of the authors in question. For example, at times, he provides occasional contextual references to other important medieval ethicists such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, and Albert the Great. Osborne is explicitly conscious of the methodological need to avoid conforming the authors under consideration to a superficial historical narrative in which Scotus is construed as reacting to Aquinas, and Ockham in turn to Scotus (see 222–23, where Osborne briefly critiques two common historio-graphical trends). On this point, Osborne recognizes that Aquinas in the era prior to his canonization did not have as significant an intellectual import for Franciscan thinkers as contemporary scholars might expect (xix). Overall, Osborne indicates that his comparative studies should serve to provide his reader both with basic familiarity with the moral psychology of each thinker and with a cognizance of the doctrinal currents that proved to be influential upon subsequent Western thought (xxv). In this respect, Osborne points to three main themes that he indicates establish a reliable historical narrative concerning the doctrinal developments in fundamental ethics from Aquinas to Ockham: "(1) a developing separation between nature and will, (2) an increased emphasis on the will's activity, and (3) a changing view of mental causation" with respect to elicited exterior acts (xxiv–xxv, cf. 227). These themes collectively provide a helpful orientation for continued study of these thinkers, a framework that other scholars will benefit from exploring and evaluating. Osborne's work is organized into five chapters enveloped by an introduction and a conclusion. Each of the five chapters is focused on [End Page 353] a particular ethical topic, such as the causes of a moral act (viz., an agent's intellect and will), the stages of a moral act, or the specification of a moral act. Regarding the structure of the book, Osborne states that it "develops thematically" (xxii). The topical arrangement of the study is intended generally to follow the ordo doctrinae found in questions 6–21 of the prima secundae of Aquinas's Summa theologiae, which Osborne maintains is the most complete and systematic treatment of moral psychology found among the works of the three thinkers under consideration (xvi). Each of Osborne's chapters is further divided into four parts. This schema for the most part follows a common pattern of first expositing Aquinas's position on the ethical topic at hand and then the positions of Scotus and Ockham and closing with a synopsis that compares and contrasts the main positions of...

In theological and philosophical circles, religious experience has often been described in terms of a direct encounter with the supernatural that exceeds the possibilities of normal human experience. More recently, however, select scholars have endeavored to explore the respects in which ordinary aesthetic experiences might serve as a site for mediated encounters with the divine. In this paper, I will argue that any attempt to establish the legitimacy of both direct and aesthetic religious experiences depends upon their placement within a larger context, which recognizes the sense in which all forms of ordinary human experience may mediate an experience of God. In order to bolster this claim, I will begin with a critical assessment of the relevant work of Alvin Plantinga and Mark Wynn, who respectively offer accounts of direct and aesthetic religious experience. I will then show that neither account fully evades two main objections that tend to be leveled against accounts of religious experience. Following this discussion, I will develop an account of the way all ordinary human experiences may mediate religious experience, in conversation with Thomas Aquinas. Far from precluding narrower accounts of religious experience as direct or aesthetic, this account includes them in a way that makes it possible to determine their validity.

476 BOOK REVIEWS Soskice's essay, "Fides et ratio: The Postmodern Pope" (292-96), provides a brief and jaunty summary of the encyclical's main goals, with special interest in its analysis of our cultural malaise, mixed in equal parts of nihilism and despair, and in its recommendation to return philosophy to its large-scale interests in fundamental and final questions. A task for the future, one I have yet to see taken up with the energy it deserves in the now extensive literature on the encyclical, and certainly absent from this volume, is discussion of why none of the encyclical's exemplars of philosophy done well are taken from what is sometimes (misleadingly) called the Anglo-American analytical tradition. There is a tendency among Catholic philosophers to think that the only Egyptians who need to be despoiled are the phenomenological (Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger, and after) and hermeutical (Levinas, Ricoeur) ones; and that those best equipped to do the despoiling will always be Thomists of one stripe or another. The pope's own philosophical work shows that a rich harvest can be reaped in this way. But I suspect that there is more to be said about what the ratio evident in the work of philosophers (some Catholic and some very much not) such as Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Michael Dummett, Philippa Foot, Alvin Plantinga, and Peter van lnwagen might have to offer to the tasks limned by Fides et ratio. It may be that the editors of this volume, being as I think English, are in a good position to take up that task in future volumes in this series. This is, then, a mixed bag, as are all such collections. Some of the individual contributions provide deep and useful insight into the encyclical and the issues it propounds. Yet the volume's truly distinctive {if somewhat puzzling) contrib~tion is the new translation it provides. University ofIllinois at Chicago Chicago, Illinois PAUL}. GRIFFITHS God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering: A Theological Reflection. By JOHN E. THIEL. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2002. Pp. 192. $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8245-1928-0. The modern project known as "theodicy" has been with us a long time-at least since Leibniz's book ofthat title published in 1710. The theological appeal of this project is undeniable. No religious person wants to believe that his or her God is a monster who sends planes crashing into buildings or wills a child's death by cancer. On the other hand, theodicy's critics-and they have been many-have wondered if the price to be paid is too great. Is not the God of theodicy a rationalized deity, constructed according to human needs and purposes? Don't pious attempts to make sense of evil tend toward rendering it BOOK REVIEWS 477 tolerable? It is understandable if some prefer to endure the mystery of evil in faith, rather than offering blasphemous explanations for its existence. John Thiel's God, Evil, and Innocent Suffering is one long, determined effort to resist the temptations of theodicy. Thiel seeks to offer a theological account of evil and suffering that "move[s] within the language of scripture and tradition," its rationality governed by "the most basic Christian claims of faith" (3). At the same time, Thiel is not entirely happy with the ways in which the classical tradition has approached these issues. His book seeks to chart an alternative course within the tradition that can better address the mystery of evil. The key term of his inquiry is found in the book's title: innocent suffering. Thiel argues that for much of the tradition, there is really no such thing as innocent suffering. Augustine believed that most human suffering could be accounted for on the basis of the Fall. This theological answer reflects a deep religious urge to see God as just and loving. If innocent suffering exists, then God is indeed a monster; so if God has the character we attribute to him, then suffering cannot be innocent. As Thiel rightly says, "the denial of innocent suffering lets the Christian God be the Christian God" (12). But this orthodox explanation does not sit well with our experience...

Analytic theology (AT) is a particular approach to theology and the study of religion that engages with the tools, categories, and methodological concerns of analytic philosophy. As a named-entity, AT arrived on the academic scene with the 2009 Oxford University Press publication, Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology, edited by Oliver D. Crisp and Michael C. Rea. AT was arguably represented, prior to this publication, by the proto-analytic theologian Richard Swinburne in his noteworthy works on Christian doctrine (e.g. Providence and the Problem of Evil, Responsibility and Atonement, The Christian God, Faith and Reason, and The Resurrection of God Incarnate), as well as by other professional philosophers of religion such as Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Richard Swinburne, William Alston, Eleonore Stump, Robert and Marilyn McCord Adams, Basil Mitchell, Keith Yandell, Paul Helm, and Stephen T. Davis, among others. These philosophers were addressing such topics as the coherence of theism, the rationality of religious belief, and the contributions of such philosophical theologians of the medieval past including Thomas Aquinas or William Ockham and those from modernity including René Descartes and Jonathan Edwards. Yet, the impetus for utilizing analytic philosophy to treat these topics emerged, not from the theological side of the conversation, but from the philosophical side. Anachronistically, then, the term “analytic theology” seems to aptly describe the work of these philosophers of religion.

Reviewed by: Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections by Matthew Levering Glenn B. Siniscalchi matthew levering, Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? Historical and Theological Reflections (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). Pp. ix + 255. $99. Today scholarly publications on the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus are not difficult to find. Many NT historians appeal to three reported facts as evidence for the resurrection: (1) the series of postmortem appearances of Jesus to friend and foe alike, (2) the discovery of the open and empty tomb by a group of his women followers, and (3) the origin of the disciples' faith in the resurrection despite having predispositions to the contrary. Some critics add to or nuance the evidence, but in recent years a consensus has emerged in support of the facts. The hesitancy in affirming Jesus's resurrection as an event of history has more to do with philosophical issues related to defending the historicity of miracles rather than establishing what should count as evidence. One of the best features of Matthew Levering's new book is that he makes several genuine contributions to a field that seems to have been nearly exhausted. For example, after surveying the most recent arguments and positions among prominent NT scholars who write on the subject, he draws from Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of selected OT passages that, "when viewed as an assemblage, instruct us profoundly about the context in which Jesus' resurrection is credible" (p. 13). The OT witnesses go beyond the presupposition of God's existence for ensuring the possibility of miracles (or even the probability of miracles). Thus, L. summarizes other presuppositions for taking the resurrection seriously: "The needed foundations for believing in Christ's Resurrection are here. We must believe that God is creator; that God loves humans in to existence; that God wishes to draw near to his fallen human creatures; that God wills to establish a 'ladder' between his dwelling and ours; that God will restore his fallen creatures through the sacrifice of his beloved son" (p. 105). Another major contribution focuses on the strangeness of the resurrection as evidence. Undoubtedly, there is a sense in which this argument has been utilized in resurrection studies (it is most notably found in N. T. Wright's monumental The Resurrection of the Son of God [Christian Origins and the Question of God 3; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003]), but L. [End Page 323] does not so much focus on the unicity of the resurrection against the Jewish matrix from which Easter faith emerged as appeal to the peculiarity of the NT writers' depiction of the risen body. A spiritual view of the afterlife would have been much easier to promote in dialogue with potential converts in the Greco-Roman world, but the early Christians never compromised about the risen body in their preaching. Though some contemporary exegetes may highlight the spiritual view in order to make the afterlife credible in the modern world, L. reminds us that the ancient world had the same trouble with accepting the bodily resurrection. Yet the early Christians proclaimed that Jesus was raised from the dead, not assumed or immortalized. Third, L.'s chapter on faith, reason, and history outlines the Catholic perspectives of Joseph Fenton, Bernard Lonergan, and Pierre Rousselot. Although L. recognizes the indispensable role of reason in matters of defending the faith, he does not overstate the case for reason in the next chapter, which shows the need for contemplative engagement and love to pinpoint an answer to the truth concerning the risen Jesus. As a case in point, L. shows how Hans Urs von Balthasar's apologetics of love (see his Love Alone Is Credible [trans. D. C. Schindler; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004]) is congruent with historical approaches: "While I think von Balthasar's position is too quick to dismiss the contemplative work of reason unaided by faith, the strengths of his position should be evident. Lacking appreciation for divine self-surrendering love, we are unlikely to perceive the truth of Christ" (p. 182). Finally, given the assumption that Jesus made himself seen to the disciples, skeptics, individuals, and even large groups of people under radically different circumstances...

Reviewed by: Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ by Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt Olivier-Thomas Venard O.P. Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ. By Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Pp. xii + 342. $110.00 (cloth), $31.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-19-921314-6 (cloth), 978-0-19-921315-3 (paper). After so many "companions" or "readers," is it still possible to compose a novel introduction to Aquinas? In this insightful book, presented "as a general introduction to the life and thought of Thomas Aquinas" (x), Frederick Bauerschmidt meets the challenge. His work consists of seven chapters. The first chapter, "Time, Place, and Person," is a historical-cultural introduction focusing on Aquinas's life and [End Page 297] activity in the context of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (1-37). Two parts follow. The first has a historical-theoretical flavor. It explains "how Thomas related reason to faith" (x), including the following chapters: "Thomas's Intellectual Project" (chap. 2, pp. 41-81), "Praeambula fidei: God and the World" (chap. 3, pp. 83-142), and "Fides quaerens intellectum" (chap. 4, pp. 143-75). The second part, "Following Christ," deals more with morals, starting in a quite Thomasian way by examining "the way of God incarnate" (chap. 5, pp. 179-227) before examining "the way of God's people" (chap. 6, pp. 229-89). Chapter 7, "Thomas in History" (291-316), presents a nuanced overview of the history of the reception of Aquinas. According to Bauerschmidt himself, "those who wish to have an easy descriptor for this book can describe it as an essay in Hillbilly Thomism" (xi, alluding to Flannery O'Connor). However, this opus is much more refined than the humble claim suggests. Indeed, the last chapter, "Thomas in History," shows great hermeneutic sophistication and mastery. Although Bauerschmidt obviously favors la nouvelle théologie rather than archeo-Thomism in his review of the history of twentieth-century Thomism, he stresses both the naïveté of Marie-Dominique Chenu's dichotomy between religious affirmations or intuitions and particular languages and concepts throughout history, and the "point" of Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange "that it is hard to identify continuity of intuition or affirmation without some sort of conceptual continuity" (313). We would go further and speak of a necessary continuity of wording, of language. When he compares "historical theology" à la Rorty with the "history of theology" (308-10), Bauerschmidt obviously presents the reader with his own method. Indeed, his book does not only offer (1) historical reconstructions (accounts of Aquinas in terms that Aquinas himself would approve, trying to avoid anachronism) and (2) "rational reconstructions" (redescriptions of Aquinas in our terms, deliberately anachronistic). It also gives some insights pertaining to (3) Geistesgeschichte and (4) intellectual history (the broader cultural context). Indeed, this book epitomizes "historical theology" at its best, by presenting Aquinas's intellectual project as "a form of discipleship" (x) still imitable today. Bauerschmidt presents theology, sacra doctrina, as a "way of life." Throughout the book, he demonstrates how sacra doctrina as understood by Aquinas compares with ancient philosophy as rediscovered by Pierre Hadot: it is a way of life, more than a theoretical discipline. Bauerschmidt stresses the reciprocal integration of Aquinas's way of life (as a Dominican) and his thought. For instance, he writes, "Thomas recognizes, as did the schools of philosophy in antiquity, that virtues are acquired or deepened through practices, which always occur at particular times and places under the guidance of particular rules, teachers, and examples" (260). Even the reception of infused virtues may be prepared by such exercises (ibid.). Hence the prevalence of virtue over law in Aquinas's moral teaching. This feature [End Page 298] mirrors the statements of the Order of Preachers about the legal—not moral—status of its regulations (258-59). In order to stress the Dominican-oriented dimension of Aquinas's theology, Bauerschmidt makes a judicious use of Michèle Mulchahey's work on medieval Dominican institutions (chap. 2 and pp. 258-64). Dominican formation started even with learning "a new way to walk" (261)! Since Aquinas was a "disciple," his way of life and oeuvre are fundamentally Christocentric: "his single goal...

In this article, I examine the development of Thomas's doctrine of the predestination of Christ against the broader backdrop of thirteenth‐century scholasticism, highlighting its distinctively Christocentric character. Pauline texts (Eph. 1:4; Rom. 8:29) speaking of our predestination in and through Christ, along with a text from Augustine's late work, De praedestinatione sanctorum, which describes Christ as the “clearest light of predestination and grace,” require the scholastics of this period to affirm the causality of Christ's predestination. Such an affirmation, however, seems to contradict the eternal character of predestination. In the process of treating this difficulty, two distinct approaches emerge: what I refer to as the “Halensian distinction” and the “Thomasian distinction.” Through the former, Alexander of Hales, the authors of the Summa Halensis and Bonaventure are led, unwittingly, to deny any true causal role for Christ's predestination as such. Far from considering Christ's predestination, these thinkers end up speaking only of Christ as predestined, in time. While this approach preserves the eternal character of predestination, it does so by minimizing the role of Christ in God's pre‐ordained plan. By contrast, Thomas's mature doctrine maintains the eternal character of predestination without, however, minimizing Christ's central role in it. For Thomas, it is impossible to consider the predestination of human beings to salvation without considering in concreto its orientation towards and fulfillment in Christ. In re‐conceiving the doctrine of Christ's predestination, Thomas not only accounts for the relevant Pauline texts, but also recovers the original sense of Augustine's phrase, that Christ is the clearest light of predestination and grace. Against this backdrop, we are able to appreciate more fully the distinctively Christocentric character of Thomas's doctrine of Christ's predestination.

In 1996, John Polkinghorne published Scientists as Theologians: A Comparison of the Writings of Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne. Responding to this book and his subsequent writing, I first summarize four topics on which we all agree: (1) critical realism; (2) holism, emergence, and levels of organization; (3) human nature; and (4) limitations in God's power. I then discuss our differences concerning: (1) classification schemes; (2) concepts of God; (3) laws of nature; (4) divine action; and (5) Christology. I then explore the contexts in which we were writing: our differing scientific disciplines, theological traditions, and academic institutions. Some concluding reflections concern our place in the interdisciplinary field of “science and religion.”