THIS is an interesting book, which covers a wide range on the borders between theology and philosophy. It might have had as a subtitle “The relevance of the Torah for today”, but this does not do full justice to the breadth of its coverage.
This book begins as a serious academic study of the necessity of God, drawing on a wide range of scholarship from the ancient Greeks through Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinkers and heavily influenced by the Torah and its insights into the nature of God. A particular feature is a close examination of Spinoza’s approach. Different forms of ontological arguments are analysed. A book focusing on the importance of God’s necessity is to be welcomed, as this is an idea underpinning Aristotle’s attenuated idea of God, the great and early Islamic philosophers, the God of mainstream Catholic Christianity, stemming from the early church Fathers, St Thomas Aquinas, and, of course, Moses Maimonides in the Jewish tradition.
God as wholly simple — timeless, spaceless, bodiless, omniscient, omnipotent, unchanging, and utterly transcendent — is an important monotheistic idea, and yet it is not without its problems. A God who is imminently involved and active in creation, who answers prayers, who suffers with the world, and who, in Christianity, become incarnate in Jesus and who changes God’s mind in conversation with Abraham, who walks in the garden with Adam and Eve, and wrestles with Jacob is not easily squared with the idea of a wholly simple God.
The wholly simple God is also held to be omniscient in a strong sense, hence knowing every detail of past, present, and future, all of which are immediately and simultaneously present in God’s one eternal “now”. This idea is not readily compatible with human freedom, although many brilliant scholars have made the attempt.
Maimonides, one of the greatest Jewish theologians, whom the author quotes on a number of occasions, recognised the problem. He was convinced, like them, that God had to be timeless and spaceless, wholly simple. Yet, he was also intellectually honest and recognised the great problem with this position. Maimonides repeatedly insists that the only truthful way to speak about God is through silence and the admission of ignorance. This led to the via negativa. His most explicit formulations are in The Guide for the Perplexed, where he argues that all positive language about God is misleading and that the highest form of praise is refraining from speech. The book does not really tackle these difficulties.
The second half moves beyond this. Not only does it provide a reply to atheism and effectively presents abductive arguments for the relevance and persuasive power of the idea of God, but it also explores in some detail what it means for God to see creation as good. The part played by mathematics in such discussions is explored, but, more centrally, the book seeks to defend the idea of Truth (the capital “T” is important) and of Beauty, which it sees as being linked. In doing these, it makes a significant contribution.
Dr Peter Vardy is a former Vice-Principal of Heythrop College, University of London.
God and Truth: An essay on reason and religious ideas
Lenn E. Goodman
Cambridge University Press £25
(978-1-108-45904-4)
Church Times Bookshop £22.50