Books Received

BOOK REVIEWS 127 Miller believes that a religious position should be intelligible and credible. There is, however, at least one case in Miller's theology where many people may find his view has failed to meet this standard. He seems to favor the orthodox position that God's omniscience does not necessitate human actions. He asserts that "although it follows, according to theologians like St. Augustine and St. Thomas, that if God foreknows x, then x will happen , it does not follow that x will necessarily happen because God foreknows it" (p. 148). On this view, freedom is retained in human action, in spite of God's omniscience, because God simply knows what man freely chooses to do. This line of reasoning overlooks a basic fact. If God really knows what I am going to choose or do tomorrow, then those events cannot, strictly speaking, be other than God knows them to be. There is a sense, then, in which my life is complete before I have actually lived it. This outcome conflicts directly with the experience of freedom that many men have today. In the ensuing crunch between the openendedness of one's own experience and the traditional theological view that Miller defends, it is not likely that the latter will seem really intelligible and credible. One more interesting issue figures in this matrix of problems. It appears at the end of Miller's chapter on religious language. Discussing Ian T. Ramsey with approval, Miller concludes by suggesting that "religious language is necessarily an odd one, commensurate with the oddness of the religious situation itself" (p. 203). For some time, analytic philosophers have been telling us that religious language is "odd." If Miller shares this idea, he could help the reader by spelling out the oddity. This would provide one way for him to clarify his position on faith and reason. It would also enable him to speak more fully on the issue of how the philosophical theologian can develop an understanding of God that may be at least partly viable for someone other than himself alone. All of these problems share one obvious quality--immense difficulty. If Miller has failed to handle them satisfactorily---or even to take on some of them at all--that does not detract from the fact that he has written a very sound historical introduction to philosophical theology. Nonetheless, many readers will surely think that the book has too little actual theologizing and philosophizing by Miller. They will hope that his most important work still lies ahead. JOHN K. RorrI Claremont Men's College BOOKS RECEIVED First Editions Anuario Filosofico-1974, Volumen VII. Universidad de Navarra. Director Jesus Garcia Lopez. Baranain-Pamplona: EUNSA, Ediciones Universidad de Navarra, S.A., 1974. Pp. 525. Paper, $10. Atti del Convegno di Storia della Logica, Parma, 8-10 October, 1972. Istituto di Filosofia dell- 'Universit~t di Parma. Padua: Liviana Editrice, 1974. Pp. 292. Paper, L5,500. Barzun, Jacques. Clio and the Doctors: Psycho-History, Quanto-History, and History. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974. Pp. xi @ 173. $7.95. Bennett, Jonathan. Kant's Dialectic. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1974. Pp. xi @ 291. $15.50; paper, $4.95. Berkson, William. Fields of Force: The Development of a World View from Faraday to Einstein. New York: Halsted Press, 1974. Pp. xiii -t- 370. $19.75. Bertrand Russell's Philosophy. Ed. by George Nakhnikian. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1974. Pp. vii + 278. $19.50. Bonforte, John. Epictetus: A Dialogue in Common Sense. New York: Philosophical Library Inc., 1974. Pp. 178. $6.00. 128 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Boydston, Jo Ann and Poulos, Kathleen. Checklist o] Writings About John Dewey 1887-1973. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1974. Pp. ix + 396. $12.50. Braun, Lucien. Histoire de l'Histoire de la Philosophy. Association des Publications pros les Universitts de Strasbourg. Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1973. Pp. 400. Paper, 50.00 TTC. Brook, Richard J. Berkeley's Philosophy o] Science. Internatiooal Archives of the History of Ideas, 65. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973. Pp. v + 210. Gld. 45. Bucher, Alexius J. Modellbegriffe: Philosophische Untersuchungen in der Theologie. Volume 16. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1974. Pp. 153. DM 26. Buttemeyer, Wilhelm...