The Trinity and Theodicy: The Trinitarian Theology of Von Balthasar and the Problem of Evil by Jacob H. Friesenhahn (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 157 previously wanting. At the very least, Lombardo’s careful work will demand attention from anyone who writes in this area of Thomas’s thought in the future. For this reviewer, the matter of this book has caused him to reconsider his views on the matter, as well as suggesting to him new and promising avenues whereby healthy human affectivity might be achieved. STEPHEN J. LOUGHLIN DeSales University Center Valley, Pennsylvania The Trinity and Theodicy: The Trinitarian Theology of Von Balthasar and the Problem of Evil. By JACOB H. FRIESENHAHN, Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2011. Pp. 197. $90.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-1-4094-0801-7. “To speak of ‘theodicy’ in Thomism is to use a meaningless expression. There is no such thing as a Thomistic ‘justification’ of God for having created this universe rather than another one. Being as such is good.” So declaims Etienne Gilson in his Elements of Christian Philosophy (170). But in this age of aggressive atheism, we seem to be stuck with the task—if not the word—of “justifying the ways of God to man.” Gottfried Leibniz, who coined that misleading term, utterly confused matters by introducing possibility into God (defined previously as Pure Act). He made that fateful move because he held that God—when faced with the infinite number of possible universes—had to create “the best of all possible worlds,” for to do otherwise would denigrate God’s infinite goodness. But as Gilson pointed out, in his inimitably droll way, Leibniz’s argument conflates God’s actual infinity as Pure Act with the possible “finite infinity” of creation (finite because creation is inherently finite, and infinite because of the infinite range of possible universes): [O]ne should remember that, since God is infinite, no finite being is such that better finite beings could not be conceived by an infinitely wise and good First Cause. On the contrary, there always is a possible universe better than any conceivable finite universe. Just as, in the case of numbers, there is no absolutely greatest number (since, given any number, the number + 1 always remains possible), so also, however good any finite universe may be, there still would be room for a better one, and so on indefinitely. . . . The doctrine of Thomas Aquinas on this point has been unintentionally summed by a certain Dr. Boteler in The Compleat Angler of Izaak Watson. Speaking of strawberries, Dr. Boteler aptly says BOOK REVIEWS 158 of them: “Doubtless God could have made a better berry; but doubtless He never did.” (170-71) One could of course object that Thomas did, after all, write a large work called De Malo, which certainly sounds like a theodicy. But that book is actually a work of moral theology with a brief introduction on the “metaphysics” of evil (insofar as a study of evil as the privation of being can merit being called a metaphysics). Strictly defined, theodicy asks how God’s combined omnipotence and goodness can be squared with the existence of evil (with Leibniz arguing that the two poles could be reconciled, and David Hume holding the contrary)—and that question is never entertained as such by Thomas, for the very good reason that the terms of the question, as posed, foreclose any plausible answer. The only place where the Common Doctor comes close to addressing the theodicy question as we understand it, and as it has so dominated modern philosophy of religion in the wake of Leibniz and Hume, is early in the Summa Theologiae, where he says quite simply and in one sentence: “This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that He should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good” (STh I, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1). But is it at least permissible to build on that lapidary line and ask how God can produce good out of evil? Jacob Friesenhahn thinks we can. Despite the title of the book, which prominently features the dread word, he fully realizes that theodicy as traditionally pursued is a fool’s errand. The first half of the book, three chapters out of a total of six, is devoted to proving that point. Given the...