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The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong. By WILLIAM C. PLACHER. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Pp. 222. $19.99 (paper). ISBN 0-664-25635-X. Yet another book on the question of modernity? Yes and no. Although the latest book by William Placher, a student and editor of the late Hans Frei and well-respected theological writer in his own right, does deal with this topic, its quest is not to explain how or why modernity began, but rather to renew the battle between the ancients and the modems on a specific theme: how human beings should think and speak about God. In particular, Placher argues that at the dawn of the modern age in the seventeenth century, Christian theology lost its appreciation of divine transcendence, with its implications for the human knowledge of God. Placher does not suggest a wholesale retrieval of premodem theology of God, recognizing its support of oppressive social and cultural arrangements. Instead, through a detailed treatment of aspects of the thought of Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, and John Calvin-an ecumenical "heroes gallery"-he hopes to demonstrate that these pre-Enlightenment thinkers knew something their modern successors forgot and that must be retrieved by contemporary theology. A set of interrelated questions focuses Placher's historical analysis: (1) how have theologians and philosophers thought about God? (2) how have they defined their language about God? and (3) what is God's relation to the world we experience and the lives we undertake? In each instance, he argues that premodern theologians possessed greater insight than those who first tangled with the Enlightenment. Placher summarizes what went wrong as a "domestication of God," an image he derives from a line by Thomas Hooker written while combating the doggedly undomesticated theology of Anne Hutchinson: "I know there is wilde love and joy enough in the world as there is wilde thyme and other herbes, but we would have garden-love and garden-joy, of God's own planting." In Placher's terms, God is domesticated when theology seeks a "clearly structured system ... in which God plays a rather carefully defined role and we can grasp the principles behind God's actions" (39). This is the sin of modern theology to the extent that it rejected the mysterious and uncontrollable God, and settled for one who could be contained within a bower well-tended by human hands. Prior to embarking on his historical project, Placher addresses the now common dismissal of "classical theism" and the ensuing call for a "postmodern theology." He argues that the identification of the God of classical theism as a distant, dominating, and decidedly patriarchal deity is a caricature indicative of a failure to do the hard work of truly understanding the thought of the leading premoderns, and to distinguish it from what followed. Moreover, while Placher applauds the sensitivity to divine transcendence 469 470 BOOK REVIEWS demonstrated by self-proclaimed theologians of postmodernity such as Mark C. Taylor, he finds that it is often at the expense of appreciating the epistemological repercussions of the self-revelation of the Trinity in the Incarnation of Christ and the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit. Demonstrating a strong Barthian commitment, Placher insists that apart from divine self-revelation theology becomes a "form of idolatry" which seeks to bring the divine under human control (15). For insight into how one can speak of God in light of self-revelation, Placher suggests that close attention be paid to the efforts of Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin. Admirably well-informed on current scholarship concerning the theology of Aquinas (particularly that which rejects any description of Aquinas as half philosopher and half theologian), he emphasizes Thomas's deep appreciation for the consequences the simplicity of God has for theological knowledge. Since God is a simple reality, he cannot be known by human reason, which attains truth by dividing and joining, distinguishing potency from act, and abstracting accidental qualities from essential ones. Yet, as a Christian theologian who believed God's revelation of Jesus Christ as "the way of truth" and eternal salvation, Aquinas recognized the necessity of saying something about God. His solution to the quandary of...

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