Paradox and Identity in Theology by B. T. Herbert, and: Value and Existence by John Leslie (review)

680 :BOOK REVIEWS for an analysis of the difference's between the basic goods which the author outlines and those suggested by such authors as Rawls, for there is currently a great deal of confusion about the ontological character of the intrinsic human goods. This is an extremely valuable book that may very well become a standard work in moral theology, moral philosophy, metaethics, jurisprudence, and philosophy. And it is also a valuable work on account of the level of insight manifested in it and because of its rigorous scholarship. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. ROBERT BARRY, O.P. Paradox and Identity in Theology. By R. T. HERBERT. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979. Pp. 197. $12.50. Value and Existence. By JOHN LESLIE. (American Philosophical Quarterly Library of Philosophy) Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1979. Pp. ix + ~19. The juxtaposition of these two books is a vivid illustration of the richness and variety of contemporary philosophy of religion. Each is a work in philosophical theology, each engages in reflection on classic themes both in religion and in philosophy, and each is restrained in its ambitions: Herbert argues for the intelligibility of three doctrnes of Christianity, while Leslie advances a cosmological thesis largely on the strength of its interest. Yet the books embody different conceptions of philosophy and different conceptions of their religious topics. Herbert's book is rooted in the linguistic interests of the twentieth century and particularly in the later Wittgenstein. He takes up classical theological topics as part of the discussion whose major figures are philosophers like Flew, Nielsen, Geach, Kenny, Phillips, Rhees, Hudson, and Sherry. Religion, for Herbert, while it certainly has metaphysical or supernatural intentions, becomes accessible to philosophical inquiry as a form of human life. So his concerns are with particular doctrines and the arguments surrounding them. Leslie, on the other hand, finds his philosophical footing in a straightforwardly metaphysical idiom impatient with the linguistic style. His prose is full of terms like "reality," "value," "ground," and "the existence of the universe," all used with full metaphysical weight. His book takes up the conversation of Plato, Plotinus, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Whitehead. While Herbert finds religious belief one thing and its philosophical defense some- BOOK REVIEWS 631 thing clearly different, Leslie's constructive philosophical task is a cosmological project of the sort that may supplant belief. Even though his aim is identical with the aim of the traditional arguments for the existence of God, his interest lies in having an intelligible explanation for the existence of the universe rather than in providing the groundwork for faith in the God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. These books will be provocative, though they are unlikely to attract the same readers. R. T. Herbert's Paradox and Identity in Theology takes up three topics in Christian doctrine: the idea of the God-man, the relationship of divine foreknowledge to human freedom, and the issue of personal identity in resurrection. In order to approach these topics Herbert first discusses the notions of paradox, puzzle, and illusion, and places those discussions in the context of a tripartite division of the positions in contemporary philosophy of religion into the camps of the sceptics, the philosophical theists, and the fideists. Herbert aligns himself with philosophical theism, which he understands as the defense of the intelligibility of particular religious doctrines against specific arguments meant to show that they are nonsensical. He distinguishes his position from fideism by asserting that fideism takes religious doctrines to have only a psychological or an anthropological significance , while the philosophical theist agrees with the sceptic that "they have, essentially, a supernatural or metaphysical intention " (p. 18). Clearly, however," fideism "is a contentious term, and some philosophers who have drawn that label (Herbert mentions D. Z. Phillips and Rush Rhees) might object to a distinction made, tout court, between "philosophical theism " and " fideism," as if fideism were neither philosophical nor theistic. Having set up a three-cornered debate, Herbert takes on only one opponent, the sceptic. This tactic is unfortunate because it obscures interesting questions about the kind of meaning religious doctrines are thought to have. (Are the fideists simply wrong about that?) But more...