Faith and the Life of Reason by John King-Farlow, William N. Christensen (review)

880 BOOK REVIEWS surprisingly resistant notion of Satan is an important facet of contemporary religious consciousness, which demands a fuller investigation." That there is a market, as well as a need, for serious attention to Satan in print may well justify this resurrection of part of Sheed and Ward's 1951 translation and the publishing of the older articles along with Updike's preface, as well as the other materials. Popular thought, as Fr. Woods says," seems to be as attuned to the devil as ever," but since Vatican II the theologians have tended to relegate Satan to obscurity. Lay readers of this volume can obtain information concerning such matters as pseudo-possession, dream demons, and the realities of exorcism-as well as the reasons why it must be so guarded and circumscribed by the Church with the greastest care. The account of a Black Mass in Paris, taken from J. K. Huysmans' La-Bas, and the very effective short-story "The Hint of an Explanation " by Graham Greene, are striking, imaginative experiences, which vividly present the diabolic drive to desecrate what is most sacred. F. J. Sheed's apologetics may be dated, but it is not easy to avoid the force of his conclusion that the New Testament takes the power of Satan most seriously. John Updike, speaking as an American Protestant, remarks that most people in his religious tradition nowadays " have trouble enough conceiving of a deity, without dabbling at diabolism." Yet, he says, "The world always topples. A century of progressivism bears the fruit of Hitler; our own supertechnology breeds witches and warlocks from the loins of engineers." Not to give the Devil his due seems, in effect, io result in having the Devil to pay. If Soundings in Satanism has its flaws, it is at least a reminder to contemporary theologians that the Devil will not be demythologized without a struggle. PAUL VAN K. THOMSON Providence OoUege Providence, Rhod6 Island Faith and the Life of Reason. By John King-Farlow & William N. Christensen. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel Publishing Company, 1972. Pp. 253. 68 florins. The authors are Anglican philosophers speaking in the context of linguistic analytic method and making the case for the reasonableness of a philosophic theism. They deal with a set of knotty problems in natural theology: the existence and character of God, the possibility and meaning t>f miracle, the role of will and intellect in religious commitment, the problem of evil, and, in a brief concluding chapter, the just war theory BOOK REVIEWS 381 of Thomas Aquinas. In their travels through this muddied field they raise the relevant philosophic issues: analogy, language about being (s) and Being, existence as predicate and God's existence as "necessary" (very neatly done here), time and eternity, the desirability and possibility of metaphysics (they are for it), and themeaning of probability. Their arguments are pitched at traditional and contemporary empiricist anti-theism and involve analysis of the analysts' analyses of the logic of Christian belief. They are, it seems to me, successful in their efforts. They will speak perhaps more successfully to later day analysts than to the hoary elders of the movement who discarded the possibility of even a descriptive metaphysics. What lurks behind, and occasionally not at all very far behind, the authors' analytic technique and language is what I gauge to be a belief in an explanatory metaphysics. But since they are so intent on providing some room in the analytic tradition for a moderately traditional theism, they do not bring out the heavy metaphysical guns. One is led to hope that if their collaboration continues they will issue a study drawing out the implications of their suggestion that, after all, being is in need of explanation. The volume is fast, engaging, stimulating, and very enlightening for the theologian who is given to wonder at the maze of analytic philosophy of religion and to despair that it bodes any good for a traditional theology or philosophy of God. In fact, the book is proof enough that it bodes plenty of good toward clarifying religious and theological language. There are parts that will be rough going for one not trained in analysis, but the text...