Divine Power and Possibility in St. Peter Damian's "De Divina Omnipotentia" (review)

298 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:2 APRIL 199 4 later historical consciousness. As founding editor of the journal HistoTy of Political Thought, Janet Coleman has done much to revive memories of past thinking about politics, a subject in which what a thing is is substantially determined by what those involved in it think it is. The studies in the present volume cast an interesting variety of lights on what we may be doing in these and other acts of recollection. A. S. McGRADE Universityof Connecticut, Storrs Irven Michael Resnick. Divine Power and Possibility in St. Peter Damian's "De Divina Omnipotentia." Studien und Texte zur C,eistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 31. Leiden : E.J. Brill, 199~. Pp. viii + 1~8. Cloth, $42.86. The De Divina Omnipotentia purports to be a letter from Peter Damian to Desiderius, abbot of Monte Cassino. Peter develops a position he had taken in an earlier discussion with Desiderius on the claim of St. Jerome that, although God can do all things, he cannot restore virginity to a woman who had lost it. Desiderius had sided with Jerome; Damian had claimed that God could indeed restore lost virginity. In this letter Peter defends his views, an undertaking that takes him into the discussion of the scope of divine power, the possibility of God's annulling the past, and the problems that arise from using the language of human temporality to describe divine possibilities in an eternal present. Professor Resnick provides a fine introduction to the philosophical issues raised by the De Divina Omnipotentia. The central question of the nature and scope of divine power is related to previous discussions of the question and to the more sophisticated debates of the later Middle Ages (Chapters 1 and 3). The second chapter discusses the life and works of Peter Damian. This biographical account is not only a concession to readers unfamiliar with this eleventh-century author, but is germane to Resnick's interpretation of Damian's purpose in writing. The final substantive chapters (4 and 5) provide the specifically philosophical analysis and interpretation of the key issues of Damian's work--the possibility of restoring lost virginity, the nature and scope of divine power, the possibility of undoing the past, eternity, and the laws of nature. These are heady questions and some might fault Resnick for dedicating only about sixty percent of an already short book to their exploration. This would be a mistake. While the author could have expanded his discussion of any of the thematic questions, he does each justice by laying out the issue, usually providing some textual analysis, and by exploring possible interpretations. I believe, however, that Resnick should have made a greater effort to engage the respectable body of contemporary critical analysis of some of Damian's views. Damian's apparent claims that the law of contradiction does not apply to God and that God is able to annul the past deserve more extensive treatment. In these discussions Damian shows himself the equal of any. of the dialecticians that he so severely criticizes. Resnick's discussion is based on a careful reading of the texts, which he cites extensively. Although one might quarrel with his interpretations, they are invariably BOOK REVIEWS ~99 well supported. The limitation of an expository review precludes extended critique, but I would like to raise two issues. The first relates to the question of the restoration of lost virginity. As the author notes, the editor of Damian's work suggests that this question is superfluous because no one ever seriously doubted that God could restore physical integrity or that he could make a woman spiritually whole again. Resnick is unconvincing in his attempted refutation of this criticism (49-5 l). There is surely a wider issue here, relating either to Desiderius's claim that to say that God is unable to restore means nothing else than that he does not will to restore, or to the more interesting question whether God can ordain that what is now (lost virginity) did not happen. A second observation relates to Resnick's presentation of Damian's account of the dialecucians' attempts to restrain God's power within the conclusions...