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  • The Divine Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology
  • Carl N. Still
A. N. Williams. The Divine Sense: The Intellect in Patristic Theology. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xi + 252. Cloth, $85.00.

Unless one already knows the phrase ‘The Divine Sense’, which Williams borrows from Origen (82), the reader might think that the intellect in question here is divine. But this book is as much about the human intellect as the divine. Williams approaches her subject through selective treatment of figures ranging from apostolic fathers to fifth-century monastic authors. Her first chapter deals with Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, who presage later thought by their attention to human mind as mirror of the divine (43). From there she moves to Clement and Origen as “early Alexandrians” (chapter 2), for whom knowledge of God has salvific power. The central and longest chapter (chapter 3) deals with the two Gregories, “Nyssen” (as she calls him) and Nazianzen. Chapters 2 and 3 offer a detailed comparison of the two theologians. The exposition goes far beyond the intellect—divine or human—to embrace topics implied by intellect; not only knowledge, thought, and contemplation, but for an embodied being, the relation of soul and body, passions, virtue, and for the Christian, grace. Chapter 4 treats of Augustine, who brings love to the fore, though intellect is no less central. And chapter 5 deals with “monastic writings,” most notably those by Evagrius and Cassian.

While she follows a historical sequence, Williams is less interested in the development of patristic thought about intellect than in the theme’s organizing power in each of these theologies. The conceptual thesis informing the book is that the intellect is the “connector” for the other themes (234). Williams spells out three connections of the human intellect: with its superior, the divine intellect; with its partner, the will; and with its subordinate, the body (5–6). Given the connective work intellect does, patristic theology tends towards the systematic (3), even if none of these authors wrote a systematic theology—excepting perhaps Origen’s Peri Archôn (44). Why should intellect point to system? If the human being really is the image of God, and this “image” stands especially for intelligence, then the God in whose image we are made must be intelligent. That intelligence must be reflected in the whole created order, in which case a true theology must be correspondingly orderly. Williams struggles with the fact that these Fathers rarely specify mind as a divine attribute; yet God must surely have a mind, or simply be a mind, since God is simple.

Intellect’s connections yield various unities that guide the exposition. The connection of intellect and will implies unity of knowledge and love, while the connection of intellect and body secures the unity of the human person. Love is already there in the Alexandrians (19), but it achieves integration with understanding in Augustine’s De Trinitate, where memory, understanding, and love form a mental trinity reflecting the divine Trinity. On intellect’s embodiment, Williams has to stretch to save Origen’s anthropology from denigration by the body, but balances that against the use of bodily imagery to describe the incorporeal mind (83). A third unity bookends the study: the unity of theology and spirituality (7, 238). Williams suggests the patristic understandings of intellect might enrich modern theology, which separates theology and spirituality to create theologies divorced from prayer and spiritualities in which thinking is discouraged (2).

The many virtues of the book more than offset some minor imperfections. While the exposition is dense in places, Williams writes in a refreshingly direct style. She rigorously documents her sources—the chapter on the Cappadocians runs to nearly 600 footnotes—and is critical of those scholars whose speculations find no support in the texts. In discussion notes, she situates her views in the context of the scholarly landscape rather than merely citing studies with which the informed reader may be presumed to be familiar. Her own voice rarely intrudes in the body of the text, but when it does, she offers acute judgments and nice insights. She resists explanations from “influence” as speculative and incomplete, and she compares...

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