God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Aboluteness by James E. Dolezal (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 625 these wider questions should look at the recent Oxford Handbook of Eschatology, edited by Jerry Walls (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Christ Our Hope is not just a good book, but an encouraging sign, both for the specific field of eschatology and for Catholic theology as a whole. Recent theology is integrated into a framework set by the larger theological and doctrinal tradition. Catholic teaching is fundamental, but non-Catholic theologians are treated as valued participants in the discussion. Doctrines fundamental within the hierarchy of truths—especially Christology and pneumatology—play an orienting role. Christ Our Hope is an exemplar for how contemporary textbooks on specific theological topics should be written. MICHAEL ROOT The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Aboluteness. By JAMES E. DOLEZAL. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2011. Pp. 259. $29.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-61097658 -9. “God without parts”—it is an unusual phrase and makes a rather striking title. Even the author himself calls it “curious verbiage” (1). Language about “parts” tends to conjure up images of Lego blocks or perhaps IKEA furniture (“some assembly required”). It all sounds rather mechanical—but for that very reason talk about divine “parts” may be theologically therapeutic. For many of today’s theologians, God seems to be something that “requires assembly,” something that we put together piece by piece from our own human thoughts and imaginings. The title of this book is a stark reminder of how univocal many theologians have become in the ways they think of God and creatures. God without Parts intends to tell us about the God who is in no way the product of our thoughts but rather exceeds all we can think. James Dolezal is well equipped to speak of this God. He brings together two traditions that have long been committed to pondering the mystery of God but have unfortunately been less frequently engaged in dialogue with each other: Thomism and Reformed Scholasticism. Dolezal himself is a Reformed Baptist minister who received his doctorate from Westminster Theological Seminary and is currently a research fellow at the Craig Center for the Study of the Westminster Standards. In this work, he brings the two traditions together on the question of divine simplicity: “Throughout this volume I make extensive use of both classic Thomist and Reformed sources” (xviii). The volume may be seen as a work of ressourcement, retrieving 626 BOOK REVIEWS classical theological sources to address contemporary questions: “I deploy these older writers simply in order to rehabilitate the power and subtlety of their insights for our modern philosophical-theological milieu” (xviii). In addition to being intimately familiar with the Reformed tradition, Dolezal is well acquainted with Aquinas and employs arguments from an impressive variety of his works. At times, Dolezal is even more “Thomistic” than some Thomists, arguing against Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, for instance, when they disagree with Aquinas’s views on whether divine simplicity is compatible with divine freedom (191-94, 197-201). Dolezal starts with what he sees as the common Christian affirmation that God is absolute: “Orthodox Christians are universally committed to the confession that God is absolute” (xvii). The question for theologians is then “how to characterize” such absoluteness: “What is the ontological condition by which such absoluteness is ascribed to God?” (xvii, 1). He discovers the answer in certain words from the Westminster Confession of Faith that also find their way into the title of his book: “There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions . . . most holy, most free, most absolute” (1). God is “without parts,” and “only if God is ‘without parts’ can he be ‘most absolute’” (2). Divine simplicity is the “ontological condition” for our confession of divine absoluteness: “It is this argument that forms the central thesis of this volume: Simplicity is the ontologically sufficient condition for God’s absoluteness” (ibid.). The notion of divine simplicity itself, however, is not without its problems and critics. The task Dolezal sets himself is to explain what divine simplicity means and doesn...