Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology by Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 633 the emphasis placed by Thomas on the analogy of attribution for thinking about the relations between God and creatures? SERGE-THOMAS BONINO, O.P. Institut Catholique Toulouse, France Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology. By THOMAS JOSEPH WHITE, O.P. Ave Maria, Fla.: Sapientia Press, 2009. Pp. 320. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 978-1-9325-8955-9. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio calls for a recovery of confidence in the capacity of philosophical reflection to engage in metaphysical reasoning about God. The project that it lays out is admittedly complex. It calls for the articulation of a case for belief in God that will be compelling for our age. It also calls for the establishment of a sound basis for resolving contemporary questions about the meaning of human existence and a wide range of current issues in ethics, politics, and culture. But restoring such confidence in reason is no easy task. It is not uncommon to find people holding that only particular religious traditions can offer answers to such ultimate questions. It is far less common to find an author who both makes a thoroughgoing case for the natural knowledge of God and traces the connections between that topic and the various cultural and moral questions that Fides et Ratio addresses, let alone one who makes it as well as Thomas Joseph White does in the present volume. The ranks of modern Christian thinkers who are skeptical of the resources of philosophy for such tasks are headed by the likes of Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Barth. In their very different ways they argue for the impossibility of any natural knowledge of God. For them, the doubtful capacities of philosophical reason can only be compensated for by promoting the trustworthiness of divine revelation. No doubt, some of the excesses in the claims for reason that were made by the philosophers of the Enlightenment left a great distaste for philosophy. In its survey of the ravages that pragmatism, relativism, and nihilism have brought upon the philosophical landscape, Fides et Ratio shows a certain sympathy for the view that the typical strategies of modern philosophy are not the sort of approach that we need. But that encyclical inveighs against simply abandoning the field when it comes to assessing the possibilities and prospects of reason. It urges a renewal of the philosophia perennis as a more likely way to offer valid and valuable contributions to such tasks as showing the 634 BOOK REVIEWS reasonableness of belief in God and answering some of the ultimate questions before humanity. The question, thus, is whether a strategy of keeping faith and reason in separate silos—perhaps for their own protection—is the best if not the only route available. The project at the heart of White’s volume—natural theology in the Thomistic tradition—grants that faith and reason are distinct. But White steadfastly resists the suggestion that we adopt the silo strategy by treating them as uninvolved with one another. At the core of the approach in this book is the conviction that nature is an important point of conjunction for faith and reason. This is so because nature has the objectivity needed for success in philosophical inquiry and yet has a theological resonance. Creation can reveal much about the creator, just as any effect can show much about its cause. There is much that we can learn from the book of nature by the methods proper to philosophy and science, and yet inquirers can also profit from the illumination that divine faith gives. Sometimes the assistance that faith provides consists simply in showing reason where best to look. Admittedly, the preponderance of thinkers in what today count as science and philosophy treat the very notion of nature as suspect. In contemporary science, the success of statistical approaches in calibrating the predictive power of concepts has been accompanied by a broad skepticism about the legitimacy of the traditional concept of nature. For many postmodern philosophers in the wake of such masters of suspicion as Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche, the idea of nature is regarded as enchained by the pretenses by which the powerful...