Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind’s Relationship to God by Paul A. Macdonald, Jr. (review)

494 BOOK REVIEWS Knowledge and the Transcendent: An Inquiry into the Mind's Relationship to God. By PAUL A. MACDONALD, JR. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009. Pp. 306. $69.95 (cloth). ISBN 978-08132 -1577-8. Macdonald's book demands the attention of philosophers and theologians alike. Philosophically, Macdonald engages skepticism, subjectivism, philosophy of the mind, analytical philosophy, epistemology, realism, and Thomism. Theologically, Macdonald discusses the relation of faith and reason, the role of the intellect and the will in faith, apophatic theology, eschatology, and the significance of theological realism. These twin trajectories inform his answer to the question: "How can God transcend the mind but still remain known to the mind?" Critical of the overwhelmingly negative responses to this question since Kant, Macdonald affirmatively proposes, "Having knowledge of God thus seems to require that our conceptions of God bear on or are directed on God's transcendent reality" (xiii). The aim of the book, therefore, is to offer an epistemology that permits objective knowledge of God that does not diminish God's transcendence. Macdonald accomplishes this by arguing for an epistemology of direct realism and then shows how direct realism is compatible with natural knowledge of God, knowledge gained by faith, and even knowledge in the beatific vision. This last aspect is particularly intriguing since the beatific vision functions as the primary or quintessential instance of direct realism. Knowledge and the Transcendent is divided into three parts. The first part outlines howsubjectivism and skepticism proffer a problematic conception ofthe mind's relation to God, and traces the influence of this problematic through various philosophical and theological thinkers since Descartes and especially Kant. The second part addresses this problematic by offering an alternative, direct realism, argued for on the basis of a close reading of Aquinas's epistemology (STh I, qq. 78-85) and supported by its consistency with the knowledge of God by reason, faith, and beatitude. Macdonald argues that direct realism ensures objective knowledge of things and correspondingly of God-even if, in the case of the latter, this knowledge is partial, noncomprehensive, and nonabsolute. The third part applies direct realism to contemporary discourses on faith and reason on one hand and theological realism on the other. In this manner, Macdonald orients direct realism and its implications by critically engaging the works of John McDowell, Victor Preller, Norman Kretzmann, Denys Turner, and Peter Byrne. Modern discussions about knowing the transcendent God have often been falsely construed on the basis of a misconception of the relation between the mind and the world and, derivatively, the mind and God. Modern epistemologies conceive a disjunctive dualism between subject and object, the BOOK REVIEWS 495 mind and the world, which limits reason to dealing with mere appearances and not things-in-themselves. This restrictive narrowing of reason and objective knowledge by skepticism and subjectivism consequently creates a divide or boundary between the mind and God so that one must either overcome the divide by reducing God to the subject (anthropomorphism) or accentuate it so that God ultimately remains entirely unknown (agnosticism). Macdonald explains the consequences of many modern epistemologies, worth quoting at length, In short, the problem can be specified as follows: once God is placed outside or beyond a cognitive boundary (given that God is pictured as transcending a cognitive boundary), then there can be no objectivity in what human persons believe and say about God. The beliefs and assertions we hold and make about God ... can have no bearing on who God objectively is. This leads to skepticism regarding our knowledge of God. The alternative to the skeptical position, which in fact turns out to be an extension of skepticism, is subjectivism. According to this position, we can think and talk about God in terms of our religious symbols and experience; or we can think and talk about God in terms of our individual or collective religious responses and practices; but again, we cannot think and talk about God "in God's self." (3) As one may expect, Macdonald outlines the genesis of this problematic in Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Their epistemologies result in "theological antirealism ," whether in its anthropomorphic or agnostic forms, indicative of...