Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century by Maria Rosa Antognazza (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 501 working through these studies, one must wonder how it is even possible to regard the metaphysics in Thomas's ethical writings as some sort of dispensable appendage. Perhaps the only answer is that discerning metaphysical influence takes a "metaphysical eye." Dewan has one, and the influence he sees is deep and pervasive. This is not to deny the distinctness of ethics. It has its own subject and principles, and hence its "autonomy." But it is not a self-starter, partly because of what we saw earlier: it is not its own last end. Its absolutely first principle, for Thomas, is the last end. (In some interpretations, however, even this is not too clear.) To be sure, the first principles that ethics supposes, being genuine firsts, must be indemonstrable, "self-evident." But ethics only supposes them. To determine, judge and defend them-to bring them fully into their own "evidence"-is a metaphysical exercise. That this is so for Thomas ought to be plain enough even from a glance at the first few lines of the proemium to his commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics. In this book Dewan puts on display how it is so. These essays are certainly not just for specialists. Anyone wanting to understand Thomas's thought better will benefit immensely from them. It is not just that Dewan knows Thomas intimately and gets his meaning right. He has a way of capturing what is "happening" in the text, of "watching" Thomas philosophize and re-enacting the event, which is unusually instructive. As for the prose, it is always crystal clear, and as fresh as it is serene. The book's chief virtue, however, is simply the perennial moral wisdom that it transmits. Dewan says, "I wish to stress the lifelong use of St. Thomas's Summa theologiae secunda secundae. Moral education, self-help in spirituality, requires that we make such a book, such a treatise on human living, a constant stimulus of our reflection" (363). Clearly he has done this very thing. The results have a power to stimulate all their own. Pontficial University of the Holy Cross Rome, Italy STEPHEN L. BROCK Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century. By MARIA ROSA ANTOGNAZZA. Translated by GERALD PARKS. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Pp. 348 $60.00 (cloth). ISBN: 978-0-300-10074-7. An all-too-common view of Leibniz is that ofthe metaphysician who humored his more devout correspondents with an occasional, though disingenuous, bit of theologizing. How many times have we read that Leibniz was pulling the leg of his Jesuit interlocutor Bartholomew de Bosses when he compared his notion of 502 BOOK REVIEWS the vinculum substantiale with the Eucharist? Surely, a century's worth of rationalists have informed us, the man who invented the calculus would not-could not-have taken Christianity seriously. Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation, a fully revised version of the author's Trinita e Incarnazione: II rapporto tra filosofia e teologia rivelata nel pensiero di Leibniz, should drive the final nail in the coffin of this tired old story. Hardly the textbook rationalist, Leibniz emerges in Antognazza's fine work as passionate defender of the Christian mysteries, a dexterous exponent of St. Augustine's account of Trinitarian vestiges in creation, and an able apologist for the perennial value of the terms 'substance', 'nature', and 'person' in Trinitarian theology. Moreover, Antognazza makes a fine case for rereading Leibniz's metaphysics in light of his commitment to revealed theology: Although theological in origin, these Trinitarian debates were interwoven with many philosophical problems, such as the relationship between reason and revelation, knowledge and faith; the issue of the limits of human understanding, of the degrees of knowledge, and of the epistemological status of belief; the question of the scope and validity of the principle of noncontradiction; the reflection on the role and meaning of analogy; the inquiry into the concepts of 'nature,' 'substance,' and 'person'; and the theory of relations (xiii). Two conclusions emerge from Antognazza's survey of Leibniz's theological interests. On the one hand, she argues that Leibniz was "clearly convinced" that the doctrine...