Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages by Gillian R. Evans (review)

168 BOOK REVIEWS infallible efficacy, human beings can retain a kind of Lockean freedom 'to do whatever they choose to do'; they can in fact execute what they intend" (120). The logic of Tanner's position, however, seems to leave space for nothing more than a compatibilist understanding of such Lockean freedom. Tanner insists that "a theologian holding our picture cannot deny that, given God's infallible working, human beings must choose when and what God wills" (127). In order to avoid making God responsible for human sin, she also insists that "if the creature sins, that is contrary to God's will in that God's will does not extend to the bringing to be of sin" (133). But since humans do sin, something not brought to be by, and contrary to, God's will occurs, and so it seems false that human beings must choose when and what God wills. Tanner supposes that the difficulty can be resolved by "multiplying , perhaps indefinitely, the outcomes that may conform to God's will for the world" (134). If God's will for the world is consistent with many outcomes, however, then God's will does not determine the world in all its details. As Hasker points out, such divine underdetermination would leave room for there to be "many ways God's will can be fulfilled, depending on the decisions ofthe human agents" (145). But in that case there would be some nondivine things, specifically those human decisions that are not brought forth by direct divine creative activity. So perhaps, as Hasker suggests, Tanner's position is inconsistent because she begins by affirming but, under pressure from the problem of human moral evil, ends by denying theological determinism. In any event, her position faces severe difficulties. The quality of the essays in this volume is very high. They tackle tough problems in philosophical theology and make original contributions to the published literature devoted to discussion of these problems. And they set a standard of excellence for conversations between philosophers and theologians that future conversations of this sort should aspire to live up to, even though doing so will not be easy. University ofNotre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana PHILIP L. QUINN Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages. By Gillian R. Evans. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, 1993. Pp. x + 139. $49.95 (cloth); $14.95 (paper). An enormous amount of scholorship is condensed in this rather thin survey of philosophy and theology. Unlike most considerations of these disciplines in the Middle Ages, this work is not organized chronologically, but by topic. The first section treats primarily of the sources of mediaeval philoso- BOOK REVIEWS 169 phy, with an analysis of the basic problems of language and logic; the second section considers a series of topics, broadly following the outline of a summa of theology (God, creation and the cosmos, man). No attempt is made to distinguish between theology and philosophy, but the interplay between the two disciplines is evident throughout. The summary of the classical sources of mediaeval philosophy is quite handy, and the presentation of the problem of universals is clear and well-organized. This is neither an introductory text, nor a specialized monograph. There is only the briefest possible biographical information about any of the writers cited (rarely more than the birth and death dates), and even within the individual topics presented a chronological order is not maintained (and thus the writer moves from Anselm to Aquinas to Augustine to Alan of Lille to Boethius to Albert the Great in one short section). A great number of authors are summarized in this work, the little no less than the great: along with A'!gustine, John of Salisbury, and Aquinas, we find Hugh of Amiens, Rudolph Agricola, and James of Venice. Almost all of the bibliographical references are to modern Latin editions of these authors' works. Evans's work is most useful as an introduction to the basic topics under debate throughout the Middle Ages, beginning with the question of the suitability of philosophical discourse in theology, and ending with the continuity (and discontinuity) of scholastic discourse and method in the early years of the Protestant Reformation. This survey...