Knowing The Unknown God by William J. Hill, O. P. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Knowing The Unknown God. By WILLIAM J. HILL, 0. P. New York: Philosophical Library, 1971. Pp. 807. $12.00. We have here an excellent contribution in one of the most important areas of theological thinking today. The issue is the validity of our ideas about God, a central point in theological discourse. For anyone who has ventured into this area it will be clear that there is, in the words of the prophet, " terror on every side "; every position one takes is a challenge to one's knowledge of the whole history of theology and philosophy, not to mention the coherence that is demanded with all the big questions and answers that bear on the matter: the validity of human knowledge especially in its attainment of the transcendent, the structure of human consciousness , the meaning of faith, revelation, and all the rest. With this kind of problem Fr. Hill has done extremely well. He has controlled an immense amount of material, historical and theoretical. He keeps to his point, yet the ample notes show that all the necessary spade-work has been done. In general, this is a Thomistic book, but in no narrow sense: the author is continually in dialogue with all the leading names in modem and ancient theological debate, with Cajetan as well as Merleau-Pony, with Dewart and Lonergan along with St. Thomas. One of the pleasing features of this work is the neatness with which the question is formulated and kept before us. It requires a capacity for precision which one does not find in the large number of writers who have ranged over this matter. Fr. Hill sees the conceptual element involved in all human knowing; but since a direct concept of God is an obvious impossibility in the present mode of human knowledge, what value attaches to the ideas we employ in our speaking about God? To situate our theological attainment of God in a purely non-conceptual dynamism of knowledge is a rather congenial temptation in our ecumenical and existential times. However the question will not go away, and theologians at least have a vested interest in somehow maintaining that one thought is not as correct as another, nor one word as accurate as another in serving the truth of the Mystery that is certainly beyond us. The author adds considerable precision to the question by an excellent treatment of that increasingly interesting figure for modem theology, Cajetan (Thomas de Vio). In many ways this speculative genius is the founding father of the Thomistic Tradition: his de Nominum Analogia continues to be one of the classic texts in the discussion of our knowledge of the Transcendent. Fr. Hill justifiably points out that this man was not 800 BOOK REVIEWS 801 the culprit in giving Scholasticism its static and conceptualist reputation in a way that Scotus or even Suarez might have been. He reacted against the univocity of Scotus with the whole weight of his teaching on analogy, and at the same time he was sensitive to existence as the " ultima actualitas " and the supra-categorical nature of the divine Reality (here we refer to his Commentary on Summa Theol., I, q. 89, a. 1, no. VII). He tried to bring these points together: the analogical concept was a true formal expression of the divine reality, yet there was no possibility of expressing the divine mode of being. This is exactly the point where Fr. Hill discerns the weakness in the Thomistic tradition on this matter. He asks if this " eminenter " is sufficient. If the divine modus essendi can in no way be represented in the concept, where does the formal correspondence between the idea and the divine reality lie? (pp. !tO ff.) The concept must at least play some kind of referential role insofar as the divine Reality is somehow envisaged. But, he admits, the Scholastic tradition generally goes further than this. He gives some instances, especially in the divine nature-person problems, which indicate how the Schoolmen did in fact verge toward conceptualism and depreciate the sense of the Mystery they were in fact confronted with. Even though no reputable thinker thought they were expressing the reality " as it...