Dieu et la Permission du Mal by Jacques Maritain (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 533 tive treatment on formal logic. Each of these works has its own particular merits. If modern formal logic is the subject under study, then Fisk's book along with the readings offers a good basis. Whereas Bird's book with its treatment of traditional syllogistic could well be used in a course on traditional logic. Bird's book also serves as an introduction to modern logic. Naturally the use of either of these books will depend on the purpose of the teacher or the reader. RoBERT V. DEVINE WMhington, D. C. Dieu et la Permission du Mal (Textes et Etudes Philosophiques). By JAcQUEs MARITAIN. Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1963. Pp. 111. Three seminars conducted by Maritain for the Little Brothers of Jesus in Toulouse, during May, 196fl, make up this book. The style is simple, colloquial. The occasion was chosen as a means of responding to some objections by one of his Dominican friends, P. Jean-Herve Nicolas, who wrote in the Revue Thomiste partly against Maritain's theories expressed in Court Traite de ['Existence et de l'Existant (translated as Existence and the Existent). Maritain's central purpose, however, is to go more deeply into questions that he has been thinking about all his life and into the manner of facing them which, he believes, is more than ever valid. He treats, in order, (1) the innocence of God regarding sin; (fl) some difficulties in the classical Thomist school, "la bonne ecole"; (3) his own position as expressed in the Court Traite regarding the non-consideration of the rule, the shatterabie motion from God, and the divine permissive decree consequent to the non-consideration of the rule; (4) the objections of P. Nicolas; (5) how God knows evil; (6) the divine eternal plan; (7) finally, predestination and reprobation. Briefly, P. Nicolas had taken Maritain to task for departing from the traditional Thomist position by introducing the idea of a shatterable motion from God that has no definite term (thus an indeterminate divine motion, which, to a Thomist, is unthinkable), and for positing a consequent rather than the traditional antecedent permissive decree. Maritain rather humbly admits that some of his doctrine regarding the shatterable motion was poorly expressed and takes back a long footnote of the Court Traite, written, as he says, in haste; though he does not back down from his basic hypothesis. He in no way backs down from his doctrine on the consequent decree, but firmly defends it. His defense is based on his conception of God's knowledge of existing things. It is not, he says, like a dramatist's knowledge of the characters he creates, since that puts all the emphasis on the pre-knowledge and the 534 BOOK REVIEWS antecedent decrees, and makes mere puppets of God's free creatures. Since every moment of time is present to the divine eternity there is no question of a time before time; everything takes place in the eternal instant. Maritain's elaboration of this concept is quite complex, yet exceedingly worth reading. He avoids Molinism by insisting on the radical dissymmetry between the line of good and the line of evil. God has the initiative in the first, the free creature in the second. Regarding any act that is placed by the creature in the line of good, or being, l\'Iaritain shows that there can be absolutely no determination of God. In the line of evil the creature begins with a non-act, a pure negation, which causes the privation of sin. Be it noted that P. Nicolas includes Marin-Sola and Muniz among the adversaries of the classical Thomist position. Whether or not Maritain is correct in all aspects of his theory, he has given us some fresh insights into an old, old problem. This reviewer for one hopes that the book is read seriously by anyone who ever has been perplexed by the problem of how the antecedent will of God that all men be saved is reconciled with the doctrine on predestination. In the last part of the book Maritain confronts this problem and handles it with his characteristic vigor and skill. St. Mary's School of Theology Notre...