God in Himself: Scripture, Metaphysics, and the Task of Christian Theology by Steven J. Duby (review)

This book covers a breadth of topics related to the doctrine of God, natural and supernatural revelation and the knowledge of God, the incarnation, theology and metaphysics, and analogy. Given the range of available judgments on these issues, and the extensive significance they have for the shape and content of systematic theology, it is to Steven Duby's credit that the presentation and evaluation of these topics remain consistently insightful and balanced. Also impressive and laudable is the sweep of Duby's engagement with Scripture, and with ancient, patristic, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary sources. Throughout the work, there is a deft interweaving of biblical exegesis, historical theology, and systematic theology. In this way, the author both argues for and performs the greater inclusion of patristic, medieval, and Reformed orthodox theologians amongst modern and contemporary theologians as sources for doctrinal reflection.

Materially speaking, the book's main proposals regard the purpose, object, nature, and limitations of theological knowledge and the importance of proper speculation regarding God in se (chap. 1); the salutary place of the natural knowledge of God within the divine economy of the blessing of and fellowship with rational creatures (chap. 2); the formal and material relationship between Christology and the doctrines of God and the Trinity (chap. 3); and the necessity of the use of metaphysics and analogy within the doctrine of God (chaps. 4 and 5 respectively). The brief conclusion summarizes the arguments of the chapters and begins by noting one of the threads that is sown throughout the book: the importance and primacy of theologia, of the consideration and description of God in se, "without primary reference to the economy" (193). These chapters and this thread are offered as an extended correction to a contemporary theological landscape which Duby views as bifurcating theologia and economia and assuming that one must choose between a speculative doctrine of God which employs natural theology and metaphysics (often illustrated in this book by Thomas Aquinas, but also the Reformed Scholastics) and a doctrine of God centered upon Jesus Christ and the economy (often illustrated by Karl Barth and other modern Protestant theologians). Duby argues that this bifurcation is unnecessary and damaging to systematic theology, and so he attempts to repair this disjunction through the rehabilitation of a variety of theological prolegomena. In this repair, he especially marshals Reformed Orthodoxy and Aquinas in an effort to ameliorate the influence of modern Protestant theology, especially that of Barth and some of his followers, in matters of speculation, the natural knowledge of God, metaphysics, analogy, specifics regarding the incarnation of the eternal Son, and the debates surrounding Trinity and election. In terms of triangulation, then, it seems that Duby would wish for contemporary theology to move beyond the overinvestment in economia and the underinvestment of theologia he finds in the theologies of Barth, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jürgen Moltmann, and Robert Jenson with the help of Reformed Orthodoxy, which he in turn would like to become more permeated with insights from patristic and medieval sources, and most especially the theology of Aquinas. In the Introduction, Duby mentions Katherine Sonderegger and John Webster as contemporary theologians who have sought to return theology's attention to God in se and who have attempted a provide a more classically inflected doctrine of God that includes but is not materially exhausted by Christology. In what follows I will focus upon Duby's understanding and presentation of Barth—as he is the theologian with whom I am most familiar and as Barth and some of those influenced by him appear to be the main foils of the book—before raising some observations and questions about some of the positive claims put forward in the book.

Duby is well aware of the structure and content of Barth's Church Dogmatics, and so much of his interpretation of Barth is his own. When...