The One Creator God in Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary Theology by Michael J. Dodds, O.P (review)

This book provides a treatise on the One and Creator God inspired by the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas. One of the strengths of the author, Michael J. Dodds, O.P., is his ability to reveal the relevance of this theology in the concert of contemporary theologies, while integrating some new questions into the Thomistic synthesis. The book is classically constructed, with chapters on God’s existence (chap. 1); divine attributes (chap. 2); our capacity to know and name God (chap. 3); God’s knowledge (chap. 4); his will (chap. 5); his love, justice and compassion (chap. 6); providence (chap. 7); power (chap. 8); beatitude (chap. 9); and divine action as creation and government (chap. 10). The presentation of each topic is pedagogical and informed, without excessive technicality. I wish simply to point out some original features of the book, conducive to discussion or further study.

Regarding the Tertia via, Dodds explains the thesis that what is contingent cannot always exist by means of the presupposition—for the sake of argument— that the world has existed for an infinite time (43). Given this assumption, if contingency in existence is one of the essential properties of the realities considered at the starting point of the Tertia via, they must not always exist. One might object to Dodds that such an assumption belies the biblical belief in creation, involving a temporal beginning of the world. It seems therefore awkward that Thomas would make such an ad hoc assumption.

The explanation of the Quinta via includes a useful clarification. This path, based on the observation of a finality in natural things that occur mostly in the same way, is distinct from arguments about Intelligent Design. The latter start from a basic configuration sought and found in the distant past and do not reach a Designer who is both truly transcendent and truly immanent to the world (53–54). The Quinta via, on the other hand, leads to a God who causes the substantial form by which natural things are directed to a natural end.

The exposition of the divine attributes and the way of knowing God in this life is classic, with three important clarifications in the contemporary context: the correlation between transcendence and immanence in the face of the middle term represented by panentheism (69–71), the type of analogy adjusted to name God (87–92), and the doctrine of the mixed relation between God and creatures (93–100). On this last point, a study by Gilles Emery ("Ad aliquid: Relation in the Thought of St. Thomas Aquinas," in Theology Needs Philosophy: Acting against Reason Is Contrary to the Nature of God, ed. Matthew L. Lamb [Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016], 175–201) would provide interesting additions. While many biblical accounts present a God who reacts (or seems to react) to the behaviors of his creatures, it would also be relevant to show how such “metaphors” are meaningful and cannot be reduced to merely secondary statements. For instance, most of the passions attributed to God in biblical narratives, such as sorrow, anger, regret, or envy, are not to be understood as properly signified. It does not mean that they are irrelevant, but that their mode of attribution is of a different kind. Improper attributes might be highly valuable and revelatory, as well as proper attributes.

The explanations of God’s knowledge and his will have in common that they argue for a compatibility between the transcendence of divine operations and the necessity or contingency ordered by him in created causes or agents (104–7 and 114–17). God’s eternal operations do not impose necessity on contingent things.

In discussing the compassion of the impassible God, Dodds argues that he does not suffer at all in himself, but actually suffers as...