Thomas Schärtl, Christian Tapp, and Veronika Wegener, eds. Rethinking the Concept of a Personal God: Classical Theism, Personal Theism, and Alternative Concepts of God. Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2016, pp. 249, $76.00. In this collection of essays, a set of German and English speaking theologians and philosophers come together to discuss competing conceptions of God. To be honest, this collection of essays was a bit of a struggle for me. There are several reasons for this that are worth noting. In several of the essays, it was not clear that the authors were using demarcations that I would use to distinguish between competing conceptions of God. To be sure, this is not necessarily a strike against the book. It just shows a particular disconnect that I felt with the authors. For example, in Oliver Wiertz’s essay, “Classical Theism,” Wiertz takes the reader through a carefully nuanced account of perfect being theology for the purposes of defending classical theism. This is a well-written and rigorously argued paper. However, Wiertz makes it clear that the classical theism that he is defending is the God of open theism. On open theism, God is temporal, passible, mutable in certain respects, and lacks exhaustive foreknowledge of…

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Meister, Chad and James K. Dew Jr, eds. God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017, pp. 196, $25.00. The Spectrum Multiview book series by InterVaristy Press considers a topic, and allows experts on the topic to present their views and interact with one another. In this volume, the question of the nature and existence of God is debated in light of the existence and nature of evil. Each author is given the chance to set out their own view. Then at the end of the book, each author has an opportunity to engage, criticize, and develop their thoughts on the views of the other authors. Personally, I find this format very useful for going deeper into theological and philosophical issues. Chad Meister and James Dew have done an excellent job at finding authors that have well-developed views that are quite distinct from one another. Further, they have selected authors who have made interesting, and significant contributions to this issue. Readers who are fairly new to the problem of evil will be well-served by starting with this volume, and then following up by reading other works by each contributor. The experts in this volume are…

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Joshua R. Farris. The Soul of Theological Anthropology: A Cartesian Exploration. London, UK: Routledge, 2017. pp. 198. $119.96, hardback. $38.47, ebook. Joshua R. Farris (Ph.D., University of Bristol) is Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University, School of Humanities, The Academy and The Honors College, in Houston, TX. He is also a member of the Department of Theology and is Director over Trinity School of Theology. Nearly 30 years ago, John W. Cooper wrote and published his widely read theological defense of substance dualism and the doctrine of the intermediate state: Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting. To this day, when one researches Christian accounts of the afterlife and attendant accounts of the human person, Cooper’s work is ubiquitous. Indeed, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting has been something of the “gold standard” by which all defenses of the doctrine of the intermediate state and a theological defense of substance dualism have been measured. By my lights, that reign ends with the publication of Joshua Farris’s book, The Soul of Theological Anthropology. Farris is clear that his theological account of the human person “is motivated and influenced by John Cooper’s . . . work” and that he intends to “take some…

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Taliaferro, Charles and Chad Meister. Contemporary Philosophical Theology. New York, NY: Routledge, 2016, pp. 242, $44.95, paperback. The authors are both well-established experts in the fields of philosophy and philosophical theology. Charles Taliaferro, Professor of Philosophy at St. Olaf College, is the author, co-author or editor of over twenty books. Recent books include The Golden Cord: A Short Book on the Sacred and the Secular (University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) and The Image in Mind (Bloomsbury, 2013, co-authored with Jil Evans). He is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Theism (Routledge, 2012, with Victoria S. Harrison and Stewart Goetz) and The Ashgate Companion to Theological Anthropology (Ashgate, 2016, with Joshua R. Farris). Chad Meister is Professor of Philosophy and Theology at Bethel College. He, too, is the author, co-author or editor of over twenty books. Recent books include Christian Thought: A Historical Introduction, second edition (Routledge, 2016, with J. B. Stump) and Introducing Philosophy of Religion (Routledge, 2019). He is co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Problem of Evil (Cambridge University Press, 2017, with Paul Moser) and God and the Problem of Evil: Five Views (IVP Academic, 2017, with James K. Dew, Jr.). Together, in Contemporary Philosophical…

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Applegate, Kathryn and J. B. Stump, eds. How I Changed my Mind about Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016, pp. 196, $10, paperback. Kathryn Applegate and J. B. Stump are the Resources Editor and Senior Editor, respectively, at BioLogos—a Christian organization whose mission is to advocate a view of “harmony between science and biblical faith” rooted in “an evolutionary understanding of God’s creation” (http://biologos.org/about-us). Applegate holds a PhD in computational cell biology from The Scripps Research Institute. Stump, who recently authored Science and Christianity: An Introduction to the Issues (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), holds a PhD in philosophy from Boston University. How I Changed my Mind about Evolution is a collection of autobiographical essays from evangelical Christians who believe the theory of evolution is compatible with the truth and authority of the Bible. Among its twenty-five contributing authors are pastors, Bible scholars, theologians, philosophers, and scientists. Some are distinguished scholars with doctoral degrees from Oxford, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley, or MIT. Eight have doctorates in the biological sciences, and two of these biologists—Denis Lamoureux and Jeff Hardin—have additional graduate degrees in theology. Two other contributors hold prestigious positions in the scientific community: Jennifer Wiseman is a…

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Reeves, Josh A. and Steve Donaldson, A Little Book for New Scientists. Downers Grove, IVP Academic, 2016, pp. 141, $12.00, paperback. A book title by an evangelical publisher purporting to provide help for scientists immediately raises questions in today’s overheated world of Christianity in relation to science. But this is precisely the purpose of this truly little blue book (7 x 4 x ½ inches). And for such a small work, the authors do a remarkably good job of at least pointing out to us the right questions. The authors teach that the scientist can expect felicitous surprises (e.g., opportunities for mission and ministry) as well as trials for their Christian faith (e.g., science-religion conflicts). The latter can lead to intellectual crisis for Christians. So the authors state: “The primary purpose of this book, then, is to help Christians studying and practicing in the sciences to connect their vocation with their Christian faith” (p. 13). The authors, who teach at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, are well-qualified to write such a book. Reeves serves as a project administrator in the university’s Center for Science and Religion (CSR), managing the New Directions in Science and Religion project. Donaldson, who co-founded the…

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Craig, William Lane. God Over All: Divine Aseity and the Challenge of Platonism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 242, $80.00, hardback. God Over All is an expansion of William Lane Craig’s 2015 Cadbury lectures. A more in depth volume on God and abstract objects is forthcoming with Springer Publishing. This work then can be considered as a succinct summary of Craig’s research on the topic. Given that this is the case, we should judge this work in light of the aforementioned context. Craig begins the volume by defining the problem of God and abstract objects. The idea is something like this: Classical theism sees God as a se, that is, God does not exist through another or from another; instead it is he who is responsible for all of reality (p. 1). And yet, if Platonism – the thesis that there are abstract objects which are eternal and immaterial – is true, God would not be a se. Craig gives the following as an example of why this would be the case: Consider the cluster of divine attributes which go to make up God’s nature. Call that nature deity. On Platonism, deity is an abstract object existing independently of God,…

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Gould, Paul M. and Richard Brian Davis, eds. Four Views on Christianity and Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016, pp. 240, $19.99, paperback. Perhaps reflecting the influence of his colleague, Rudolf Bultmann, Martin Heidegger makes what at first seems a curious statement in a 1927-28 lecture entitled “Phenomenology and Theology”: “there is no such thing as a Christian philosophy” (in The Piety of Thinking, James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, eds. [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976], 21). For Heidegger, philosophy examines the most basic of human pursuits (the question of Being) while all other disciplines (including theology) examine various aspects of Being. Some in the Society of Christian Philosophers may disagree, but Heidegger is basically correct—if by Christian philosophy one means a philosophy that differs in kind from other alleged types of philosophy. Philosophy, though, properly understood, is not a set of beliefs or method of analysis that is susceptible to qualifying titles such as “Christian,” or “atheistic,” or Buddhist.” This is not to say that one who is a Christian may not philosophize differently from one who is an atheist, or a Muslim, or a Buddhist. The practitioner changes while the practice does not—or, at least, it should not….

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Bryson, James, ed. The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016, pp. 273, $114.00, hardback. In 2016 Roger Scruton, eminent British philosopher and writer, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth on her birthday. Sir Roger, recognized for his accomplishments in philosophy, teaching, and public education, was at the apotheosis of career spanning decades where he wrote and lectured on topics ranging from aesthetics, art, politics, and natural conservation. Surprisingly, there has been very little academic literature about Sir Roger’s writings, even less about his religious views. Given that he has written works on both religion and church life, this absence is glaring. It was to a great surprise that I noticed The Religious Philosophy of Roger Scruton. Originally conceived as a conference on Scruton’s writings, the work is a collection of papers presented on Sir Roger’s religious philosophy. The collection is well-thought out and organized clearly. The book itself is divided into four parts, each with essays devoting their time to exploring various areas of Scruton’s work. Part I is an exploration of Scruton’s writing on religion, Part II attempts to dive into the influences that shaped Scruton and his writing. Part III explores Scruton’s defense of art,…

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Buckareff, Andrei A. and Yujin Nagasawa, eds. Alternative Concepts of God: Essays on the Metaphysics of the Divine. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp 299, $51.80. The renaissance of philosophy of religion in the 20th Century brought with it an in-depth exploration of the metaphysics of theism. Other alternatives to theism have been explored such as pantheism and panentheism. Yet, these alternative models of God have not been given the same level of attention as theism in contemporary philosophy of religion. The collection of essays in Alternative Concepts of God seeks to provide readers with non-theistic explorations of the metaphysics of God. Each essay is well written, and the scholarship is fairly solid. However, most of the essays do not offer alternative conceptions to a theistic understanding of God in any significant depth. For example, Karl Pfeifer’s paper, “Pantheism as Panpsychism,” spends more time developing panpsychism than it does articulating pantheism. The connection to pantheism is not altogether clear as it seems that a theist could easily adopt panpsychism without endorsing pantheism. Andrei A. Buckareff develops a powerful argument for thinking that God must have spatial location; however, he does not develop this model of God in any depth….

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