Book Reviews 245

B.J. van der Walt and the Neo-Thomist Tradition: A Christian-Philosophical Assessment. The Institute for Contemporary in Africa, Potchefstroom, South Africa, 2017. 242 pages. isbn 978-1-86822-685-6.

Thomas Aquinas has been something of a bête noire among Reformed schol- ars. To some extent this is justified—however, for the most part, he has been unread and ignored. Not so for van der Walt. Aquinas was the subject of his ma and PhD work. His master’s thesis was completed under the supervision of J.A.L. Taljaard (1915–1994)1 and dealt with the philosophy of Thomas Aqui- nas; his PhD dissertation entitled “Natural theology with special reference to Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and the ‘Synopsis Purioris Theologiae’—a philo- sophical investigation” was also supervised by Taljaard. Van der Walt, then, is no stranger to Aquinas. He began to study Aquinas because he believed that “a synthetic tradition of nearly 2000 years (starting with the early Church Fathers and systematised by Aquinas in the Middle Ages) was still with us” (Bishop 2010, xliv). Thomas Aquinas and the Neo-Thomist Tradition represents a re-examination of Aquinas, and to do so, van der Walt has gone to the source. In light of recent studies and his rereading of Aquinas, what we have here is a first-rate discus- sion of the work and influence of Aquinas. This re-evaluation is important as Aquinas’s influence is not only in the past and among scholars, but is also felt today among the Radical Orthodoxy of John Milbank and his ­followers, and in Richard A. Muller’s Reformed project. More surprisingly, as van der Walt illustrates, Aquinas has also influenced some reformational philosophers. The great strength of this book is that it goes back to Aquinas’s own writings, primarily his Contra Gentiles. Secondary sources are kept to a mini- mum in the first part of the book, as van der Walt wants Aquinas to “speak” in his own words. However, this is both a strength and a weakness: a strength, in that it allows Aquinas to “speak for himself”; and a weakness, in that other interpretations of Aquinas are largely ignored. The latter chapters, however, do examine and critique modern secondary sources on neo-. Van der Walt’s main thesis is that the idea of law (nomology) plays a key role in Aquinas’s mesh of complex ideas. This is a fascinating thesis and one that is supported by discussion of Aquinas’s ontology, anthropology, epistemology,

1 For information on Taljaard, an important but often ignored Vollenhovian philosopher, see http://www.allofliferedeemed.co.uk/taljaard.htm (accessed August 20, 2017).

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246 Book Reviews and his views on providence. This thesis is contrary to the approach of another reformational Aquinas scholar, namely, Jan Aertsen. Aertsen sees a cyclic mo- tive as Aquinas’s main theme (see, for example, Aertsen 1991). Van der Walt briefly takes issue with this—more of a critique of Aertsen’s view would have been valuable. Particularly interesting is chapter 5 where he explores Aquinas’s view of providence. Here we see clearly how Aquinas is a synthesis thinker, synthesiz- ing Scripture with Aristotelian philosophy. Such an approach leads to a dead end. Aquinas sees as immovable and immutable; but this then means that the sense of guilt and responsibility that humans have is inexplicable. Aqui- nas’s deterministic doctrine of predestination is unable to reconcile divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Aquinas’s God is a cause; thus, not only does God become something created, but he also becomes the cause of evil. Van der Walt’s book is an excellent critique of Aquinas. In addition, it shows how the legacy of Aquinas’s approach has influenced contemporary approach- es. Aquinas’s Christianizing of Hellenism has meant the Hellenization of the Christian faith. This is the result of a synthesis philosophy with its concomi- tant methods of exegesis-eisegesis, its paradoxical method, and its adoption of a -grace approach. In chapter 6 van der Walt examines these meth- ods, along with the different phases of Aquinas’s synthetic accommodation of Scripture and , and the question whether a synthetic ap- proach is inevitable. He looks briefly at the approaches of Dooyeweerd and ­Vollenhoven (who respond no), Klapwijk (who responds with a tentative yes), and Helleman (see, e.g., Helleman 1994) who is sympathetic with a Helle- nizing approach. Helleman,­ van der Walt maintains, sees culture as neutral, thus ­denying a Christian approach to culture. Van der Walt advocates the thetic-­critical approach of Vollenhoven which he develops in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 7 examines the legacy of neo-Thomist thought. Here he looks at its influence on Roman Catholic scholars such as Rahner, von Balthasar, Kung, Schillebeeckx, and Schoonenberg, as well on the Radical Orthodox advocates, and on Reformed theology as epitomized in the Synod of Dort. The latter is an important point and one that van der Walt has dealt with previously (van der Walt 2011). Here he outlines some of these influences—but this key insight could have been developed more fully in this volume. In this chapter he also discusses the problems in the mapping of the his- tory of neo-Thomism over the last seven centuries post-Aquinas; he mentions, for example, the approach of Benedict Ashley, op, who identifies several types of neo-Thomism—e.g., Platonizing, Aristotelian, Augustinian, existentialist,

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