The Problem of God in Modern Thought

Christian Century, Feb 13, 2002 by John B. Cobb, Jr.

Problem of God in Modern Thought. By Philip Clayton. Eerdmans, 516 pp., $39.00.

METAPHYSICAL THEOLOGY has been treated roughly in the past two centuries and I especially in the past few decades. In wide circles, both scientific and humanistic, "metaphysical" is a term of scorn justifying quick dismissal of whatever is so labeled. Of course, people give the term various meanings, especially when they use it dismissively. Often the implication is that one should not try to probe behind the world of sensory appearance to anything more fundamental, or at least that one should not attribute "reality" to anything at that level. At other times, scientists are allowed to view their quarks and photons as "real," and the only thing rejected is any hypothesis about the reality of God. For some, dismissing the metaphysical means that God's reality is rightly asserted on the basis of faith, but that it cannot be supported by rational reflection. As a result, most Protestant theologians avoid metaphysical theology, seeking in anthropology a sounder basis for their work.

We pay a high price for this dismissal. In one of its forms, the rejection of metaphysics leads to a fideism that opens the door to almost any belief without allowing for rational criticism. In its other forms, it leads to reducing God to a creation of the human mind or language rather than recognizing God as that reality that is supremely worthy of our trust and worship. It is doubtful that a healthy Christian faith can survive either of these moves.

Fortunately, metaphysical theology has not disappeared. The prestige of Thomas Aquinas has assured its survival in Catholic circles. In this country, Charles Hartshorne gained a small following for his program of neoclassical theism, and Robert Neville has developed his own distinctive form of metaphysical theology. A variety of forms of cosmological thinking that make contact with metaphysical theology have grown out of new developments in science (Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, Whitehead).

We now have a powerful new voice speaking for metaphysics-that of Philip Clayton. His magisterial study of philosophical reflection about God, from Descartes through Schelling, demonstrates that metaphysical theology continues to attract some of the brightest minds and most gifted scholars. Without question, this is a major work. It may help turn the tide against the easy dismissal of metaphysics which has inhibited the discussion of so many important questions. If The Problem of God in Modern Thought succeeds in this, Clayton will have earned a significant place in the history of Western intellectual life.

Of course, those who have been socialized to quickly dismiss the metaphysical enterprise may simply ignore this book as they have ignored others that challenge their prejudices. Still, Clayton's work has a better chance to reach them, since it engages just those historical developments on which the dismissal of metaphysics often rests. It does so with such scholarly thoroughness and balance, analytical rigor and intellectual insight that it can hardly be trivialized. Again and again it shows that the historical grounds for rejecting all metaphysical inquiry have involved valid criticism of the particular form of metaphysics treated but have not justified the wholesale dismissal of the enterprise.

The most important figure in this regard is Immanuel Kant, whose impact on intellectual and cultural history has been enormous. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, above all, challenged the conviction that an adequate philosophy should ask questions about the nature of what is. Since Kant, the appropriateness of such questions has been seen as at least problematic. For a vast segment of philosophical reflection, the dominant question since Kant has been about the conditions of knowing rather than about what is known.

Clayton explains, accepts and affirms this. He agrees with the dismissers of metaphysics that, since Kant, traditional forms of metaphysics have been highly problematic. Kant rightly directs attention to the limits of reason. But Clayton proceeds to show in great detail both that Kant himself pursued metaphysical inquiry in his later writings and that the strictures of the first critique quire considerable qualification. For example, the sharp contrast of regulative and constitutive ideas was not successfully maintained by Kant and cannot be maintained today. There is nothing to preclude a regulative idea (a principle that regulates our thought) from being proposed as a constitutive one (characterizing what is thought about) as well. Therefore, the fact that for Kant God functions as a regulative idea does not forbid us from formulating the hypothesis that God is real.

The book not only demonstrates the lack of justification for opposing metaphysical reflection as a whole, but through detailed critical study it also teases out of early modern philosophers the metaphysical ideas that can still be used today. In the process, Clayton also points out the dead ends in past metaphysical reflection. In particular, he criticizes the tradition that centered on divine perfection. He shows that there are no clear guidelines as to what perfections should be attributed to God, and that certain commonly attributed perfections turn out to be incompatible.