Four Views on Christian Metaphysics. Timothy M. Mosteller (editor). Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2022. 142 pp. pb. $23.00 ISBN 978-1-7252-7330-6

This short book provides an interesting introduction to contemporary Christian views on metaphysics, the field of philosophy that explores the fundamental nature of reality. In the book four Christian philosophers outline their views and respond to the contributions and criticisms of their peers. Paul Gould starts off the conversation by presenting a form of Christian Platonism (1-19). On this view, God is the sole ultimate reality who created the world through a creative act with three logical moments. First, by a spontaneous movement of the divine intellect, God dreamt up all the creaturely possibilities, including possible individuals and possible worlds. As a logical consequence of the first step, God created the abstract objects (e.g. properties) that exist in the Platonic realm. After this, God freely and deliberately created the physical universe. This universe contains concrete things that have properties (step 2) and participate in God by means of the divine ideas (step 1). Among these concreta are human beings which are immaterial souls that have a material body as a distinct part of themselves. The reason for creation, Gould suggests, may be to manifest the divine goodness. To the degree that creatures are like their Creator, God’s goodness is communicated via them. In defense of his view that there are abstract objects in addition to divine ideas, Gould notes that properties, unlike thoughts, are not intentional. He further argues that Platonic properties offer the best solution to the problem of explaining similarities and qualities in the universe (25, 29). Some difficulties, however, remain. For instance, it’s not clear that God’s attributes, which seem to involve a whole host of minor properties, leave much room for the created properties of the Platonic realm.

Christian Aristotelianism is the next view in the book and is represented by Timothy Jacobs (35-53). Jacobs clarifies that the Aristotelian forms are descriptions or predicates of subjects and not (contrary to Plato) real objects. They exist in union with matter (hylomorphism). He distinguishes between accidental and substantial change and notes that prime matter persists even when the substantial form of a thing is changed. Human beings are made up of body (matter) and soul (substantial form). However, any substantial form that includes the vegetative power is a soul, thus even plants and animals have souls. Of course, people have additional powers, including reason which sets us apart from other living beings. Moving beyond Aristotle by means of Aquinas, Jacobs argues that the human soul can survive the death of the body. Further, according to Aquinas, all creatures are composites of essence and existence and therefore depend on God in whom there is no distinction between the two. The simple and single divine substance does, however, have three inherent relations, and is thus triune. Divine simplicity is an interesting point of disagreement between Jacobs and Gould, who holds that God is a composite being, so it is unfortunate that Jacobs’s defense of the doctrine is rather brief due to space limitations (66-67).

After this, James Spiegel articulates a form of Christian Idealism that relies heavily on George Berkeley (71-87). On this view, reality consists of minds and ideas. There are two sorts of minds: the divine mind and creaturely minds. Ordinary objects, such as apples and chairs, are bundles of sensible qualities (i.e. ideas) that are perceived by minds. Indeed, the entire physical world is actually a sort of language that the divine mind creates to communicate with creaturely minds. The ‘laws of nature’ might thus also be termed the syntactical rules of God. Human beings are made up of a soul (mind) and a bundle of perceivable properties (body). This anthropological account is thus strikingly different from that of Gould and Jacobs. It also allows for a very intimate relationship between human beings and God, since we literally interact with divine ideas on a daily basis. However, one of the problems with Spiegel’s overall view is that the nature of properties is rather murky. If properties just are ideas, then what distinguishes the finite minds from each other and God given that minds are ontologically prior to ideas? Arguably, Christian Idealism needs another ontological category besides minds and ideas.

Sam Welbaum closes the book with a chapter on Christian metaphysics and postmodernism (103-138). He first sketches the history of Western philosophy to explain postmodernism and its relationship to classical thought and modernity. Then he develops a view making use of a Heideggerian distinction between the ontic, external (material) world, and the ontological, the (experiential) world(s) of meaning. For the postmodernist, it is primarily the ontological world that is of interest. Human beings construct and inhabit these subjective worlds, and have limited access to the world as it is in itself. However, the Christian postmodernist believes that it is possible for us come more in line with the objective world created by God and with God’s correct interpretation of reality. The metaphysical specifics of God, human beings and the created world are unfortunately left a bit vague, and the other contributors are rightly critical of Welbaum. His voice is nevertheless important, since many people today, both inside and outside the church, treat metaphysics similarly. We must also bear in mind that Welbaum does not have an easy task, since postmodernism is not only broad, but also concerned more with experience, value and epistemology, than with traditional metaphysical questions. In conclusion, Four Views on Christian Metaphysics is an interesting introduction to metaphysics from a Christian perspective. The book is too short to be fully satisfying, both the individual contributions as well as the responses leave various issues unaddressed, but each chapter provides readers with a list of literature and can function as a doorway to more developed versions of the views presented in the book. Moreover, the book allows readers to quickly become acquainted with important areas of metaphysical discussion and to witness representatives of different philosophical schools (constructively) engaging each other’s views and arguments.