<i>Principles of Catholic Theology</i>, Book 2: <i>On the Rational Credibility of Christianity</i>. By Thomas Joseph White, OP. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2024. Pp. viii, 352. $24.95.

This book is a marvel—just the kind needed if theology is going to become relevant again in the broader culture. After a brief introduction laying out the aims of theological apologetics, White begins with a chapter responding to the widespread presumption in educated circles that humanity and life on earth are either ‘a mere cosmic accident’ or else that all we have are arbitrary guesses about the meaning of life. The first step to answering such viewpoints consists in retrieving metaphysical questions about whether the physical world is or can be all there is. Can the Big Bang or a multiverse, or some other set of physical entities, account for all that is? If matter is all there is, ‘[w]hat is the reason that such a complex set of beings exists in the first place? Why is there intelligible order within these primeval given realities that is properly basic?' (p. 18) These questions are not ones that can be answered by materialists, as White shows in detail. What might appear to be the simplest solution—there is no ‘God’, only matter—actually entails a set of contradictory and implausible claims. White also investigates versions of Buddhism and Hinduism, and he shows that the metaphysical claims that they make likewise entail grave problems. For a better path, White argues that we should start with the being, unity, truth, goodness, and beauty that we find in the ordinary things around us. He identifies principles that pertain to being, including the principles of non-contradiction, identity, causality, and sufficient reason (‘for every effect that stems from a cause, there must be a proportionate cause that serves as the source of and explanation for that effect’ [p. 52]). He similarly identifies principles that pertain to unity, such as form and matter, as well as substance and accident. He proceeds in the same way through each of the transcendentals. It is not possible here for me to survey White's extensive presentation of the transcendentals and the principles that emerge from the study of them, but suffice it to say that his work demonstrates an easy mastery of his subject. The upshot is that we discover how ‘metaphysics’ arises from basic questions and common-sense insights. He concludes this chapter by briefly defending the cogency of the claim that God exists, and then adding that not only is it reasonable to think that God would reveal himself, but also the human mind is capable of receiving such revelation. True revelation cannot be contradictory to what the human mind can know from other sources, although it can be expected to exceed (and to illuminate) mere human knowledge. Here he takes up other claimants to divine revelation such as Islam. As he shows, Islam faces an internal contradiction owing to its claim that the Qur'an is inerrant. With respect to Catholicism, he very briefly notes various signs of credibility—such as the saints—along with counter-signs. Chapter 2 offers seven extensive arguments for the existence of God, drawn from Thomas Aquinas. White once more displays an extraordinary ability to explain such arguments in relatively easy language, and with rigorous thoroughness. His seventh argument for God's existence hinges upon the immateriality of human intellection—an argument that could be expanded beyond what White is able to do in a short space, though White's emphasis on the self-reflexivity of the intellect and the will is valuable. He demonstrates that purely material powers are capable of such self-reflexivity. As he shows, natural science itself depends upon metaphysical principles. He also provides a spiritual diagnosis of atheism, and its simultaneous exaltation and degradation of the human person. In his third chapter, White examines the biblical testimony and the writings of the Church Fathers with the goal of assessing the cogency of faith in the Trinity. Among his most important insights in this chapter is the centrality of knowing God for both the Old and New Testaments. Divine revelation reveals God without taking away his incomprehensibility or hiddenness. White notes that the God of Israel is understood in the Old Testament to be the creator of all, and thus his self-revelation to the particular people of Israel always has a universal significance. In Jesus Christ, ‘the knowledge of the God of Israel is made manifest to all the nations’ (p. 193). White directs attention to the eschatological developments in late Second Temple Judaism and the eschatological claims of the New Testament, preeminently the resurrection of Jesus. Focusing on the New Testament, White sets forth ‘the theological foundations for belief in the Trinity as conveyed by Jesus himself as he is depicted historically in the primal apostolic reports of the Church’ (p. 201). The result is a nice example of a theologian conversant with historical-critical biblical scholarship handling the biblical texts. White portrays Jesus inaugurating the kingdom, extending the covenant to all nations, and identifying himself with the God of Israel. He shows that, according to the New Testament, after Jesus's resurrection his pre-existent sonship and status as the divine creator became known; and he describes the New Testament's references to the divine Word, Wisdom, and Image. On the basis of various New Testament texts, he argues for the divinity and distinct personal identity and agency of the Spirit, who comes forth from the Father and the Word as Love. White then tracks these themes in the writings of the Church Fathers, persuasively defending the post-biblical doctrinal developments, as well as defending the cogency of the psychological analogy for the Trinity. Again, I do not have space to do justice to White's argumentation, but it includes a subtle handling of the earliest Fathers and the point that certain positions of Origen, by leading to inadequate solutions, led eventually to the Nicene teaching. Athanasius, the Cappadocians, and Augustine receive special attention, and White demonstrates that they are hardly as far apart as some have supposed. Athanasius emphasises the analogy from thought or the mind (the Logos) and the Cappadocians are the source for the key insight that relations of origin distinguish the divine persons. Augustine takes up and further develops these trinitarian insights. The fourth and final chapter addresses how ‘the mystery of the Trinity cast[s] light on the mystery of what it is to be human, made in the image of God’ (p. 263). White begins with the natural desire to see God—to ‘see’ or know God in his very essence, as he is. This is not just a contemplative desire for philosophical knowledge of the truth about God. It is desire for ‘immediate’ knowledge of God, far beyond what any philosophical knowledge could attain. White affirms that, ‘we have a natural desire to see God in himself and… we do not have the natural power in and from ourselves to achieve this aim’ (p. 273). By contrast, we do not have a natural desire to commune with the Trinity; this requires faith, hope, and love. We cannot know that God is Trinity without divine revelation. God's grace elevates our mind to desire the vision of the Trinity. This vision fulfils our natural desire to see God, even while it elevates this natural desire. White portrays the saints as exemplars of human nature on the path to beatitude, rooted in contemplation and love of the Trinity. Since human knowing and loving constitutes an image of God, White remarks that ‘[t]he human being is a little Trinity’, created for the happiness of sharing in the Trinity's life in communion with others (p. 289). This realisation has evident political consequences inasmuch as it means that each human life is of inestimable dignity (thus, not to be instrumentalised as a means to an end) and inasmuch as it should prevent us from absolutising the state. The purpose of the Church is to foster union with the Trinity, not to satisfy human political needs and ambitions. Nevertheless, the Church, as the inaugurated kingdom (existing on earth and even more fully in ‘heaven’, in the glorified flesh of Jesus and Mary around whom the blessed are gathered), constitutes ‘a collective common good already in act, toward which this whole universe is directed and in which the visible creation already participates’ (p. 295). This common good is the ‘spiritual marriage’ of the triune God and his creation (p. 296). The final pages of the work are a ‘coda’ comparing Aquinas and Friedrich Nietzsche on truth and moral authenticity, showing that Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical and radically perspectivalist thought is self-contradictory in its exaltation of the ‘Dionysian’ will as the highest value. Furthermore, Nietzsche's programme excludes truth, love, and friendship. Despite its claims to be life-giving, it extinguishes human flourishing—unleashing instead ‘a neo-pagan human vengeance’ that ‘creates not a culture of unity in communion’ but ‘systemic rivalry’ and ‘the incessant clash of political wills to power’ (p. 332). In my estimation, White has written a masterwork. Complementing and advancing the project of his previous books, this book deserves the widest possible academic readership. It will be joyfully received wherever serious theology is valued.