Paul DafyddJones, <i>Patience—A Theological Exploration: Part One, From Creation to Christ</i>. London: T&amp;T Clark, 2022, 632pp. $46.95

In Part One of Patience—A Theological Exploration, Paul Dafydd Jones revives the long-neglected attribute of patience both as a divine perfection and as a (qualified) human virtue. Envisioned as the first of a two-part series, this volume reintroduces the topic of patience, develops historical resources for thinking about it in both divine and human terms, and puts forward the first elements of a constructive proposal—which will not be fully realized until the next volume. Overall, Jones aims to make the case that patience has been and should be a central theological topic, and that its application has unrealized theological benefits. Patience is a deliberately eclectic work. It summons resources from many historical sources and applies those resources in conversation with an equally wide range of contemporary conversation partners. This potpourri approach gives the work a kind of winsomely messy breadth. For example, it can summon Tertullian and Julian of Norwich together just as easily as it can cite Reformed Scholastics alongside process theologians. There is potential for hybrid vigor in this energizing swirl of figures from the more or less distant past. What keeps the flow of ideas all part of the same current of thought is the book's post-Barthian starting point and ethos. Indeed, one might characterize the book's central wager to be that patience as a divine attribute (and humans' correspondence to that attribute) might be fruitfully explicated if taken in a rather straightforwardly realistic sense. The Introduction first sets out the terms of the work as a whole, outlines the content, and undertakes a series of word studies of the biblical material. This content is placed between reflections on method and ends with both an invitation to ‘think adventurously’ and a warning that this book moves slowly (p. 62), itself requiring of the reader the patience it recommends. Chapter 1 engages a range of historical figures with respect to patience. Tertullian, Cyprian, and Julian or Norwich are our central protagonists. Augustine and Aquinas represent missed opportunities. Throughout we see the various ways that patience has been applied (or not) to God and human agents. This is no bare recitation—Jones' normative work is well underway. Chapter 2 takes off with the Reformers. Somewhat out of order, it begins with Calvin before moving to Luther, Karlstadt, and Sattler. Although each Reformer represents promises and perils in their own way, this chapter is especially themed around the patience/impatience dichotomy with ‘divine patience setting the terms for thinking about human patience’ (p. 163). Chapter 3 takes us into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It begins with an engagement with Barth and proceeds from there to engage a wide range of more recent theological luminaries writing on patience in both a divine and human mode. This chapter not only draws out positive theological resources but also attends to the limits and problems of patience as a ‘burdened virtue’ (p. 267). The second part of the volume begins the constructive work of this project in Chapter 4 on God the Creator. This chapter treats of God's creative work as itself an exercise in patience, thus linking patience with divine cooperation by way of the endowing of human (and other creaturely) agency as an act of God ‘letting be’ and ‘letting go’ (p. 317). This chapter ends with a reflection on the environmental crisis. Chapters 5 and 6 continue Jones' constructive proposal in their collective focus on God the Provider. These chapters think through themes of how God's ‘letting be’ and ‘letting go’ relate to issues of sin and theodicy, to the suffering of God in the economy of salvation, and God's patient providential waiting, conducive to his saving work. Finally, the Epilogue to this volume recapitulates the work, makes promises for the future volume, and says something about the ways Parts One and Two will connect. This is a crucial inclusion as Part One includes many pregnant discussions not yet developed fulsomely. For example, the Christological content is yet to be fully set forth. For this and more, Jones asks us to be patient. Recalling that this is only Part One of a two-part work, a few critical questions remained for me at the end. The first is whether patience is, in the final analysis, a virtue (or perfection). It seemed sometimes that patience itself required modification to avoid excess or deficiency, and at other times impatience was treated as a perfection. Since the very test of a virtue or perfection is whether it is the sort of thing that is always good to be or have, the fact that patience was sometimes not so left me perplexed as to both its status and the importance of its role. The second question I was left with is whether the various ideas summoned in favor of Jones' constructive proposal cohere and, if not, what difference does that make for how they can be combined? For example, how does one make Whitehead and Calvin play well together without serious mental gymnastics? I wonder whether Jones might simply have to make hard choices going forward. Finally, I wondered at key points throughout this work whether the paths not taken (whether figures or ideas) were treated with sufficient rigor. That is not the same as wondering whether such figures or ideas were treated charitably. Rather, what I mean is that the great breadth of this work forced it to remain at a high altitude, not getting into the serious details of, for example, the concept of causality—a concept this work repeatedly foreswears. I wonder whether this book might well have traded some of its dispersed and ad hoc reflections for deeper and more concentrated ones, at least at the most critical junctures. Given all of this, who is this book for? On the one hand, it is in some ways, rather straightforwardly, traditional. It includes scriptural exegesis, the history of doctrine, proceeds by loci, at points speaks well of substitutionary atonement as an outpouring of divine wrath on the person of Christ, and more. On the other hand, it is largely revisionary in its content and takes authorities and conversation partners of such different views that it is not always obvious how they fit with each other, let alone with the thinkers of prior or later centuries. All told, this book takes up an important topic of biblical provenance and theological importance with a sense of the almost overflowing potential that awaits one who is willing to relax and indulge a little. For patient readers looking to savor the creative possibilities of this theological fusion cuisine, Patience will provide ample pleasure and food for thought.