God's Knowledge of the World: Medieval Theories of Divine Ideas from Bonaventure to Ockham by Carl A. Vater (review)

Reviewed by: God's Knowledge of the World: Medieval Theories of Divine Ideas from Bonaventure to Ockham by Carl A. Vater Paul J. DeHart God's Knowledge of the World: Medieval Theories of Divine Ideas from Bonaventure to Ockham. By Carl A. Vater. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2022. Pp. ix- 336. 75. 00 (hard). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3554-7. The divine ideas are the intentional patterns posited within the creator's mind in accord with which all that is created, or that is creatable, is perfectly known and (if divinely willed) infallibly produced. Scholastic theology in the high Middle Ages, taking up a long tradition grounded in Christian Platonism, elaborated detailed theories concerning the ideas; a succession of writers aimed thereby to secure God's perfect knowledge of the multitude of realities that are not God (so that God may be said to create intelligently and freely), but always in such a way that the radical simplicity of God's essence and act of understanding was in no way vitiated. Over a period of about seventy-five years major thinkers developed the discourse of the divine ideas to a high pitch of sophistication; for readers seeking a sure-footed guide through the complex positions developed, with their broad similarities and crucial differences, Carl Vater has written a most valuable book. God's Knowledge of the World, a revised version of the author's 2017 Catholic University of America doctoral dissertation, is ambitious in its level of detail and in the depth of its engagement with the primary sources. Readers will appreciate the extensive footnotes, which in many cases provide quotations from the original Latin, an especially helpful feature given that the sources may not all be readily at hand. But what particularly marks Vater's approach is the careful delineation of the seventy-five-year Scholastic discussion of ideas as a single coherent chain of disputes, distributed among a set of five logically distinct positions. Vater argues that an initially developed consensus concerning what a divine idea is and how it relates to God's knowledge of the world came to be challenged on several fronts. This resulted in a sequence of variations that unfolded as each thinker or group of thinkers suggested weaknesses in the prior model (s) and attempted to address them. In the brief introductory chapter the author summarizes the key traditional resources taken up in the discussion of ideas, dwelling particularly on Averroes because "his theory of divine knowledge" was "the proximate cause of the explosion of literature on divine ideas" (3). He also specifies that his discussions of each theory or figure will fall into two broad areas of concern: first, the status of divine ideas (what are they, are they speculative or practical, how many are they, what kind of existence do they have in God, etc. ) ; second, the scope of divine ideas (of which created things can God be said to have an idea). He ends by offering a useful outline of the discussion. Vater divides his account into five parts, each devoted to one of the five theories of ideas that emerged roughly between 1250 and 1325. Part 1 (three chapters devoted to Bonaventure, Aquinas, and Henry of Ghent) expounds versions of the Imitability Theory: ideas as secondary objects of God's essential self-knowledge. Part 2 is a chapter on the Infinite Intellect Theory (mainly Peter End Page 364 John Olivi): ideas as simply identical with the infinite act of divine understanding. Part 3 is a chapter on James of Viterbo's Obiectum Cognitum Theory: ideas as the objects cognized by God as effects of his essence as cause. Part 4 (three chapters on Richard of Mediavilla, Duns Scotus, and early Thomists and Scotists) explains the Creatura Intellecta Theory: God knows creatures immediately, with the ideas being the relations of imitability consequently understood. Part 5, finally, in two chapters on Auriol and Ockham, lays out related versions of the radically deflationary Nominalist Theory: God's direct knowledge and absolute simplicity obviate the ideas, at least in any ontologically robust sense. The book concludes with a final chapter devoted mostly to a fine and. . .