Lisanne Winslow is Professor of Biology at the University of Northwestern, St Paul. Having completed a PhD in systematic theology at the University of Aberdeen, the publication of A Trinitarian Theology of Nature is her first theological monograph. She wishes to develop a ‘theology of nature’, rather than a ‘natural theology’, recognisably following a trail laid out by Alastair McGrath. Her principal theological sources are Jonathan Edwards and Emil Brunner; her particular emphasis is on what it might mean for a theological account of nature, or the created world, to be Trinitarian in form.
It is useful, and refreshing, to read an engagement with Brunner such as this, after decades in which he has been, at best, under Karl Barth's shadow, and for some even under Barth's curse. Reading Brunner here, discussing natural science, and parallel treatments from Thomas Torrance, we are reminded that theological interest in science did not spring from nowhere in the latter half of the twentieth century (which attention elsewhere to figures such as Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke, and John Polkinghorne can sometimes be wont to suggest).
Winslow wishes to hold together two perspectives. The first is that nature reveals God (here following Brunner, and marking a distance Karl Barth), even to an extent that pushes further than other significant voices, including John Calvin and Thomas Aquinas. On the other hand, here more in line with Barth, she also wishes to stress divine freedom, such that the created world does not reveal God simply by being what it is, but rather by means of the revelatory witness of the Holy Spirit, such that this divine work must be at least thinkably distinct from any witness to God by creation simply as such.
The Trinitarian discussion revolves around the idea of the relation of all creatures to God as willing divine ideas into existence (the Father), as emanating ‘onto-types’ to creatures (a category somewhat related to Aristotelian ‘specific form’ or the logoi of creatures in Maximus the Confessor – all of which is related to the Son), and as revealing God in or through those creatures (the work of the Spirit). This Trinitarian dimension will be received with enthusiasm by many readers, although it would have to be said that it is not quite as original as one might suppose from this volume. The idea of a relation of all creatures to God as Trinity, perhaps even a likeness in all creatures to God as Trinity, was extensively explored in the high Middle Ages under the category of a Trinitarian vestigium or ‘trace’. Brief mention of Bonaventure, for instance, does not give the impression that he was the master of this theme that he was, for instance in the Breviloquium or the Commentary on the Sentences. Such Trinitarian perspectives then also belong within the yet broader discussion of God as efficient, exemplar, and final cause of all things, stretching back to the time of the early church. In this, and other ways, the substantial relevant corpus of writing on her topics, from before Edwards, is simply almost entirely passed over.
Stimulating as the book is, my concerns relate to this tendency not to treat ideas or texts in quite the detail that one might wish, textually or historically. A good deal of the discussion of Barth, for instance, comes through secondary texts. Statements can be sweeping, and not receive the supporting justification one might wish. We read, for instance, that ‘Traditionally, God's divine action… is attributed to the Father / Creator God with no mention of the involvement of the Son or the Spirit’. Perhaps that is true of some traditions, but it could not be said to be true of the broad historic sweep of Christian doctrine, which would also likely baulk at the suggestion, implicit here, that creation has been seen as the work of the First Person, in distinction from the Second and Third. As another example, we read twice that ‘a universe of total receivers of existence simply cannot exist’. What this means is not as clear as it might be and, although it is associated with Aquinas in both cases, neither page provides a citation.
Relation to other approaches is also lacking in the discussion of the metaphysics of divine action. None of the list of options provided on p. 54, for instance, seems fully to take into account what might be called the participatory or ‘non-contrastive’ vision associated, for instance, with the work of Kathryn Tanner or David Burrell. In the past few decades, this idea has enjoyed particular prominence – that God and creatures are not comparable sorts of agents – as a way of integrating transcendence with immanence, and of outwitting the suggestion that creatures are either cyphers or independent of God, either over-and-against God as to agency, or puppets. For many readers, that will be a significant gap.
Another chapter offers the worked example of the solubility of salt, approached in terms of ‘a theistic metaphysics and onto-typology’. I have to confess to not being able to make a great deal of this section. The fault may be a lack of theological inquisitiveness on my part: I have never thought that the dissolution of salt in water called for much by way of theological commentary.
As a book, the whole here may not outstrip the sum of its parts, and not all of those parts struck me as equally cogent. We are, however, certainly introduced to some worthwhile ideas, and to some excellent historical material, often overlooked, not least from Edwards.
