The past twenty-five years have reflected a renewed interest in myriad matters of religious studies, and a recent and burgeoning area within this field is philosophical theology. While oftentimes used as a synonym for ‘philosophy of religion’, philosophical theology is also demarcated by its own domain of study, consisting of topics particularly germane to theology per se. This is the way in which Stephen Davis uses the term in his recent book on the subject, Christian Philosophical Theology. Davis is a Christian philosopher from the Reformed tradition, and he makes clear straightaway that while the book is a Christian work, his aim is to provide and defend a coherent worldview which reflects the general centre of Christian faith and avoids private or denominational positions. He quotes extensively from scripture and from various Christian theologians throughout the centuries, and while many of the arguments in the book are based on his previous works, there is also much new material as well. Overall, the work is tightly argued and presents a unified, coherent structure throughout.

The book is divided into four parts, with each one centring on fundamental questions. Part 1 focuses on the question ‘Why believe in God?’, and a significant facet of this question for the Christian is why anyone would doubt the existence of God. If Christianity is true, and if God has revealed Himself to humankind as the Bible claims, then everyone should know that God exists. But clearly this is not the case. Why might this be? Davis provides an answer by first distinguishing between different senses of the word know – a weak sense and a strong sense. On the strong sense, ‘A knows p’ entails ‘A believes p’, whereas on the weak sense knowing p does not entail believing p, at least consciously. Thus, it could be that a person (an atheist, say) knows that God exists in the weak but not the strong sense. In this case, he argues, the person could still be culpable for not knowing that God exists in the strong sense. The person has perhaps closed her spiritual eyes, and thus is in an inferior epistemic position. Nonetheless, such a person is morally responsible for this condition.

So how does one come to know that God exists in the strong sense? While Davis grants that there is a place for natural theology (and he provides an argument for God's existence in chapter 2), it is primarily by having the ‘blinkers’ removed from one's eyes – blinkers due to human pride – and by the illumination that comes from the ‘inward testimony of the Holy Spirit’ (17). The certainty that derives from this testimony is not due primarily to the weighing of evidence or intellectual inference. Rather, it is through private, direct intuition of the truth of scripture and the Christian message which God provides. Furthermore, he argues, as long as the message has not been refuted or rendered improbable, it is rational for those who have had this private experience to believe it to be true. Natural theology can play a role, however, by offering rebuttals when the message is challenged by contrary evidence.

By acknowledging a beneficial role for natural theology, Davis hopes to bridge a gap between natural theologians and Reformed epistemologists who eschew natural theology. I doubt, however, that many in either camp would agree that he has bridged the gap. For natural theologians generally believe that the Holy Spirit plays an essential role in one's coming to faith, and Reformed epistemologists – at least the ones with whom I am familiar – generally agree that natural theology can be beneficially utilized in supplying rebuttals to sceptical attacks on the faith.

In the next chapter, Davis offers a version of the cosmological argument, and one might think that perhaps it is here that a rapprochement between natural theologians and Reformed epistemologists can be attained. But such is probably not the case. For while he offers a fairly persuasive version of the cosmological argument and concludes that it is rational to believe in God given its force, he also grants that one of its premises (a form of the principle of sufficient reason), can also be rationally denied. Thus, the believer and unbeliever are at loggerheads. Reformed epistemologists may be content with this conclusion, but natural theologians typically would not.

In chapter 3 he develops a view of God's sovereignty. This is rich material as he weaves together the questions ‘What is God like?’, ‘How is God related to creation?’, and ‘How is God revealed?’. Chapter 4 develops an argument for a version of social Trinitarianism which he dubs perichoretic monotheism – a position rooted in historical Trinitarian dogma – and defends it against various criticisms.

In Part 2, the driving question of the section is ‘Why believe in Jesus?’. The longest section in the book, it is yet narrower in scope than the first as it hones in on important themes in Christology, including questions relevant to the historical Jesus (e.g. ‘Who was he?’; ‘How did he view himself and his mission?’; ‘Why was he crucified?’; and so forth), Jesus' resurrection, and the Incarnation. Davis values the role of the higher-critical method, and he grants that there are different Christological emphases in various places in the New Testament. But he is suspicious of the more radical conclusions reached by some historical-critical scholars who find within its pages inconsistent Christologies, and in chapter 6 he offers several reasons for his concern. The biblical evidence demonstrates, he argues, that there need not be ‘competing and mutually inconsistent interpretations of Jesus’, and that ‘a “New Testament picture of Jesus” does exist’ (102).

In chapter 7 Davis examines the nature and meaning of the resurrection of Jesus. In this work he does not attempt to argue that God raised Jesus from the dead (although he has so argued elsewhere), but he does consider the claim that Jesus was bodily raised from the dead and notes that ‘once we understand the implications of bodily transformation, we have a way of interpreting and unifying the quite disparate New Testament accounts of the resurrection’ (128). After examining four possible views of the resurrection held by contemporary Christians (bodily resuscitation, bodily transformation, spiritual resurrection, and reductive resurrection theories), he concludes that the most sensible view is the traditional doctrine that Jesus was bodily raised.

Besides belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, a second crucial aspect of Christian faith, he insists, is the claim that people encountered Jesus in bodily form after the resurrection – a claim he considers in chapter 8. He first argues that the physical detail in the biblical accounts of the appearances would lead the natural, pre-critical reader to take them as being normal visual experiences. Since many contemporary scholars instead take the appearances to be some sort of vision, utilizing historical-critical grounds he responds to six arguments supporting this view. While the belief that the risen Jesus was a physical body in space and time – one which could have been photographed or televised – may seem ‘uncouth or outré’ (143), Davis nevertheless maintains that the evidence warrants believing that the resurrection appearances should be taken as ordinary visual appearances. He offers further evidence for the traditional view from the interpretation of the events by the early Church Fathers as well as from the theological significance of the event.

Most people do not doubt that Jesus was human, but that he was ‘truly divine’ is another matter. In the next chapter Davis offers his version of the mad, bad, or God (MBG) argument, first propounded by C. S. Lewis, for the belief that Jesus was (is) divine. Premiss 1 – that Jesus claimed, either explicitly or implicitly, to be divine – is the crux of the argument, and the one most challenged by critics. Davis examines this premiss, as well as the others, and argues that MBG is both valid and sound. While he does not hold that the argument ‘establishes the irrationality of unbelief in the incarnation of Jesus’ (170), he does believe that it accomplishes the proper goal of demonstrating the rational belief in Jesus' incarnation.

If it is the case that Jesus was the incarnate Son of God – and thus both truly human and truly divine – then how does this work? Chapter 10 is an attempt to answer this question. Specifically, Davis presents a kenotic version of the Incarnation and argues that it is within the bounds of orthodoxy (he defines orthodoxy this way: ‘t is orthodox’ means roughly ‘t is acceptable for belief by the people of God’ (173)) and that it affirms a ‘high Christology’ – i.e. one that is consistent with the decrees of Nicea and Chalcedon.

Incarnational conundrums began as early theologians reflected on the nature of the doctrine. How could one being be both truly God and truly man? God is omniscient, omnipresent, incorporeal, etc. Human beings don't have such properties. Thus arose attempts by Nestorius, Appollinarius, Arius, and others to make sense of the doctrine. All these attempts were rejected by the Orthodox Church, however, and the council at Chalcedon was instigated in an attempt to shed light on the issue.

The kenotic Christological theory is one recent attempt to make sense of the Incarnation while keeping within the bounds of orthodoxy, and it involves Jesus' ‘laying aside’, or ‘giving up’, or ‘emptying himself’ of certain divine properties out of love and for the sake of redemption (cf. Philippians 2.6–11). This is contrasted with the classical theory in which no divine properties were given up by the incarnate Jesus, but rather the Logos (the pre-incarnate Son of God) took on a new, human condition at the Incarnation. While kenotic ideas have a long history, kenotic theories were first developed in the nineteenth century and a resurgence of interest in them has emerged in the last several decades. Thus Davis is not alone as a recent defender of the theory.

There are three parts to his argument: (1) that it is allowed by scripture; (2) that it is consistent with the great Christological creeds; and (3) that it can be defended against criticisms of its being unorthodox. One serious objection to the kenotic view in general, and it applies to Davis's version as well, is that it seems to entail that God does not necessarily have certain properties which are generally thought to be necessarily had by God – properties such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence, for example. But if these properties are not necessary for divinity, one wonders what properties are necessary. Davis responds – using a suggestion by Thomas Morris (no defender of the kenotic theory) – by making a distinction between being human and being merely human, and between being divine and being divine simpliciter (i.e. being divine without also being human). With these distinctions in mind, Davis makes the following point:

Thus, while it is not necessary that God have the property of omniscience, perhaps it is necessary that God have a more complex property such as being omniscient-unless-freely-and-temporarily-choosing-to-be-otherwise. And so too with the other divine properties. But as Morris and others have argued, this seems quite an ad hoc move – a desperate hypothesis developed to save the theory from incoherence. Davis does not directly respond to this objection (although he does insightfully respond to the objection that the Son of God could have both the property of being able to die and the property of not being able to die), perhaps not taking it to be terribly problematic. Nonetheless, properties such as omniscience seem to be ‘ungiveupable’ by God, and more needs to be said in response to this objection than Davis provides.

Part 3 deals with the topics of sin and redemption, and the thematic question is ‘How are we saved?’ Davis first contrasts the two prominent methods of redemption, karma and grace, in chapter 11. After noting crucial points of agreement between them, he describes the two systems and offers five criticisms of each. He concludes the chapter with karma being subject to ‘telling objections’ and grace winning out. How redemption is accomplished, then, is through the atoning work of Christ, and in the next chapter he argues for the claim that atonement of some sort is necessary for redemption. He also examines the thorny concept of hell and argues that is it is not incompatible with the love of God.

Chapters 13 and 14 deal with bodily redemption and the resurrection of the dead, respectively. In chapter 13 Davis discusses faith, justification by faith, and the redemption of embodied persons, and argues that Christian redemption is the divine solution to the two fundamental problems of guilt and death. ‘Together, forgiveness and resurrection make possible our eternal life in the presence of God’ (239), he concludes, and this leads to the last step in redemption – resurrection. In the next chapter, then, he notes that resurrection comes in two stages: the resurrection of Christ (which was already addressed in chapters 7 and 8), and the general resurrection – which he explains and defends. While he formerly held to a materialist view of the human person, he now rejects that position and does not discuss it here. Rather, he defends a ‘temporary disembodiment’ view in which he argues that, while not the only viable option for Christians, is a plausible view consisting of three main aspects: (1) after death the soul exists for a time; (2) at the time of the parousia the body will be raised from the ground and reunited with the soul; and (3) the body will then be transformed into a ‘glorified body’ (243).

Finally Part 4, the shortest section in the book, focuses on theological method and asks the question ‘How to do theology?’. First, Davis tackles the relationship between scripture and tradition in chapter 15. He notes that the significance of tradition in Roman Catholicism is to be commended, and he grants that there are difficulties with the way the Protestant notion of ‘Scripture alone’ is often interpreted. Nevertheless, he proposes an understanding of the principle which he believes is both reasonable and true: ‘Scripture is our source of religious truth above all other sources, our norm or guide to religious truth above all other norms or guides’ (274).

He then concludes the book with an examination of the claim that the Bible is true. Three desiderata for a theory of ‘the Bible is true’ are: (1) it must take note of the status of human beings as ‘verbivores’ (a need for words, especially from God); (2) it must explain why the Bible is unique; and (3) it must explain why Christians take the Bible to be normative and authoritative. By being ‘true’ Davis means that ‘our attitude towards the Bible is such that we believe what it says, we trust it, we lay ourselves open to it. We allow our noetic structures and beliefs to be influenced by it […]. We consider it normative […]. We place ourselves under its theological authority’ (286–287). Without committing to any particular theory of biblical inspiration, he affirms the belief that the Bible is ‘God speaking to us’; indeed, he claims, it is this belief which underlies the desiderata of the theory. This view of the Bible as true also has practical import, for ‘We read the Scriptures expecting them to give us light and life’ (298).

All in all, this book is a rarity among recent works in theology. It is rigorously argued yet surprisingly accessible, fresh and profoundly insightful, and orthodox yet irenic in spirit. I believe the careful reader who works or even dabbles in the field, while perhaps not agreeing with all of Davis's presuppositions or conclusions, will take away more than a few theological and philosophical gems. I heartily recommend it.