Contemplating God with the Great Tradition

Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism

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Pub Date 20 Apr 2021 | Archive Date 20 Jun 2021

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Description

Southwestern Journal of Theology 2021 Book Award (Theological Studies)

2021 Book Award, The Gospel Coalition (Honorable Mention, Academic Theology)

Following his well-received Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition, Craig Carter presents the biblical and theological foundations of trinitarian classical theism. Carter, a leading Christian theologian known for his provocative defenses of classical approaches to doctrine, critiques the recent trend toward modifying or rejecting classical theism in favor of modern "relational" understandings of God. The book includes a short history of trinitarian theology from its patristic origins to the modern period, and a concluding appendix provides a brief summary of classical trinitarian theology. Foreword by Carl R. Trueman.
Southwestern Journal of Theology 2021 Book Award (Theological Studies)

2021 Book Award, The Gospel Coalition (Honorable Mention, Academic Theology)

Following his well-received Interpreting Scripture...

Advance Praise

“Carter shows that, far from putting God in a tidy box, the orthodox doctrine of God smashes our idolatrous tendencies and alerts us contemplatively to a better way found in Holy Scripture and prized in the Augustinian, Thomist, and Reformed traditions. Over against the mythologies of modern scientific study (even in its purportedly evangelical forms), Carter draws our gaze upward to the mysteries of the faith, outward to learn from the communion of saints, and forward to the never-ceasing call to contemplative exegesis of God’s Word. Here evangelical and Reformed theological practice receives a needed recalibration.”—Michael Allen, John Dyer Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando, Florida 

“Written clearly and engagingly, this book is a clarion call for evangelical Protestants to reject modern metaphysics and return to Nicene metaphysics. Carter sees the rise of what he calls ‘relational theism’ as a move, both conscious and unconscious, that surrenders God’s transcendence in order to emphasize his activity in history. Through a detailed study of Isaiah 40–48, the author shows that transcendence, with its necessary corollaries of immutability and impassibility, is not a creation of the philosophers but a profoundly biblical idea, one that we surrender at our peril.”—John N. Oswalt, visiting distinguished professor of Old Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary 

“Craig Carter makes another important contribution to the theological interpretation of Scripture, upholding Nicene trinitarian classical theism against modern metaphysical assumptions. I commend his defense of responsible exegesis, showing how the inspired human authors, and therefore the divine author of Scripture, exercised polemical-corrective theology in their writing by engaging with ancient Near Eastern mythology and Greco-Roman metaphysics and revealing a transcendent, sovereign, unique, and personal God.”—Aimee Byrd, author of Recovering from Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Theological Fitness 

“We have lots to learn from Carter’s wonderful description and celebration of the biblical and theological merits of trinitarian classical theism. Carter writes with eloquence and humility, leading the reader toward an astonished inhabitation of the universal church’s confession of the transcendent and sovereign Lord. Few books lead one to worship as overtly as Carter’s, calling us to abandon shallow relational portraits of God in favor of delighting in the extraordinary grandeur of God.”—Christopher Holmes, associate professor of systematic theology, head of the theology programme, School of Arts, University of Otago 

“For decades evangelicals have been absorbing relational theism and have assumed that it is consistent with the biblical witness. Craig Carter exposes this faulty assumption, revealing social trinitarianism’s radical inconsistency with Scripture’s own presentation of the triune God. Thankfully, Carter also knows the antidote and summons us back to classical Christianity. Only by taking ressourcement seriously and sitting with hermeneutical humility at the feet of the Great Tradition can we escape the captivity of modern manipulations of the Trinity.”—Matthew Barrett, associate professor of Christian theology, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary; author of Simply Trinity 

“With an insider’s knowledge of modern ‘relational theism,’ Carter is able to bring into sharp relief the choice that the church faces in its doctrine of God, a choice as vital as the one it faced in the fourth century. Will it return to trinitarian classical theism, or will it collapse God into the world and consign itself to the degenerative oblivion faced by pagan modernity and the liberal theological project that piggybacks upon it? Carter blends exegesis with sweeping cultural analysis to provide by both instruction and example an inspiring vision of the Christian doctrine of God as it should be done.”—Garry J. Williams, director of the Pastors’ Academy at London Seminary 

“By revisiting the doctrines behind classical theism—Nicene orthodoxy—Carter takes readers on a journey to the past on a path that leads to the future. We have much to learn from the Nicene fathers: the exegesis, theology, and metaphysics that inform their doctrine of God is biblical and true. For those who love classical theism, this book serves as a welcome enchiridion; for those who are drawn to revisionary doctrines of God, this book serves as a worthy dialogue partner; and for anyone who wants to know the God of Scripture, this book is must reading.”—J. V. Fesko, professor of systematic and historical theology, Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, Mississippi

“Carter shows that, far from putting God in a tidy box, the orthodox doctrine of God smashes our idolatrous tendencies and alerts us contemplatively to a better way found in Holy Scripture and...


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EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781540963307
PRICE US$32.99 (USD)
PAGES 352

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Featured Reviews

Craig Carter has written a well-researched, exegetically informed monograph on classical theism in its historical expression and its modern deterioration. The thesis is clear - without the classical theism taught in Scripture and the Early Church, we are bound to drift towards mythology or pantheism. Carter’s organization is a bit scattered at times, but the clear outline of definition followed by exegesis and contemplation followed by a historical exploration builds a solid foundation for his critique of 19th and 20th century departures from classical theism towards a metaphysic that is substantially the same as the Ancient Near East. Carter’s careful exegesis of Isaiah 40-48 seems out of place but is actually critical to demonstrating the corrective-polemic of Scripture, especially since this is the corrective-polemic he argues is embodied in the Early Church’s approach to disputes on the nature of God. Carter’s monograph is philosophically, exegetically, and historically thought provoking while demonstrating a clear pattern of doxology flowing out of theological reflection.

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In his new book, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition, Craig A. Carter recounts a significantly different experience with Biblical education than my own. In his account, he was taught to look down on the Father’s Trinitarian theology as inadequate and, perhaps, a capitulation to the philosophical trends of their day. However, when he began to read the Fathers for himself, he encountered something radically different. Thus, he came to appreciate not only the Fathers’ method and theology but also the philosophical framework which they worked out in critical interaction with the best philosophy of their day. In my experience, I was taught what Craig calls “Trinitarian Classical Theism” (TCT) with its attendant view of the Trinity and came to embrace “Christian Platonism” as I studied Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine in my undergraduate and graduate education. However, as I began to grapple with the questions driving Plato and Aristotle, I began to question their conclusions seriously; ironically, I found in Augustine a subtle but dramatic departure from Platonism. These seeds of philosophical inquiry were nurtured through the works of John Frame and Cornelius Van Til, among others. Once I followed Frame and Van Til in abandoning the Platonic epistemology, I soon realized that this entailed an abandonment of the Platonic metaphysic. I did not, however, default to “pantheistic materialism” that Carter decries throughout Contemplating God. Instead, I found myself embracing an equally—if not more—supernaturalistic metaphysic than Platonism. I was pleased to receive a copy of Contemplating God with the Great Tradition from Baker books for an opportunity to wrestle further with Patristic theology and its contemporary significance.

There were many good and commendable things in Contemplating God. I wholeheartedly agree with Carter’s sustained attack on methodological naturalism, especially in Biblical studies, and with his argument that much contemporary theology is uncritically indebted to naturalist and materialist metaphysics. There are also many of his twenty-five theses of “Trinitarian Classical Theism” that I would wholeheartedly accept, or with only minor clarification. Carter also rightly identifies the stakes involved: we cannot reject the metaphysics of the Fathers without rethinking the way they expressed their theology or even specific theological claims they make. However, the good things that Contemplating God argues are outweighed by its substantial problems.

Carter writes to show the “congruence between the classical Nicene doctrine of God and the teaching of the Holy Scripture” (loc 1008). He intends to argue that the Fathers were “not reading Greek metaphysics into the Bible but rather were correcting Greek metaphysics using biblical theology” (loc 1029). When he says Trinitarian Classical Theism is Biblical, he means that it is either explicitly stated in Scripture or logically deduced therefrom, as the Westminster Confession has it (loc 1179). Something that is only compatible with Scripture may be believed but cannot be held up as a standard of orthodoxy. To argue this, he builds on his earlier volume Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition. His method works with two levels of exegesis, following the “classical method of doing theology by contemplating the results of exegesis and seeking to formulate doctrines that can guide us in a deeper ‘second exegesis,’ in which we try to listen to God’s voice speaking to us through the text” (loc 5867). Though he seems to be writing for “conservative” Evangelicals who have supposedly abandoned “Trinitarian Classical Theism” (TCT), his only dialogue partners (excepting a brief criticism of Rob Lister) are modernist theologians who have sought to radically reshape the Christian doctrine of God (such as Bultmann, Pannenberg, social Trinitarians, process theologians and open theists). He thus never deals with the issues which contemporary, Bible-believing Evangelical theologians find problematic with TCT. Instead, he repeatedly suggests that anyone who disagrees with his position is a naïve, ignorant idiot. For example, “ignorance that might be excusable in a layperson is often found among pastors and theologians, who just do not know how the classical tradition sees the relationship between the simple, perfect, eternal, immutable God and the God of the Bible, who speaks and acts in history” (loc. 1094). Or, “the decline in the study of Greek philosophy by theologians also renders them unable to comprehend what the fourth-century debates were all about” (loc 668). Finally, “Many contemporary evangelical theologians are trying to play the game called the liberal project without understanding what game they are playing or what its rules actually are” (loc 6410). This gets the fundamental problem with Carter’s argument: he draws a false disjunction where one must either be a TCT proponent or a modernist, adopting polytheistic and pantheistic materialism. For example, “Biblical exegetes must be theologians, not secular historians, and they must begin with the classical orthodoxy of the church, because the only alternative is to begin from a set of presuppositions that is hostile to the Bible itself” (loc 1000). The only options, apparently, are either Classical Theism or the Hellenization thesis, namely, that the Fathers’ uncritically accommodated the Bible to Greek philosophy (e.g. loc 240, 1066-1089, 5919). Carter does not entertain the idea that some of us who disagree at points with the Fathers have read them, understood them, appreciated them, and have disagreed with them on Biblical and philosophical grounds, arriving a position that is not “half-baked” (loc 905) but well-reasoned.

To argue his position, Carter engages in a three-part argument. In Part 1, he addressed the definitional issue, first describing the contrast between “Classical Orthodoxy” and “Relational Theism” (Chapter 1) and then describing TCT (Chapter 2), focusing on 25 theses (read them here). Then, in Part 2, Carter argues that TCT has “biblical roots.” After defending theological interpretation in Chapter 3, Carter then argues Isaiah 40-48 presents God as “the Transcendent Creator” (Chapter 4), the “Lord of History” (Chapter 5), and Monotheism or God’s uniqueness (Chapter 6). Finally, in Part 3, Carter seeks to demonstrate that TCT is found in history and is Biblically based. In Chapter 7, he unpacks the thinking of various fathers. In Chapter 8, he argues at length that creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) is found earlier in the tradition and rightly deduced from the Bible. Finally, in Chapter 9, he concludes that the God of TCT is the God of the Bible. The epilogue concludes, “Why the Church Does Not Change Its Mind.” The title of the epilogue implies what may be the biggest problem in the book. Throughout Contemplating God, Carter makes it clear that TCT is the only orthodoxy and that it is required to even speak about God rightly. However, he also makes clear that it is incredibly difficult to understand, such that most theologians and pastors today—let alone the average layperson—cannot understand it (loc 1000, 1080, 1094, 6417, 6467). In this way, he sets theology and right knowledge of God far beyond the grasp of most Christians today or throughout history. By suggesting that any other position is sub-Christian, outside of the “Great Tradition,” or outside of what the “church” has believed, Carter makes it clear that orthodoxy, tradition, and the church are defined not by the believing community but by its most wealthy and intelligent members, the only ones who can afford and succeed in the sorts of education necessary to understand TCT. For me, this is unacceptable but a clear implication of the marriage of Platonism and the Bible.

A more in-depth review will be published on Teleioteti.ca on March 22, here.

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