Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism, by Craig A. Carter. Grand Rapids: Baker, 2021. xviii + 308 pp. $32.99.
In 2018, in his Interpreting Scripture with the Great Tradition (Baker), Craig Carter argued that the academy, which has read the Bible according the historical-critical method, is a dead end and needs to be reformed according to the tradition’s exegesis, dogma, and metaphysics. This was a helpful contribution to a long-standing discussion surrounding the relationship of modern exegetical practices to pre-modern practices. Carter, who is professor of theology at Tyndale University (Toronto) and theologian in residence at Westney Heights Baptist Church (Ajax, Ontario) has continued his project of retrieval by addressing more aspects of his required reformation in his recent book, Contemplating God with the Great Tradition. In sum, Carter’s argument is that much of what passes in modern theology is a revisionist theology that derides metaphysics in general, and that of the classical tradition in particular, yet ironically inserts its own metaphysics. The God of Trinitarian Classical Theism (TCT) is the historic doctrine of God while that of Relational Theism argues that God changes the world and the world changes God. The point of Carter’s book is to explain how this shift happened and to show it is a dead end.
The first part of the book works to define TCT. To do this, Carter explains the shift that has happened in recent theology. Carter argues that classical theism has historically been tied to Trinitarian theology as best summarized in the Nicene tradition. Much of modern theology has chastised this view as allowing too much philosophy to affect theology (Adolf von Harnack’s famous Hellenization thesis being the most famous instance of this critique). For Carter, this is not only incorrect, but also ironic. It is incorrect because the removal of Trinitarian theology from the classical formula results in the god of the philosophers. The church fathers who built this formula insisted that they were not importing pagan metaphysics into theology, rather they were correcting pagan metaphysics with Trinitarian theology. The Hellenization charge is also ironic because Trinitarian theology without classical theism results in a god who is part of the cosmos with us (29). In other words, it is ironic because “it is actually liberal theology that has imported unrevised pagan metaphysics into theology” (4). To counter this, Carter wants to show that TCT is the best explainer of Scripture. As a summary, Carter helpfully produces twenty-five theses of what constitutes TCT. The purpose of theology is not to dissolve mysteries into neat definitions, but to define what is believed so that one can be led to contemplation and worship while avoiding heresy (25).
This is where Carter ties together exegesis, metaphysics, and dogma. Following the lead of church fathers such as Athanasius, Carter presents a first and second exegesis. This builds out of the idea that there is a canonical unity to scripture which makes it necessary to take a step back in the exegesis process and contemplate that reality. “Exegesis must precede contemplation, but without contemplation, exegesis remains incomplete as knowledge of God. Theology is exegesis plus the contemplation of exegetical results and the expression of the results of that contemplation in the form of doctrines” (36). So, one does the initial exegesis, begins to put doctrine together, then contemplates what they understand. However, due to the nature of inspired scripture, it is necessary to do a second round of exegesis. “A significant component of that second round of exegesis will involve prayerful contemplation of the text in light of the exegesis already done, and the relation of that text to other texts and to the doctrinal summary statements we have created” (37). This is how Athanasius could critique Arian exegesis: because it did not adequately reflect the contemplations of God across the entire “skopos of Scripture as a whole” (38). Such an exegetical process is regular in the early church and all the way through the post-Reformation period, being encoded in most Protestant confessions but is completely foreign to modern exegesis.
The second major part of the book takes four chapters and lays out the biblical roots of TCT with an extended look at Isaiah 40–48. He begins by arguing that the metaphysical world of the ancient Near East was largely mythological in its metaphysics, where the gods were part of eternal matter. Greek metaphysics changed this by positing a First Mover. This was a step in the right direction, but a Christian correction was still needed. Isaiah 40–48 is an answer to the ancient Near Eastern myths. These saw gods as molding and shaping eternal matter. Isaiah 40 builds on Genesis 1 and argues that the God of Israel is the transcendent God who created ex nihilo, which then makes him reliable and trustworthy. The ability to give predictive prophecy about the future king Cyrus showed that the God of the Bible not only had control of leaders but also of time itself. In the ancient Near East, and in Scripture, there were many who could be described as Elohim, but Yahweh was seen as unique. Biblical monotheism—“transcendent monotheism” as Carter calls it (181)—is the view that coalesced the many descriptions of God culminating in the idea that he is the transcendent creator of all things. This God has control and can redeem. The people of God could believe Yahweh because of who he is.
The final major part of the book takes three chapters to consider “the biblical character of Pro-Nicene theology.” Carter argues that there is a tradition from Moses to Isaiah to the New Testament apostles to the fourth century fathers that is built around the ideas of transcendence, sovereignty, and monotheism. The early Fathers did not improperly use the culture around them. They responded to the culture in a way similar to the biblical authors. Rather than Greek thought improperly influencing them, it is better to say that there was a “Christianization of Hellenism.” How this worked out is presented in painstaking detail by Carter, borrowing heavily from the works of Lewis Ayres and Khaled Anatolios. One of the key ideas in the early church, as it was for the biblical authors, was the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In modern theology this is under attack by those who argue that empirical science simply does not lend itself to such a theology. However, this is simply an undeniable tenet of both the Christian tradition and Scripture. Creation ex nihilo rules out two dominant concepts of God: pantheism and theistic personalism because both are dependent on philosophical naturalism.
The final chapter is meant to furnish a way to evaluate contemporary theological trends related to the doctrine of God from the perspective of TCT. The major thesis is that it is not the fathers (and the tradition after them) that were taken captive, but rather modern Protestantism (273). This can be traced from Schleiermacher, through Barth, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and even into conservative evangelicals. The major turn away from a recognized metaphysical framework was slow, and at times inexplicit, yet undeniable. Carter utilizes Lloyd Gerson, “a historian of ancient philosophy” (290), and his argument that there is a recognizable core to the broad stream of “Platonism.” This “Ur-Platonism” consists of antimaterialism, antinominalism, antimechanism, antiskepticism, and antirelativism. This metaphysical framework of the ancient world was conducive to TCT, though it still needed to be Christianized (i.e., it needed Trinitarian theology). The root problem of modern theology is that it is built on a modern metaphysic exactly the opposite of all five tenets of this “Ur-Platonic” framework. It is no wonder that the resultant theology differs from TCT. Again, the removal of Trinitarian theology from the classical formula results in the god of the philosophers, and Trinitarian theology without classical theism results in a god who is part of the cosmos with us (29). Carter’s challenge is that one must refute the presuppositions of modernity in order to challenge both modern liberal theology and the many conservative evangelicals who have unwittingly tried to reconstruct a theology of God while holding several modern metaphysical assumptions.
Carter’s 2021 book is a very helpful addition to his 2018 work. No doubt the reader would be helped by first reading his 2018 work, but this more recent book may still be read on its own. The overall project is a call to the importance of evaluating metaphysical assumptions as they work their way out in exegesis and theology. These three things simply cannot be divorced from one another. In this account, I believe that Carter has proved his point. Another great help of the book is his twenty-five theses of TCT, which he lists also in an appendix. These are a great primer for classical theism.
I would certainly recommend this book to those who are trying to understand why many conservative evangelicals (such as Steven Duby, James Dolezal, Matthew Barrett, and others) are pushing hard for a return to classical conceptions of God. Carter lays bare the unknown assumptions that so many make about metaphysical assumptions. At a minimum this is a call to attend to such matters. For my part, I find Carter’s various presentations, particularly the first and second exegesis, convincing. Beyond that, the overriding purpose of Carter is the same as that of the Fathers of the Great Tradition and the prophets and apostles: this is the God we worship. We worship him for he alone is transcendent over creation and effective in our salvation.
