Book Reviews 241

metaphysical possibility of multiple incarnations, Crisp takes issue with the theologian
Brian Hebblethwaite. Crisp’s argument against Hebblethwaite’s insistence that multiple
incarnations are logically and metaphysically impossible is simply put: ‘that God could
have become incarnate more than once, but he has not done so’ (p. 219).
By way of concluding this review, a return to Martin Stone’s ‘Introduction,’ where he
pays tribute to the wideness and variety of Helm’s learning, seems in order. Stone’s words
concerning Paul Helm best express why this volume is so recommendable: ‘The fact that
these essays embrace such a wide variety of themes and issues is perhaps the best and
most appropriate tribute to Paul Helm. In these sad and trying times of excessive special-
ization, and the proliferation of increasingly myopic and quite ghastly academic
approaches to both philosophy and theology, it is important that we celebrate the achieve-
ments of a civilized and cultivated colleague who writes on a great number of topics in
philosophy, philosophy of religion, theology and Reformation studies, with learning, wit
and authority’ (p. 7).

Belief and Metaphysics. Edited by Peter M. Candler Jr and Conor Cunningham.

London: SCM, 2008. Pp. 576. Price: £35 (pbk). ISBN 978-0-3340-4137-5.

Reviewed by: Ian Leask, Mater Dei Institute / Dublin City University.

This volume achieves exactly what it sets out to do. It provides a broad, sweeping and
properly catholic survey, consisting of 20 essays characterized largely, although not
entirely, by a shared, sapiential, mission to refuse (if not to refute) the sacred/secular divide
of nominalist modernity. Although, as we shall see, a detail in its principal contribution
may reveal a devilish problematic, Belief and Metaphysics is a magnificent collection—
rich, stimulating, and provocative—which deserves the widest possible readership.
Despite a fairly awesome variety of voices, subject-matter, and approaches, the vol-
ume still manages to cohere around certain common principles: (1) a commitment to
some kind of philosophical realism; (2) a suspicion regarding so much of the claims and
culture of ‘postmodernism’ (broadly construed); and (3) a related commitment to ‘meta-
physics’ (broadly construed). For sure, the precise meaning of these key terms—realism,
postmodernism, metaphysics—is neither wholly clear nor mutually agreed within the
volume itself (never mind wider academic debate). Significantly, though, this very loose-
ness manifests itself as a kind of capacious flexibility, rather than chaotic disparateness,
and may even provide the core strength of the collection.
Accordingly, rubbing shoulders in largely compatible mode, we have the likes of
David Burrell on Creation; John Betz on the ‘Metaphysical Imagination’; Vittorio Hösle
on Kierkegaard and Hegel; William Desmond on what lies between (or Between) meta-
physics and belief; Neill Turnbull on Wittgenstein on everyday-ness; and Paul Tyson on
Plato (contra Heidegger). James Williams contributes a limpid, thoughtful meditation on
what Deleuze and Lyotard have to offer an epistemology that goes beyond fixation upon
questions of ‘justified true belief’; curiously, much of what he suggests recalls Yves
Simon’s explication of a Thomistic ‘metaphysics of knowledge.’ Marcus Pound recasts
Lacanian pyschoanalysis as a kind of Christian supplement (although he may ultimately

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242 Irish Theological Quarterly 75(2)

ask certain details—that removing the ‘I’ from je suis gives us ‘Jesus’, for example—to
carry a bit too much argumentative weight). Conor Cunningham gives a full-flavoured
taster of what we can expect from his forthcoming monograph on Darwin (and on how
ultra-Darwinism ends up denying evolution!). E. J. Lowe—in an example of analytical
philosophy at its muscular best—provides a vigorous, rigorous, defence of essentialism,
realism and the rational self. Michael Rea critiques the anti-realism of Bas van Fraassen;
Daniel Bell enlists Foucault and Deleuze to critique liberalism (and to posit its gospel
antithesis); and Sean Mc Grath presents a superb exposition of the (ultimately Lutheran)
shortcomings in Heidegger’s treatment of Aquinas. As this all-too-brief survey indicates,
the range here is enormous—and yet the centre holds.
Arguably, though, a critical issue that does arise—regularly, although not continu-
ously—is a certain tendency to forego more careful philosophical construction in the
name of broader, sapiential, claims. For example: both Louis Dupré and William
Desmond depict Kant as some kind of anti-metaphysician—in a way that risks reducing
the critical project to Humeanism, and avoids confronting the scale of the questions that
Kant poses for metaphysical speculation. This kind of hastiness indicates, in turn, what
seems a risk for any promulgation of a broadly sapiential approach—namely, how to
avoid such promulgation appearing as (or even being) uncritical dogmatism. This is not
to suggest, of course, that ‘sapientialism’ is uncritical dogmatism; yet it can perhaps too
readily mistake precise and careful argumentation for consorting with an enemy—and,
as a result, rely too easily on mere assertion or even hyperbole.
Oliva Blanchette, for example, ends a wonderful exploration of, among other topics,
analogy, Hegel’s Phenomenology, and Marion’s anti-ontology, with the declaration that
‘philosophy … cannot hold back from matters of theology and religious belief, turn its
back on God, so to speak, since that would be to … [say] no to the God who is its prin-
ciple and end’ (p. 160). This claim may be true; but it is not really much of an argument,
and it is hard to see what intellectual traction it might have. Or again: the editors of the
volume, calling for a Thomistic fusion of faith and reason, cite Churchland’s eliminative
materialism as a fateful example of ‘the consequences of leaving reason to itself’ (p.
xxxii), and thus of how reason should be ‘mediated’ by faith. There may be rhetorical
force to this claim, and to the depiction of reason as ‘dogmatic.’ But there is also plenty
that can be critically unpacked here: after all, reason itself (god-less or otherwise) can
ask of eliminative materialism how semantic properties such as meaning, or truth, could
ever be reduced to neurological activity without undermining the semantic claims of
eliminative materialism itself. The problem with dogmatic philosophical claims is not
necessarily a surfeit of reason; on the contrary …
Perhaps the piece that achieves the most convincing fusion of argumentative rigour
and broader, ‘sapiential’ spirit is John Milbank’s (Radically Orthodox) reworking of
Quentin Meillassoux’s critique of ‘correlationism’; as well as presenting an astonish-
ing tour de force, Milbank’s contribution acts almost as a consummation of the entire
project—and, as such, seems to demand particular attention.
Essentially, Milbank accepts the basic thrust of Meillassoux’s fabulously provocative
thesis, but—unsurprisingly—he refuses to remain within its wider contours. Thus Milbank
agrees that post-Kantian philosophy—both phenomenological and analytical—is

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Book Reviews 243

characterized by various forms of trepidation regarding any claim that exceeds our situ-
ated finitude: ‘reality-as-such’ becomes a philosophical impossibility for this anaemic
agnosticism; meanwhile, fideism and fanaticism are only too keen to fill the void left by
reason’s retreat. However, Milbank also seeks to provide a far deeper historical account
than that provided by After Finitude—which, in turn, allows him to delineate a very dif-
ferent take on what humanity’s relation to the infinite might mean.
The main culprit, historically, is a familiar enough bogeyman (in Radical Orthodoxy’s
terms, at least): Duns Scotus. For, as Milbank would have it, that ancient Platonic hierar-
chy according to which something is more perfect the more it participates in being—i.e.
the more it is realized, or actualized, the more it is—is levelled, even destroyed, by
Scotism; and it is only because of this Scotist ‘paradigm shift’ that Kant can posit tran-
scendental Categories that determine a priori the possible range of the actual. The fail-
ings of Kantianism are thus located in a far wider context than that provided by
Meillassoux himself. Which means, in turn, that Meillassoux’s own pre-Kantian exem-
plars become located within the same, post-Scotist problematic—and so, however pre-
scient his diagnosis, Meillassoux’s alternative to correlationism (a kind of amalgam of
early modern naturalism and Badiou-inspired ontologized mathematics) is shown to
remain part of the problem he himself identifies. The only viable solution, according to
Milbank’s brilliant reformulation, is—of course—a Thomistic Platonism.
Given the awesome sweep of Milbank’s piece, it is hardly surprising that some of
the threads that make up its fabric might be looser than others; one of these, which
is more significant than might be immediately apparent, is Milbank’s unusually
crude treatment of Marx. It is not just that the characterization of Marx as some kind
of positivist or utilitarian ignores any account (Ernst Bloch’s, say, or Kolakowski’s,
or Bhaskar’s, or Scott Meikle’s, or—from within Ireland—James Daly’s) which
locates Marx’s thought in a far more venerable tradition: there is also a curious eli-
sion in Milbank’s account, regarding a ‘metaphysics of the left’ and its supposed
manifestation qua ‘state terror in the name of an implausibly arriving utopia’ (p. 475),
that raises crucial, critical, questions. For one thing, it is not at all clear—and is
certainly not established by Milbank—that there is a necessary and inevitable cor-
relation here. But, what is more, if this elision is warranted, then, by the ‘logic’
entailed, Milbank himself faces a more pressing problem regarding his own, far too
casual, assertion that a commitment to a ‘metaphysically “rightwards” alternative …
do[es] not in any way correlate with political conservatism’ (ibid.). The historical
record of regimes guided by a ‘metaphysics of the right’ renders such a claim ques-
tionable, to say the least; and it hardly seems unreasonable to wonder whether
Radical Orthodoxy’s wider promulgation of tradition, paternalism, authority and
hierarchy could ever be as politically neutral as Milbank would have it. (Indeed,
Milbank’s protestation here may well invert itself by alerting us to the charged sig-
nificance of what it denies.) However excellent Belief and Metaphysics might be
(and it is an outstanding collection); and however broad and independent its range of
contributors; nonetheless, this problematic for the Radical Orthodoxy project overall
cannot help but insinuate itself, not so much into each and every paper, but, nag-
gingly, into the collection as a totality.

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