I must admit I wasn’t looking forward to reading “None Greater” by Matthew Barrett. Simply Trinity had not just left me frustrated and disappointed but angry as well. You can find out why here and here. None Greater is a much better offering but the bar was set quite low.
Barrett’s book is about what he describes as the “untamed attributes of God”, namely those particularly associated with Classical-Theism, that God is eternal, infinite, incomprehensible, independent, simple, unchanging and impassible. Writing from a Classical Theist position he also seeks to write with the help of heavy-weight theologians from the past.
At the same time, Barrett aims to write for a popular audience.[1] He says:
All that to say, I’ve written this book not for scholars (though I hope many scholars will read it) but instead for churchgoers, pastors, and those beginning students who have yet to pick up a book that takes them into the classical view of God. Sincerely, I hope this book will be passed around among the people of God so that churches of tomorrow will be fortified against those who might cleverly attempt to fill our theological house with a theology proper foreign to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.[2]
Sadly, in that respect, this work falls short in exactly the same way that the previous work did. Accompanying dense, technical prose with little smippets of incidental personal autobiography is not what makes for popular level or accessible theology. Take a statement like this for example:
“In the past, God’s essence has been referred to as his “quiddity.”8 Quiddity constitutes “the essential nature of something.”9 God’s quiddity is unlike our quiddity. Infinite as he is, his quiddity is ineffable.10 “Ineffable” means something is “incapable of being expressed in words.”11 To say that God’s quiddity is ineffable is to say that God’s essence is indescribable.[3]
Who is expecting to find words like quiddity and ineffable in a popular level book? Who is using such words in everyday language? Perhaps some may believe that it is necessary to use such obscure language to speak more accurately or reverently of God but the fact that we have a definition of these words shows that we can speak accurately and indeed more concisely and intelligibly without dependence on them.
So, what exactly is to be gained from an approach that requires the use of those kinds of terms in the body of the text. I might add the same question when it comes to the quotes from the past that are littered throughout. Do those quotes aid our understanding? I am unconvinced. Furthermore, why are Augustine, Anselm and Aquinas selected, seemingly at random as the A-Team? What, for example of Athanasius? The focus on Anselm and Aquinas more than the patristics and those associated with the development of creeds does suggest that “Classical Theism” in its current form is more concerned with recovering the theology of the Middle Ages than it Is the foundational beliefs of the Church. Indeed, the A Team is introduced with little warning about their fallibility and that the dominant views emerging from Aquinas’ thinking played a not insignificant role in the need for the Reformation.
Now, I’m not suggesting that there isn’t a place for technical terms or historical quotes. I’ve used them myself in the teaching resources I’m putting together on Doctrine. However, there needs to be a clear purpose for this. In my case, it is because I’ve got an eye on those who may want to pursue theology further and so to introduce theologians and theological thought to them in order to make other books accessible. Even still, on reflection I over relied on those quotes in the early stages.
Overall, I find myself in general agreement with Barret on the key doctrinal positions he takes. I must admit though that the extent to which I was able to follow his argument was dependent on my pre-existing familiarity with those doctrines. I was also not convinced by his illustrations which are at times deeply unhelpful. Take for example, his illustration of the impassive fireman which I’ve responded to in another context.
Nor was I always convinced by his application. Some of it is better than other bits. However take for example this application on atonement:
For it is painfully obvious there is no one who can make atonement. Such a person would have to be infinite himself to atone for a sin against an infinite God, to pay sins that deserve a penalty that has no end. In our finite, fallen world, clearly there is no one like this to be found.[4]
The idea that sin’s seriousness is against the honour of an infinite God and therefore infinitely terrible is of course derived from the approach Anselm takes in his satisfaction theory. This may at times have worked apologetically. However, I’m not convinced it works that well today because it makes God look just a little thin skinned fragile, or rather very, infinitely fragile and thin skinned. Nor, though is it really the way that Scripture seems to take us with the emphasis being much more on the seriousness of sin because of what it does. Adam and Eve’s sin was aimed at rivalling and deposing God and was a rejection of his word and his presence. That is why death is the legitimate penalty. When I lie, swear or think wrong thoughts, the issue is not that these are offenses to God’s infinite character but that they are rooted in the same deicidal idolatry. In fact, it is because I am in Adam that I am under the death penalty.
At the heart of Barrett’s approach is a thesis, again based on Anselm which I think gets us to the heart of the problem with Neo-Classical Theism. Barrett writes:
“What must be true of God if he is the most perfect being? God is, as Anselm so famously said, “something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.”7[5]
Barrett’s approach and that of the Neo-Classical Theists is to argue that we are in the habit, to use Fred Sander’s language in the foreward where
“We are easily lulled into a style of theology that starts from ourselves and imagines some ways in which God must be like that, but bigger and better. I feel sad when I am rejected, so God must feel even more rejected, but without acting out because of it. I need to be loved, so God must need to be loved even more, but also somehow he must be able to accept when he isn’t. It’s possible to take statements like these and nuance them enough, or hedge them with some biblical principles, or rule out gross errors, so that we end up with a decent theology of a respectable God. But there is an underlying problem that will keep generating errors every time we let down our guard. The underlying problem is a theological style that, even in its reading of Scripture, works up from us to God.[6]
Sanders says that:
With None Greater, Barrett is determined to reverse that direction. He has learned that the proper path of theology is to follow the revelation of God from above to below instead, and he wants to bring readers along with him on this journey.[7]
There are, I think three problems with this. First that Barret’s own starting point of , “something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.”7[8] Is itself a “theology from below” because it starts with what we are able to reason rather than what God reveals. I think we also see this at work in how neo-classical theists tend to handle analogical talk of God. This is especially true when it comes to discussion about passions and impassibility where the tendency is to assume that anthropomorphic language means scripture uses human attributes to give us a bit of a sense of what God is like, whereas, we do better to think of those human, temporary and changeable passions as being a bit, imperfectly like God’s perfect affections. For comparison, think about how we insist that we can call God our Father because human fathers are imperfectly trying to imitate the heavenly father rather than God being a bit like an inadequate human dad.
Thirdly and most crucially though, the very fact that God stoops and to use Calvin’s language “lisps” should tell us something very important. God both in revelation and incarnation chooses to stoop down so that in revealing who he is, invites us to discover him “from below.” Furthermore, this means that it is, through covenant and atonement that we meet him first as the God who is love. This is important because I find that a lot of this “from above” neo-classical stuff majors on the Greatness of God but it feels like the goodness of God and especially his love is, if not entirely discarded, relegated to a minor walk on part. I’m afraid that this is the feel of Barrett’s book. To be sure, God’s love, grace and forgiveness are mentioned but we seem to take a tortuous route to get there.
One major result of this in neo-classical-theism is that we are distanced from God. God chooses to reveal himself to us through his word, inviting us to hear him directly. Yet, neo-classical theism is so fearful of what it derides and Biblicism that it builds up a whole host of mediators in between. Left with just the Bible and the local church, we will end up with a faulty view it seems. So, we need to have God’s Word mediated to us through medieval scholars, who themselves need mediating to us through their contemporary scholars who stop down to writer popular level stuff for us.
At least this time, I was only left disappointed by an unsatisfactory read.
[1] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. xvii). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[2] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. xvii). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[3] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. 23). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[4] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. 51). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[5] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. 45). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[6] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (pp. xii-xiii). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[7] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. xiii). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
[8] Barrett, Matthew. None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (p. 45). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Faithroots 