The Failure of Natural Theology

by Jeffrey D. Johnson

Aristotle's cosmological argument is the foundation of Aquinas's doctrine of God. For Thomas, the cosmological argument not only speaks of God's existence but also of God's nature. By learning that the unmoved mover is behind all moving objects, we learn something true about the essence of God-principally, that God is immobile. But therein lies the problem for Thomas. The Catholic Church had already condemned Aristotle's unmoved mover because, according to Aristotle, the unmoved mover is unable to be the moving cause (i.e., Creator) and governor of the universe-or else he would cease to be immobile. By seeking to baptize Aristotle into the Catholic Church, however, Thomas gave his life to seeking to explain how God can be both immobile and the moving cause of the universe. Thomas even looked to the pantheistic philosophy of Pseudo-Dionysius for help. But even with Dionysius's aid, Thomas failed to reconcile the god of Aristotle with the Trinitarian God of the Bible. If Thomas would have rejected the natural theology of Aristotle by placing the doctrine of the Trinity, which is known only by divine revelation, at the foundation of his knowledge of God, he would have rid himself of the irresolvable tension that permeates his philosophical theology. Thomas could have realized that the Trinity alone allows for God to be the only self-moving being-because the Trinity is the only being not moved by anything outside himself but freely capable of creating and controlling contingent things in motion.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

283 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 23, 2021

About the author

Jeff is the author of several Christian books, including the Amazon #1 Bestseller, The Church: Why Bother?

He is pastor/teacher of Grace Bible Church in Conway, Arkansas, a community where he also resides with his wife Letha and their two sons, Martyn and Christian.

Jeff graduated from Central Baptist College in Bible and earned his M. Rel. in Biblical Studies. He earned his Th.D in Systematics from Veritas Theological Seminary.

Along with his pastoral and publishing ministry, Jeff is a sought-after conference speaker and contributes regularly to the Reformed Baptist Blog.

Reviews

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 1 out of 5]

Highly misleading…

This book misrepresents famous theologians including John Calvin and Herman Bavinck using out of context quotes from them to support novel positions that they did not hold.

I am interested in critiques of Thomas, I am well aware that his ecclesiology and sacramentology have many flaws, I am intrigued by the assertion I have heard a few times that he is a very consistent thinker and as such his doctrine of God is inextricably linked with his other (obviously) faulty doctrine. A nuanced evaluation and critique of Thomas could be both fascinating and very useful. However this book is not it.

What is this book?
This book is an attempt to refute as unbiblical:
a) Thomas’s doctrines of Natural Revelation and Natural Theology (i.e. the things Thomas taught are revealed about God and can be deduced about him from examining creation) AND
b) Thomas’s doctrine of God including Aseity, Simplicity, Immutability and Eternality (as Thomas defined them)

It is argued that Thomas’s approach to these areas:
i) owed more to pagan philosophy than the Bible AND
ii) that it was novel and out of line with the orthodox beliefs before him AND
iii) that it is contradicted by the reformers and later reformed theologians

Bavinck vs Thomas
To make this review manageable I am going to limit myself to Johnson’s use of Bavinck.

I recently read Bavinck’s Reformed Dogmatics from start to end. Reading Johnson I was surprised by his appeals to Bavinck, the positions he was arguing for sound very different to what I learnt reading Bavinck.

Johnson quotes the english translation of Volume 2 of the Dogmatics (RDV2) several times and quotes “The doctrine of God” a couple of times which is an earlier translation of an excerpt from RDV2 . it is unclear why Johnson switches between the recent full translation and the older translation of an excerpt; he gives no reason for this.

Below each significant reference to Bavinck in the book is examined and the position Johnson uses Bavinck to support is compared against what Bavinck is actually teaching in the relevant section of RDV2.

1. Page 24 on Natural Revelation
According to Herman Bavinck, man’s knowledge of God “arises spontaneously and without coercion, without scientific argumentation and proof.”Creation provides this knowledge to the educated and the uneducated alike. The old and the young and everyone in between are fully aware of God’s transcendence and immanence. Herman Bavinck goes on to say, “Knowledge of God never needs to be instilled in people by coercion or violence, nor by logical argumentation or compelling proofs, but belongs to humans by their very nature and arises spontaneously and automatically.”

To understand the point Johnson is using Bavinck for, note the conclusion of this section which comes on page 25:

Natural revelation, therefore, extends and is limited to the infallible knowledge of God, which is revealed universally, effectually, immediately, and consistently. Consequently, philosophy and science are not a part of natural revelation. Though all truth is God’s truth, not all truth is communicated universally, effectively, immediately, consistently, and infallibly from above. (emphasis added)

Bavinck does teach that there is innate immediate knowledge of God but he would not agree with the “is limited to” part.

The portions quoted from Bavinck are very selective, the second quote is from a section where Bavinck compares "Innate knowledge of God" with "Acquired knowledge of God" placing the quote in its context we see a different picture (section quoted by Johnson in bold, detail in brackets added to avoid extending the quote back a page):

It [christian theology] only used that language [innate knowledge of God] to indicate that a knowledge of God never needs to be instilled in people by coercion or violence, nor by logical argumentation or compelling proofs, but belongs to humans by their very nature and arises spontaneously and automatically. Humans in the course of a natural development arrive at certain knowledge of God without compulsion or effort. Accordingly, the innate knowledge if God is not opposed to the acquired knowledge of God, for in a broader sense also the former can be called acquired. In fact, God's revelation precedes both, for God does not leave himself without a witness. With his eternal power and deity he exerts revelatory pressure upon humans both from without and from within. God confronts humans in the realm of nature as well as in the realm of humankind, in heart and conscience, both in adversity and in prosperity. (page 73 of RDV2)

Bavinck is saying that through people's circumstances and experiences (as well as internally) God imparts the knowledge of himself to them - rather than this being limited to an immediate knowledge as Johnson claims.

2. Pages 36-38 on the knowability of God and Natural Revelation
Bavinck is cited 3 times discussing the classification of divine attributes - and the inherent problem of seemingly dividing God into parts (communicable and incommunicable, knowable and unknowable etc.)

A lengthy quote of Bavinck is then used from "The Doctrine of God” this quote is selective, comparing against RDV2 it contains two jumps skipping over material in Bavinck that contradicts the point Johnson is making.

I have not obtained a copy of “The Doctrine of God” so have not verified whether any of the skipped material was missing in it - however as Johnson elsewhere quotes from RDV2 he should have compared this lengthy extract against RDV2 - unless he was not aware that one of the works he was citing is an extract from the other.

Summary of quotation:
1. 2 lines from page 74 of RDV2 criticising “Natural Theology” considered as a discipline separate to any revelation (Bavinck insists that Natural theology requires and is dependent on revelation)
2. A two page skip marked with a “…” by Johnson, the material skipped over speaks positively of Natural Theology (contra the position Johnson is arguing for)
3. 6 lines quoted which appear on page 76 of RDV2, these lines assert that scripture points people to see the world in light of the existence of God
4. A 14 page skip without any clear indicator from Johnson of anything being skipped, in these 14 pages Bavinck asserts the validity of the 5 Thomistic proofs and even states that scripture teaches them (though he later says that “proof” is not the best name for them see below)
5. A lengthy quote from page 90 of RDV2 placed as if a direct continuation from the material taken from page 76; this section from RDV2 says faith is not directly dependent on proof.

Immediately after this selective quote of Bavinck, Johnson states on page 38:
The knowledge of God that comes through natural revelation is not the conclusion of a syllogism rooted in science. Rather, it is the immediate awareness of God that comes with the awareness of self and nature.

Building on this, later in the book (page 73) Johnson will state: "The cosmological argument does not lead to the God of the Bible”.

In contrast, part of the skipped section on page 76 of RDV2 says this:

Thus, appealing to the whole created world as a witness to, and revelation of, God, Scripture contains germinally all that was later elaborated and dialectically unfolded in the proofs, There is truth in C.I. Nitzch's comment that scripture gives us a beginning and analogy of the etiological [cosmological] proof in Romans 1:20, of the teleological proof in Psalm 8 and Acts 14:17, of the moral proof in Romans 2:14, and of the ontological proof in Acts 17:24 and Romans 1:19,32.

And reading on in RDV2 after the end of the quoted section we find:

There is not an atom of the universe in which his everlasting power and deity are not clearly seen. Both from within and from without, God's witness speaks to us. God does not leave himself without a witness, either in nature or history, in heart or conscience, in life or lot. This witness of God is so powerful, accordingly, that almost no one denies its reality. All humans and peoples have heard something of the voice of the Lord. The consent of all peoples is confirmation of the fact that God does not leave himself without a witness; it is humanity's response to the voice of God.

Now these testimonies that come from God are addressed to humans throughout the world and are ordered and arranged in the proofs. The syllogistic form in which they are cast does not give them greater power. Though weak as proofs they are strong as testimonies. (RDV2 page 90 - after the end of Johnson’s quote)

Bavinck clearly believed that the knowledge of God that comes through natural revelation includes (though is not limited to) knowledge observable in every aspect of creation - including the proofs (though Bavinck would rather call them testimonies).

The selective nature of these quotes of Bavinck produced by Johnson imply that he supports Johnson’s complete rejection of natural theology. That is false.

3. Chapter 4 on Pseudo-Dionysius and Divine Incomprehensibility
Herman Bavinck would explain Dionysius’s position almost fourteen hundred years later: “All knowledge of God is analogical; this analogy is more clearly evident in one group of creatures than in another, and more manifest in the universe of invisible reality than in the world of visible things.”133 Yet what good are these “variety of separable symbols” if they do not communicate actual realities? (page 98)

Johnson's commentary implies that he sees Bavinck opposing the position of pseudo-Dionysius that he is summarising. He goes on to add (as the conclusion of Bavinck's analysis of pseudo-Dionysius):

As Herman Bavinck concluded, “Even negative theology fails to furnish us any knowledge of God’s being, for in the final analysis, God surpasses both all negation and all affirmation, all assertion and all denial.” (pages 98-99)

This is from page 38 of RD volume 2, however further down the page Bavinck says:
scholasticism at several points expressed itself more cautiously, and especially attached greater value to positive theology than did Pseudo-Dionysius and Erigene. Nevertheless, it fully affirmed the theory that God's being as such is unknowable by humans.

Then on page 39 Bavinck explained how Aquinas developed this concept, on page 40 speaking of the same concept he said "The theology of the Reformation did not modify this view.”

On pages 47-52 Bavinck confirmed that he shares this understanding of the incomprehensibility of God asserting that our true knowledge of God is nonetheless a relative knowledge of God.

4. Page 124 Bavinck and the Cosmological argument
Of course, this does not prove that God moves himself. It just means that we cannot know for certain, based on Aquinas’s first proof, if God moves himself or not. Herman Bavinck placed his finger on the problem when he stated, “We have no right . . . to apply the law of causality to such a first cause, and that we therefore cannot say anything specific about it.” The cosmological argument collapses because it jumps from physics to metaphysics, from science to philosophy, without having any epistemological warrant for such a leap. It may appear that God’s nature can be derived from sense experience, from natural science, but such a conclusion is only a philosophical assumption.

As shown above in point 2 Bavinck affirms the validity of the proofs, even saying that Romans 1:20 points us to the cosmological argument hence this is misleading.

This quote is from page 82 of RDV2, where Bavinck is denying that the Cosmological argument can be used to draw out details about God beyond his existence as first cause, this view of Bavinck's may differ from Thomas. But for Johnson to use this to deny that the cosmological argument leads to God at all is to misrepresent Bavinck.

5. Page 145 Bavinck and Immutability
The biblical doctrine of divine simplicity and immutability does not mean, as Aquinas believed, divine immobility. As Herman Bavinck rightly claimed, “Immutability . . . should not be confused with monotonous sameness or rigid immobility.”For Aquinas, movement is linked with mutability because everything in the universe is both in motion and mutable.

The quote from Bavinck comes from page 158 of RDV2, in context:
Those who predicate any change whatsoever of God, whether with respect to his essence, knowledge, or will, diminish all his attributes: independence, simplicity, eternality, omniscience, and omnipotence. This robs God of his divine nature, and religion of its firm foundation and assured comfort.

This immutability, however, should not be confused with monotonous sameness or rigid immobility.

It is worth reading pages 158 and 159 in full, Bavinck describes at length that God is intimately involved in his creation and the lives of all his creatures without being changed in any way himself. On page 159 Bavinck gives illustrations of his position one of which he ascribes to Thomas "A pillar remains unchanged whether a persons sees it on her right or on her left"

Bavinck believed that the view he was articulating was the view of Thomas - Johnson quoting from this section to argue against Thomas without even acknowledging Bavinck's professed agreement with Thomas is disingenuous.

Reading the longer quote I have provided of Bavinck we see him asserting that to predicate any change in the knowledge or will of God would rob God of his divine nature. In contrast earlier in the book on page 127 Johnson identified as a problem with Thomas his extension of immutability beyond the “character” of God, Johnson page 127:
Aquinas taught that God is not just immutable in his character but also in his actions (i.e. immobile)

In chapter 8 as a whole Johnson argues that if God is simple and unmoving then either the universe is eternal or the universe would not exist as God could not have decided to create. He defines the Triune God as "the moving cause of the universe" he asserts that it is because the persons of the trinity "relate to" (i.e. move) one another that God can be (as he puts it) auto-mobile (self-moving) whilst he does not explicitly state that this involves God changing his will it is hard to see what else it means. This certainly is not what Bavinck is saying.

6. Page 167 Bavinck and Simplicity
God’s simplicity, therefore, must be understood in light of God’s diversity, and God’s diversity must be understood in light of God’s simplicity. Augustine claimed God was both simple and multiple: “For God it is the same thing to be as to be powerful or just or wise or anything else that can be said about his simple multiplicity or multiple simplicity to signify his substance.” Likewise, following Augustine, Bavinck said, “God is therefore simple in his multiplicity and manifold in his simplicity.”

On their own there is nothing wrong with these words. But the Bavinck quote is from RDV2 page 177 and on that page Bavinck quotes Thomas to support his position 2 lines after the quoted statement.

That irony aside the argument Johnson is building here flows out of his rejection in the preceding chapter of Thomas' doctrine of divine simplicity he asserts on page 152:
If, as Aquinas said, “His intellect and its object are altogether the same” (ST. 1.14.2), then how can there be a real distinction between the Father and the Son?

Johnson's question is meant rhetorically to deny Thomas's doctrine of simplicity. In the following chapter in which he quoted Bavinck (as above) he is then seeking to present an alternative in which God is differentiated with the three persons being distinct and God's knowledge being differentiated etc.

However on page 176 of RDV2 (the page before the quote above) Bavinck (speaking of rejecting classical simplicity) states:
On that basis he is not the highest love, for then there is in him a subject who loves -which is one thing-as well as a love by which he loves - which is another.

In this section of Bavinck he makes similar arguments to Thomas' arguments for simplicity - asserting that God’s love is simply God - just as Thomas said that God’s intellect is simply God.

7. Page 172 Bavinck and more Simplicity
And Bavinck claims, “On the basis of God’s revelation it is our obligation . . . to hold onto the belief that, though every attribute is identical with the divine being, the attributes are nevertheless distinct.” He continues: “This diversity of attributes, moreover, does not clash with God’s simplicity."

These quotes come from RDV2 page 127 reading on to the end of the section which is on page 128 Bavinck closes with these words:
Although it is always the same being that confronts us in these names, each name by itself gives us a succinct statement of what that being truly is in its infinite fullness. In God holiness and mercy may be the same in essence, yet our understanding of these two attributes, formed from God's self-revelation, differs. There is no name capable of expressing God's being with full adequacy, Given that reality, many names serve to give us an impression of his all-transcending grandeur.

This is footnoted in RDV2 sending the reader to a variety of sources for further information including: Summa theologica part 1 question 3 article 3 and question 13 article 4. Bavinck in this place (and many others) self-consciously identifies his doctrine of God as Thomas's doctrine - a fact that Johnson ignores.

In fact this very doctrine is exactly the idea that Johnson is seeking to deny as he goes on to posit real differentiation within the Godhead.

8. Page 175 Bavinck and Immanence
Bavinck is quoted is 3 times on this page making the case for the immanence of God - these quotes are drawn from Bavinck's discussion of immutability already mentioned above. Johnson uses this description of immanence to ground his argument for God as "auto-mobile" which Bavinck would very clearly reject - see Bavinck and immutability above.

Conclusion
Bavinck agreed with Thomas’s doctrine of God. Their views of Natural Revelation and Natural Theology may have been slightly different - but they both affirmed that some knowledge of God can be obtained from observation and study of all areas of creation,

Johnson misrepresents Bavinck as rejecting the Thomistic doctrine of God and denying any place for Natural Theology.

I am flabbergasted at how extreme this misrepresentation is and do not know how to explain it.

[Scott Bielinski · Rating 2 out of 5]

A confused and confusing book.

[J. Rutherford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have serious concerns about the Thomistic revival that seems to be sweeping Evangelicalism in recent years, including many Reformed pastors and scholars. In The Failure of Natural Theology, Jeffery Johnson addresses one significant issue raised by the theology of Thomas Aquinas. I am thankful to have received a review copy from the author. Johnson argues that the doctrine of divine “immobility” stands at the centre of Aquinas synthesis of Natural and Revealed theologies. In addition to arguing that “natural theology” is itself a flawed project, Johnson claims that divine immobility is not necessarily entailed by the arguments from which Aquinas (and Aristotle before him) derived the doctrine; moreover, divine immobility stands in tension with God’s self-revelation in Scripture. Along the way, Johnson identifies many more troublesome aspects of Aquinas’s teaching (arguing in an appendix that Aquinas cannot be easily accommodated within Protestantism) and argues for the significance of the doctrine of the Trinity for properly understanding God’s world. By concluding with a reflection on the Trinity, Johnson underscores his primary point, that Aquinas and those who follow him go wrong by looking to “the wisdom of man” instead of Scripture for their theology, and points toward his own hope for the book, “to drive us to divine revelation in our understanding of the nature of God” (6).

Summary

The Failure of Natural Theology is divided into nine chapters, followed by an appendix. The first two chapters address methodological errors in Aquinas’s project. Chapter 1 identifies a general problem of Natural Theology, in sum, that “If we don’t start with the God of divine revelation, as Calvin suggested, we will not arrive to the God of divine revelation” (29). Johnson rightly distinguishes between natural revelation, such as was taught by Calvin, and natural theology. The former is characterised by its infallibility, continuous reality, immediacy, efficacy, and universality. Natural theology, as the philosophical knowledge of God derived from experience and reason, is none of these things (Cf. 18-20). In Chapter 2, Johnson then considers Aquinas’ theological method. For Aquinas, natural theology and revelation or complementary perspectives on truth; they provide different ways for getting at the same thing, the right understanding of God. Johnson argues that Aquinas asserted three disciplines that arrive at the knowledge of God, “(1) natural theology/philosophy—based on reason, (2) theology—based on faith, (3) philosophical theology—based on faith and reason” (36). Against some Protestant misunderstandings, Johnson follows Arvin Vos with the clarification,
Because Aquinas believed that philosophy and theology overlapped in their doctrine of God’s essence, his doctrine of God is not necessar¬ily a two-story structure with the lower level rooted in philosophy and the upper level rooted in Scripture. It’s not that simple to say Aquinas was seeking to place theology on the foundation of philosophy. (42)
Johnson concludes chapter 2 with the claim that philosophy should not be taken as a complementary route to knowledge of God.
The next two chapters address the natural theologies of Aristotle (Chapter 3) and Pseudo-Dionysius (Chapter 4). Johnson does a fine job presenting the thought of these two main influences on Aquinas. Throughout both chapters, Johnson seeks to highlight the way the thought of these thinkers is antithetical to the God revealed in the Bible. Chapter 5 then illustrates how both Aristotle and Pseudo-Dionysius are integrated into Aquinas’ theology, how their distinct emphases on God and the knowledge of God come together to shape Aquinas’ theology.
In Chapters 6-9, Johnson addresses critical themes in Aquinas’ thought. Johnson perceives the doctrine of “immobility” stands at the heart of Thomas’ theology. Divine immobility is a particular interpretation of immutability (which Johnson distinguishes from immobility) wherein God is said to be unable to act or contemplate any object other than himself. Thus, according to divine immobility, any activity of God must be part of one eternal, unchanging act which God has never begun or ceased performing, and differences perceived in God’s actions outside of himself must be attributed to the creature, not to God himself (116-117). In Chapter 6, Johnson argues that divine immobility is not a necessary conclusion to Thomas’s first proof and that it stands in tension with his second proof (as recognised by Aristotle, who denied that God could be the efficient cause of the universe). Johnson raises several other apt criticisms of the doctrine in this chapter and continues to do so in Chapter 7, which raises theological issues created by the doctrine of immobility. Chapter 8 then argues that the Biblical doctrine of the Trinity reconciles the tensions in Aristotle and Aquinas theology between stability and unity, or the one, and change and multiplicity, or the many. Chapter 9 brings The Failure of Natural Theology to a close by arguing that Aquinas’ understanding of analogy can yield no knowledge of God and that, through Scripture, we can have accurate knowledge of God. In the appendix, Johnson argues that various aspects of Aquinas’ theology and methodology set him at odds with the Protestant theology, so we should not attempt to baptise him as such.

Evaluation

In evaluation, I believe that Johnson is right to define immobility as a central tenet of Aristotle and Aquinas’s theology, an extremely problematic one at that. Johnson’s arguments against the doctrine are accurate. The Failure of Natural Theology is part of a growing body of literature addressing the increasing influence of Thomas Aquinas within Protestant theology; I have serious concerns about this development myself and am thankful for Johnson’s thoughtful criticism.
If I had two choose problematic areas in the book, I would say the lack of explicit argument from Scripture and the endorsement of Christian Platonism. On the one hand, space limits the sorts of arguments Johnson can make, but I am always in favour of more Scripture as much as possible. I suspect this may limit the audience to those sympathetic with Johnson’s broader interpretation of Scripture and the doctrine of God. On the other hand, at various points throughout the book, Johnson seems to endorse Augustine’ Platonism (78-79), to suggest that the rejection of Plato’s ideas is a significant problem with Aristotle and so Aquinas’ theology (34, 78-79), and to suggest that Plato’s own methodology is sympathetic to that which Johnson endorses (53). Following this line of thought, his understanding of the Trinity and its solution to the problems with which Aquinas wrestled is expressed in terms of the abstract one and the concrete many, in terms of essence and particular. I don’t think it’s fair to align Platonic method with Christian approach from revelation: they both begin with the assumption that God is known, but they assume two very different pictures of the God that is known. Johnson’s conclusion about natural theology on page 166 is as true concerning Plato as it is concerning Aristotle,
Philosophy is unable to explain not only a temporal universe and the Trinitarian diversity within the Godhead but also the true nature of God’s oneness. Philosophy is good at raising questions but not so good at answering them, because it does not have access to the necessary data (i.e., the Trinity) needed to construct a consistent worldview.
Indeed, Aristotle and Plato are far more aligned than they are in opposition. As I have argued elsewhere, I think the Biblical testimony to God requires a reconstruction of the whole “one and the many” dilemma; as such, it may be better to see the Trinity not as the solution to the problem of “the one and the many” but the eradication of it. Nevertheless, Johnson has helped us see more clearly why Thomas Aquinas is a hindrance to the right knowledge of God as revealed in Scripture, not an aid—let alone essential reading (as some recent books would have it).

[Ronnie Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have enjoyed everything I have read by Pastor Johnson. This book is no exception. The distinction made between natural revelation and natural theology is a very important one and clearly made at the beginning of the book. The flaws in Thomism are fairly presented and the reader is challenged to see beyond his own reasoning as his standard of faith. His observations Scripturally supported and engaging.

[Barry Sewell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent work showing the fatal flaw in Aquinas' attempt to Christianize Aristotle. The appendix on the early reformers and reformers with relation to Aquinas shows that His theology is basically Roman Catholic in every respect. Descendants of the reformers should remember this as some seek to praise Aquinas with respect to Theology Proper. As Johnson summarizers:

"Aquinas was not a pre-Reformer. As he opposed the Waldensians in his day, he would have opposed the Reformers in their day. He was a Roman Catholic through and through, and it is for good reason that popes have venerated him as their greatest theologian. Until this day, Aquinas remains the theologian of the Catholic Church. “After Saint Augustine,” for instance, “the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers more times to Thomas Aquinas than to any other personal authority in the Catholic tradition.” So, let the truth be known to all who love the truth—Aquinas is not among the Protestants."

Johnson, Jeffrey D.. The Failure of Natural Theology: A Critical Appraisal of the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas (p. 223). Free Grace Press. Kindle Edition.

[Isaiah Hess · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unserious, unscholarly, unsound

If I, as a seminary student, had submitted this as a class assignment, I would have been flunked for numerous improper and unethical use of sources, countless logical fallacies, non-existent exegesis, and prejudicial language. Johnson dismisses classical theism while failing to engage how the Reformed scholastics understood these doctrines. He’ll quote these Reformed scholastics, but only by cherry-picking quotes. Johnson’s poor argumentation and heterodox articulation of the Trinity leaves him with tritheism as the logical conclusion of his argumentation. For example, Johnson makes the persons of the Trinity attributes of God - something that is highly heterodox. It’s not that every critique Johnson makes of Aquinas is wrong. But this book is so riddled with fallacies and unethical and improper use of sources that this book is hopelessly useless, at best.

It’s obvious that Johnson has not seriously engaged works if systematic and historical theology. What’s tragic is that Johnson is a seminary president, someone you’d hope would know better.

Avoid this book.

[Paul Hess · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I, as a seminary student, had submitted this as a class assignment, I would have been flunked for numerous improper and unethical use of sources, countless logical fallacies, non-existent exegesis, and prejudicial language. Johnson dismisses classical theism while failing to engage how the Reformed scholastics understood these doctrines. He’ll quote these Reformed scholastics, but only by cherry-picking quotes. Johnson’s poor argumentation and heterodox articulation of the Trinity leaves him with tritheism as the logical conclusion of his argumentation. For example, Johnson makes the persons of the Trinity attributes of God - something that is highly heterodox. It’s not that every critique Johnson makes of Aquinas is wrong. But this book is so riddled with fallacies and unethical and improper use of sources that this book is hopelessly useless, at best.

It’s obvious that Johnson has not seriously engaged works if systematic and historical theology. What’s tragic is that Johnson is a seminary president, someone you’d hope would know better.

Avoid this book.

[Chris Whisonant · Rating 5 out of 5]

A work that brings up many questions and concerns that the other side should be dealing with. It's worth having difficult discussions around this topic as the viewpoint espoused by Dr. Johnson is often used as a linchpin in saying that he (and those who may be on his side of concern over the Thomistic revival) are no longer able to consider themselves Confessional Baptists. (Probably would have only given it a 4 star review, but considering one of the 1 star reviewers had issues with something he misattributed as being Johnson's own words I wanted to even that review out some.) Solid book which we should take up and consider.

[Neil T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Refreshing Gospel Perspective!

Jeffrey Johnson captures your attention in this book and highlights the tendency of most if not all those in academia to dilute the Gospel with pagan philosophical categories.

In so doing, is it any wonder that the church has little or no influence on the surrounding world?

Let’s leave Aquinas and pagan philosophy and return to the pure biblical Gospel that ALONE has the power to save.

[Jesus Salgado · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this book was great. A lot of important information is displayed by the author. I know this book created a lot of controversy but I still think there was much benefit from reading this book.

[Keller Hackbusch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful book addressing a very complicated subject. Johnson provides insight and helpful ways to think about Aquinas’ theology.

[David Jamison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting introduction to this topic for me