THE LORD IS GOOD
Seeking the God of the Psalter
By Christopher R. J. Holmes
Apollos. 198 pages. £16.99
ISBN 978 1 783 596 577
This is not so much a book that enables us to understand how the Psalter presents God as one that explores one attribute of God – his goodness – from the standpoint of systematic and historical theology.
Leaning heavily on Thomas Aquinas and (to a lesser extent) Augustine, and also engaging with Karl Barth, the author purports to ‘revitalise attention to the importance of attending to some classical and medieval distinctions in the doctrine of God’ (p.187). He is ‘metaphysically motivated’ (p.86), as opposed, it seems, to being driven by direct, ‘bottom-up’ exegesis of Scripture.
Lack of attention
This is not incompatible with a concern to explain truths found in Scripture: even if we decry his lack of attention to biblical context, Holmes does ‘circle around’ scriptural texts (p.148), and the interpretations he clings to can still be right and insightful. Most of the key ideas which he sets forth appear straightforward and uncontroversial: God is superior to his creatures and not dependent on them; goodness is true of God’s very being; we Christians derive goodness from him. Other, generally less central, points may be more debatable, such as the form of language we use to speak of God (pp.14-16, 37-39), or speculative, such as concerning the character of the life to come (p.165). Still others seem to be off target: in the area of sin, he can assert that ‘what [human] nature wills is evil, not the nature itself’ (p.110; cf. also p.127), and he espouses a certain asceticism (pp.77, 176, 179, 185).
God’s leading attribute
This book can be recommended to en readers who are sufficiently versed in Scripture to be able to sift wheat from chaff and have finely-tuned doctrinal antennae (I came away from this book wishing I were clearer on the pros and cons of Thomist theology). Although Holmes uses language that can be off-putting (‘architectonic’, ‘emanationist’, ‘innascibility’), his material is fairly accessible, for he restates and repeats the main emphases of the book. And there is much to stimulate here, including in relation to the debates regarding God’s leading attribute and the function of the Mosaic law. Further, there is a welcome insistence on the importance of marrying doctrine and worship: one can be helped along the road of ‘[gazing] upon the beauty of the LORD’ (Psalm 27.4). But I suspect that most
en readers would do better to turn to the second part of Packer’s Knowing God or, say, the chapters of Berkhof’s Systematic Theology that deal with God’s attributes.
