God's Knowledge of the World

Carl A. Vater is assistant professor of philosophy at St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA.

"Indeed, in this book Vater has put scholars of Scholastic philosophy and theology in his debt. The remarkable interpretive and expositional skill on display here will make his volume central to future discussions of the divine ideas. As Vivian Boland's Ideas in God according to Saint Thomas admirably covered the late antique and early medieval developments leading up to Aquinas, so Vater's book will now authoritatively conduct informed readers along the evolving sweep of this fascinating theological and philosophical tradition." -Thomist "Vater's book is a rigorous yet luminously clear volume that narrates the medieval trajectories on divine ideas. This book will repay careful studying. Beyond the useful survey of the medieval trajectories on divine ideas, this book will help evangelicals in another way. In recent years Aquinas has been retrieved fruitfully within evangelical theology, but often in ways that isolate him as a normative or most important figure within the medieval period (in ways that ironically parallel the historically problematic centralization of Calvin for Reformed theology in the mid-twentieth century). For evangelical readers then, this volume will help to locate Aquinas within a larger whole, and to show that other thinkers, especially Bonaventure, may be an improvement over Aquinas in important respects." - Evangelical Quarterly "While developing lengthy textual discussions or a formal apparatus lie beyond the scope of God's Knowledge of the World, the rigor and clarity of the work is not compromised. Quite the contrary, Vater delivers a systematic exposition centered around the most philosophically pressing questions concerning the status and scope of divine ideas." - Speculum