Review by Choice Review
Kirkpatrick (Trinity College) develops the view that God is a primordial personal agent. He adds, "By primordiality I mean simply that personal agents are a non-reducible, basic, fundamental, elemental fact of life and that the concept that reflects that fact is itself non-reducible, incapable of either being broken down into more basic 'parts' or gone beyond by a more transcendent concept." Unclear, however is whether personal agents are "facts," even if they are realities, and similarly unclear is that a concept of a personal agent cannot be broken down somewhat in terms of awareness, belief, desire, and intention, for instance. In any case, Kirkpatrick opposes both the "materialist" view that reality consists just of matter and the "dualist" view that God, being "wholly other," is beyond personal agency. At the same time, he seeks a role for divine mystery, particularly in the area of why God loves creatures, on the ground that "love is beyond explanation." He makes considerable use of ideas from John Macmurray, Edward Pols, and Raymond Tallis and offers expositions of numerous writers on divine agency. Summing Up: Recommended. Libraries supporting work on the philosophy of religion; upper-level undergraduates through researchers/faculty. P. K. Moser Loyola University Chicago
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
