A theory of divine ideas was the standard Scholastic response to the question how does God know and produce the world? A theory was deemed to be successful only if it simultaneously upheld that God has perfect knowledge and that he is supremely simple and one. In articulating a theory of divine ideas, Carl Vater answers two sorts of questions. First, what is an idea? Does God have ideas? Are there many divine ideas? What sort of existence does an idea enjoy? Second, he answers questions about the scope of divine ideas: does God have ideas of individuals, species, genera, accidents, matter, evil, etc.? How many divine ideas are there? These questions cause the Scholastic authors to articulate clearly, among other things, their positions on the nature of knowledge, relation, exemplar causality, participation, infinity, and possibility. An author's theory of divine ideas, then, is the locus for him to test the coherence of his metaphysical, epistemological, and logical principles. Many of the debates over divine ideas have their roots in disagreements over whether a given theory adequately articulates one of the underlying positions or the overall coherence of those positions. Peter John Olivi, for example, argues that his predecessors' theories of knowledge and theories of relations are at odds, and this critique results in a major shift in theories of divine ideas. God's Knowledge of the World examines theories of divine ideas from approximately 1250-1325 AD (St. Bonaventure through Ockham). It will be the only work dedicated to categorizing and comparing the major theories of divine ideas in the Scholastic period.
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
