The Vigilant God: Providence in the Thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth, Second Edition

by Horton Davies, Marie-Hélène Davies (Compiler)

Overview

The Vigilant God by Horton Davies, a non-conformist minister who taught in the Religion Department of Princeton University and attended church regularly, is a reconsideration of the belief that God is still active in history. It is a reassessment of the theology of Providence in the thought of four major Christian theologians (Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth) and of their views on predestination, theodicy, and free will, leading the author to consider the role it might have for the future of humanity.

The book starts with a sketch of the biblical sources relating to Providence, predestination, election, and reprobation. Davies sees Augustine’s doctrine of Providence and his view of evil as privatio boni, as greatly influenced by Plato and his followers. He dwells on Aquinas the man, his life and his character, open to Aristotle and his Jewish and Arab commentators, before plunging into the structure of his encyclopedic thought and works. Davies appreciates Calvin’s regard for Scripture as a means of illumination of the Spirit, but rejects the pastor’s views on predestination as tyrannical and unjust, and believes that Barth’s positive insistence on God’s universal mercy is necessary against the horrors perpetrated in the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781433155055
Publisher:	Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers
Publication date:	09/28/2018
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	142
Product dimensions:	5.91(w) x 8.86(h) x (d)

About the Author

Horton Davies (1916–2004), D.D., D.Phil., D. Lit., Edinburgh and Oxford, ministered in London during the war, and founded the Religion Department at Grahamstown, South Africa (1946–1953). Invited, he first returned to Mansfield College, Oxford, to chair its Department of Ecclesiastical History and then to Princeton University's Religion Department until he retired in 1984. The author of some thirty-five books, including the six-volume Worship and Theology in England, for which he was given the prestigious Oxford D.Phil. degree, Dr. Davies started painting in his free moments, a hobby that he took up full time from 1984 to 2004.

Table of Contents

David B. McIlhiney: Foreword – Acknowledgments – Introduction – Biblical Sources for the Traditional Doctrine of Providence – St. Augustine’s Doctrine of Providence – St. Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Providence – Calvin’s Doctrine of Providence – Barth’s Doctrine of Providence – Conclusion.

Editorial Reviews

Horton Davies, one of the most distinguished church historians in his generation, is best known for his multi-volume magnum opus, Worship and Theology in England. Among his many lesser-known books, The Vigilant God, stands out as perhaps the most enduring and moving. Its topic is the providential governance of humankind in an essentially good world that has been set out of whack by sin. Its conversation partners are among the greatest theologians who have put pen to paper over the ages.”—Jeffrey L. Stout, Princeton University

“The Vigilant God is a mature scholar’s return to the theological traditions that shaped his life and work. Horton Davies focuses on four great figures of that tradition—Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth—giving particular attention to the place of Election in each. This book comes most fully alive in the last two sections, those on Calvin and Barth, for these two biblical theologians have had the greatest influence on the author’s own formation. Calvin is a better expositor of Scripture than Augustine, Davies argues, partly because the Genevan makes Scripture, rather than the Church, the final authority for Christian theology. But the admirer of Calvin is left with the burden of double predestination, a doctrine that, at least to modern sensibility, makes God seem unjust and that ultimately makes human virtue impossible. Davies believes that Barth has largely resolved this dilemma by moving the focus of God’s Election from the individual soul to Christ himself…. Davies was a remarkably wide-ranging historian of the Christian Church, one who was just as alert to the roles of liturgy and arts and music as he was to doctrinal controversies. This little book is a masterful account of how an earnest Christian scholar has been shaped by, and has struggled with, his theological inheritance.”—David B. McIlhiney

“This welcome new edition of The Vigilant God, a title invited by Psalm 121, is not without a touch of irony, at any time, least of all in our own. Horton Davies declares, ‘…in these days of our confusion.’ The concern is theodicy in terms of the doctrine of Providence in Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth. Davies boldly, unpretentiously, and wisely offers the approachableness of the giants.”—David Cain, University of Mary Washington

“In a balanced and judicious critique of four major Christian theologians, Horton Davies probes the viability of faith in a supposedly omnipotent and benevolent God who presides over a world full of corruption and suffering. He thoughtfully highlights ideas that offer not solutions to perennial questions but rather encouragement for further reflection on human existence, compassion, and wisdom.”—Henry Warner Bowden, Rutgers University

“‘Providence,’ God’s careful ruling the course of the world and the life of every person, is one of the most underestimated topics in contemporary theology and philosophy of religion but eminently significant when people must face disturbing times and inscrutable incidents. Horton Davies, the internationally renowned theologian and historian, evaluates in his comprehensive comparison four outstanding conceptions, clarifies misleading ideas, and rediscovers indispensable questions to be answered in trustworthy ways.”—Gerhard Sauter, Professor Emeritus of Systematic and Ecumenical Theology, University of Oxford

From the Publisher