Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (review)

Lynne Spellman

Journal of the History of Philosophy, Volume 49, Number 1, January 2011, pp. 117-118 (Article) Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/hph.2011.0006

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but it should (as Sextus should) be read more widely by those interested in epistemology and moral psychology. The Pyrrhonist claims to suspend judgment on all matters that his rivals, dogmatic philosophers, purport to investigate. His suspension of judgment brings about the tranquility (ataraxia) that Sextus describes as the motivation or the causal principle of skepticism (Outlines 1: 12). Critics both ancient and modern have objected that the skeptics aim and his suspension of judgment are incompatible with genuine and rigorous rational inquiry; indeed, it has been argued that Sextus description of the Sceptic as engaged in the search for truth is a sham (8). Perins response to this charge occupies his first two chapters. Negatively, Perins general strategy is to defend Sextus by showing how very much he can do with really very little. He draws our attention, frequently and importantly, to what Sextus does not say, clarifies what he does say, and explains, compellingly in most cases, why so many claims attributed to Sextus need not follow from the letter of the text and why it is therefore inappropriate to hold the skeptic to them. Positively, Perin then seeks to explain why someone who is able to achieve tranquility as Sextus does, by suspending judgment, would search for truth at all, and how it is possible for him to do so while employing arguments that he acknowledges to have as their conclusion that the truth about [some] matter cannot be known (2732). If the argument of Perins first two chapters is right, then not only does Sextus not eschew the demands of reason, in fact he recognizes them as necessary and respects them. What is more, his practice turns out to be a unique means of satisfying those demands. In his third chapter, Perin turns to the vexed issue of the scope of Pyrrhonism, defending a restricted rather than a radical interpretation, according to which Sextus suspends belief about how things are rather than merely appear to be (84). This understanding of skepticisms scope is not new, but Perin draws some further conclusions that are provocative enough to have warranted lengthier treatment (for instance, that the Sceptic does not make any inferences or have any beliefs that are the products of inference [83]). The fourth and final chapter takes up the classic apraxia objectionthe charge that skepticism is incompatible with action and therefore unlivable. I suspect that Perins proposed solutions to these tenacious problems will not silence all objectors. But they are fresh and well-argued, supported by both nuanced and sympathetic readings of the text and ambitious but restrained rational reconstruction. It will make an excellent companion volume to Sextuss Outlines. Jessica N. Berry Georgia State University

Andrew Radde-Gallwitz. Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Pp. xxi + 261. Cloth, $100.00. In this study, Andrew Radde-Gallwitz argues that Basil and Gregory develop an understanding of divine simplicity which does not require that God be identical with the properties of God or that these be identical with one another. Their motivation is that they want to hold that we cannot, in all eternity, know Gods essence and yet that we have knowledge of God. Radde-Gallwitz argues that, for Basil and especially Gregory, in addition to our conceptualizations (epinoiai), we also have knowledge of propria, properties necessarily connected to Gods essence. In the early chapters, Radde-Gallwitz surveys the background to the Cappadocians, beginning with the second century. He argues that in early Christianity the requirement for divine simplicity is not an intrusion from Greek philosophy but arises from reflection on the apparent inconsistency of the God revealed in scripture. So, for example, Marcion holds that God has only one attribute, namely goodness, a view that led him to reject the

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Hebrew Scriptures. But even without moral inconsistency, a concern for the unchangeability of God sometimes produced a parallel maneuver, dividing Gods attributes between a first and second God, namely, Christ. After discussing Clement, for whom God is both simple and ineffable, and a chapter on the background to thinking of God as ingenerate, Radde-Gallwitz turns to Eunomiuss ongoing dispute with Basil and Gregory. For Radde-Gallwitz, Eunomius does not develop his view that the essence of God is ingeneracy in order to subordinate the Son to the Father (that the view is Neo-Arian is instead a consequence) (96), but because he thinks that to honor God we must be able to know God and, in a line of thought traceable to Platos Meno, we can be said to know God only if we know Gods essence. For Eunomius, to have only conceptualizations of God, as he believed the Cappadocians to hold, would be not to know God. Of course Eunomius is also concerned to be true to scripture. Thus, he concluded that the other titles of God, for example, light or life, must signify the same simple entity as ingeneracy, a claim which, as he did not distinguish meaning from reference, led him to understand simplicity in terms of identity. The transformation of divine simplicity Radde-Gallwitz attributes to the Cappadocians is a transformation in relation to Eunomius (as well as Augustine, Aquinas, and contemporary discussions), but it is also a return to the original Christian concerns regarding divine simplicity. Radde-Gallwitzs account of Basil and Gregory is too complex to do justice to here. Conceptualization is, says Gregory, the way we find out things we do not know, using what is connected and consequent upon our first idea of a subject to discover what lies beyond (177). The Cappadocians argue that ingeneracy is an epinoia formed by reflection upon scripture. But their key move, Radde-Gallwitz believes, is to say that although we cannot know Gods essence, we can have knowledge of God because (even though Gregory is not entirely consistent in his terminology) Gods substance is distinguished from Gods nature or essence. What Basil and Gregory claim is that goodness, light, life, power, wisdom, and so on, are propria, unique identifying properties which are part of Gods substance. As such, they are inseparably linked to the divine nature but distinct in some sense from it and necessarily joined to one another (18485). Radde-Gallwitz does not address Gregorys exceedingly interesting proposal that the way we see God is in the mirror which is ourselves (as in Homily 6, in On the Beatitudes). He does discuss how for Gregory we naturally desire the good and so begin from notions of God that are innate. Moral development and knowledge advance together because it is by acquiring the virtues that we become better able to distinguish pure goodness from goodness that is limited or mixed (196). Radde-Gallwitz rejects more apophatic accounts of the Cappadocians such as David Bradshaws Aristotle East and West (Cambridge, 2004), in which Bradshaw distinguishes between Gods unknowable essence and Gods activities (energeiai), which are not merely activities but are God as He is capable of being apprehended by us (Bradshaw, 16567). At issue is whether Gods activities necessarily reflect Gods essence. Bradshaw believes the Cappadocians leave the question unsettled (172). Radde-Gallwitz holds that for the Cappadocians, God cannot do otherwise without being otherwise, although he qualifies this claim by saying that there are varieties of freedom and that one needs to ask whether otherwise means different in kind (233). The question of Gods freedom is of obvious interest in the history of philosophy. But there is also another question, one Radde-Gallwitz does not address. Even if he is right that for the Cappadocians what we know of God are propria, is he right to commend their position for its subtlety? Does the notion of propria make sense? If we knew only that horses neigh, we would not know much about horses, but that is because the example is so unconvincing. If we know Gods propria and these are necessarily linked to Gods essence, what is left that we do not know? To put the point less contentiously, what kind of necessity is it that binds Gods essence and Gods propria? Lynne Spellman University of Arkansas, Fayetteville