The Review of Metaphysics

This volume is a sequel to Schindler's 2017 work, Freedom from Reality: The Diabolical Character of Modern Liberty. There Schindler critiqued modern conceptions of liberty and explained the sense of freedom he finds in Plato and Aristotle. The project of this sequel is to bring out the positive development of the notion of freedom in the Christian tradition. To that end, Schindler first sketches the themes that Christian writers bring together: "Greek" concepts, which involve nature, and "Jewish" ones, which involve will and covenant. Next, there are detailed chapters on authors who work to "get this delicate and multifaceted matter right": Plotinus, Augustine, Dionysius the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Godfrey of Fontaines, and John Duns Scotus. Finally, a closing reflection sets up for the projected third volume.

Schindler begins with Plotinus, who, he believes, models what Christians should do in understanding freedom: ascend to the inner life of [End Page 769] God's self-relation to grasp receptivity and action as they take place on a transcendent level before trying to grasp how participatory beings act and receive. Next, he shows that Augustine's account of Trinitarian relations and freedom as gift synthesized Greek themes with themes of covenant, historicity, and relationship. Pseudo-Dionysius says little explicitly about freedom, but for Schindler, the relations of generative superabundance that the Areopagite establishes are crucial to understanding it. This is similarly the case with Maximus the Confessor: Schindler believes that in emphasizing the two wills of the Incarnate Christ, he sets up crucial relations between history and eternity.

The next two thinkers Schindler speaks of, Anselm and Bernard, also deepened the Christian account of freedom. However, he thinks they each go astray in certain respects, since Anselm emphasizes obedience at the expense of nature, and Bernard, in rejecting necessity, also sets freedom apart from nature. He is not at all disappointed, though, by his next pair of thinkers: Bonaventure and Aquinas present rich syntheses that portray freedom within its full network of natural and supernatural relations. With the last two authors, Schindler is again disappointed, though he emphasizes that they should not be characterized as intellectualist and voluntarist. Rather, Godfrey renders the object of will fundamentally impotent, and Scotus radicalizes potency until there can be no communication of being. In concluding, Schindler emphasizes the givenness of freedom and the beauty of the Christian tradition, but he cautions against the asymmetrical developments of modernity and calls for the Christian tradition to be "more fully tapped"—the project of his third volume.

In many ways, this is a great work in the Augustinian tradition. Schindler rightly emphasizes that freedom should not be understood in the context of sin but as a gift of nature, with a divine origin and orientation. He repeatedly lifts the reader to higher levels, and his breadth of vision is also welcome; he writes about the complete development of a major idea and its relation to the most fundamental realities and eschews mind-numbing minutiae. Schindler does share some Neoplatonist weaknesses. Like Pseudo-Dionysius, he offers few syllogisms, saying explicitly that his method is not deductive. Schindler prefers to describe, distinguish, and swiftly reject alternatives because they are not self-evident or because their fruits are not good. If Schindler has an interlocutor, he is a most docile one, who asks questions only to advance the narrative, such as: "Is Bonaventure's notion of freedom as dominion in tension with his account of how liberality discloses its meaning as gratuitous superabundance?" An additional troubling feature of Schindler's method is that it leaves little room for any use of common doxa or everyday experience. This was a bit jarring when applied to Aquinas, who is portrayed as unable to answer a simple objection without first mobilizing a vast metaphysics of creation.

The best audience for this book is unclear. Scholars in the history of philosophy and theology will be...