The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers, by Eleonore Stump. ISBN
978-0-87462-189-1. 116 pages. Hardcover. 4.5 x 7.0. LIST PRICE: $15.00.
The Aquinas Lecture for 2016. Number 80 in the series.
The 2016 Aquinas Lecture, The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers, was delivered on Sunday, February 28, 2016, by Eleonore Stump, Robert J. Henle Professor of Philosophy, Saint Louis University.
Prof. Stump has a B.A. in Classical Languages from Grinnell College, where she was valedictorian (1969). She also holds an M.A. in New Testament Studies from Harvard University (1971) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Cornell University (1975). Before moving to Saint Louis University in 1992 to take up the Robert J. Henle Chair in Philosophy, she taught at Oberlin College, Virginia Tech, and Notre Dame. She has also had visiting appointments at the Wolfgang Goethe University (Frankfurt), Calvin College, Oxford (Oriel), Baylor University, the Pontifical Gregorian University, Aberdeen University, Princeton University, Wuhan University, and the Australian Catholic University. Among the distinguished lectures she has given are the Gifford lectures (Aberdeen), the Wilde lectures (Oxford), and the Stewart lectures (Princeton). Her numerous awards include the Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching (Baylor University, 2004), an honorary doctorate from Marquette University (2006), and the Aquinas medal (the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 2013). In 2012, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2014-15, with her colleague John Greco, she was awarded a $3.3 million Templeton grant for work on the topic “Intellectual Humility.” She has been president of the Society of Christian Philosophers ((1995-98), the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1999-2000), the American Philosophical Association, Central Division (2005-2006), and Philosophers in Jesuit Education (2013-2015). Prof. Stump has published extensively in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and medieval philosophy, and her work has been translated into Polish, Russian, Chinese, Swedish, Italian, German, Spanish, and French. Among her books are her magisterial Aquinas (2003) and her extensive discussion of the problem of suffering Wandering in Darkness (2010). She has published more than 100 articles on topics as diverse as “Dialectic in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Garlandus Compotista,” “Theology and Physics in De Sacramento Altaris: Ockham’s Theory of Indivisibles,” “Dante’s Hell, Aquinas’s Theory of Morality, and the Love of God,” “Non-Cartesian Substance Dualism and Materialism without Reductionism,” “Libertarian Freedom and the Principle of Alternative Possibilities,” “Saadia Gaon on the Problem of Evil,” “Augustine on Free Will,” and “Love, By All Accounts.”
The author revisits the classical discussion comparing the biblical God with the philosophers’ God, particularly using the works of Thomas Aquinas and focusing on the three divine attributes of immutability, eternity, and simplicity. Attention is paid to the idea of the Holy Spirit as related to the simplicity of God and how humans, made in God’s image, are similar to God.
Marquette University Press
