Note: This is the online version of an essay from the Hanover Review 3.2 on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture. Print copies are available here and full digital copies of the issue are available here. More information about the Hanover Review is found here.

1. Introduction

Peter Leithart is President of the Theopolis Institute and serves as Teacher at Trinity Presbyterian Church (CREC) in Birmingham, Alabama. He holds advanced degrees from Westminster Theological Seminary (Philadelphia) and the University of Cambridge, where he received his PhD. Leithart is a prolific author, writing on a wide range of exegetical topics. His latest work is Creator: A Theological Interpretation of Genesis 1. In classic Leithart fashion, it is a mix of creative biblical exegesis, surprising theological explanations, and potentially startling conclusions. It is nothing if not provocative. Following in the trend of many recent popular works on theology proper, Leithart sets out to destroy the “nonexistent idol” that many theologians have erected in place of the living God (3). Unfortunately, I suggest Leithart does no such thing. Instead, he meanders through the wilderness of ancient philosophy and arrives at a “destination” not far from the original path he sought to avoid. At his best, he offers good advice and guidance, but overall, he evidences confusion on several key topics that could have been avoided had he been tutored by a wiser guide. In what follows, I provide a general summary of Leithart’s book followed by a critical interaction with several of his key claims before offering an alternative proposal for reading Scripture well so that we may “honor God as God” as Saint Paul admonishes (Rom 1:21).

2. Summarizing Leithart

Leithart’s book is divided into seven chapters, coveringavast arrayof topics, though there is a definite fault line between the descriptive and historical character of the first half of the book and the constructive, exegetical, and daring second half. Leithart’s overall thesis shines throughout his book: there is no God but the Creator. There are various “sub-theses” that develop and sustain this general idea, such as the necessity of starting with Genesis. Many of our problems, according to Leithart, stem from failing to adequately integrate creation into our theologizing. Accordingly, these problems would melt away if we properly disciplined ourselves to the Bible and eschewed metaphysical speculation (3, 148). In Leithart’s own words, “Creator is largely a theological commentary on portions of Genesis 1:1–2:3, an attempt to articulate a fundamental theology explicitly and rigorously controlled by the Bible’s first chapter” (1).

Chapter 1 engages the topic of theological or divine “accommodation”where in traditional modes of theology much of Scripture’s language is overly literalistic and should be interpreted metaphorically. When Scripture speaks of God having an arm or nose, these are not literally true. When God is said to repent, this is not literally true. And so on. Leithart is consistently negative toward this approach, thinking that it renders us as more sophisticated and intelligent than God himself. The reason for this is that, for Leithart, a spiritualized reading of the Bible like this assumes that God is unable to communicate what he intended, rendering him lacking in power. It makes us, the readers and interpreters, as the true intellectual giants that then explain to everyone else what God really meant when he said something about himself. Chapter 2 develops ideas related to logos, mythos, and creation. He argues that Christian theology was adversely affected by Greek thought so we must pursue “scriptural purification” (28). This isn’t strictly a reassertion of the Hellenization thesis, but it does come close to that historical assessment by my lights. The chapter focuses on Plato’s Timaeus, the Demiurge, the forms, and Parmenides. The goal for Leithart is to express the vast ocean of difference between Genesis and Plato. He argues that they provide rival accounts of creation and creator. Since these are rival accounts, Leithart concludes that “if Christians renounce the myth, we must also be ready to oppose the metaphysics” (66).

Chapter 3 is cheekily titled “Simplicity Partially Baptized.” It is well summed up by Leithart’s provocative imagery that “the theologian who uses philosophy should not mix water and wine but imitate Jesus by turning the one into the other” (68). Divine simplicity, then, should be purified and transformed by Scripture. This naturally means that those who affirm standard accounts of divine simplicity have not gone far enough and need a true transformation of their view. Leithart explains, “Genesis 1, in short, forces a revisionist understanding of simplicity” (84). Leithart correctly shows this to be the case, to some degree, as Thomas Aquinas himself has a less “strong” account of simplicity compared to those like Plotinus (83). Throughout the chapter Leithart makes bold claims, such as:

• “There is that in God (esse acceptum ab alio) of which created dependence and passivity are resemblances” (108)
• “If a trinitarian ontology is assumed, we may say: There is that in God of which the simultaneity of cause and effect is a resemblance” (110)
• “If God is simpliciter immobile, how can he create a world in motion? If God lacks potency, where does the potency and patiency of creation come from?” (111)
• “There are two theologies in the Summa, a theology of nature and reason and a trinitarian theology of the gospel, and they are not entirely compatible. To exaggerate crudely for the sake of emphasis: Thomas introduces two Gods, and they are ” (113)

Some of these are admittedly more daring than others. Some are also likely to make readers rather frustrated (Thomas has “two Gods”?!). But the point is clear—Leithart is taking no prisoners and is revising, or attempting to revise, much of traditional theology on the doctrine of God.

Chapter 4 develops the idea of God as Creator. Again, Leithart is brashly adventurous in his claims throughout. Here he begins to develop one of his key claims—the idea that God could not not create. In other words, he must create. For example, he says this quite clearly in his own words: “there is no possibility for God not to be Creator” (160). Interestingly, Leithart despite wanting to revise divine simplicity onboards the thorny problem of modal collapse. One would think a key reason to reject divine simplicity was to do so for the very purposes of avoiding this strong necessity which Leithart goes on to hoist back onto God. So, despite wanting to develop our metaphysics from Genesis where we need to “fudge” on simplicity and admit of complexity and new relations in God, God still must create out of necessity (128, 131–132). This is why Leithart continues to be critical of Thomas. He thinks he is completely inconsistent. He says, “Thomas’s doctrine of God cannot get past the first verse of the Bible before slamming into incoherence” (133). In his potentially most provocative line throughout the work, he criticizes a traditional account of God creating out of divine freedom:

If creation is arbitrarily related to the eternal essence of God, and if God is understood as choosing among various possible worlds, God is reduced to a “god.” Instead of being fully actualized, this “godlet” goes shopping at the Cosmic Costco of Possible Worlds. (134)

God’s entire being and identity is based on his role as Creator (149). As Leithart says:

• “In Scripture, there is no God without interplay with creatures, without a created playground” (150)
• “A non-Creator is, in the strictest possible sense, a nonentity. God- without-creation is an idol” (151)
• “Scripture never speaks of God’s Godness by speaking of simplicity, or actus purus, or esse ipsum” (152)
• “the Creator does depend on creation in various senses” (154)

Leithart’s solution in Creator is supposed to give us all we want without all these traditional problems (153). All of the traditional problems, except for modal collapse, apparently.

Chapters 5 through 7 focus on exegetical and constructive theology that is more akin to what one would expect from Leithart. Chapter 5 develops the literary structure of Genesis 1. Chapter 6 argues for the superiority of Genesis and its metaphysics to anything else—even Exodus! For example, Genesis “surpasses and sublates the metaphysics of Exodus” (215). This includes wide ranging accounts of numerology to develop theological points. Finally, Chapter 7 engages the contemporary debates regarding the nature of time and God’s relation to it (274–77).

3. Critical Interaction

Leithart makes no shortage of striking claims worthy of consideration and evaluation. There are so many, in fact, that determining which ones to analyze in an extended fashion is rather difficult. I’ve chosen to focus on two major themes that recur throughout the work before making a few general comments on other areas of concern.

Before my extended critique, I must say that I do appreciate much of Leithart’s work. He is one of the most original and free-thinking theologians and exegetes alive today. When he stays true to his creative biblical insights, he’s most welcome, even if he is too daring and often wrong. There is much to learn from the process of discovery and the jolting nature of the result itself. But Leithart’s strength—creative and illuminating biblical exegesis—is unfortunately largely sidelined in Creator. What is left is a heaping mound of philosophical musings, most of which are ultimately wrong. Many of these musings would have benefited from the careful review of an expert philosopher, as many of them contain errors that would be eliminated with the assistance of a careful reader.

3.1  Accommodation of What?

As hinted at initially, I find Leithart’s description and analysis of divine accommodation to be less than successful. This is due in large part to his misunderstanding (or misrepresentation?) of the traditional approach to accommodation, or at least the entailments of accommodation. Throughout his opening chapter he provides at least four different problematic accounts/entailments of accommodation that I find worthy of rebuttal.

First, he thinks accommodation essentially boils down to equivocation. He begins in the right neighborhood, describing accommodation as being grounded in a “metaphysical conviction” that God is transcendent. Since God is transcendent, finite creatures like us can never really get at exactly “what it’s like” to be God and so cannot properly describe him. Hence, God must “accommodate” himself to us in language and concepts our finite minds can grasp (4–5). Things turn problematic when Leithart gives concrete examples of what this means.

For example, he says that accommodation entails the following: “If Scripture says, ‘Jeremiah said,’ it means, straightforwardly ‘Jeremiah said,’ but if Scripture says, ‘God said,’ it must be hedged with caution signs” (8). The idea here, according to Leithart, is that the acceptance of the doctrine of accommodation so destabilizes our language that we cannot make sense of anything God says. Language breaks down to such a degree that we literally cannot do theology, except in the mode of babbling infants. Unfortunately, Leithart has allowed Pseudo-Dionysius to misshape his thinking. For Pseudo-Dionysius, theology is only a negative enterprise. We can only know what God is not. And even then, we really have no idea what we are saying. Our words are mere murmurs in the darkness as we grope. But the darkened sayings of Pseudo-Dionysius are not all the tradition has to offer. For example, John Chrysostom (347–407) explains accommodation as follows: 

God condescends whenever he is not seen as he is, but in the way one incapable of beholding him is able to look upon him. In this way God reveals himself by accommodating what he reveals to the weakness of vision of those who behold him.¹John Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, Paul W. Harkins (The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), III, 15.

On this account, God stoops low to his creation and makes himself known within created realities that lack exact representation. The only exact imprint of God is the Son (Heb 1:3). So, while God reveals himself, the knowledge God brings is not exhaustive knowledge of himself.²Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, V, 38 Therefore, the real idea behind accommodation is an inability to understand directly and literally what God is. Since he transcends created categories, we have nothing with which we can truly compare him.³Basil, Against Eunomius, Mark DelCogliano and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz (The Catholic University of America Press, 2011), 1.14. Therefore, God must use accommodated language to help us understand what he is like. God is like a rock, like a tree, and like a lion. These examples give us some ability to make theological judgments, limited as they are. But they are real theological judgments nonetheless. Accommodation, then, is not designed to qualify or judge Scripture but to aid us in understanding how Scripture is communicating.

In one sense, I understand Leithart’s concern. Such an interpretive practice may be surprising to our modern ears. It might seem to destroy our ability to know anything about God. When we read Augustine saying that Scripture teaches us through “something like children’s toys,” this may sound alarming, or at the very least, suspicious.⁴Augustine, The Trinity, Edmund Hill (New City, 2015), I.1.2. But consider for a moment several examples. Is God literally seated on the cherubim as Psalm 80:1 claims?⁵Augustine, The Trinity, 2.8, 9. Surely it is quite intuitive to allow for metaphors like this to communicate something besides literal truth, lest we be content to assume that God also has literal eyes, legs, and arms. We must be willing to allow some level of divine accommodation. So, while some predications are proper, like love, others are improper and metaphorical, like circumscribed location. God isn’t literally contained at a single place like us. And Scripture itself attests to this—the very Scriptures which Leithart insists must be our sole basis for speaking about God.

Second, he thinks “accommodation suggests God does not take full responsibility for his own speech” (19). He thinks that accommodation means that God wasn’t quite “up to the task” of communicating properly and thus had to recourse to “baby talk,” as Leithart puts it. Poor creatures, we are. Too stupid or inadequate to understand basic claims about truth, goodness, and beauty. As such, Leithart counters that “Scripture is God’s Word in written form. It contains nothing unworthy of its divine Author. What Scripture teaches, God teaches” (23). But accommodation doesn’t mean that the grownups in the room should put away childish games for the “grown-up language about God” which “turns out to be metaphysical language” (16). It doesn’t mean that there are words that are “unworthy” of God in Scripture. Do we really think that theologians as wide and diverse as Basil, Augustine, Chrysostom, Calvin, and Bavinck all thought that the Bible contains unworthy things? I hope the answer is obvious. Certainly not! The Bible remains perfect to its last jot and tittle. Dare we suggest those like Calvin thought Scripture contained things unworthy of God because of his defense of divine accommodation? Shall we hear him speak of the glory of John’s Gospel against those who lack reverence for Scripture where we “find a thousand sayings to arouse, at least, their dull minds— nay, I should rather say, to burn a dreadful brand upon their consciences for the restraint of their mockery” and truly conclude that Calvin thought the Bible contained things unworthy of God?⁶John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Westminster John Knox, 2006), 1.8.11. Heaven forbid.

Leithart goes on to suggest that any doctrine of accommodation is “theologically insupportable” (17–20). He argues further as follows:

Having created a world that comprehensively speaks of God, why would God prohibit us to use language he made? How could it possibly be inadequate or inappropriate? Why is it unworthy of God when we use created things as God intended them to be used? Where does the instinct to explain away the “crudeness” of Scripture come from? (15)

The problem here, again, is that accommodation doesn’t entail any of this. Leithart is dead wrong to describe accommodation as “a method, or a trick, to relieve the shame of devoting a lifetime of study to a children’s picture book” (16). Merely read Augustine, Calvin, or Chrysostom and see the difference. God doesn’t prohibit us from using language. It is not a strange form of Gnosticism. The point is that humans cannot fully comprehend God because he is so much greater and ultimately different than we are as Creator instead of creature. A truly transcendent God is beyond our intelligence and “transcends the power of mortal words.”⁷Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God, III, 5–6. While there are echoes of God throughout creation none of these apply simplistically back to him without purification. To borrow Leithart’s own turn of phrase, creation and words too must be baptized.

A third problem is that Leithart argues that accommodation entails a second condescension from God: creation and then accommodation. To employ these “ticks and tricks” that posit a second condescension is to suggest that “creation is not entirely good” (21–22). But none of this is true. Leithart misunderstands the nature of accommodation which is attempting to provide hermeneutical tools for understanding and interpreting the varied modes of divine communication. It does not mean we need something more than Scripture. It just means that we should be patient as we read the biblical text and allow the various signposts found throughout Scripture itself, that warn us of the danger of reading metaphorical language as literal, to have their pride of place. And why worry about a second condescension beyond creation, as if that were necessarily bad? Certainly, the incarnation is a condescension after creation, and I’d put money on that being good.

Even more, we see again that Leithart is getting things backwards. It is not that accommodation means creation is not good. Rather, it means that creation is a dim reflection of the true source of goodness and meaning which is God himself. Leithart seems to think that unless we take up every created word as useful to describe God in a literalistic sense then it is not good. But created reality takes its name from God as a faint reflection, not the other way around.⁸Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, John Bolt, trans. John Vriend (Baker Academic, 2003), 2:130. Creation as an image of the Creator is not divine, and thus lacks sufficient capability to name God by itself. While creation has a kinship relation to the Creator and as such grounds the warrant for using creaturely language about God, it too must once again be baptized.⁹Bavinck, RD, 2:106–107. Grace elevates nature.

A fourth problem is that Leithart also argues against accommodation because “mystery does not suddenly confront us when we begin to speak about God” (8). It seems Leithart thinks accommodation is employed only in theological contexts of mystery. And since all of creation has a degree of mysteriousness then we should have accommodation all the way down. And no one thinks that. But of course, we have two problems here. One is that there are those who think it is mysterious accommodation “all the way down.” Bavinck is not shy: “Scripture does not just contain a few scattered anthropomorphisms but is anthropomorphic through and through.”¹⁰Bavinck, RD, 2:99. The more pressing problem is that the fact that all of creation is in a sense mysterious doesn’t need to entail that there is pure accommodation all the way down. This is to flatten out creation beyond recognition.

What Leithart could have done was employ a modest account of language akin to Richard Swinburne. Swinburne similarly explores the possibility of ordinary words being used dissimilarly according to the subject and whether these words can mean the same thing when applied to differing subjects. For example, does “good” mean the same thing when predicated of God and man and dogs? If not, does that mean all meaning has been lost? Swinburne thinks you can maintain meaning across these differing subjects while accounting for differences by describing words as having a “core entailment” along with many “mini entailments.” The idea here is that there is some core meaning for goodness that is kept in every instance, thus guaranteeing meaningful correspondence, while allowing for significant variances in its “mini entailments.” So, goodness when applied to George Washington, to my dog Fido, and to God can have some sort of shared meaning when uttered of each. For example, we can know that goodness means at least that each are desirable in some sense, even though the desirability of each differs to a significant degree.¹¹See Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2016), 55–59. This account doesn’t require us to say that goodness is the exact same in every instance or that it is completely dissimilar and thus useless to use created words of God.

To sum up: Leithart’s major qualm (and worry) is that if accommodation is true then the words of Scripture are no longer adequate to convey the truth that God intended (4). It “obliterates the Bible” and “erodes the very possibility of Scripture” (10). This is a legitimate worry to have. We should desire to preserve the truth of Scripture. But fearing that accommodation is the boogeyman under the bed that will empty revelation of its truth is akin to thinking that employing tools of history or grammar necessitate a warped view of Scripture! His worry, thus, goes too far. Accommodation doesn’t destroy our ability to use created categories to speak of God. Instead, it attempts to preserve the varied senses of Scripture, often portrayed by and directed by Scripture itself. It does nothing other than what Leithart calls us to in other works of his. It assists us by “tracing out the crucial missing elements that make the text mean what it does.” To reject divine accommodation for the reasons Leithart does, ironically, can “only kill interpretation.”¹²Peter J. Leithart, Deep Exegesis: The Mystery of Reading Scripture (Baylor University Press, 2009), 112.

3.2  The Necessary(?) Creator

A further serious problem shot through the entirety of Leithart’s book is his claim that God is necessarily creator. At points, he shies away from the force of this claim, which makes pinning down his view difficult. But considering his whole work, the impression he gives is that creation was necessary for God, which I will attempt to show below. Now, there are some great Christian thinkers that have argued in this way, so Leithart isn’t alone: Jonathan Edwards argued for the necessity of creation, and Daniel Pedersen and Christopher Lilley have done the same recently.¹³I know some may debate this claim about Edwards, but I do not see any reasonable reading of his work that could deny See Jonathan Edwards, “Dissertation I: Concerning the End for Which God Created the World,” in Ethical Writings in Works of Jonathan Edwards Online, ed. Paul Ramsey, vol. 8 ( Jonathan Edwards Center: Yale University Press, 2008); Daniel J. Pedersen and Christopher Lilley, “Divine Simplicity, God’s Freedom, and the Supposed Problem of Modal Collapse,” Journal of Reformed Theology 16 (2022): 127–47, https://doi.org/10.1163/15697312-bja10028. The problem, however, is twofold. First, a necessary creator is false. Second, a necessary creator goes against the consensus of the tradition.

A necessary creator is false because it entails a lack of freedom in God, and God should be understood as most free. Even worse, to suggest a necessary creation naturally leads one to pantheism.¹⁴Editor’s note: The author intended panentheism at this juncture, a form of process theism like pantheism that provides a clearer understanding of the identity between God and the world that is not one of strict identity but necessary co-existence. – 1/27/25 A necessary creation is no different than the pantheistic world that co-exists alongside God. This, of course, is precisely the result that those like Friedrich Schleiermacher want. But it is not the one we find throughout the tradition. As Francis Turretin argues, “no created thing is necessary with respect to God but contingent.” Hence, God has liberty of will.¹⁵Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison, trans. George Musgrave Giger (P&R, 1994), 3.14.V. According to Richard Muller, for the entirety of the Reformed orthodox, “the will of God is characterized by its absolute freedom from all external constraints.”¹⁶Richard A. Muller, Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics: The Rise and Development of Reformed Orthodoxy, ca. 1520 to ca. 1725, 2nd ed (Baker Academic, 2003), 3:433.

Leithart, however, argues that God exists necessarily for another. And thus, while he says the relation is not pantheistic, God and creation must both exist. Apart from creation there is no God. He says this clearly in multiple locations. I list several examples (some of which were seen in my summary) to prove his claims lest the reader worry of misrepresentation:

• “The world is essential to a concrete concept of God” (137)
• “The Creator is internally related….the Creator does depend on creation in various senses….Given creation, the identity of God depends on creation” (154)
• “There is no possibility for God not to be Creator” (160)
• “Scripture thus knows nothing at all about a God who might-or- might-not create” (150)
• “A non-Creator is, in the strictest possible sense, a nonentity. God- without-creation is an idol” (151)

But surely a straightforward reading of Genesis 1:1 (not to mention John 1:1–3, Col 1:15–18, Prov 8, etc.) tells us that God was prior to creation, and thus without it. And surely Leithart knows that positing God as dependent on his creation entails a violation of divine aseity, which is the hallmark of creating an actual idol?

Leithart seems to think that arguing against an eternal creation means “detaching” God’s will from his intellect and, more fundamentally, his nature, and leads to voluntarism (128). But in no sense is this sequence of thought necessary. Leithart, again, evidences a lack of careful attention to thedistinctionsandnuancesdeployedthroughoutscholasticliteratureused to defend the freedom of God. This isn’t a unique problem to Leithart— many others have exhibited the same errors. But it remains problematic, nonetheless. For example, he thinks that the classic distinctions between hypothetical and absolute necessity introduce complexity into God (131). But to think this means one has not paid sufficient attention to how these concepts are deployed throughout the tradition. It is one thing to reject them as meaningless. It is another to fault them in ways that are easily resolved—in this case, by simply coming to a proper understanding of the meaning of the concepts themselves. So, while Leithart accuses those like Thomas of “slamming into incoherence” with the first verse of the Bible, it is actually Leithart himself who has caused the incoherence by misunderstanding the concepts at play. In fact, Leithart himself appears to utilize a similar distinction when he argues at once that the world could not fail to be created. This means it is necessary. But he immediately will follow this claim by an assertion that it is a free act of creation and not bound by any natural necessity (135). He seeks to rely upon the very same framework he lambasts. He saws off the branch on which he sits.

3.3  General Critical Remarks

Besides these main criticisms, I have several further qualms. First, I found the book much too long, wandering in the wilderness of ancient philosophy so long that even the expert reader may find themselves dizzied without refreshment. Even when we found our way to more energizing lands, Leithart remained an unreliable guide. This was rather evident from the resources he primarily engaged. He lacked the relevant literature that ought to characterize a project such as his. Where is Eleonore Stump’s work (besides the one dated joint publication with Norman Kretzman)? Where is Tim Pawl? Matthews Grant? Ed Feser? Brian Leftow? Robert Pasnau? Even that of Jay Wesley Richards? Where are the legions of philosophical journal articles on these topics? If one wants to wade into these waters and be taken seriously one must evidence a knowledge of the requisite literature. Instead, Leithart relies on popular level works and his own original contributions without conversing with the mountain of resources on God’s relation to his creation. For example, Leithart continually poses dilemmas for classical theism that are resolved in the relevant literature, or at least given answers. For instance: “If God is simple, he ‘must’ create; or, if God is simple, he cannot create, because creation would put in him a ‘new’ relation” (117). But this proves he has not done the proper reading on what a “relation” is, when someone acquires one, and what simplicity entails. This could be solved without extensive engagement with the relevant literature had Leithart simply worked on a constructive account of Genesis 1 without the critical eye to so-called classical theism.

Further, his discussion of the metaphysics of time evidences a superficial acquaintance with the views and complexities of the debate. For example, he completely misunderstands the A- and B-theories. He thinks the lack of tense in the B-theory renders it “impersonal.” But it does no such thing. This simply evidences an unfamiliarity with the literature. It is an amateur’s first impression (276–77). The lack of tense does not remove the real events of life—love, passion, hate, anger, embarrassment. They all still happen.

Elsewhere he creates a curious rivalry between the metaphysics of Genesis and Exodus. He claims that Genesis “surpasses and sublates the metaphysics of Exodus” (215). But why think the two are at odds? Why not assume they compliment one another and build on each other? Genesis and Exodus are friends and to attempt to separate or pit one against the other is to lead one into the wilderness in need of an exodus.

He has further weird claims like creation being a “metaphysical Golgotha” where “the Absolute sacrifices its absoluteness without losing it” (136). The rhetorical flourish of these claims is striking. One may be attracted to the elegance of metaphysics dying a sacrificial death at Golgotha. But nowhere does Leithart give clarity to these rhetorical oddities. Whatever their purpose, they function as substitutes for rational deliberation. But most fundamentally and most concerningly, Leithart argues that Genesis is a “good place to start” (148). This is wise advice. It is no mere coincidence that Genesis sits at the beginning of the canon. But throughout the book Leithart gives the sense that we should start with Genesis and stay in Genesis. Now, I don’t think Leithart really thinks that. But what else am I supposed to make of saying that Genesis surpasses and sublates Exodus? And as important as a hermeneutical starting place is, no theologian wants merely creation or even death through baptism alone. No: we want to finish. We want a resurrection.

3.4  Praiseworthy Remarks

While I’ve spent the majority of this review criticizing central portions of Leithart’s book, I don’t mean to suggest that there is no value in it. As expected, Leithart does deliver some ideas that are worthy of commendation and reflection.

First, Leithart is to be commended for his resolute commitment to Scripture. It is always a worthwhile reminder to consider afresh our theology in light of Scripture. His creative and sometimes shocking turns of phrase often serve his readers well. They force us to re-evaluate. They encourage us to examine once again what God has revealed in his Word. Anyone that spurs this is to be thanked. Of course, such encouragements can come from any number of sources, not always worth recommending. Unitarians may cause us to examine the Scriptural record of the Son’s divinity afresh. They are to be thanked for this. But their conclusions should not be recommended. But in Leithart’s case, he does encourage us at the right points to pause and re-examine what God has said versus what we’ve presupposed.

Second, Leithart’s reflections on the ontology of light are simply delightful. They are the sort of expositions I hoped to find when reading this book. Throughout he seeks to understand the fundamental nature of light and how it is a created resemblance of speech, giving generously and ordering things around it (248). He muses that the audible word is prioritized over the optical (243). But in all this he maintains that the word is more fundamental than light; that music is more basic than light because as word it is the source of light and medium of visibility (264). Whatever the truth of the matter is, these sort of reflections are worthy of commendation because they cause one to examine the text with care and re-examine one’s ontology in general.

Third, he has several claims or assumptions that are well-delivered. For example, he provocatively and helpfully claims that the theologian should not mix water and wine but to turn water into wine (68). While slightly cryptic, this aphorism reminds the theologian to be a Christian theologian first and foremost. Similarly, Leithart argues that while divine simplicity is nearly universally affirmed in the Christian tradition, not all theologians and philosophers mean the same thing by it (84). This observation is quite right. Too many scholars and theologians today are persuaded that the Christian tradition is a monolith on doctrines such as simplicity; that there is no variance on the doctrine throughout the tradition. They’ve thought all models are identical (pun intended) with Thomas. But this is quite wrong.

4. Conclusion

Leithart’s constant impulse to draw all theology from Scripture is a good one. His beating of the Bible drum over and over awakens us from our metaphysical slumber. But we needn’t be shackled by his many false dilemmas. The God of Scripture—the God of Genesis—remains the God of classical theism. Eleonore Stump’s words still ring true: “The God of classical theism is the engaged, personally present, responsive God of the Bible.”¹⁷Eleonore Stump, The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (Marquette University Press, 2016), 19. We ought to heed Leithart’s own words from a prior work: “why should I attempt to conform to modern insight about the nature of meaning?”¹⁸Leithart, Deep Exegesis, 78. But instead of only conforming to the modern nature of meaning, why should we conform to the modern insight about God?

In the end, Leithart’s Creator is full of twists, turns, wandering, and drifting. While some of his meanderings lead to worthwhile insights, which we have come to expect from him, they do not make up for the overall confusion of the book. To put it rather bluntly, Leithart does not understand the subtleties of the doctrine of God and the relevant scholarly literature. Therefore, he is not a trustworthy guide to the academic discourse on so-called classical theism and the doctrine of God and his book should not be widely read. Whatever his rhetorical power, the “revisionary metaphysics” Leithart champions are not an improvement. This doesn’t mean that all of Leithart’s work is in vain or that he is untrustworthy. Nor does it detract from the way that Leithart aids in the process of discovery through this book. His writing and thinking are unique. It’s clear he is a powerful intellect capable of reshaping our vision. And he does this at times throughout the book. In this way, one might think Leithart fits the category of a bad book that is nonetheless a worthwhile companion. Some bad books offer new perspectives on old conundrums; some insightfully exegete familiar passages of Scripture; some provide useful taxonomies and arguments. Leithart’s book has some of these positive qualities. But the positive aspects of Leithart’s work simply do not overcome the negative, misleading, and potentially dangerous assertions I’ve chronicled above. Unfortunately, his bad book is not a worthwhile companion for most. But for some, it may serve as the catalyst needed to arrest their attention back upon the God of Scripture— just not the one Leithart mistakenly paints at times.