Gaven Kerr, Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation. New York NY, Oxford University Press, 2019, 14.5 × 22 cm, viii-252 p., ISBN 978-0-19094-130-7

Author Gaven Kerr characterizes Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation as enlarging in the final chapter of his previous book, Aquinas’s Way to God: The Proof in De Ente et Essentia (p. 2). There, Kerr considered Thomas’s proof for the existence of God which relies upon the distinction between essence and esse (existence or being), and the causing of the joining of these in creatures. Such considerations, Kerr writes in Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation, “led me naturally to conclude with a brief account of what a Thomistic metaphysics of creation would look like” (p. 2), and thus Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation is concerned to expand on the brief account of creation found in Aquinas’s Way to God, precisely as informed by the discussion of essence and esse that is so central to the latter work. Indeed, one sees the fingerprints of Aquinas’s Way to God throughout this work, from Kerr’s many and tasteful references to his previous material, to the continued and central role that essence and esse, especially esse, play in Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation. And yet this book feels like a complete work in its own right, perhaps due to the fact that Kerr’s primary source material is so much more varied than it was previously in Aquinas’s Way to God, as Thomas nowhere presents a metaphysics of creation as such. In what follows I will present a brief summary of the chapters of Aquinas and the Metaphysics of Creation; I will include occasional remarks as to the highlights of certain chapters. After this, I will explain what I take to be further strengths and the main weaknesses of the book, on which I will finally provide my final thoughts. The first chapter concerns the history of philosophical thought around the idea of creation, from the Pre-Socratics until Thomas’s time. Here, Kerr takes his cue from Thomas’s own reading of the history of philosophy (pp. 15-16), although Kerr is keen on warning the reader that this first chapter is not merely a historical chapter (p. 12), and indeed it contains dense philosophical reasoning and argumentation. The thrust of the first chapter is that Thomas sees the history of philosophy as slowly unfolding a philosophy of creation, as in time philosophers approached a more nuanced and universal appreciation of being itself. What this chapter does especially well is laying the groundwork for the central role that esse will play in the remainder of the book. God as the agent of creation is the focus of the second chapter. Here, Kerr follows Thomas’s treatment of God’s operation that is found in Summa Theologiae I.14-25; that is, Kerr considers God’s knowledge, will, and power, which he labels as the “creative attributes” of God (p. 57). Especially useful in this chapter is how Kerr ties these attributes to the creative act, identifying in them formal, final, and efficient principles of creation respectively (pp. 70-71). The third chapter concerns the nature of creation, and more precisely, the definition of creation; Kerr works from Thomas’s definition of creation: “to create something is to produce it in being (esse) according to its total substance” (p. 75). Thus, Kerr locates the creative act in the production not just of esse (although this is primary, as the creature is produced in being), but in the creature whole and complete (according to its total substance). Included in this chapter is a treatment of the relationship of creatures to God, and vice versa. Here, Kerr argues that the relationship between creatures and God …