God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth

The legacies of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth remain influential for contemporary theologians, who have increasingly put them into conversation on debated questions over analogy and the knowledge of God. However, little explicit dialogue has occurred between their theologies of God. This book offers one of the first extended analyzes of this fundamental issue, asking how each theologian seeks to confess in fact and in thought God's qualitative distinctiveness in relation to creation. Wittman first examines how they understand the correspondence and distinction between God's being and external acts within an overarching concern to avoid idolatry. Second, he analyzes the kind of relation God bears to creation that follows from these respective understandings. Despite many common goals, Aquinas and Barth ultimately differ on the subject matter of theological reason with consequences for their ability to uphold God's distinctiveness consistently. These mutually informative issues offer some important lessons for contemporary theology.

• Puts Aquinas and Barth into dialogue on God's relation to creation, and how we understand God's being and activity
• Sets Barth's doctrine of God against the background of medieval and Protestant scholastic discussions
• Sets forth some of the most influential theological and metaphysical dimensions of God's relation to creation in classical and contemporary thought