rhetorical antitheses set up by early Christian apologists.

Recurrence
theories are certainly a feature of Greek thinking about the past, but were
far from being universally accepted or implied; and it is equally significant
that the view taken by pagan historians from Herodotus to Ammianus
Marcellinus that the course ofhuman history reveals divine chastisement of
human excess finds an obvious counterpart in the demonstration by such
Christian historians as Eusebius and Lactantius of Gods overthrow of the
unrighteous. But for all the reasonableness of his conclusion, Presss argument is fatally flawed by the nature ofhis procedures. His central chapters,
with their lengthy discussion of the uses of the term historia and its
cognates, do not, and cannot, amount to a discussion of the idea of
history, and to suppose that it is possible, as Press claims (p. 19), to
determine, through the study ofthe term [my italics], the content and development of the idea of history in antiquity is to suppose a very implausible
correspondence between terms and ideas. Whatever changes the uses of
these terms may or may not have undergone, there is a body of practice which could loosely be called thinking about and trying to explain the
human past - which was carried on with varying degrees of success at
various times throughout antiquity, sometimes - as in the cases of
Thucydides and Polybius - with some reflexion on its nature. No account of
the development ofthe idea ofhistory in antiquity can afford to ignore these
attempts and the views which they expressed or implied; and if it should be
objected that this is to prejudge the meaning of history, it has to be said
that some such prejudgment is already implicit in Presss denial of the
conflict between the two traditions. The artificiality of his procedure is
illustrated by his translation (p. 30) of historian peri phuse5s (Plato, Phaedo
96a) as history of nature, and by his reference (p. 20) to Thucydides and
Livy as historians in inverted commas.
Presss examination of the terminology could have been made much
tauter, and suffers from a failure to distinguish between absolute uses of
historia and uses with an object specified; but there is much of value and
much that is acute in his careful distinctions. Combined with an equally
thorough survey of a wider range of terms, and of the practice of ancient
historians and oftheir view ofwhat they were doing, it would form the basis
for a satisfactory account of the development of the idea of history in
antiquity.
UN I V E R S l T Y OF L.\NC:ASIER

JOHN CREED

The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste

By J A M E S M ~ E V O Y
Clarendon Press, 1982. xvii + 560 pp. E35.00
For a medieval philosopher to be frequently cited by later medieval writers
and thus become an auctor was a great honour, normally reserved to those of
classical or patristic remoteness. But Lincolniensis - the name derives from
Grossetestes diocese - achieved it. Subsequent historiography has also
looked kindly on him, and in this century he has even been hailed as a
84

founder of modern science - a case most forcibly put in A. C. Crombies

Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science 1100-1700 (Oxford,
1953),although somewhat retracted in the books second impression (1962).
McEvoy gives some attention to this side of Grosseteste, and emphasises
the significance of his giving a mathematical structure to physical reality
(via his metaphysics of light) as more important than his methodological
discussions. But McEvoys main concern is elsewhere, as is evidenced by
the relative space accorded to the three sections of the book bearing directly
on Grossetestes philosophy: The Light of Nature (his physical thought)
has 74 pages, as compared to 96 for The Angelic Light (angelology and
pseudo-Dionysian translations and commentaries) and 2 17 for The Light
of Intelligence (psychology and anthropology). At the beginning of the
angelological section we are warned that the student of medieval literature
and ideas must submit to the vast readjustment in seeing man, not as the
creature standing at the top ofthe evolutionary stair the foot ofwhich is lost
in a biological underworld, but as the figure visible at the bottom ofJacobs
ladder, the summit of which is invisible with light, the traffic of which
intense (p. 51).
McEvoy is thus insistent on emphasising the foreignness of medieval
thought, a policy with which I have in principle much sympathy, and have
publicly commended elsewhere. But an inescapable flagging attention at
many points in reading this book made me ponder the dangers of extreme
anti-anachronism. Partly it is a question ofselection: why should I be more
interested in Grossetestes angelology or indeed in Grosseteste himself than
in countless other facets of past thought that several lifetimes would be
insufficient to cover? Partly also of contextualisation: the twentieth-century
reader needs more help in recognising the layout and significance of the
already existing landforms and artefacts in Grossetestes strange country in
order to appreciate better the excitement of his own constructions. For in
many ways McEvoy has gone native, and no longer clearly recognises what
especially demands explanation in his letters home.
But going native, and even falling in love with ones chosen subject (cf. p.
vii), does not necessarily mean that one will be fully accepted by ones
adopted society as one of themselves. And there are times when McEvoy
seems to me to be speaking a subtly different language from Grosseteste
himself. As an example let me give first my own translation from Grossetestes Latin, and then follow that with McEvoys paraphrase of the same
passage.

Nor let the fact that Aristotle and other philosophers prove God to be
unchangeable and non-temporal and suchlike influence anyone into
thinking that he or the other philosophers clearly understood the simplicity of eternity, because we must know that by the discourse of reason
we prove many things to be true whose essence we do not understand,
just as many men know how to show by firm reasoning that intelligences
exist and that God exists, but do not understand the divine essence or the
incorporeality of intelligences, but see them behind corporeal phantasms,
like the sun behind a cloud, and, if they follow the phantasms, they falsely

85

assert many corporeal properties of non-corporeals and say and judge the
contraries of what elsewhere they have discovered by the discourse of
their reason.
McEvoy renders this as follows (p. 356). I italicise those parts where he
seems to show deviation from Grosseteste.
Aristotle and other philosophers prove Gods zmmortality and intemporality; but no one should be deceived by his conclusion, for the discourse of reason can convince us of the truth of many things, without
always being able to give us an understanding of their essence. There haue been
men who have demonstrated the spirituality of the intelligences and the reality of
God, without understanding the content of either notion. They see realzty
under the influence of corporeal phantasms -as it were, the sun through
a cloud - and continue to speak and think the very opposite of what the
discourse of reason has revealed to them.
Small points perhaps, but I suspect tendentiousness, although I am not
able precisely to characterise the tendency: probably it has something to do
with a particular form of theological education. But doubtless McEvoy
would accept a judgment of this kind, for in discussing Crombies thesis he
stresses that there can be no history-writing without presuppositions (p.
206), although he does not attempt to spell out his own.
T h e above criticisms are directed more against a genre than against a
book, and indeed a genre in which very much ofthe best work on medieval
philosophy has been done. I t remains to emphasise the wealth of fine
erudition that has gone into this book: it will be the constant companion of
the Grosseteste student. Among its many other virtues it includes an
up-dating of S. H. Thomsons Grosseteste bibliography of 1940.

,\

U N I V E R S I T Y 0 F ~\B ERD E E N

C;E.ORCiI.: MOI,L.\hU

Reformed Thought and Scholasticism

By J O H N P1,AII
E. J . Brill, 1982. viii 249 pp. Dfl. 38

Subtitled The Arguments for the Existence of God in Dutch Theology

1575-1650, this study is concerned with tracing the extent to which John
Calvins views on the natural knowledge ofGod came to be developed into a
full-orbed natural theology by the second generation of Reformed theologians in Holland. Calvin held that all men have an innate awareness of
God, and, in addition, that something in Gods existence and character is to
be seen i n nature. But according to Calvin this existence, without supernatural revelation and regenerating grace, does not lead men to a full
knowledge of God, but only renders them inexcusable.
Dr Platt follows u p several difrerent lines of enquiry. He argues that the
various published abridgements of Calvins Znrtitutes, Dutch writings on the
Heidelberg Catechism (the standard Reformed Catechism on the Continent) and on the Belgic Confession, together show a change in theological
86