Christopher R. J. Holmes, A Theology of the Christian Life: Imitating and Participating in God (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2021), pp. xvii + 171. $24.99.

Abstract

This book ‘ unfold[s] a program of spiritual renewal founded on some of the essential names or attributes of the divine being ’ (p. xii). The core idea is that the doctrine of God is the wellspring of Christian life. This core idea unpacks two essentially biblical motifs, namely that Christians are called to imitate God, and that they are called to participate in God ’ s manner of existence. As such, Holmes expands upon a wider contemporary retrieval of a pre-modern sensibility that casts theology as a spiritual exercise rather than as an abstracted, intellectual pursuit divorced from faithful practices aimed at human transformation. ‘ Scripture and the premodern tradition ’ , Holmes writes, ‘ remind us that Christian life is the setting for the doctrine of God ’ (p. 45). The book forms a primer in how doctrine is ‘ descriptive ’ and ‘ imperative ’ , shaping Christian practices and being shaped in turn by the goal of the Christian life as it seeks to live the life of God. Holmes divides the book into two parts that develop its core idea and two motifs. The first part is comprised of five chapters that in turn address how five divine names or attributes – being, simplicity, perfection, infinity and immutability – shape the Christian life. Each chapter explores how each divine name both asserts a radical ontological distinction between God and creatures and yet also express attributes which believers are mysteriously called to imitate and participate in as they become ‘ friends ’ with God. The grammar of participation unlocks the intelligibility of this apparent paradox. While the divine names only belong essentially and properly to God, creatures enjoy a participated similitude because the divine nature is their under-pinning first and final cause. The second part is comprised of three chapters that go on to consider how the divine names shape thinking about and imitating Christ, virtue as the ‘ personal dimension ’ of the doctrine of God (pp. 125, 142), and ecclesiology. The first part of