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CHOICE Review

Buckley (Berkeley Graduate Theological Union) undertakes the tasks of trying to determine how the idea of atheism arose in the modern world and what theology might learn from this knowledge. After an opening chapter on questions of methodology, five long chapters trace the development of the linked concepts of atheism and God from the early 16th century through the Enlightenment; Buckley shows how God became a philosophic problem when the concept was turned over to philosophers by theologians. Buckley throws new light on familiar ground and is led into some seldom-trod byways of intellectual history. Chapter-length sections are devoted to Descartes, Newton, Malebranch, and Samuel Clarke. Chapters are devoted to Diderot and d'Holbach; an early chapter explores the neglected figures of Leonard Lessing and Marin Mersenne. The book is exhaustively researched and well written. It will be the rare historian who will not learn something new from this excellent book. Recommended for graduate students and faculty.-P.J. Johnson, California State University, San Bernardino