The Vigilant God Providence in the Thought of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth, Second Edition

"The Vigilant God is a mature scholar's return to the theological traditions that shaped his life and work. Horton Davies focuses on four great figures of that tradition-Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and Barth-giving particular attention to the place of Election in each. This book comes most fully alive in the last two sections, those on Calvin and Barth, for these two biblical theologians have had the greatest influence on the author's own formation. Calvin is a better expositor of Scripture than Augustine, Davies argues, partly because the Genevan makes Scripture, rather than the Church, the final authority for Christian theology. But the admirer of Calvin is left with the burden of double predestination, a doctrine that, at least to modern sensibility, makes God seem unjust and that ultimately makes human virtue impossible. Davies believes that Barth has largely resolved this dilemma by moving the focus of God's Election from the individual soul to Christ himself.... Davies was a remarkably wide-ranging historian of the Christian Church, one who was just as alert to the roles of liturgy and arts and music as he was to doctrinal controversies. This little book is a masterful account of how an earnest Christian scholar has been shaped by, and has struggled with, his theological inheritance."-David B. McIlhiney