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Book Review: On the God of the Christians3 6 3intelligible. It is more important, however, to confess or acknowledge theoneness of God, because even if God’s oneness is provisionally intelligible,it is nevertheless a difficult attribute to understand fully (58). Moreover, henotes, Christians confess a Trinitarian God, a mysterious conception hestates is a novelty of Christianity (63). One wonders to what extent the mindcan assent to something that it does not understand. In any event, he goeson to say, “The dogma of the Trinity maintains that the three divine Personsare not distinguished in anything (they have, or are, the same substance),except for the relations that unite them” (64, emphasis mine), and love playsa central role in his attempt to understand this most mysterious dogma. I donot believe that I can do full justice to Brague’s treatment of the doctrine ofthe Trinity, but he concludes that “monotheism is the doctrine of the Trinity.…[The doctrine of the trinity] deepens the confession of the fact that God isone, by means of the manner in which he is one. The Trinity is the manner inwhich God is one” (67, emphasis in original). Even with his beautiful treatmentof the Trinity, the doctrine remains a mystery.Chapter 4, “God the Father,” is by far the shortest chapter and the onlyone without main sections (there are, however, smaller subsections). In thischapter, Brague goes to great lengths to show that the conception of God asfather is not meant to imply masculinity. Nor is it meant to impute to Godany sexuality. The God of Israel, to whose attention Brague now directs us,is “either beyond the sexual difference or above sexuality in general” (71).He is not male. Insofar as God is Creator, however, He is Father. Brague’saccount is persuasive, but one still wonders why the Bible regularly uses malenouns, adjectives, and articles to describe God—might there be some deeperwisdom that the authors of scriptures are trying to convey? Pagan Greeksand Romans, as is well known, had female deities, and in pre-Islamic Arabia,three goddesses were worshiped. Both Hebrew and Greek, the languages ofthe Bible, have a neuter gender, so the authors of scripture had the meansavailable to describe God free of masculine terminology. In any event, Braguetraces God’s masculine attributes almost solely to His act of creation. Andwhile Brague goes to great lengths to argue that the Bible does not privilegethe male sex over the female, one cannot help but notice that males greatlysurpass women in the Bible—and this is even more the case in the New Testamentthan in the Old.In chapter 5, Brague discusses a “God who has said everything.” The overarchingclaim being made in this chapter is that the New Testament is God’sfinal revelation to man; we can expect no further communication from God.