Nichol's Introduction to Theology and Philosophy: Chapter 3

Roughly speaking, philosophy so defined covers three questions. First, What is man? or Who am I? This is the problem of human existence and the nature of the self: philosophical anthropology and its extension, ethics. Second, What is the world? or What is this whole interconnected reality of which I form part? This is the problem of cosmology: of nature and the extension of nature, history. Third and finally, What are the fundamental terms on which the world exists? What are its conditions of possibility? This is the problem of ontology, well summed up by the contemporary German philosopher Martin Heidegger when he asked, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" [3] If these are the basic questions that philosophy deals with, we can say that philosophy is an almost inescapable part of all human life. No one simply eats, drinks, sleeps, and makes love. Everyone at some point asks in some form these questions or something like them. No doubt a Stone Age human or a modern Eskimo would not phrase these questions exactly as I have. Nor - come to that - would a London bus conductor or a Roman ice-cream seller. But some form of them would occur to such people nevertheless. There is no culture which has not made some attempt to pose and answer such questions, not necessarily in formal philosophy or even in writing at all, but perhaps in art, in music, or even in the way people bury their dead. Philosophy is the attempt to say who we are and what kind of a world we live in, drawing on the resources of human experience as clarified by reflection.

Because philosophy tries to give a universal answer to these fundamental questions, it necessarily comes into relation with theology. Indeed, for some people, it necessarily comes into conflict with theology, since these are just the kind of questions theology itself deals with, on the basis of revelation, from the higher vantage point of Christian faith. Theology has its own answers to the questions, What is man? What is the good life for all people? What is their final destiny? (anthropology and ethics); What is reality like? What meaning does history hold? (cosmology and the philosophy of history); What is the ultimate ground of reality? What is not only the source but also the goal of the world (ontology). And if theology has answers to these questions, why not just listen to theology and forget about philosophy? If theology deals with the same questions from higher up, surely we can dispense with the more lowly science of philosophy. If you want an aerial photograph and you possess a helicopter, you will not bother to borrow a balloon as well.

In the ecclesial communities that date from the Reformation of the sixteenth century, the rejection of philosophy by theology has been a fairly frequent occurrence, though it is much sharper in Luther than in Calvin. [4] Partly, this has been based on the idea just mentioned, that philosophy is superfluous once you have revelation. But predominantly, philosophy has been rejected because it has been regarded as a dangerous competitor to theology: it is too hot to handle. If philosophers have their own concept of God and their own view of human life, is there not a danger that they will alter or suppress the concept of God and the view of life found in revelation? Theologians may say that all they want to do is to use philosophy, but perhaps they will end up by being used. The philosopher will call the tune.

This radical suspicion of philosophy has not been limited to the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, even though it is at its strongest there. From time to time, such views have been held by thinkers in the Catholic tradition also. Usually, they have not taken the form of systematic theories as to why theology should not touch philosophy with a barge pole, such as may be found in writers influenced by the great neo-orthodox Swiss Protestant theologian, Karl Barth. [5] In Catholicism, similar views have found a more low-key expression in feelings of anxiety or unease in the presence of philosophy, or whenever philosophy has had a marked influence on theology. Thus, when some of the early Fathers of the Church called Christianity "the true philosophy" - and in early Christian art Christ is often portrayed dressed as a philosopher - they meant to imply that Christianity answered the questions set by philosophy better than the philosophers themselves. [6] Thus, they felt, Christian revelation had rendered philosophy out of date. On occasion, this suspicion of philosophy by the Fathers or by later Catholic writers is expressed pretty strongly. For instance, the third-century African writer Tertullian once declared that Athens "had nothing to do with Jerusalem": in other words, that there is no common ground between philosophy and revelation. [7] In a similar vein, Blaise Pascal, already mentioned, drew a sharp contrast between what he called the "God of the philosophers" and the "God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob": by which he meant the biblical God, the God disclosed in Scripture. [8] But in fact both these men, Tertullian and Pascal, use concepts in their religious writings which we can only call philosophical - since they certainly do not stem from revelation itself. Tertullian even has arguments for the existence of God of a rather simple sort, based on the fact that even atheists when they are in trouble exclaim, "Oh God!" [9] Actually, Tertullian's argument is more sophisticated than this reference might suggest. He held that the soul was "naturally Christian" and only overlaid by a superficial carapace of ideology in the case of atheists and agnostics. So even the theologian who wants to get away from philosophy finds it hard to do so. [10] Probably the only way of doing so entirely would be to make theology consist in a repetition of the language of the Bible. But this would hardly be theology at all but rather a mere rearrangement of the biblical text.

But apart from the question of fact, Can a theologian get away altogether from philosophy? there is also a question of principle, Should he or she want to? In effect, it is the position of the Catholic Church that the theologian should not want to get away from the philosopher. I say this because of the teaching found in the dogmatic constitution of the First Vatican Council of 1870 on the Catholic faith, usually referred to by its opening words, Dei Filius. [11] A relation between theology and philosophy is implied in this text because a relation between faith and reason is explicitly presented, and presented as based on the Church's understanding of the relation between grace and nature.

Catholicism holds that, in the first place, there is an essential difference between nature and grace - between our human nature with its own inherent powers and capabilities and what is sometimes referred to as the "second nature" or "second gift" of grace. The grace of God transforms human nature so that it is capable of behaving in ways not native to it. We can see this at its fullest in the saints. The saints are atypical human beings, but this is not simply because they are statistically unusual. More than this, some of the things they do are not derivative from ordinary human nature as such: giving one's life in continuous self-sacrifice for others, for example, or enjoying the friendship of the Blessed Trinity. Our understanding of this transformation by grace comes from revelation and when formally expressed is theology. But this still leaves open the possibility, indeed it posits the necessity, of a more limited but still valuable understanding of an independent kind: an understanding of the nature that is thus transformed by grace. This understanding derives from ordinary human experience and when formally expressed is called philosophy. So the distinction between nature and grace in Catholic teaching has a mirror effect in a distinction of two kinds of understanding, one possessed by reason and the other by faith, and crystallizing out in philosophy and theology. [12]

That this is close to the heart of the matter may be confirmed by noting that a major reason for the distrust of philosophy by classical Protestant thinkers lies in the tendency of the Reformers to see human nature as totally corrupt after the Fall. [13] If human nature is totally corrupt and grossly unreliable, then human reason, as an integral part of human nature, is unlikely to be in a much better state. And if human reason is radically corrupt, then the philosophy it produces is not likely to be of much service to the gospel. The Catholic episcopate at the Council of Trent repudiated this extreme pessimism about nature after the Fall. In its place they proposed that although human nature has been savagely wounded by the Fall, it has not been totally corrupted. Its powers, and thus its activities, have been seriously damaged by sin, but its deepest foundation is still what God made it. This will mean, then, that human reason will be fallible, and so the philosophical tradition of Homo sapiens may well be full of errors. Nevertheless, in itself reason is still capable of apprehending truth and so philosophy is too. Although people can no longer attain God in a way that will ultimately satisfy them by their own resources alone (if, even before the Fall, they ever could), their resources still give them access to reality, to truth, and so, ineluctably, in some degree to God. [14] In fact, we could go so far as to say, building on the insights of Trent and the First Vaticanum, that the Church expects and requires people to investigate the world philosophically. Just as grace requires nature to build on, so theology requires philosophy as a necessary infrastructure. Christ came to save the world. This presupposes that there was already a world worth saving. In a similar way, theology is the Christianizing of human thinking, and this implies that human thinking is a worthwhile pursuit in its own right. Just as grace would look silly without nature, so theology would look silly without philosophy. And as a matter of fact, the history of theology shows conclusively that theologians have drawn on now one, now another philosophy in order to state the faith of the Church. Before going on to consider the implications of this historical variability in the theological use of philosophy, perhaps it may be helpful to sum up what we have so far about their interrelation in a diagrammatic form that masquerades as a mathematical equation:

So far we have agreed, then, that somebody's philosophy should play a part in theology, but nothing has yet been said about whose this will be. The next question we must tackle, therefore, is Which philosophy? To this question not only are various answers possible, but various kinds of answer are possible. A first kind of answer would be to say that this is not a proper question to ask in the first place. Which philosophy one is going to adopt is for students of philosophy themselves to decide. Nihil contra philosophiam nisi philosophia. It is not for theologians to dictate what Christians should think philosophically, nor even how they are to do their philosophical thinking. This is no more legitimate than would be an attempt by theologians to lay down the law on what Christians should think about astronomy, or the best techniques for cake making. There is indeed an element of truth in this response. As we have seen, philosophy does enjoy a certain autonomy vis-à-vis theology, just as nature does in relation to grace. On the other hand, theologians can certainly report on the use their predecessors have made of different philosophies and can say whether they think the results are a success. Very importantly, a theologian has the right to say whether, in his or her view, a particular philosophy is compatible with revelation or not. Even more than this, the theologian has a duty to say so, just as, analogously, the Church's magisterium had the duty to come to a judgment about philosophical theses relevant to the truth of Christian doctrine - at least in those cases where such theses are currently commended by an intelligentsia for wide-scale adoption in the community of faith. [15]

A second type of answer would be to say that although theology needs philosophy, it can, if it is clever enough, generate its own philosophy. This is the idea, much supported in Catholic circles in the period from the First World War to the Second Vatican Council, that there can be such a thing as a purely Christian philosophy. [16] Revelation, as we know, enables us to get a grip on truth about the ultimate philosophical issues: Who am I? What is the World? Why is there something rather than just nothing? But it may be that some of the truth we get from revelation can be restated in philosophical terms.[17] Theologians have often held that some revealed truths are completely beyond reason but others are just difficult for reason to grasp with sureness. The second set of truths might be, so to speak, detached from revelation and erected into a philosophy in their own right: a Christian philosophy. For instance, it is clear from revealed religion that there is a God, that this God satisfies our deepest needs, that we as persons reflect in some way the life of this God, that there is a moral law written in our hearts. All of these ideas could be allowed to set up shop and do business under their own name. Although in fact they came from revelation (at least in a given culture this may well be so), in principle they could be defended by reason alone and so make their own way in philosophical history. Furthermore, the reflection which Christian philosophers would carry out on them would develop and enrich their content. So the Church would have its own philosophy - a genuine philosophy, not a theology - yet one that would avoid the risks that people like Tertullian and Pascal identified because this philosophy would come from within revelation itself.

Historically, there can be little doubt that a great deal of the philosophy written by Christians has emerged in exactly this way. The great historian of medieval philosophy Etienne Gilson showed that the main thematic differences between Western philosophy and the philosophy of the ancient world (notably, of course, Greek philosophy) derive from the influence of Christianity during the late antique and medieval periods. [18] On the other hand, Gilson's case could easily be overstated. It would not be true to say that the entire philosophical outlook of a medieval theologian like St. Bonaventure or St. Albert was a precipitate of revelation. Some of it was indebted to a philosophical tradition that antedated the arrival of Christianity on the scene. In any case, while historians may show that philosophy has been influenced by revelation in its choice of themes and even in the way that it has dealt with them, this does not oblige us to draw the prescriptive conclusions to which the supporters of the idea of a Christian philosophy subscribe. That is, we need not necessarily conclude that what the Church allows to happen, she positively expects to happen.

In principle, it might be said - and this would be a third kind of answer to our original question, Which philosophy? - the orders of philosophy and theology are utterly distinct, with different departure points and ways of arguing. Although revelation has the right to pass judgment on a philosophical conclusion, it has no right to declare a preference for one way of reaching it rather than another. This has been the position taken up by, among others, the devotees of neoScholasticism over against those of the Christian philosophy school [19] On this view, there can be no halfway house between supernatural truth and a search for natural truth based simply on evidence seen in the light of rationally defensible first principles.

Finally, a fourth answer and one which I commend would be a mediating position between the last two tendencies I have discussed. We could say that a good philosophy (from the point of view of theological fruitfulness) will consist of, formally speaking, the best purely natural reasoning available, but that materially speaking or contentwise, revelation can help to identify the areas to which natural reasoning could most profitably be directed. Thus, the form of philosophy as practiced by Christians would have no reference to revelation, but its content would. Here revelation directs the philosopher's interests but not the methods or ideas. Whether a philosophy has thus proved theologically fruitful or not will be evaluated by asking how helpful it has been in the work of our theological predecessors - though obviously this criterion would not be of much use if some highly original philosophy were to be worked out in our lifetime. Thus, for instance, the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, a philosophy of divine transcendence disclosed in the human face, though still in the process of being written, is already being utilized by theologians. [20]

From the viewpoint of the history of philosophy, then, who are the main candidates for the vacant post of ancilla theologiae, the handmaid (or, possibly, handmaids) that theology is looking for? Something like what I have called the "mediating position" has been actualized in different ways in different periods of theological history. We can identify at least six principal periods in this regard. To begin with, in the early Church philosophy most commonly took the form of some variety of Platonism, [21] supplemented by Stoic ethics, and peppered with pieces of the Aristotelean corpus. Platonism - in its later antique forms, in which it became a house spacious enough to accommodate elements of these other philosophical traditions - was the favored philosophy of the patristic period because of its clear doctrine of transcendence, the idea that there is a single (divine) principle on which all things depend. For the same reason, it would be revived much later by such Christian humanists of the Renaissance as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola.

In the medieval West, philosophy took a turn toward Aristotle, because his analysis of the structure of finite beings (humans included) seemed to provide a good account of nature to complement revelation's account of grace. [22] This was the dominant position of the great Scholastics, though the Aristoteleanism of a figure like Thomas Aquinas was also heavily indebted to the Platonic tradition. Again, philosophy as practiced by Christians in the early Modern period (the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) moved more in the direction of a rational metaphysics attentive to the natural sciences: in the line of Descartes, through Leibniz, to Christian Wolff. [23] These writers were admired for the coherence, or close conceptual interrelatedness, of their systems. They showed the systematic intelligibility of a world which springs from the Logos, or Reason of God.

By the nineteenth century, Christians were frequently found drawing on the idealism of F. W. J. von Schelling and G. W. F. Hegel. [24] The principal attraction here was a doctrine of history. For the German idealists, history is the self-manifestation of the Absolute, or God. The nature of the historical process was a major concern of the German Catholic theology of the first half of the nineteenth century, understandably so since Catholic Christianity regards the salvific process as taking historical form.

In the middle years of the twentieth century, existentialism and personalism were the two main preferred philosophies of innovative theologians: existentialism because it raises the religiously relevant question of a meaning to life, and personalism because it takes personality to be the most important phenomenon in the world. In addition, an interest in sociological thought corrected the somewhat individualistic tendencies of much existentialist - and personalist influenced writing and stressed the corporate nature of human life. [25] All three contributions are of great interest to those investigating Chrisristiantian doctrine, especially, perhaps, theological anthropology and ecclesiology, the doctrine of the person and in particular of the "ecclesial person." Concern with the manner in which Christian truth descends through time has since been enlivened by the stimulus of hermeneutical philosophy - the philosophical investigation of the process of interpretation as represented by, most notably, Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer, [26] while the importance of reflection on language in their (originally) French and German writings respectively has been taken further in the English-speaking world, thanks to the achievement of Ludwig Wittgenstein. [27] These philosophies are clearly pertinent to Christian theology, since that theology can be thought of as the continuous interpretative reappropriation of a religious tradition, a tradition which sees itself as the carrier of a divine revelation, for which our primary metaphor is the Word, precisely, of God. The need to contextualize the particular realities that form the subject matter of these theological areas within the wider realm of being as a whole has also sustained interest in philosophies concerned to look with fresh eyes at the traditional ontology of Western metaphysics: here the later thought of Heidegger and such dissident disciples of Heidegger as Lévinas may be singled out for mention. [28]

Such a hasty historical rundown gives us an idea of the menu but does not tell us which dish to order. Speaking from within the tradition of the Dominican Order, I will be forgiven for saying a word more about the enduring value of the second historical epoch, that of Christianized Aristoteleanism (which included, by the way, a fairly hefty dose of Platonism also). For Thomists, the philosophy of St. Thomas perfectly expresses the mediating position mentioned above. [29] The philosophical elements in Thomas' thought are rationally cogent, and they reflect areas of concern close to the heart of the Christian faith. For the most militant Thomists, the philosophical part of Thomism constitutes a sort of eternal philosophy, philosophia perennis, a system of philosophical thought which cannot really be bettered except in details. What are the elements in Thomism that have called forth such extravagant claims? At least five features of Thomist philosophy render it particularly attractive to Catholic theologians. These may be rapidly enumerated. First, there is the fact that Thomism begins from sense experience. As the celebrated Thomist adage puts it, "Nothing is in the mind that was not first in the senses." This means that Thomists share common ground with the ordinary person, both l'homme moyen sensuel and the good pagan enquiring about the truth of the Catholic faith. Second, on the basis of reflection about what is involved in this process of knowing things through the senses, Thomism comes to describe the human mind itself and to prove - at least to its own satisfaction - that the mind is immaterial and so immortal. Third, from a consideration of certain general features of the world as perceived in ordinary experience, Thomism hopes to show that this world is dependent on an unlimited source, which "all men call God." Fourth, Thomism regards all realities save God as a unity of form and matter, that is, of a communicative intelligibility and an individuating principle of identity. This matter-and-form or hylomorphic analysis of things is highly suitable to a sacramental religion like Christianity. The Church sees the presence of God as expressed through material realities -the humanity of Jesus, the sacraments, which are his extended action, and so forth - and thus as having an incarnational structure which lends itself to hylomorphic description.[30] Finally, because of the Thomist principle that an effect must resemble in some way what caused it, Thomism has worked out a theory of analogy whereby certain qualities found in the world are ascribed to God, though in a way that quite surpasses our conceptual understanding. [31] Thomist philosophy can thus build up a picture of the divine nature by describing the perfections - goodness, unity, beauty, and so on - which belong ultimately and supremely to God but which are also found in various limited ways in this world. Thomism, in sum, claims to be able to speak to all people on the basis of shared experience, to prove to them that they have immortal souls, and that there is a God on whose existence this world depends. Furthermore, it encourages them to see material things as expressing meaning and so prepares them for the idea of the incarnation and for its corollary, the sacramental principle in the life of the Church. Finally, its God is not simply an unknown God but can to some extent be spoken of in terms of perfection. In all these ways, Thomism seems manifestly a good thing. Why, then, are there so many dissenters, so many people who, especially over the last thirty years, have become discontented with the Thomist dominance of Catholic thought? The objection is not so much to any particular conclusion that Thomists may come up with but to the very idea of a philosophia perennis, a once-for-all philosophy that will remain forever the chosen handmaid of theology. And this objection seems to be partly correct. All philosophies take their rise from meditation on some particular aspect of experience. To the degree that Thomism is Christianized Aristoteleanism, this would be, primarily, our experience of the natural order; in other philosophies, it might be our experience of historical change, or of ourselves and each other as persons. On the basis of such a slice of human experience, a philosophy tries to come to a universal statement about reality. But the likelihood is that in this a given philosophy will be to some degree selective. Precisely because of its (necessarily) limited starting point, it will see some things better than others, be strong on some aspects of the real and weak on others. If this is true, then theologians should welcome a certain philosophical eclecticism. They should be happy to draw on more than one philosophical tradition, so long, of course, as this does not lead them into plain self-contradiction and so into nonsense. Hence the importance for theologians of acquaintance with the history of philosophy, which is a storehouse of concepts that may well be of great use to them in their work.[32] In this, theological students will need the same kind of historical sensitivity that the investigation of their strictly theological resources also asks of them, for, whereas philosophers, like theologians, are now mainly to be found in universities where they are salaried and professionally qualified, with their work proceeding in specialist books, periodicals, and conferences, operating with very limited audiences, in the past this has not been so.

As may be imagined, these differing environments have had their effect on such tasks as making an argument, criticizing and responding to criticism, and developing a sustained view on issues that, by their very nature, strain the expressive capacities of thought and language.

And yet, although because of this historical variety with its built-in possibility that something missed in one age or milieu will be understood in another, the objection to a philosophia perennis turns out to be, in one sense, quite justified; in another, it is surely misplaced. We cannot be totally eclectic. We have to choose some fundamental way of reading the structure of the universe. Into this fundamental pattern we can then go on to insert extra elements drawn from alternative philosophies. We need a kind of bread-and-butter philosophy to give us our basic diet before we add the honey and jam of other philosophies to enrich and supplement the basic philosophy. And in the choice of such a skeletal structure, Thomism still has much to commend it. In fact, we can say that by disengaging the notion of "being" as the central notion, whether explicitly or implicitly, of all philosophical thinking, Thomism has provided us with the key to the unity in plurality of the philosophical history which the theologian should study. The history of philosophy is the history of the different ways in which "being" is conceived and encountered.M Further, the fundamental way of reading the universe which we select must have some kind of famfly resemblance to Thomism in that it must satisfy certain demands, implied by divine revelation and met in Thomism in an exemplary way. I have in mind such notions as, first, the transcendence of the human beings vis-à-vis the physical world; second, the correlate of this transcendence in the absolutely infinite being, God; third, the creative freedom of this transcendent universal cause of the world and thus the nondivinity of the world's own being; fourth, the independence of human beings in their moral agency, a self-determination which extends beyond death; and fifth, the unity of all human beings as a single order within the world.[35]Theologians may use philosophies whose affirmations fall short of these exigencies in limited aspects of their work; but the total infrastructure of a Catholic theology must, in its sum of elements, do justice to such requirements as these.

1. However, if one understands "ordinary language" as including the (ordinary) use of language in religious practice, one might well find a philosophical connecting point with theology: see, for instance, I. T. Ramsey, Religious Language: An Empirical Placing of Theological Phrases (London: 1957); S. McF. TeSelle, BI (London: 1973); J. M. Soskice, Metaphor and Religious Language (Oxford: 1985). And for an attempt by a Polish philosopher to argue that the desired connecting point should be found in a study of the logical status of religious propositions, see W. Lubian, "Father Innocent Bochetiski, or the Intensity of Experience," Christian Life in Poland (1989/1) 109-19, with citation of a Bocheñski lecture, "Logic and the Philosophy of Religion," delivered at Cracow on October 24, 1987.

2. For a discussion of the fundamental character of philosophy as so defined, see W. H. Walsh, "Metaphysics, Nature of," Encyclopaedia of Philosophy V (New York: 1967); E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers (2nd ed., Toronto: 1952); The Nature of Metaphysics, ed. D. F. Pears (London: 1957).

3. M. Heidegger, An Introduction to Metaphysics (English trans., New Haven and London: 1959) 1: "Why are there essents ("existents," "things that are") rather than nothing?"

4. W. Link, Das Ringen Luthers urn die Freiheit der Theologie von der Philosophie (2nd ed., Munich: 1955); nevertheless, it remains possible to present Luther's thought as providing an interpretation of concrete, historical existence and so of philosophical interest: see A. Agnoletto, "La Fiosofia di Lutero," Grande Antologia Filosofica 8, ed. M. F. Sciaccia (Milan: 1964) 1012. Phiipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) provides an interesting contrast to Luther by his much more positive estimate of philosophy: F. C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy 3 (London: 1967) 227-28. As for Calvin, while he can be bitter against humanists, as in his Treatise upon Scandals, he retained a good deal of the humanist - especially Stoic - heritage, most clear in his presentation of the themes of natural law and of Providence. See F. Wendel, Calvin (English trans., London: 1963, 1965) 2.

5. For Karl Barth's attitude to philosophy, see especially Die kirchliche Dogmatik 1.2, Die Lehre vom Wort Gottes (Zurich: 1938) 818-25, 865-67.

6. On Christianity as the "true philosophy" see e.g. Lactantius, Divinae institutions 111.30.Cf. P. Brown, "On the sarcophagi of the age, he (Christ) is always shown as a Teacher, teaching His Wisdom to a coterie of budding philosophers," Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: 1967) 42. For an iconographic example, see the account of the "Brescia lipsanotheca" in A. Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (London: 1969) 138.

9. Tertullian, Dc testimonio animae 2; Apologia 17.

10. Thus, historians of philosophy have produced such studies as C. de L. Shortt, The Influence of Philosophy on the Mind of Tertullian (London: 1933), or C. C. J. Webb, Pascal's Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: 1929).

11. Vatican 1, Constitutio dogmatica "Dei Filius" de fide Catholica, ch. 4: DS, 3015-20.

12. A. Leonard, Pensées des hoinmes et foi en Jesus-Christ (Paris: 1980) 23-31.

13. H. H. W. Kramm, The Theology of Martin Luther (London: 1949).

14. J. Alfaro, "Nature and Grace," Sacramentum mundi 4 (English trans., Bangalore:1968) 176-81.

15. C. Nicolosi, Fede cristiana e riflessione filosofica. II problema della filosofia cristiana. Teoria e storia di un dibattito (Rome: 1973) 437.

16. M. Nedoncene, Is There a Christian Philosophy? (English trans., New York: 1960); E. Gilson, Christianisme et philosophic (Paris: 1936); idem., "What Is Christian Philosophy?" in A Gilson Reader, ed. A. C. Pegis (New York: 1957).

17. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae ha. IIae., q. 2, a. 4.

18. E. Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (New York: 1940) 1-41, 403-26. For Gilson's work, see L. K. Shook, Etienne Gilson (Toronto: 1984).

19. J. M. Quinn, The Thomism of Etienne Gilson: A Critical Study (Villanova: 1971) 3-4.

20. This was the view adopted by such students of Scholasticism as P. Mandonnet, S. Ramirez, and F. van Steenberghen. For the internal variety of the Thomist school on this as on other points, see H. J. John, The Thomist Spectrum (New York: 1966).

21. E. von Ivanka, Plato Christianus: Ubernahme und Urnstaltung des Platonismus durch die Vdter (Einsiedeln: 1954); M. Spanneut, La Stoicisrne des pères de l'Eglise de Clement de Rome a Clement d'Alexandrie (Paris: 1957); for the use by the Fathers of Aristotle, see S. Lilla, "Aristotelismo," in Dizionario pat ristico edt antichità cristiane 1, ed. A. di Beradino, (Casale Monferrato: 1983), sub. loc.

(22). As Simon Tugwell has written "It was largely through the Arabs that Aristotle had been brought back to the West, and their Aristotle was part of an essentially Neoplatonist package. He brought with him the pseudo-Aristotelean Liber de causis, derived from the Elements of Theology by Proclus, one of the last great pagan Neoplatonists, and he was accompanied by the works of the Arab commentators, especially Avicenna, and, slightly later, Averroes. And in addition to this wealth of supposedly Aristotelean learning, which was often in fact more Platonist than Peripatetic, a veiled Platonism was also exercising a considerable influence through the writings of "Dionysius the Areopagite," which had begun to enjoy a new vogue in the twelfth century." S. Tugwell, "Albert the Great: Introduction," in Albert and Thomas: Selected Writings, ed. S. Tugwell (New York: 1988) 10. And compare Albert the Great's comment, "You cannot be a complete philosopher without knowing both philosophies, Aristotle"s and Plato"s," Metaphysica I. 5. 15, cited in Tugwell, Ibid. 31.

23. For the period from Descartes to Wolff, see J. D. Collins, God in Modern Philosophy (Chicago: 1959) 55-89. For more detailed studies, see, e.g., H. Gouhier, La Pensée religieuse de Descartes (Paris: 1924); J. hwanicki, Leibniz et les demonstrations mathématiques de l'existence de Dieu (Paris: 1934); M. Campo, Christian Wolff e il razionalismo precritico (Milan: 1939).

24. For post-Kantian transcendental philosophy see F. C. Copleston, A History of Philosophy 7 (London: 1963) 1-31; H. Gross, Der deutsche Idealismus und das Christentum (Munich: 1927).

25. J. MacQuarrie, Twentieth Century Religious Thought: The Frontiers of Philosophy and Theology 1900-1960 (New York: 1963).

26. J. C. Weinsheimer, Gadamer's Hermeneutics (New Haven and London: 1985); R. C. Holmes, Reception Theory. A Critical Introduction (London: 1984).

27. For a wide-ranging study, see F. Kerr, Theology After Wittgenstein (Oxford: 1987).

28. See, for instance, B. Forthomme, Une philosophic de transcendance: La metaphysique d'Ernrnanuel Lévinas (Paris: 1979).

29. A good guide is E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (English trans., London: 1961). For Gilson's own place on the Thomist spectrum, see J. M. Quinn, The Thomism of Etienne Gibson: A Critical Study (Villanova: 1971).

30. W. A. Wallace, "Hylomorphism," NCE 7, 284-85.

31. M. T.-L. Penido, Le role de l'Analogie en theobogie dogmatique (Paris: 1931); E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy (London: 1949).

32. Hence the usefulness to the student of such compendia as F. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (London: 1946-75); The Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, ed. P. Edwards (New York and London: 1967); J. Hixschberger, Geschichte der Philosophic (2nd ed., Freiburg 1954-55); Storia della fibosofia, ed. C. Fabro (Rome: 1954).

33. J. Waidron, "The forums of the ages," commenting on D. W. Hamlyn, A History of Western Philosophy, in the Times Literary Supplement for April 10, 1987, no. 4384.

34. F. O?Farrell, "Is There a History of To Be?" Gregorianum 68. 3-4 (1987) 671-703.

35. See W. Kern, "Observaciones a Ia cuestión: Una fiosofIa plural (como medio de una teología plural)?" in El pluralismo teológico (Madrid: 1976) 219-30. The original, not accessible to me, was published as Die Einheit des Glaubens und der theologische Pluralismus (Einsideln: 1973).