God and Philosophy by Étienne Gilson
"God and Philosophy" by Étienne Gilson consists of a series of lectures exploring the interplay between the concept of God and philosophical inquiry. Delivered at Indiana University in the late 1930s, these lectures delve into the metaphysical problem of God, examining how varying philosophical frameworks have approached the divine. Gilson contrasts Greek philosophical traditions, where gods are often seen as separate entities, with the Christian understanding of God as a singular, personal being who actively engages with humanity. He discusses significant figures such as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, who integrated Greek philosophical methods to articulate a Christian metaphysics that identifies God with existence itself.
Gilson critiques modern philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza, arguing that their reduction of God to an abstract essence neglects the deeper existential attributes of the divine. Throughout his lectures, Gilson emphasizes that the comprehension of God transcends human reasoning and must be accepted through faith, rooted in the revelations of Judaism and Christianity. He posits that the existence of the world and humanity is a purposeful act of creation by God, challenging the notion that existence is merely a product of chance. Ultimately, Gilson presents a vision of God as a personal, loving being, central to understanding existence, rather than a mere philosophical construct.
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God and Philosophy by Étienne Gilson
First published: 1941
Edition(s) used:God and Philosophy. 2d ed. Foreword by Jaroslav Pelikan. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002
Genre(s): Nonfiction
Subgenre(s): Philosophy; theology
Core issue(s): Creation; God; knowledge; nature; reason; religion
Overview
God and Philosophy reproduces the four Mahlon Powell Lectures on Philosophy exactly as Étienne Gilson gave them at Indiana University in 1939-1940. In the preface, he treats the unifying topic of his lectures: the metaphysical problem of God and its relationship to philosophy. Gilson explains that he is applying a method of investigation previously used in The Unity of Philosophical Experience (1937) and Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (1938). This method consists of first drawing the necessary data for correct formulation of a philosophical problem from what is stated in past philosophies and then finding the correct solution to the problem in terms of the data. He concludes the preface with a statement of the intention of his lectures.
The first lecture deals with God and Greek philosophy. Gilson discusses the irreconcilable nature of Greek religion and philosophy. The notion of gods originated by the theological poets posited a multiplicity of beings or entities identifiable as gods. Living beings possessed of wills, the gods interfered in the lives of men, who were always at their mercy. Reality in Greek philosophy was that which could be seen and touched. It was composed of things governed by laws. Things were never considered as gods. Gilson points out that even Plato kept his gods separate from his philosophical principles. For Plato, ideas were the true reality, for they were immaterial, immutable, necessary, and intelligible. The idea of the Good was the dominating idea, but Plato never referred to it as a god. Gilson recognizes that Aristotle in his metaphysics brought together the first philosophical principle and the notion of god by placing a self-subsisting and eternal Act of Thinking at the summit of the universe. However, Gilson emphasizes that below this Act of Thinking there was still a multiplicity of gods, who eternally moved the heavenly spheres. Gilson also raises the problem of how religion can exist with a god that did not create the world and that thinks only of itself, never of man, and remains a thing.
In “God and Christian Philosophy,” Gilson examines how Christian philosophy developed by using the techniques of Greek philosophy to explain the world rationally in the light of the revealed Jewish-Christian religion. Gilson recounts God’s revelation of himself to Moses and the Jews as the one God. He emphasizes that God revealed himself as a somebody, as He Who Is. He insists upon the familiarity of the Jews with their God, who personally took care of them. He proposes that any philosopher who has accepted this God must identify the supreme physical cause of the world with God. For the philosopher who believes in the Christian God, the philosophical principle and the religious principle must be one and the same.
The major portion of the lecture investigates the contributions of Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas, two of the most important theologian-philosophers of the Middle Ages. Saint Augustine found in the works of the Neoplatonists, particularly in Plotinus, a metaphysical system that he believed could describe the Christian God. Gilson points out the incompatibility of Plotinus’s metaphysics with the doctrine of Christianity, since Plotinus’s world is composed of natures whose functions are determined by their essences. His One is an It which generates all else but does not think. The Christian God (He Who Is) is everything and anything that can possibly be; he does not beget but creates. Saint Augustine, seeing a parallel in Plotinus and Christianity, went on to use the Greek technique to prove God by proposing that man, who was not a God, could possess truth, a divine element, only by the light of God. Gilson sees the explanation of Aristotle by Saint Thomas Aquinas as a transformation performed in consideration of Christian revelation. Gilson states that Aquinas makes the important distinction between “being” and “to be” and then considers the problems addressed by metaphysics in terms of existences rather than essences. The existential world thus discovered must find its cause in an existential God that is the Christian God, He Who Is.
In “God and Modern Philosophy,” Gilson considers the philosophy of René Descartes, Nicolas Malebranche, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, and Baruch Spinoza. While Gilson believes these philosophers used the techniques of the Christian philosophers, he argues that each of them reduced God to an essence and lost the significant concept of existence by their insistence on finding the first philosophical principle by the use of reason alone. Descartes’s world is a mechanical one of science, with God as the supreme cause of nature. For Malebranche, God is an infinite world of intelligible laws. Leibniz’s God is equivalent to nature, to the cause of essences. Spinoza’s philosophical God is once again That Which Is (not He Who Is). Gilson further argues that the God of the Deists is a philosophical myth, like the Demiurge of Plato. He concludes the essay by stating that the lack of proof of such a “god” does not disprove God.
In “God and Contemporary Thought,” Gilson addresses the role of science and the misconception that science can answer all questions. He argues that science is appropriate to solve problems of how things work but cannot explain the why of existence. He says that each act of existence gets its existence from a pure Act of existence, which is the first cause of philosophy and is He Who Is—that is, the Christian God.
Christian Themes
Gilson’s underlying concern is with revealed religion and belief in the existence of God as an act of faith. The faith that he accepts is that which has its origins in Judaism and then became Christianity and eventually Catholicism. According to Gilson, God is not provable by human reasoning but must instead be accepted because he revealed himself to Moses as He Who Is. Comprehension of God as a definable entity is beyond the understanding of the human mind. God is not an idea created by man’s intellect as an explanation of the world. God exists, is the one and only God, and is divine and totally complete in and of himself. All else is created by God and does not participate in divinity but receives grace from God. Thus, man exists because God exists and created him. Fortuitous accident or chance did not bring the world and the life contained therein into existence. The earth and everyone and everything that are part of it were purposefully created by God. The answer to all of the whys of existence—of the present human situation and of human beings’ sense of there being an existence greater than themselves—is God, as he made himself known to Moses and as he is revealed in the Bible. God is a personal God who thinks about, loves, and gives solace to humanity; he is not just nature, nor is he a mere intelligence that drives a mechanistic world governed by immutable laws. Rather, he is identifiable as He Who Is, the one and only God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God the Jews worshiped before they knew what name to call him, the God of the Bible and of the Christian faith.
Sources for Further Study
Gilson, Étienne. The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy. Translated by A. H. C. Downes. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Gilson’s explanation of Christian philosophy as it was developed in the Middle Ages is articulated here, in his 1931-1932 Gifford Lectures.
Grogin, R. C. The Bergsonian Controversy in France, 1900-1914. Calgary, Alta.: University of Calgary Press, 1988. Examines the philosophical controversy, especially at the Sorbonne, about being. Heavily quotes Gilson on the subject.
Maritain, Jacques. An Introduction to Philosophy. New ed. Translated by E. I. Watkins. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Excellent for understanding the many divisions of philosophy and for definitions of philosophical and metaphysical terms. Good on Gilson.
Redpath, Peter A. A Thomist Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Étienne Gilson. New York: Editions Rodopi, 2003. Good survey of Gilson’s method of philosophy and his scholarship, written by Gilson’s students.
Shook, Laurence K., C.S.B. Étienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. Accurate and complete biographical information on Gilson.