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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 August 2011
For over thirty years, Gilson and others have defended the thesis that “Christian philosophy” is not only a possibility, but also an actuality. This position has had many critics and the debate continues to this day. It appears, however, that Gilson has never been challenged on a subsidiary, but more radical, thesis. It is startling to find that, while the phrase “Christian philosophy” has been debated for decades, Gilson's peculiar and strained usage of the much more common phrase, “the Christian God,” has gone unchallenged, apparently even unnoticed. As the term is generally understood, the Christian God is the Triune, the Incarnate God, the Redeemer of mankind as well as the Creator of all things. Gilson, of course, would readily admit all of this. But it is his contention, perhaps a unique one, that we can speak of the Christian God of philosophy as well as of revealed theology. The former, the Christian God of metaphysics, is born of a recognition of the existential import of God's proper name as He revealed it to Moses.
1 Etienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Doubleday, Garden City, 1960), 86.
2 Yale University Press, New Haven, 1949.
3 Ibid., 38.
4 Ibid., 38f.
5 Ibid., 41.
6 Ibid., 40f.
7 Ibid., 73.
8 Ibid., 88.
9 Ibid., 72.
10 Ibid., 48.
11 Ibid., 49.
12 Ibid., 25.
13 Ibid., 80.
14 E. Gilson, The Philosopher and Theology (Random House, N.Y., 1962), 81.
15 God and Philosophy, 73.
16 Ibid., 72.
17 Ibid., 69.
18 Ibid., 40.
19 Jean Daniélou, God and the Ways of Knowing (Meridian, Cleveland, 1964), 108.
20 Karl Barth, God Here and Now (Harper and Row, N.Y., 1964), 86.
21 God and Philosophy, 60.
22 Ibid., 61.
23 Ibid., 80.
24 Ibid., 114.
25 Ibid., 85f.
26 Ibid., 85.
27 ibid.
28 Elements of Christian Philosophy, 86.
29 Ibid., 85.
30 The Philosopher and Theology, 206.
31 God and Philosophy, 69f.
32 Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics (Sheed and Ward, N.Y., 1939), 48, cf. also 30.
33 Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent (Pantheon, N.Y., 1948), 21f.
34 God and Philosophy, ix.
35 Elements of Christian Philosophy, 85.
36 Ibid.
37 The Philosopher and Theology, 172.