The central thesis of Etienne Gilson’s Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy is that, contrary to the commonly held view, the Middle Ages did indeed have a distinctive philosophy of its own and that philosophy was the distinctively Christian one. Through comparisons with Plato and Aristotle, he principally examines Aquinas, Augustine, Duns Scotus and St Bonaventure. He is concerned with the relation of faith to reason in light of the very concept of a Christian philosophy, and shows how the mediævals drew upon but radically recast Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics of being, necessity and contingency in light of the spirit of Christianity. Through accounts of nature and beings as created by being itself, Gilson demonstrates that the mediævals’ accounts of providence, liberty and morality are rational yet distinctively Christian in inspiration. Though the spirit of mediæval philosophy floundered, Gilson suggests that that is where we should look in order to resurrect a Christian philosophy.

Taking as his first premise that man’s attitude to nature is intimately connected with and powerfully influences his conception of God, an examination of man’s attitude towards nature is therefore a prerequisite in any study of religion. In the first series of lectures, Raven examines man’s attitude toward nature from the time of the early Church to the present.

Heidi Poon
University of Edinburgh

The lectures seek to demonstrate by historical and epistemological analysis the necessary dependence of the rise of science in the West, and its continuation in the whole world, upon the cultural and metaphysical matrix provided by the Judeo-Christian worldview. The key and unique features of that worldview required for science to be born and mature include conviction of the world’s rationality, intelligibility and contingency, summarized by the Thomistic proofs for the existence of God.

Rather than contributing a new work of natural theology, Characters in Search of Their Author is a philosophical defence of the broad task of natural theology, which takes as its starting point the assumption that some knowledge of God is attainable through ordinary means.