E-2

In this classic work, the eminent Catholic philosopher Étienne Gilson deals with one of the most important and perplexing metaphysical problems: the relation between our notion of God and demonstrations of his existence. Gilson examines Greek, Christian, and modern philosophy as well as the thinking that has grown out of our age of science in this fundamental analysis of the problem of God.
“[I] commend to another generation of seekers and students this deeply earnest and yet wistfully gentle little essay on the most important (and often, at least nowadays, the most neglected) of all metaphysical—and existential—questions. . . . The historical sweep is breathtaking, the one-liners arresting, and the style, both intellectual and literary, altogether engaging.” —Jaroslav Pelikan, from the foreword
“We have come to expect from the pen of M. Gilson not only an accurate exposition of the thought of the great philosophers, ancient and modern, but what is of much more importance and of greater interest, a keen and sympathetic insight into the reasons for that thought. The present volume does not fail to fulfill our expectations. It should be read by every Christian thinker.”—Ralph O. Dates, America

Brilliant lecture series given at Indiana University by French Thomist Gilson. I've always like his style of writing and the easy way in which Aquinas was introduced as an important thinker among all notables ancient, medieval and modern. This book gives Gilson's position that all modern scientists may try to give a scientific answer to whether God exists but that avenue has already been negatively exhausted by the logical positivists. The correct answer for the modern mind, one that incorporates all that modern science has to offer, must be a philosophical answer to the metaphysical question of God's existence. In essence the answer must be a new formulation of Thomas Aquinas' answer as a metaphysican but with all new scientific data to which Aquinas could never have imagined. Gilson argues that scientists must adopt a metaphysical approach to the question of God's existence lest the God they define be a pantheistic god. Process Theology has not met with any acceptance. Gilson says that the then perfect rational god of Spinoza has already been proposed and passed over. Logical positivism collapsed upon itself and now we are still left at the time of God and Philosophy's printing (1941) with nothing to replace the Thomistic synthesis. Beautiful writing even though English is not his first language. Gilson definitely holds out scientists (probably cosmologists and theoretical physicists) as the people most likely to advance human knowing in the most important ways. Gilson was a Roman Catholic layman.
Four chapters, Index. ( )