The recent interest in the mid-twentieth century French theological exchanges between the nouvelle théologie and the neo-Scholastics that culminated in the controversy surrounding Henri de Lubac's Surnaturel has been widely published in the last decade and has initiated a conversation that has been both vigorous and sometimes heated. In the midst of these disagreements a broader French intellectual interwar milieu that is both rich and varied is often lost. Gregory Sadler goes a long way in rectifying this deficiency with his recent book Reason Fulfilled by Revelation: The 1930's Christian Philosophy Debates in France, which provides both an excellent historical survey of the debates surrounding the possibility of Christian philosophy as well as translations of twelve important documents that bring to light a series of philosophical exchanges that had a profound influence on later theological developments and occupied some of the most significant names in the French Catholic intellectual world—Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, Maurice Blondel and Gabriel Marcel.
Sadler's intentions are two-fold: first, to provide English readers with a set of important philosophical articles previously only available to those with a command of French, and secondly, to offer a brief historical account of this largely forgotten debate which also provides historical background for previously translated works, such as Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy and Maritain's An Essay on Christian Philosophy, that emerged from this period.
Sadler understands the complexity and dynamism of the French milieu in which the exchanges took place, and he devotes the first third of Reason Fulfilled by Revelation, almost one hundred pages, to providing a philosophical and contextual overview of the debates. The complex period between the wars is examined in terms of Catholic philosophical thought, and the twelve articles that are provided in translation are firmly set within their original context. The relevant contributions of Gilson and Maritain, having long been available in English, are largely absent, but Sadler includes four articles of Maurice Blondel with the remainder belonging to Gabriel Marcel, Bruno de Solages, Antonin Sertillanges and several neo-Scholastics.
Lasting from 1931 to 1936, Sadler divides the debates into three phases and overviews the various positions of those arguing either for the possibility of Christian philosophy or against it. Several rationalists, such as Emile Bréhier and Léon Brunschvicg, as well as a number of prominent neo-Thomists from Louvain, including Ferdinand Van Steenberghen and Léon Noël, were the primary figures debating against the possibility of Christian philosophy. The rationalist position rests on several important points: first, reason is not specifically Christian, and the religious sentiments of the Christian philosopher are as accidental to his or her task as are those of the Christian mathematician or scientist. Secondly, the ‘incarnation of the Messiah’ is something that goes beyond reason and therefore provides no foundation for ‘philosophical reason to build on’ (p. 51). Various neo-Scholastics also argued for a strict separation between philosophy and theology. Philosophy remains strictly rational and Christianity ‘never intervenes except in an indirect and accidental manner’ (p. 82). Christian influences have merely helped to put the philosopher in the best possible position to develop a ‘true philosophy’ that is ‘compatible’ with and ‘open’ to Christianity, both sharing conclusions that will certainly coincide at various points.
Gilson offers a rejoinder by attempting to steer a middle course between rationalism and ‘theologism’, which sees philosophy as only diminishing Christian revelation. Gilson admits that reason in Christian philosophy is conditioned by faith, but he asserts that every philosopher's reason is conditioned by something non-rational. Using such examples of the creation metaphysics of Exodus and creation ex nihilo, he examines the course of Western philosophy historically and observes that Christian revelation has influenced philosophy significantly and promoted certain novel developments. Maritain stands in essential agreement with Gilson, but he attempts a more theoretical approach that sees Christianity as purifying and elevating philosophy.
Maurice Blondel, also a proponent of Christian philosophy, argues strongly against the ‘historicism’ and ‘conceptualism’ of Gilson and Maritain. His arguments are essentially an extension of his ‘philosophy of insufficiency’ that he put forth in his seminal treatise written in 1893, Action. He asserts that ‘far from stabilizing everything in closed concepts, reason discovers in itself needs that nature does not satisfy at all, something unattained, always naturally unattainable and nevertheless incoercibly hungering for attainment’ (p. 70).
Gabriel Marcel proposed a fourth major position for Christian philosophy by stressing several points: first, pushing Gilson's thesis further, he writes that Christianity has made contributions to philosophy through experiential dimensions of the sacramental and religious life rather than the dogmatic, and secondly, Christian philosophy remains—and must be—a paradox and a scandal as the incarnation stands as ‘a certain datum—a revealed datum—whose signification, whose value is absolutely transcendent to any experience susceptible of being constituted on purely human bases’ (p. 165).
When the complex issue concerning the natural desire to see God in Aquinas emerges in Sadler's treatment of Blondel's contributions, we are not surprised to find that Henri de Lubac was following the debates closely and wrote an article, ‘Retrieving the Tradition: On Christian Philosophy’, that served as a kind of a postscript to the exchange in that he attempted to summarize the developments and main phases of the various interventions. However, he provides much more than a summary, and while his words point to the enduring relevance of this interwar debate, they also testify to the importance of this recent publication by Gregory Sadler, which is both timely and well conceived. De Lubac writes that although the language might shift, the essential problem ‘has imposed itself on centuries past [and] will continue to impose itself on centuries to come [and] under various names designating by turns its many aspects never ceases to haunt our minds’ (De Lubac, Henri. “Retrieving the Tradition: On Christian Philosophy.” Communio. Vol. XIX, No. 3 (Fall 1992): 478).
