Reason & Revelation in the Middle Ages

Gilson's "Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages" analyzes various movements in religious and philosophical interpretation and the interaction they had with each other. Gilson analyzes developments that occurred in the world of Islam with the discovery and influence of the books of Aristotle translated and interpreted by Averroes around 1190. Averroes's interpretation was a three tiered system in which believers were of a lesser intellectual ability, yet religion held an important and valued way of civilizing barbarians, while intellects that could understand Aristotle and reason were at a higher state of reality. Islam ended up with a violent revolt against Averroes-ism and his Aristotlelianism. Averroes' ideas, however, gained a foothold in Christendom and in its universities and there was a great deal of conflict between Aristotlians and those that held the primacy of the Bible. St, Thomas was the doctor of this potential catastrophe reconciling many issues between the two for some time. His reconciliation was that reason is heightened by belief while reason cannot be fully realized without faith. Faith is more realized, understood, and appreciated by reason. Conflicts between the two can be reconciled without jeopardizing the integrity of either, explained here in some detail. Averroes' followers not only supported Aristotle's reason over faith he aggravated a violent reaction towards it in Islam which might otherwise never have happened. The reaction could have been the same in Christendom if not for St. Thomas, although there were some aggravated responses. The book "The Imitation of Christ", according to Gilson, was one of those. It may be parallel to the aggravated response against Nazism in the form of modern western pluralism and multiculturalism. The action stirred up a counter reaction that otherwise may have never existed at least in the aggressive form it took. In light of the comparative reaction given Christianity vs. Islam St. Thomas may have truly been a doctor. Gilson then describes the children of the Thomistic effort, some true to it and others misguided, as well as those that eventually did take a Bible only view and those that took a humanistic one and anti-scholastic one. Gilson's sort of thought anthropology is interesting in itself.

Gilson is too often forgotten due to his immensely dense scholarship such as in his "Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas"; however, "Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages" is light, informative and extremely readable. The book progresses through different thinkers and the struggle between the relationship of reason to faith, culminating in the syntheses of Aquinas and Scotus. Never before and never after have such a synthesis been attempted (the Age of the Summas), the remarkable task of producing a united and coherent philosophy and Christian world view. But perhaps most interesting is the duel between Peter Abelard and St.Bernard. Gilson wonderfully highlights the struggle between the "new innovations" of the rising scholastic movement with the more classical letters of the theologians. This book is well worth a read as the perfect introduction to the thought of the Middle Ages. Adam

This book is a collection of three lectures delivered at UVA in 1937. Gilson brilliantly portrays three aspects of medieval philosophy:1.The Primacy of Faith 2.The Primacy of Reason 3.The Harmony of Reason and RevelationHe takes the reader through about six or seven major thinkers along the way including Clement, Tertullian, Averroes and Aquinas to show the complexity of thought that abounded in the middle ages. This runs contrary to popular opinion, which tends to look at the 16th century as the first time people had reasonable thoughts as they unshackled themselves from the chains of religious superstition. This is not the case, as Gilson explains in the first few pages of this book.While he would not deny the importance of new ideas that came out of the Renaissance, he would say that most of them had their genesis in the medieval (and earlier) era.