The Rationalist Position
2. Another historian of philosophy, Mr. Émile Bréhier, has tried his hand at this same problem. His study{3} is not wanting in interest or in vigor, and yet so simplified is its outlook that most of the time it is wide of the mark. In dread of "fixed" concepts and "ready made" things, and unwilling to know anything about philosophy and Christianity in themselves, the author seeks his answers from history. But in how fanciful a fashion! Indeed it is not history which replies that there is no Christian philosophy, and that "it is no more possible to speak of a Christian philosophy than of a Christian mathematics or physics." Even had all taken place just as he imagines (which I am certainly far from conceding), that is to say, if we had seen a series of attempts to construct a Christian philosophy founder one by one, from St. Augustine to Mr. Blondel, these attempts would not on that account have existed in a lesser degree or left a fainter impress on Western thought. Since when does history concede reality only to syntheses that have succeeded? For what systems are not in the end assimilated into something other than themselves? One philosophy alone boasts of greater durability, and it is precisely the value of this one that Mr. Bréhier is least inclined to acknowledge. It seems of late that rationalist dogmatism has introduced a new norm into the heart of history itself: the privilege of historical existence is to be reserved solely for whatever the historian's prejudices have approved as meritorious and sound. But above all -- and this deserves our particular attention -- the means of differentiating employed by Mr. Bréhier, as suitable as they may be for outlining some material traits, possess all too meagre a scope and accuracy for gauging the influence exerted on the domain of rational thought by a teaching and a way of life that transcend all philosophy.{4}
Furthermore, it would appear that despite his aversion toward "ready made" concepts, he himself conceives of religion as something alien in its very nature to intellectuality, and that this personal opinion has taken its toll of his entire handling of the question. Lastly, while he is right in noting that some of the systems which he reviews are Christian only in a material sense, his inquiry remains nevertheless unaccountably superficial when he comes to examine that philosophy which is usually regarded as the exemplar of Christian philosophy -- I refer to medieval philosophy, and in an exceptional sense to the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas. The errors which can be singled out in his account are such that a Scholastic philosopher would certainly not be forgiven if he committed them in regard to a modern system. For example, St. Thomas definitely looked upon the human intellect as the weakest in the hierarchy of spirits; but never did he conceive of reason according to the merely dialectical and pathetically unstable pattern that Mr. Bréhier attributes to him; and never did he debar reason from "the possibility of being its own proper judge" (this does not mean its supreme judge). Never, yet again, did he reduce the relationship of reason and faith to that purely external "censorship," the workings of which Mr. Bréhier depicts with such naive abandon. (It is incontestable that for St. Thomas faith serves as a "negative norm" in relation to philosophy, yet this teaching does not bring us within the farthest flung outposts of the Thomistic teaching on faith and reason.) Never did he look on the multiplicity of individual intellects as a "miracle which is incompatible with the peculiar nature of intelligence";{5} never did he make individual differences consist of "accidents which spring from fleeting circumstance".
{3} "Y a-t-il une Philosophie Chrétienne?" Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale (April-June, 1931). Cf. Mr. Bréhier's contribution at the session of the Société de Philosophie in the Bulletin cited above.
{4} "The partitioning which Mr. Bréhier applies to St. Augustine's thought with so heavy a hand, separating it into his philosophy ('that of Plato and Plotinus') and his Christian faith, gives as nothing else could the impression that this historian, whose scholarship and probity none will contest, is utterly incapable of penetrating a doctrine in which precisely those elements which his type of analysis dissociates are intimately fused. Mr. Gilson, in contrast, who communes with Augustinism from within, has made a truly remarkable effort to show how in the works of the great Doctors, and most of all perhaps in those of St. Thomas, the concepts borrowed from Greek philosophy are struck with a stamp which is radically new, and which profoundly modifies their nature. One cannot hope by a simple process of taking inventories and comparing isolated terms instead of ideas to reach that living truth which even for -- and perhaps especially for -- the philosopher is the only one that counts." Gabriel Marcel, Nouvelle Revue des Jeunes, March 15, 1932.
{5} It is regrettable to see this same statement come from the pen of Mr. Michel Souriau (Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale. July. September, 1932, p. 365), who on Mr. Bréhier's authority presents as an accepted truth this glaring error which originated in a misinterpreted text. Are we to conclude that the Latin of the De Unitate Intellectus is too arduous for otherwise exacting and erudite scholars?