The Philosophy of the Church Fathers by Harry Austryn Wolfson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 361 The Philosophy of the Church Fathers, Vol. I, "Faith, Trinity, Incarnation ." By HARRY AusTRYN WoLFSON. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956. Pp. 663. $10.00. The present volume is the third in the series entitled, " Structure and Growth of Philosophic Systems from Plato to Spinoza." It is also the first of a series within this particular series, entitled, " The Philosophy of the Church Fathers," and deals specifically with "Faith, Trinity, Incarnation." The author writes very lucidly on abstract subjects, and at the very beginning he describes in clear terms his approach to this very profound and abstract subject. Every reader should know the method employed, not only the better to understand the work but also to be forewarned. A few quotations here will suffice to illustrate the point. "In the present work, we try to show how a similar conception (to that in Philo) among the Church Fathers with regard to the relation of certain teachings of Greek philosophy to the revealed truths of both the Jewish and the Christian Scripture resulted similarly in a recasting of Christian beliefs in the version of Greek philosophy. The material with which we had to work here is of the same kind as that in Philo-terms, formulas and analogies scattered throughout the writings, in this case, not one man but of many men of successive generations. These we tried to piece together into a unified and continuous system. The method which we have employed in trying to integrate these scattered terms and formulas and analogies is that which we have chosen to call the hypothetico-deductive method of text-study." " The first volume of the work on the Church Fathers now before the reader corresponds to three chapters (II-IV) out of the twelve which constitute the first volume on Philo, and of the three problems dealt with in this first volume, only the first-Faith and Reason-may be considered as a direct development, with some variations, to be sure, of the problem as presented in Philo; the other two problems-Trinity and Incarnation -have an origin and history apart from Philo." "Still these last two problems, though of non-Philonic origin, are not altogether outside the Philonic framework. For when the Pauline conception of the preexistent Christ, which is of non-Philonic origin, was given by John the name Logos, which is of Philonic origin, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Incarnation was either in accordance with the Philonic conception of the Logos or in departure from the Philonic conception of the Logos." "Not exactly a departure from Philo but only an addition to him is the doctrine of the Incarnation, for in its ultimate formulation the Incarnation became a new stage in the history of the Philonic Logos-a 36~ BOOK REVIEWS Logos made immanent in a man after its having been immanent in the world. Similarly the elaborate Christological discussions growing out of the Incarnation have their starting point in the Philonic analogy between the relation of the immanent Logos to the body of the world and the relation of the human soul to the body of man. Even the heresies are not unrelated to the Philonic framework. Gnosticism, which was never admitted into catholic Christianity, was an attempt to interpret the Pauline preexistent Christ in terms of paganism, in opposition to the Johannine interpretation of it in terms of Philonism. The other heresies, those which arose within catholic Christianity and were banished from it, had their origin an an attempt to restore the Philonic conception of the unity of God." In these quotations indications of the fundamental weaknesses of this volume may be found. First of all one may note the " hypothetic-deductive method of text study," as Wolfson calls it, which he has already described and employed in his famous works, Crescas's Critique of Aristotle (1929) and Philo: Foundations of Religion Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2 vols., 1947). As summarized by Wolfson (p. VI): "Briefly stated, the basis of this method is the assumption that every philosopher in the main course of the history of philosophy either reproduces former philosophers or interprets them or criticizes...