Philosophy and the God of Abraham: essays in memory of James A. Weisheipl (review)

154 Reviews Jerusalem was still in the hands of the infidel, and Christ had not yet returned. Nonetheless, the universal church canonized him in 1712. Lemaitre begins her biography with a justification, almost an apology, for undertaking such a task. But no apologies are necessary, for she produces a tour de force that demonstrates a mature understanding of the sixteenth-century context, and she succeeds in placing Pius V in that context. However, perhaps she devotes too much attention to some issues and not enough to others; for example, describing the battle of Lepanto in great detail but devoting far too little attention to the diplomatic activities of Pius V in France during the Wars of Religion. Her prose is lively, her erudition is commendable, and her biography of this unsympathetic and unappealing pope, while not making him sympathetic and appealing, makes him understandable. A. Lynn Martin Department of History The University of Adelaide Long, James R., ed., Philosophy and the God of Abraham: essays in memory of James A. Weisheipl, Toronto, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991; paper; pp. x, 296; R.R.P. CAN$31.00. In the words of Edward A. Synan ('Aquinas and the children of Abraham', p. 203): 'The career of James A. Weisheipl, OP, was marked by passionate devotion to the problematic of medieval scientific conceptions as well as to the theological traditions of his Church and Order, and the Thomistic tradition pre-eminent in both'. This provides a fair guide in fact to the general character of the collection itself, except that one must note that the emphasis falls quite definitely on Thomistic philosophy within the theological traditions of the Church. To this extent, the essays fail to do full justice to Weisheipl's philosophical concerns, especially his contribution to natural philosophy. Weisheipl is perhaps best known for his biography of Thomas Aquinas, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: his life, thought, and work (Oxford, 1974). Surprisingly, this contribution is not assessed in any of the essays. Thetitle,Philosophy and the God of Abraham, is taken from the working tide Weisheipl himself had given to a study of questions about reason and faith on which he was working at the time of his death in 1984. The collection consists of eighteen essays, focused mainly on aspects of this Reviews 155 topic in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, written by Dominican confreres, colleagues at tbe Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies where Weisheipl worked for the last twenty years of his hfe, and twelve former students. The publication, the twelfth in the series Papers in mediaeval studies, grew out of a memorial conference held in conjunction with the 24th International congress on medieval studies at Western Michigan University in 1989. It is an important collection of essays which are certainly of good general quality in then field. However, on the whole it represents a conservative philosophical standpoint, even within m o d e m Thomistic studies. This is not to say that no new ground is broken, or that nothing new is said about old questions. The concluding essay, by William A. Wallace, dealing with Aquinas and Newton on natural and divine causality, is particularly important. Wallace, who has written at length about Thomistic influences on Galileo, draws attention here to similar elements in Newton's early Trinity Notebook. Wallace, like Weisheipl, seeks to show how, in the spirit of Aquinas, 'science andreligion,rather than being in an adversary relationship, actually provide complementary understandings of the workings of nature' (p. 256). Specifically, he is concerned to show that Aquinas's first argument for the existence of God, the 'Fhst unmoved mover' argument, is not tied inextticably to medieval physics and that it remains valid and relevant in the context of Newtonian science and, indeed, of contemporary quantum theory. The comparative work on Aquinas and Newton is illuminating, but the defence of the argument for God 'ex motu' is unconvincing, as it is also in the preceding essay by David B. Twetten; although, it is certainly worthy of discussion in each case. The greatness of Thomas Aquinas's project and the significance of his thought is not in question. However, the issue for many of the contributors to...