Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers by Ralph McInerny (review)

BOOK REVIEWS Praeambula Fidei: Thomism and the God of the Philosophers. By RALPH MCINERNY. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University ofAmerica Press, 2007. Pp. 313. $34.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1458-0. Ralph Mclnerny's Gifford Lectures, Characters in Search of their Author (1999-2000) examined criticisms of natural theology posed by various practitioners of modern philosophy. Praeambula Fidei is a more technical, broad, and ambitious attempt to analyze the internal structure ofThomistic natural theological reasoning. It also seeks to respond to thinkers who (according to Mclnerny) sought to marginalize the place of this doctrine in modern Catholic theology. The book is polemical in that it takes issue with interpretations of Aquinas developed by such influential figures as Etienne Gilson, Henri de Lubac, and Marie-Dominique Chenu. Simultaneously, however, the presentation is expository , offering a counterproposal based upon the Aristotelianism ofAquinas. Mclnerny's defense of a distinctly philosophical theology in Aquinas, and of the profound strands of continuity between Aquinas's metaphysics and that of Aristotle, will leave no Thomist indifferent. For contemporary theologians, the book offers interesting arguments about fundamental theology, stressing oftforgotten truths worthy of serious (re)consideration. The book proceeds in three parts. In the first section the author exposes the doctrine of the praeambula fidei, those truths revealed by God that are also accessible to human reason. Such truths denote even to the philosophical intellect the potential truth of the Catholic faith: truths such as the existence of the soul, the rationality of the natural law, and, in particular, the philosophical demonstrability of the existence of God. Here Mclnerny articulates eloquently the Thomistic distinction between knowing by reason and believing by faith. His attentiveness to Aquinas's philosophy of first principles, self-evident propositions , and demonstrative reasoning toward non-self-evident rational truths (717 ) allows him to identify clearly the character of philosophical knowledge of God he wishes to defend. God may be known a posteriori, indirectly, as a cause is known from its effects, even while his existence is not self-evident to us a priori. This genuine form of rational knowledge is absolutely distinct from the revealed truths of divine revelation, which in turn have their own "principles" and (eventual) propositional articulation (20-23). The latter are accepted in love by an act of the will, based upon the authority of God revealing himself. These 633 634 BOOK REVIEWS two ways of knowing God are not alien to one another, however, since "the bulk of things we hold as true is based on trust" (16) and, consequently, trust in the word of another is a necessary dimension of human reason. The study of the praeambula fidei guarantees a sense of the potential harmony between faith and reason, since it demonstrates that there exists for natural reason a final term (knowledge of the existence of God) which revelation both complements and completes. In the twentieth century, however, the pursuit of this harmony has been attenuated by "flawed understandings of the nature of Christian philosophy, a tendency to disparage the natural in favor of the supernatural, [and] the suggestion that the philosophy of St. Thomas is to be found only in his theological works, and cannot be separated from them" (32). In the second section of the book, the author goes on to analyze critically the interpretations of Aquinas offered by Gilson, De Lubac, and Chenu. It is their works in particular that contributed to the above-mentioned problematic tendencies . Mclnerny sees particular evidence of this in their respective treatments of Cardinal Cajetan, and the Dominican commentary tradition more generally. What follows in the second section, then, is an extended defense of Cajetan's reading ofAquinas concerning the metaphysics of esse, the final end of man, and the integrity of philosophical theology as distinct from sacra doctrina. This defense is conducted in dialogue with the writings of Gilson, De Lubac, and Chenu, sequentially. Mclnerny first studies Gilson's claim that Aquinas' doctrine of esse (as existence "beyond" essence) was deemphasized or forgotten by the Thomistic school, and principally by Cajetan (39-68). Examining in particular Gilson's "Cajetan et !'existence" (Tijdschriff voor Philosophie 15 [1953]: 267-86), Mclnerny shows multiple ways in which Gilson...