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BOOK REVIEWS 879 The Existence of God. A Commentary on St. Thomas Aquinas's Five Ways. By ERIC G. JAY. London: Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (New York: Macmillan), 1946. Pp. 70. $1.25. Does God Exist? By A. E. TAYLOR. New York: Macmillan, 1947. Pp. 172. $2.00. The perennial question of the existence of a Supreme Being still agitates the heart and fascinates the mind of man. These two books, one a translation of the voice of a great teacher of the Middle Ages, the other the voice of a great teacher of our own age, complement one another, and reach the same conclusion. The significance of Mr. Jay's work to Thomists lies not so much in its contents-the traditional proofs-as in its background. What a surprise to discover, when Catholic schools and seminaries are still turning out students to whom he is only a name is the fine print of footnotes, that St. Thomas Aquinas has joined the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. Of further interest (and, may it be hoped, worthy of emulation ) to our Catholic schools where the study of L~tin is declining, is the fact that St. Thomas serves Anglican deacons as 1t source whence not only doctrine but also the Latin tongue may be learned. The present volume is a series of lectures given to serious-minded service men, but based on others arranged for Anglican seminarians. After a foreword which states that it was written " to arm with sound reasons, and with confidence in those reasons, any who . . . give a reason for the faith that is in them ..." we have a brief and confusing biographical note on St. Thomas, which apparently sends Thomas to Cologne before his Baccalaureate at Paris. The first three chapters clear the way, as it were, for the Five Ways by considering the relation between faith and reason (Summa Theologica I, q. 1, a.1), by rejecting the Ontological argument and exposing its roots in the Platonic world of Ideas (ibid. q. 2, a. 1), and by sketching the Aristotelian notions of matter and form, potency and act, causality· and finality, from the analysis of which St. Thomas will demonstrate the existence of a Being Who is Pure Act, First Cause, All Wise, All Good and· All Perfect. Then in a chapter for each, the Five Ways are presented in translation from the Summa, with an explanation and commentary . A final chapter on all five ways shows how, taken together, one supplements the limitations of the other to give us a broad concept of a personal living God. A short bibliography of six books evenly divided between Anglicans and Catholics, and a short index complete this precious and profitable little book. It is, on the whole, a good piece of work, and it would be unduly captious to point out the defects almost inevitable to one who attempts to interpret a part of St. Thomas without being well acquainted with the 880 BOOK REVIEWS " broad and spacious garden " of St. Thomas' mind. Some of the translation seems ad hoc, some of the reasonings go slightly askew, but no serious damage is done. Indeed, since the old objections can be and are restated in many new ways, the old arguments can be refurbished as well. We can be thankful to Mr. Jay for having placed within the grasp of almost any literate person one of the richest veins of doctrine in St. Thomas, and for having defended man's reason and his knowledge of God from the blight of Barthian Fideism. Professor Taylor's little essay is very different. It is personal rather than traditional, and argumentative rather than expository. His purpose, however, "is not to demonstrate 'the being of a God,' but only to argue that some alleged and widely entertained ' scientific objectons ' to theistic belief are unsound, and that it is unbelief (not belief) that is the unreasonable attitude . . . ." Since the modern objections to the existence of God are based on science, Professor Taylor proceeds to destroy on science's own principles its competence to either affirm or deny God. He first shows the irrationality of the rationalistic acceptance...

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