Aristotle and Early Christian Thought by Mark Edwards (review)

The ways through which the Greek philosophical and scientific legacy arrived, vascularized, and transformed late ancient and medieval Mediterranean and Near Eastern thought were manifold. Through the work of Syriac translators such as Sergius of Reshayna, the works of Plato, Galen, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists migrated eastwards. With the expansion of the Arabs in North Africa, Greek philosophy traveled and reached Iberia, where during the Reconquista it was retrieved and brought into the heart of Europe, where it influenced and transformed the medieval West. The history of the migration and reception of the works of Plato and Aristotle in later philosophy, science, and theology, is a history that traverses varied places and languages, schools and madrasas, cultures and wars.

Edwards's book contributes to the writing of this history by focusing on the reception of the philosophy of Aristotle among Christian intellectuals in the first six centuries of the Common Era. The book provides a coherent narrative, based on an attentive and mainly philosophical scrutiny of primary sources and of the problematic encounter of Christian revelation and Aristotelian philosophy. Edwards's convincing reconstruction reveals how the Christian appropriation of Aristotle's thought was made possible by a transformative set of exegetical practices which aimed at accentuating the elements of his philosophy that were more compatible with Christian revelation while consciously overlooking those that were incompatible. This process was fueled by multiple forces, including the interpretive traditions of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic thinkers of the imperial and late ancient age, who throughout the centuries made Aristotelian philosophy more palatable to Christian intellectuals by rethinking it in a way that was more creative than conservative.

Although some vocabulary and imagery that could be described as Aristotelianizing are indeed found in certain fathers (like the Peripatetic simile of iron in fire applied to the incarnation by Origen [De Principiis 2.6]), Edwards brings to light the limits of facile formulas such as "Christian Aristotelianism" which, according to the author, implies an active and "authentic" engagement of Christian intellectuals with Aristotle's philosophical legacy. If by Aristotelian we mean a thinker bound to uphold the doctrine that he professed against the attacks of every rival school, no Christian of the patristic era was strictly an "Aristotelian." Edwards points out how Christians approached Aristotle's texts with interests and concerns rarely shared by Hellene intellectuals. Consequently, only certain works (or certain sections) of Aristotle were used. The works of Aristotle that could substantiate, defend, or vindicate Christian revelation (namely the works on logic, physics, metaphysics, psychology, and cosmology) were used, whereas others (such as the treatises on biology, rhetoric, politics, and the minor ethical works) were ignored. During the fourth and fifth centuries, echoes of Aristotelian vocabulary, concepts, imagery, and reasoning patterns are found in the writings of the fathers engaged in the great Trinitarian and christological controversies, yet the "Aristotelianizing" vocabulary and imagery found in these thinkers are often used in ways that are different from Aristotle's, so we may wonder about what we really mean when we say that such elements in the writings of the fathers were Aristotelian.

The discussion of the legitimacy or otherwise of the category "Aristotelian" for early Christian thinkers is indeed one of the fundamental questions that this book investigates, yet the only concern that I have with Edwards's argument is precisely about this. The author does not seem to be open to the possibility that just like "being is said in many ways," so too being Aristotelian can be said in many ways. In the afterword he writes, "As I said in the Preface, no Christian of the patristic era is strictly an Aristotelian; conflicts between philosophy and Scripture merely exposed the limitations of philosophy, and hence there were no dilemmas such as a mediaeval thinker might encounter when he found the Church and Aristotle to be at odds with one another" (194–95). Edwards seems to say that because Aristotle had no independent authority in...