¹ Descartes, Rene’, “Meditation I” of his Meditation On First Philosophy (2^nd ed., Amsterdam, 1642)Google Scholar in Kolak, Daniel, Lovers of Wisdom (Toronto:Nelson/Thomson Learning, 2001) pp. 238-241Google Scholar; see also Biffle, Christopher, ed., Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, (Mayfield Publishing, 2001)Google Scholar.

² Williams, Hugh, “Lawrence Dewan O.P. and Etienne Gilson: Reflections on Christian Philosophy's Continuing Relevance and Challenges” in New Blackfriars: A Review, Vol.98, Issue 1075, pp. 342-352, May 2017CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ See Fr. Dewan's paper Thomas Aquinas, Wisdom, and Human Dignity: Philosophy and Beyond presented in Houston, Texas: University of St. Thomas, Aquinas Lecture, October 2013 and published in John Hittinger and Daniel Wagner, Eds. Thomas Aquinas: Teacher Of Humanity (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015) pp. 86-98; see especially p. 89. See also Dewan, Lawrence Fr., Wisdom, Law and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham Press, 2008) pp. 68-84Google Scholar; see especially p. 69.

⁴ Ibid, p. 89.

⁵ Gilson, Etienne, Christianity and Philosophy (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939) pp. vii-viiiGoogle Scholar.

⁶ This point is driven home most powerfully in Gilson's text Christianity and Philosophy in the final essay “The Intelligence In The Service Of Christ”, pp. 103-125.

⁷ This paper involves a close reading and study of Gilson's, Etienne, Thomism: The Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, 6 ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute Of Mediaeval Studies, 2002)Google Scholar. See especially his “Introduction: The Nature of Thomistic Philosophy”, pp. 1-37.

⁸ Gilson, , Part III, Ch. 7, “The Spirit of Thomism” of his Thomism, pp. 423-426Google Scholar.

⁹ We must acknowledge that some contemporary theologians such as Karl Rahner discuss ‘mystery’ in theology in a new light contrasting it with an earlier concept of ‘mystery’ seemingly adhered to by Gilson. Rahner believes this earlier concept of mystery is unable to do justice to the mysteries of Christian Revelation. According to this earlier understanding, mystery is a revealed truth that although it cannot be understood in this life it will be understood in Heaven. Rahner's alternative understanding says God is the Infinite Goal of the human mind but also is the Supreme Mystery. For Rahner, there is an unobjective knowledge of God serving as the condition of possibility for every human act of understanding and knowledge, and yet this God can never be understood as God is in himself by any finite mind and so always remains the Holy Mystery even to the blessed in Heaven. The Beatific Vision then consists in the immediate presence of the Infinite Mystery in love and not the clear understanding of it or the complete dispelling of it as Infinite Mystery. See McCool, Gerald, ed., A Rahner Reader (New York: Seabury Press, 1975) p. 108Google Scholar. Etienne Gilson's own view of mystery, I would tentatively suggest, is perhaps a confused combination of both the earlier notion of mystery and Rahner's revised unobjective knowledge of God as permanent background condition for our understanding in this life and in Heaven.

¹⁰ See Casabianca, Tristan, “Turin Shroud, Resurrection and Science: One View of the Cathedral” in New Blackfriars: A Review, Vol.98, No.1078, November 2017, pp. 709-721CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This fascinating article supports my longstanding and somewhat controversial view of the importance of Christian philosophy. It gives new life to the argument of this paper by subtly yet effectively challenging what up till recently has been the conventional academic and scholarly wisdom, that neither science nor history as a matter of principle can ever prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the evidence surrounding an object such as the Shroud may in fact show us signs supporting Christian claims regarding the bodily resurrection of Christ.

¹¹ Gilson, Thomism, p. 425.

¹² Some reflection on selected epistemological, ontological, and phenomenological definitions and considerations is clearly in order for the critical reader because there is much confusion today over the meaning of theology and of its relationship to philosophy especially philosophical metaphysics. I would direct the reader to any of the commendable scholastic manual. I personally have found Fr. Gerard Smith's seminal work in scholastic philosophy and theology to be especially helpful, see his Natural Theology: Metaphysics II (New York: Macmillan Company, 1957) pp. 1-21.

¹³ The distinction between natural theology which is a part of philosophy as the work of our natural reason, and sacred or revealed theology understood as knowledge of God illumined by the gift of supernatural faith is crucial for our discussion. In his essay “Philosophizing within Faith” (See Gilson, Etienne, Christian Philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1993) pp. 6-13Google Scholar), Gilson provides the inspiration for a more phenomenological effort to explain further and illustrate this difference between faith and revealed theology's approach to the question of God from that of the approach of natural reason and philosophy. Imagine one is ‘reading’ tracks in freshly fallen snow. One may see snowshoe tracks in the snow and know with certainty one's good friend is hunting. Yet still these tracks are not the cause of one's friend hunting and this way of knowing is different from knowing the actual cause of these tracks in itself in direct encounter, albeit dimly held in memory at present. Nonetheless, this latter knowledge is of an obviously different order than that of the natural discovery of tracks and the identification of a hunter through natural reason. Even more important, however, is that this is my good friend whom the present exercise of natural reason has no knowledge of in his singularity and of the singularity of the relationship, for its conclusions only reveal the existence of a hunter but not that of the singular one who has become my friend and who is the author of these tracks at hand. This more phenomenological example perhaps can give some sense of Gilson's intention in following St.Thomas whom he cites as saying -“We must accept by faith not only what is above reason but also what can be known by reason” (ST 2-2.2.4). The hunter known by our natural reason in this illustration is the object of a type of natural science – which we might call the science or craft of tracking. The person known in friendship, however, is intimately related to one's well-being referred to as one's salvation in the language of faith. The demonstration based upon reasoning about tracks as signs can neither reach nor even conceive of this latter knowledge which we are suggesting is analogous to the relationship of friendship. Those who reason about tracks and hunters can and ought to be befriended but this latter relationship cannot be achieved on one's own effort. As a science of hunting, natural reasoning and philosophy cannot even conceive of the possibility of the befriending and thus of this salvation to which the language of faith refers. We are by this illustrative metaphor and analogy recognizing the absolute transcendence of the friendship of persons and its associated knowledge by the striking fact of the radically different meanings and interpretations of the hunter for the knowledge of philosophy and for the knowledge involved in revealed theology.

¹⁴ This section follows closely Wright's, N. T. overall argument in his The Resurrection Of The Son Of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003)Google Scholar especially see pp. 3-31.

¹⁵ In order to give the reader, especially the Christian reader, the jarring and even stochastic dimension we believe this historical question had for the early church, we propose consideration be given to the negative or shadow aspect of the question as a type of thought experiment – what difference would it make to your faith and the faith of the church if Christ's bones should be found?

¹⁶ Wright points out that his project of enquiry is carefully resistant to any type of Christian theological apologetic that attempts to colonize authentic historical enquiry, or any program of concerted indifference to history that claims a Christian theological mandate. This latter indifference to history he attributes to the influential Protestant theology of Karl Barth while the former concern is more directed towards Catholic theologies’ traditional and scholastic preoccupation with issues of natural theology. See Geivett, R. Douglas, “The Epistemology Of Resurrection Belief” in Stewart, Robert, Editor, The Resurrection of Jesus: The Crossan-Wright Dialogue (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006) pp. 93-105Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Flew, Antony, There Is A God (New York: HarperCollins, 2008) pp. 185-213Google Scholar.

¹⁸ Stochastic thinking is my own term and by it I mean being forced to think about God's purpose or aim in the most direct and yet unimaginable way. It is closely related to the term “traumatic” in that it is or can be disruptive of the status quo and of one's psychic equilibrium but yet it does not necessarily always involve the damage, especially psychic damage associated with trauma, for in the case of the early church these interventions of God were radically enlivening. At its most spare, a summing up interpretation is that God, through these events, is helping the early church to see who Jesus is, and Jesus is helping the early church to see who God is. Our argument is that our efforts to understand this necessarily involves the dynamic and integral interplay of history, philosophy, and theology, what Etienne Gilson has persisted in calling Christian philosophy. See Cullman, Oscar and Jungmann, Josef in Mary Boys, Biblical Interpretation In Religious Education (Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1980) pp. 34-49, 76-88 on salvation historyGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ See Lonergan, Bernard, “The Problem of Evil and Its Solution” in The Lonergan Reader, Morelli, Mark and Morelli, Elizabeth, eds., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) pp. 308-339Google Scholar.

²⁰ For a sustained treatment of the relationship of revelation and philosophy see Menssen, Sandra and Sullivan, Thomas, The Agnostic Inquirer: Revelation from a Philosophical Standpoint (Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007)Google Scholar.

²¹ Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk I, Ch.79.

²² See SCG Ch. 80, 81 and Summa Theologica Pt. III Q.53 Art.4.

²³ See SCG 1-3; ST 1.1.3. Schmitz, Kenneth has given an excellent updated example of philosophy at work on this issue in his essay “Purity Of Soul And Immortality” in The Texture Of Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 2007) pp. 200-220Google Scholar.