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Foreword
If theology is about the truth, it has to be engaged – intensely, riskily, care-
fully – with all the ways in which human beings in general talk about truth
and believe they discover and cope with it. Thomas Aquinas, in response to the
well-intentioned but disastrous idea that ‘religious’ truth belonged to a differ-
ent order from other truth claims, insisted that there were not several different
kinds of truth but ultimately one. Equally, he and the tradition he represents
reject the two obvious mistakes that can arise in the wake of this. We cannot
say that theology simply supplies ‘truths’ that are lacking in other disciplines in
the sense of giving supplementary information; and we cannot proceed on the
assumption that the way in which truth claims are arrived at in other discourses
can be borrowed and expected to work in theology. In other words, theology
has to think about what its claims to truthfulness mean, and it has to have at
least some purchase on the question of what it is simply to think and to know.
Because theology is not based on a set of revealed propositions (which is not
the same as saying that it can manage without propositional content), it can
slip into a sentimental and impressionistic mode at times, focusing on the edify-
ing effect of certain ways of talking, taking refuge in an appeal to metaphor or
the ‘poetic’ in ways that are both dated and muddled. Any useful discussion of
metaphor, as recent decades have abundantly shown, demands some hard think-
ing about language and reference. And any working poet would be surprised
to be told that their work was absolved from precision or from the inexorable
diffi culty of truthtelling. If theology is indeed to be a participant worth listening
to in the conversation of the academy, it needs, perhaps not to have a theory of
language and reference, but certainly to be able to display what it thinks about
thought and knowing.
And it will do this as it always has when it is serious – by grappling with
what is being said more widely about these things. As the historical essays
which follow demonstrate this sometimes means that theologians become both
embroiled in unwinnable arguments (unwinnable because no one defi nes their
terms properly) and seduced by what look like decisive and compelling models.
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Forewordviii
But without false starts no progress is made: it is almost always the interesting
mistake that really generates fresh mental energy. There is no honest avoiding
of these risks. And in the second volume of this collection, we are helped to see
how a wide variety of ‘sense-making’ practices and discourses can be involved
with theology in the work of fi nding sustainable, defensible ways of talking
about humanity that do not leave out what is awkward or settle for what works
in the small scale and short term. As has often been said, theology is bound to
be an anthropology – and if it is, it is immediately bound up with other anthro-
pologies, discussing, affi rming, contesting and, so theology would claim, always
enlarging. What theology constantly looks to is a way of characterizing what is
human that makes it clear that there is no adequate ‘humanism’ without refer-
ence to God, and, more specifi cally, to the Second Adam.
These essays, then, make the ambitious presupposition that theology cannot
escape ontology of some sort, and so has to do the work that is so comprehen-
sively and clearly set out here. And in a university world where what counts as
knowing, what counts as sustainable truth claims and, ultimately, what counts
as ‘humanistic’ are all issues surrounded by some confusion at the moment,
theology’s contribution to the conversation is not trivial. The humanities sorely
need defences against functionalist barbarity – and so, for that matter, do most
of the sciences. And what happens to these questions in the university is signifi -
cant for what happens to them in our culture overall. Academic questions are
not – as it were – purely academic questions.
Theology has the opportunity of saying essential and properly awkward
things into current debates about scholarship and learning. These essays pro-
vide an impressively comprehensive resource as we seek to make the best use of
such an opportunity.
Archbishop Rowan Williams

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Notes on Contributors
Nicholas Adams teaches philosophy and theology at the University of
Edinburgh. He is active in the American Academy of Religion, the Society for
the Study of Theology and the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, and is a con-
sultant for the Cambridge Inter- Faith Programme. He has published one book,
Habermas and Theology , together with numerous articles on German philoso-
phy and scriptural reasoning.
Paul Avis is the General Secretary of the Council for Christian Unity of the
Church of England, a Research Fellow in the Department of Theology of the
University of Exeter and Canon Theologian of Exeter. He is the Convening
Editor of ‘Ecclesiology’ and the author of a number of books on Anglicanism,
ecumenical theology and ecclesiology.
Oliver D. Crisp (editor and contributor) is Professor of Systematic Theology at
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, US, and formerly Reader in Theology
at the University of Bristol, UK. His publications include Jonathan Edwards
and the Metaphysics of Sin (Ashgate, 2005), Divinity and Humanity: The
Incarnation Reconsidered (Cambridge, 2007), An American Augustinian: Sin
and Salvation in the Dogmatic Theology of William G. T. Shedd (Paternoster and
Wipf & Stock, 2007), God Incarnate: Explorations in Christology (T&T Clark,
2009), Analytic Theology: New Essays in the Philosophy of Theology , edited
with Michael Rea (Oxford, 2009), Retrieving Doctrine: Essays in Reformed
Theology (Paternoster and IVP Academic, 2010/2011), Revisioning Christology:
Theology in The Reformed Tradition (Ashgate, 2011) and Jonathan Edwards on
God and Creation (Oxford, 2012).
Mervyn Davies (editor) is Scholar in Residence at Sarum College, Salisbury
where he lectures on the MA in Christian Spirituality and is Programme Leader
for the MA in Christian Approaches to Leadership. He is also an honorary
Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Bristol supervising postgradu-
ate students in Newman studies. He has organized and contributed to numerous
conferences in the UK on Newman especially aimed at the wider public. He
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Notes on Contributorsx
also works nationally with Anglican, Methodist and Catholic organizations on
ecumenical, theological and organizational approaches to Christian Leadership.
He was formerly Director of Studies at Wesley College, Bristol and for 11 years
Principal of a Sixth Form College. His recent books include editing A Thankful
Heart and a Discerning Mind (2010) and (co- authored) Leadership for a People
of Hope (Continuum, 2011).
Gavin D’Costa (editor) is Professor of Catholic Theology, University of Bristol.
He advises the Church of England and Roman Catholic Committees on
Other Faiths on theology and other faiths and also the Pontifi cal Council for
Other Faiths, Vatican City. In 1998 he was Visiting Professor at the Gregorian
University, Rome. His publications include: Christianity and World Religions,
Disputed Questions in the Theology of Religions (Oxford: Blackwell, 2009);
Theology and the Public Square: Church, University and Nation (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005); Sexing the Trinity. Gender, Culture and the Divine (London:
SCM, 2000); The Meeting of Religions and the Trinity (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 2000) and other books and journal articles.
G. R. Evans is Professor Emeritus of Medieval Theology and Intellectual
History, University of Cambridge. She has published a number of books on
medieval theological themes and authors. She has served on the Archbishops’
Group on the Episcopate and the the Faith and Order Advisory Group of
the General Synod of the Church of England. She has been consultant to a
number of ecumenical committees and has written in this fi eld on Problems
of Authority in the Reformation Debates, The Church and the Churches and
Ecumenical Method.
Martin Ganeri OP is Prior of Blackfriars, Cambridge. As well as Lector and
Tutor in World Religions at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, he is Lecturer in Theology
at Heythrop College, University of London and Director of the Centre for
Christianity and Interreligious Dialogue, Heythrop College. His main areas
of teaching and research are Catholic approaches to other religions, World
Christianity and Asian religions.
Paul Gavrilyuk is Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University
of St Thomas, Saint Paul, Minnesota. He also taught at Southern Methodist
University; Harvard Divinity School; Pontifi cia Università San Tommaso, Rome,
Italy; and Institute of St Thomas Aquinas, Kiev, Ukraine. He is the author of
numerous articles and two books, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The
Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) and
Histoire du catéchuménat dans l’église ancienne (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2008).
He co- edited with Douglas Koskela and Jason Vickers, Immersed in the Life
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Notes on Contributors xi
of God: The Healing Resources of the Christian Faith (Grand Rapids, MI:
Eerdmans, 2008).
Peter Hampson (editor), formerly Professor of Psychology at the University of
the West of England, Bristol, UK, is Visiting Research Scholar at Blackfriars
Hall, Oxford. He has published numerous articles in various psychological
and theological journals, and co- authored (with Peter Morris) Imagery and
Consciousness (Academic Press, 1983) and Understanding Cognition (Blackwell,
1996) and co- edited (with David Marks and John Richardson) Imagery: Current
Developments (Routledge, 1990). His current research interests include moral
psychology and existential security, theology–psychology dialogue, the rational-
ity, assumptions and fi deistic bases of different intellectual traditions, and reli-
gion, theology and interdisciplinarity in contemporary higher education
Paul Helm is Emeritus Professor of the History and Philosophy of Religion at
King’s College, London. He is also currently a teaching fellow at Regent College,
Vancouver, BC and adjunct Professor at Highland Theological College, Dingwall,
Scotland. Previously he was J. I. Packer Chair in Theology and Philosophy,
Regent College, Vancouver, BC (2001–05). He also served as President of the
British Society for the Philosophy of Religion. Before joining King’s College
in 1993, he was Reader in Philosophy at the University of Liverpool. Paul has
written many articles and books. His books include The Providence of God ;
Eternal God ; Faith with Reason ; Faith and UnderStanding ; John Calvin’s Ideas ;
and Calvin at the Centre .
Robert W. Jenson joined the Center of Theological Inquiry in 1998 as Senior
Scholar for Research after a long career teaching theology at St Olaf College
in Northfi eld, Minnesota, the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania, and Oxford University. He helped found the Center for Catholic
and Evangelical Theology, which he continues to serve as associate director. A
co- founder and co- editor of the journal Pro Ecclesia , he was a member of the
North American Lutheran- Episcopal Dialogue I and II, and served as a perma-
nent adviser to the International Roman Catholic- Lutheran Dialogue III. His
two- volume Systematic Theology was published in 1998 and 1999 by Oxford
University Press.
Terrence Merrigan is Professor of Systematic Theology at the Katholieke
Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. He has published extensively on the theology
of John Henry Newman, and in the areas of Christology and the Theology
of Interreligious Dialogue. His publications include Godhead Here in Hiding:
Incarnation and the History of Human Suffering (Peeters, 2008), Orthodoxy:
Process and Product , edited with M. Lamberigts and L. Boeve (Leuven University
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Notes on Contributorsxii
Press, 2008), and Newman and Truth (Peeters: W.B. Eerdmans, 2008) and
The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2009), both edited with Ian Ker.
Marcus Pound is Lecturer in Catholic Studies in the Department of Theology
and Religion, Durham University. He is currently directing the research project
on Receptive Ecumenism and the Local Church, as well as lecturing on French
post- war theology and critical theory. His publications include Theology,
Psychoanalysis, Trauma (SCM, 2007), Žižek: A (Very) Critical Introduction
(Eerdmans, 2008), as well as journal contributions to New Blackfriars , The
International Journal of Žižek Studies , Psychoanalytische Perspectieven ,
Philosophical Writings , and The Letter: A Journal of Lacanian Analysis .
Michael Rota received a doctorate in philosophy from Saint Louis University in
January 2006. His dissertation (directed by Eleonore Stump) was on the con-
ceptual analysis of causation in contemporary analytic philosophy and in the
thought of Thomas Aquinas. During the 2002–03 school year, under the auspices
of the Midwest Consortium of Catholic Graduate Schools, he was a visiting
student at the University of Notre Dame, where he studied with Michael Loux,
Alvin Plantinga and Peter van Inwagen. He is currently an Assistant Professor
of Philosophy at the University of St Thomas. While on leave for the 2006–07
academic year, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.
Peter Manley Scott is Senior Lecturer in Christian Social Thought and Director
of the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester, UK. He
is the author of Theology, Ideology and Liberation (CUP, 1994; paperback
edition 2008) and A Political Theology of Nature (CUP, 2003); co- editor of
The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Blackwell, 2004; paper-
back edition 2006), Future Perfect (Continuum, 2006), Re- moralising Britain?
(Continuum, 2009), Nature Space & the Sacred (Ashgate, 2009); and guest edi-
tor of Ecotheology 11:2 – special issue on theology and technology (Equinox,
2006), and the International Journal of Public Theology 2:1 – special issue on
urban theology (Brill, 2008).
James Wetzel teaches philosophy at Villanova University, where he holds the
Augustinian Chair in the Thought of St Augustine. He writes about Augustine,
grace, the inner life of virtue, memorialized redemption, and other matters of
philosophical piety. His most recent essay ‘Agony in the Garden: Augustine’s
Myth of Will’ is due to appear in the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to
Augustine , ed. Mark Vessey.
Merold Westphal is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University.
Among his many books are: History and Truth in Hegel’s Phenomenology ;
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Notes on Contributors xiii
Kierkegaard’s Critique of Reason and Society; Becoming a Self: A Reading of
Kierkegaard’s Concluding Unscientifi c Postscript ; God, Guilt and Death: An
Existential Phenomenology of Religion ; Suspicion and Faith: The Religious
Uses of Modern Atheism ; Overcoming Ontotheology: Towards a Postmodern
Christian Faith. He has served as President of the Hegel Society of America and
of the Sǿren Kierkegaard Society and as Executive Director of the Society for
Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. He is editor of the Indianan Series
in the Philosophy of Religion.
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Introduction
Theology in Search of a Handmaiden:
Reason and Philosophy
The Editors
In this volume and the next, we have assembled commissioned essays to argue
a point of view. That point of view, which we shall call ‘Christian culture’, took
something of a back seat between the seventeenth century and recent times,
although it was always present in some circles. The phrase ‘Christian culture’
could be unpacked in terms of a two- step argument, but fi rst a few words on
the phrase itself. It can have various meanings. Here, we take it to mean the
ability of Christians, with the aid of philosophy, to engage with all intellectual
disciplines as Christians, while recognizing that different disciplines, including
philosophy, have a rightful autonomy. If this type of engagement were to hap-
pen in any serious way, we maintain it might help generate a ‘Christian cul-
ture’. This would entail fresh developments and continuing research cultures
within the natural, social, human and creative sciences that would, in the long
term, help human fl ourishing as well as create an environment where the gospel
would penetrate all aspects of human existence. Let us turn to the explicit two-
step argument.
The fi rst step, this volume of essays, is concerned to show that philosophy,
virtually all forms of philosophy, might act as a suitable handmaiden to theol-
ogy. Theology acts on the datum of revelation and tradition, and, for some
Christians, the latter also includes a magisterium (an authoritative teaching
offi ce). Theology seeks to both testify to that which has been given to Christians
in revelation and to explicate it as robustly as possible so that which has been
‘given’ can be passed on, illuminating, challenging and constructing our cultures.
Theologizing involves the intellect explicating faith. In this process, various
branches of theology help the operation: scripture, patristics, mediaeval, mod-
ern, dogmatics, missiology, moral, pastoral and so on. When all these branches
work together, which would be a rare and interesting phenomenon, given the
tendency of the contemporary university towards the cult of specialism, theol-
ogy refl ects on its normative sources and gives an account of itself, defends its
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Theology and Philosophy2
claims, engages with the particular context and questions of Christians living;
while always kneeling in wonder and awe at the object of its enquiry. When it
engages in these operations it must inevitably engage with philosophy, fi rst and
foremost. This is the fi rst step of the argument – this volume. And it must then
inevitably engage with other intellectual disciplines, in a secondary fashion. This
is the second step of the argument – the next volume. The fi rst step requires
a historical demonstration of the necessity of philosophy for theology’s fi nal
ends.
We claim that the relationship with philosophy is thus crucial for theology, but
also implies a structuring hierarchy. Theology works on revelation and philoso-
phy is employed to defend, elaborate, explicate and understand this revelation.
Philosophy cannot have fi nal authority on the question of God’s self- disclosing,
but what theology teaches about God’s self- revelation cannot be philosophically
indefensible or philosophically inexplicable. Philosophy thus has at least two
roles as handmaiden, formally and materially. Formally, it helps theology with
the formal tasks of developing coherence, logical rigour, intelligibility and rhe-
torical elegance – among other things. It helps theology engage with its cultured
despisers, but only provisionally and strategically on the ‘despisers’ territory, for
theology must always be grounded in its formal object: God. Materially, it helps
theology in providing complex and sophisticated systems of conceptuality that
have been employed to address a huge variety of questions ranging from cos-
mology, maths, the sciences, the nature of the human person and their ends, the
good life, and so on. Once more, the use of these conceptualities is a complex
and contested process, always in danger of encoding theology within an alien
world view, rather than allowing theology to fi nd rigorous intellectual expres-
sion to tell of the scandal and novelty that it proclaims.
This account is far too neat for a historical reality that is hugely complex
and contested. But it is a defensible account and one that underpins this vol-
ume: there is a confi dence that all philosophies, even those that have often been
associated with anti- Christian spokespersons, are capable of acting as hand-
maidens to theology in some way or other and of course in varying degrees.
Many modern philosophers have often been thought of as in opposition to
orthodox Christianity. While that is true about some fi gures, we are particu-
larly keen to explore how giants like Kant and Marx, or movements like exis-
tentialism and postmodernism, might actually provide grounds for theological
hope, rather than descend into black and white antagonism. The claim is not
that Marx would be theologically friendly, but rather Marx’s philosophy, in the
hands of theologians, might prove theologically productive. This cannot be an
a priori claim, but only a historical contention. We want to trace this long his-
tory of theology’s interaction with philosophy into premodern times to indicate
a continuous telos within theology. Hence, this volume begins with the ancient
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy3
philosophical Greek tradition that is the bedrock of Christianity. The particu-
larity of God’s action in Jesus Christ was already a scandal to both Jews and
Greeks. The further scandal was that through metaphysics that particularity was
also seen, with the action of the Holy Spirit, to be a universal. Greek philosophy
was well suited for this ambition: to relate the particular to the universal.
The volume moves forward with different snap shots, both historically and
denominationally. It begins with the Greeks and ends with the non- Western
philosophical traditions which are the cradle for future Christian civilizations.
But we also look carefully at the modern West, after the decline of Christianity
in Europe, its traditional heartland, for one of our chief concerns is the revival
of Christianity worldwide. And without philosophy, such a revival is impos-
sible, for philosophy provides the bridge by which Christians engage with cul-
tured despisers – and its own intellectuals to develop the tradition.
If we look at the early Church this same dynamic is present. When Jesus
preached to his own people in Jerusalem, the authority of Moses, the prophets
and the law were the key hinges upon which the gospel hung for its validity – and
still do. But when St Paul is in Athens to speak to the Jewish communities there,
he also meets those sophisticated urban Athenians (Acts 17: 18ff.) who accept
the authority of fi gures like Zeno of Citium, Cleanthes and Chrysippus – the
founders of Stoicism; or Diogenes Laertius’s depiction of Epicurean’s works –
the founder of Epicureanism. These urban intellectuals also know their classic
poets who are sometimes philosophers, like Aratus and Epimenides. So Paul
searches for points of contact, whereby he is able to show there is a bridge, an
indirect implication embedded within that which they hold dear, to make the
scandal to Jews and Greeks, clear to the Athenian mind. It is a crucial moment
of the Nazarene sect’s development into a universal church and a world religion.
Paul does not make these references to endorse the truth of these philosophers
and poets as such, but rather he is trying to show that these traditions, in part,
indirectly point to the truth of Christ – if only the Athenians could see, what in
their blindness, they are missing. Clement of Alexandria, about a hundred years
later, refl ects on Paul’s strategy. He writes in the Stromateis 1.19:
It is clear that by using poetic examples from the Phaenomena of Aratus
[Paul] approves the best statements of the Greeks. Besides, he refers to the
fact that in the person of the unknown god the Greeks are indirectly hon-
oring God the Creator and need to receive him and learn about him with
full knowledge through the Son.
For Clement, as with most of the early Fathers, this did not mean that the Greeks
were other than blind to the truth of the Gospel. Rather there was a bridge from
their blindness, given that some of what they held had vestiges of truth. Clement
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Theology and Philosophy4
continues a line later: ‘So these are the “opened eyes of the blind,” which means
the clear knowledge of the Father through the Son, the direct grasp of the thing
to which the Greeks indirectly allude.’ Some half a century later, Venerable Bede,
in his commentary on Paul’s actions in Athens, pushes the critique of pagan cul-
tures hard, but in a way that today holds little intellectual credibility as a proper
grasp of the philosophies he speaks of. He wants to establish the total depravity
of those philosophies and writes in his Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles :
‘The Epicureans, following the stupidity of their teacher, put the happiness of
humanity in the pleasure of the body alone, while the Stoics placed it solely in
the virtue of the mind.’ It makes for a nice contrast with the unity of mind and
body in the incarnation, but it lacks some of Clement’s generous intelligence.
Augustine, later than Clement but earlier than Bede, when discussing the same
passage in The Trinity , book 16, could see that philosophies might refl ect on
‘natural order’, and from there, recognize there might be a God who orders all
things. For Augustine, ‘revelation’ was that God speaking and inviting us into
a personal and redeeming relationship, and philosophy at best could recognize
that a being, God, does exist.
This meeting at Athens also reminds us of the oft- cited Tertullian. In De
praescriptione , 7, he was uncompromisingly clear: ‘What has Athens to do with
Jerusalem’ or indeed, ‘the Academy with the Church’? In some ways Tertullian
makes an important point about the truths of faith that are only accessible
through revelation, but he has sometimes been deployed wrongly as an ancient
authority who was purely anti- philosophy. He was critical of philosophy
of course, but only in terms of its inability to deliver the truths of the faith.
But Tertullian is not averse to skilfully using technical methods derived from
Stoicism as are found in his elaborate arguments in De anima when arguing
against the heretic Hermogenes. The purpose of our present book, with, rather
than against, Tertullian, is to suggest that Athens and Jerusalem could have and
should have much to do with each other. The purpose of the second volume on
the intellectual disciplines is to develop that argument, so that one might see
that if the church and academy came together, this might ensure huge productiv-
ity and cultural generation, so that both mutually benefi t.
It is important to stress that none of these Christian writers reckoned that
philosophy could deliver the truths of salvation, even if some philosophers
believed that this is what they could offer. And the exciting element of our
project is to trace the different strategies employed by Christians in the light
of changing philosophies, while continuing doggedly with the conviction that
faith and reason should not and cannot be divorced. The value of a philosophi-
cal education was too deeply ingrained in leading intellectuals who converted
to Christianity. They realized that formally and materially philosophy was an
essential handmaiden, or theology would be stuck in the ghetto. Augustine was
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy5
an important turning point for the Latin West. His widely infl uential writings
bear all the hallmarks of his rigorous and long philosophical training. He knew
how to argue with the most learned detractors of the faith, while simultaneously
recognizing that what he was arguing about might be grasped by the unlearned.
Faith was primary; followed by the intellect. Augustine drew upon forms of
Platonism to explicate and defend the truth of the gospel, for while arduously
opposing various Platonic tenets, he realized that Platonism provided a con-
ceptual vocabulary to get to the heart of the participation in God’s life that the
incarnation opened to the world. Augustine with others would inevitably gen-
erate what has been called Christian neo- Platonism. Tertullian might not have
been happy, but it is not clear that he would complain, for Augustine insisted
that the truth of salvation was only to be found in Christ and his Church. But
there were other truths about the natural world and the cultural world that
needed to be integrated and related to the Christian vision. Augustine’s massive
re- narration of history is found in The City of God and his grasp of music and
its meaning in De Musica . By using philosophy, as handmaiden, to explicate the
gospel, Augustine used the bridge to build further into other areas. In this he
was followed by Boethius who, in his endeavour, like Cicero, to bring the riches
of Hellenistic philosophy before the minds of educated readers, depicted ‘Lady
Philosophy’ as the handmaiden of theology and in so doing made an important
and infl uential contribution to the language about God and virtue in succeeding
centuries ( The Consolation of Philosophy ).
When Aristotle’s broader legacy slowly became accessible through the medi-
aeval Islamic translations by Al- Farabi, and later by Ibn Rushd, known in the
West as Averroes, and Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna, a new ‘handmaiden’ had
arrived. Al- Farabi believed in the ultimate harmony of Plato and Aristotle, but
that was increasingly diffi cult to argue. As Aristotle fi ltered through to Aquinas
in the University of Paris, Aquinas conducted a masterly synthesis of Augustine
and his neo- Platonic heritage with an epistemology and metaphysics drawn
from Aristotle. Aquinas’s great synthesis generated what might be qualifi edly
called Christian neo- Aristotelianism, although Plato is always present. Neither
Augustine nor Aquinas would fi nally say they were doing anything other than
‘plundering the Greeks’, to adapt Exodus 12:36. Aquinas’s great synthesis was
also mirrored, although poorly, in the idea of the mediaeval university which
drew on Aristotle’s depiction of the sciences and their divisions and subdivi-
sions. It provided a possible structure for a sacred canopy whereby the study of
all disciplines would be related under the fundamental telos of Christian cul-
ture. It failed. And it possibly failed because the relationship between theology,
philosophy and the disciplines had not been fully worked out.
In Pope John Paul II’s account of the relationship between philosophy and
theology in his magisterial encyclical, Faith and Reason (1988), he sees in the
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Theology and Philosophy6
foundation of the mediaeval universities both a great possibility as well as the
seeds of what he calls ‘the drama of the separation of faith and reason’. We cite
him in detail, not to suggest this argument is unique to Roman Catholicism, but
because it so well articulates the concerns of this and the next volume:
With the rise of the fi rst universities, theology came more directly into
contact with other forms of learning and scientifi c research. Although they
insisted upon the organic link between theology and philosophy, Saint
Albert the Great and Saint Thomas were the fi rst to recognize the auton-
omy which philosophy and the sciences needed if they were to perform
well in their respective fi elds of research. From the late Medieval period
onwards, however, the legitimate distinction between the two forms of
learning became more and more a fateful separation. As a result of the
exaggerated rationalism of certain thinkers, positions grew more radical
and there emerged eventually a philosophy which was separate from and
absolutely independent of the contents of faith. Another of the many con-
sequences of this separation was an ever deeper mistrust with regard to
reason itself. . . . The more infl uential of these radical positions are well
known and high in profi le, especially in the history of the West. It is not
too much to claim that the development of a good part of modern philoso-
phy has seen it move further and further away from Christian Revelation,
to the point of setting itself quite explicitly in opposition. This process
reached its apogee in the last century. . . . In the fi eld of scientifi c research,
a positivistic mentality took hold which not only abandoned the Christian
vision of the world, but more especially rejected every appeal to a meta-
physical or moral vision. . . . As a result of the crisis of rationalism, what
has appeared fi nally is nihilism . As a philosophy of nothingness, it has a
certain attraction for people of our time. . . . Nihilism is at the root of the
widespread mentality which claims that a defi nitive commitment should
no longer be made, because everything is fl eeting and provisional. It should
also be borne in mind that the role of philosophy itself has changed in
modern culture. From universal wisdom and learning, it has been gradu-
ally reduced to one of the many fi elds of human knowing; indeed in some
ways it has been consigned to a wholly marginal role. Other forms of
rationality have acquired an ever higher profi le, making philosophical
learning appear all the more peripheral. These forms of rationality are
directed not towards the contemplation of truth and the search for the
ultimate goal and meaning of life; but instead, as ‘instrumental reason’,
they are directed – actually or potentially – towards the promotion of
utilitarian ends, towards enjoyment or power. In the wake of these cultural
shifts, some philosophers have abandoned the search for truth in itself and
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy7
made their sole aim the attainment of a subjective certainty or a pragmatic
sense of utility. This in turn has obscured the true dignity of reason, which
is no longer equipped to know the truth and to seek the absolute. ( Faith
and Reason , paras 45–47)
We would tend to agree with this evaluation, but importantly, we also want to
show that this turning away by some philosophers, even to the extent of claims
by philosophy that theology has no subject matter, does not mean that their phi-
losophies do not provide the bridges that the ancients found in the Greek tradi-
tion to point to the truth of the subject matter they wish to deny. Indeed, these
essays testify to the profound insight of faith that reason strives to discover the
fullness of truth, even when hindered by fallen philosophers. And reason also
shows how philosophy helps faith avoid what some theologians have fallen
into: fi deism and subjectivism.
The Pope’s point about genuine autonomy of the disciplines is also very
important for it also applies to philosophy, for ‘handmaiden’ is misunderstood
if it means that theology bullies, badgers and blinds the search for truth in phi-
losophy. Rather, the term handmaiden is to be understood as theology’s draw-
ing upon philosophy (often despite itself) to explicate, defend and commend
the truth of revelation. And theology has a confi dence that the truth in both
disciplines, philosophy and theology, cannot fi nally confl ict, but can actually
mutually aid each to reach their fulfi lment. This is a rather smug way of putting
it, for historically that relationship is often a diffi cult struggle, sometimes with
innocent casualties, but it is important to put the matter like this, for the confi -
dence that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology must be argued. And here
is one such argument.
The Essays in This Collection
Part I
In the fi rst part, Paul Gavrilyuk begins the discussion in his essay on ‘The
Greek Fathers and philosophy’ with a selective overview of the early Christian
engagements with the philosophical traditions of the Greco- Roman world. In
the study of Christian origins, the character and extent of Greek philosophy’s
infl uence on patristic theology is, he notes, a highly contested issue. He illus-
trates this by looking at the specifi c ways in which Greek philosophy served
as Christian theology’s (at times rebellious) handmaid. He emphasizes that
the Fathers did not canonize any one specifi c metaphysical or epistemological
option on offer in late antiquity. From the standpoint of Eastern Orthodox
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Theology and Philosophy8
historiography, the doctrines of the incarnation and trinity represent success-
ful paradigms of using philosophy as theology’s handmaid, inasmuch as the
metaphysical vision expressed by these doctrines is informed by, but not subor-
dinated to non- Christian philosophical teachings. In this regard, he argues that
patristic theological explorations have an enduring value for the present- day
discussion of Christianity’s interaction with culture. More generally, from the
standpoint of Eastern Orthodox theology, philosophy accomplishes its servant
function successfully if it provides theology with the linguistic, metaphysical,
epistemic, and other tools for adequately expressing the truth of the divine
revelation.
G. R. Evans argues that the question of the relationship of faith and reason was
central to the Western intellectual tradition from Augustine to the Renaissance
and beyond. It was raised again and again by generations of scholars with a
strong respect for ‘authority’, a respect tempered by a nervous consciousness
that in reading such classical authors as Aristotle and Cicero they were relying
on authorities who were not Christian. Anselm of Canterbury was confi dent
that a faith seeking understanding would not be a faith disturbed; he taught
that reasoning would lead to the orthodox conclusions of Christian belief. But
with the rise of the universities and the emergence of a syllabus which required
students to master the liberal arts with some philosophy added, it became usual
to think of ‘philosophy’ and ‘theology’ as separate disciplines. Thomas Aquinas
began his Summa Theologiae with an analysis of the ways in which they might
be related. The essence of the problem was whether man as an intellectual being,
Aristotle’s rational animal, could think his way to faith or whether faith requires
a leap of trust. This part provides a matrix for some of the detailed studies in
Part II.
Robert Jenson argues that there is no such thing as ‘the Lutheran view’ of the
relation between theology and philosophy. What developed were a number of
sometimes incompatible relationships between Lutheran theologians and phi-
losophy. Martin Luther’s view of philosophy is often thought to be summed up
in his remark that ‘reason is a great whore’. What is sometimes not noted is that
in a less prudish world than ours, this was not necessarily a rejection. It simply
meant that she would go with anyone. It follows that reason will also go with the
gospel. A case in point, and a paradigm of Lutheran theology’s later relation to
philosophy, can be Luther’s explanation of how faith makes us actually just. For
this, he appropriated and revised the Aristotelian/scholastic doctrine that nous
is on the one hand a sheer potentiality of apprehension and on the other what is
apprehended. For Aristotle the paradigm of apprehension was sight: ‘I as nous
am what I see.’ Luther makes hearing the paradigm: ‘I as nous am what I hear.’
Thus if what I attend to is the gospel of God’s participatory justice, my inner
self is just. And faith simply is such hearing. What we see here is Luther indeed
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy9
not bowing to the offi cially so labelled philosophers, but not thereby rejecting
the enterprise on which they are embarked. Instead he does philosophy himself,
in critical conversation with them, bending their doctrines to accommodate the
truth of the gospel. In this, his actual procedure is remarkably like that of Karl
Barth. In the seventeenth century this principle carried through into a full- scale
effort of revisionary metaphysics; principal names are Balthasar, Meisner and
Jacobus Martini. The object was not now to accommodate the doctrine of jus-
tifi cation by faith, but to accommodate its corollary, Lutheranism’s radically
Cyrillean christology and sacramentology. If we must say without qualifi cation
or equivocation that the bread on the altar is the body of the risen Christ, and
indeed the only body he has, then the notions of substance and attribute and
indeed all the main topoi of inherited metaphysis needed to be redone. This
work was terminated when Germany’s Lutheran university faculties were scat-
tered by the Thirty Years War. It was never directly taken up again. But perhaps
we may say that in the nineteenth century Hegel and others were moved by the
same impetus.
In ‘Religion and Reason from a Reformed Perspective’, Paul Helm argues
that it is possible to discern three foci of the relation of reason to religion; rea-
son as reasoning, in the sense of the use of inductive and deductive logic applied
to sets of religious sentences and their possible meanings; reason as a tool for
providing some limited understanding of the divine mysteries, and in this sense
the Reformed tradition sees itself as exemplifying the Augustinian ‘faith seek-
ing understanding’ project; and the place of reason in the articulation of theo-
logical method(s). In addition the tradition sees a place for reason in religious
epistemology, including natural theological approaches, though historically
these issues have been addressed rather eclectically. Such positive relationships
between reason and religion provide grounds to counter the common belief that
due to the Reformed emphasis on the effects of sin on human nature the proper
approach to theology is fi deistic and paradoxical.
Paul Avis’ essay begins by tracing the legacy of patristic and mediaeval
thought and the infl uence of the major Continental Reformers for the Church
of England’s theological and philosophical method. It will then outline the rela-
tion between theology and philosophy, faith and reason, in a number of rep-
resentative Anglican thinkers, including Hooker, Locke and Butler, up to the
mid- eighteenth century. The reception of the Enlightenment and the impact of
historical consciousness and of the natural and human sciences will be evaluated.
In the period from the mid- nineteenth century to the mid- twentieth, writers such
as Maurice, Gore, Tennant and Temple will receive attention. The contribution
of later twentieth- century Anglicans (e.g. MacKinnon, Swinburne, Mitchell,
Ward and Hebblethwaite, Milbank as well as examples from the United States)
will set the scene for some brief concluding refl ections on whether a coherent
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Theology and Philosophy10
Anglican approach to the relation between theology and philosophy, faith and
reason, can be discerned and defended.
Part II
James Wetzel begins this Part by arguing in his essay on ‘Augustine and
Platonism’ that it has often been assumed that Platonism – particularly of the
Plotinian variety – gives Augustine his spiritual itinerary, his path from the shad-
owy confusion of material desires to the limpid clarity of immaterial live. His
Christianity enters this picture as the ritualistic prop or a motivational help
to his Platonism. Although this kind of reading is not without merit (some of
Augustine’s early works seem to support it outright), the deeper truth is that
his Platonism gets thoroughly taken up and transformed by his reading of the
Christian witness. Platonism remains an important ingredient in the dialectic of
Augustine’s faith (intramural and secular), but it fi nally has no status for him
as an independent source of wisdom. Indeed no philosophy exists for him as an
independent source of wisdom, and it is only within that recognition that he
takes philosophy to be possible.
Following this, in his essay on ‘What Aristotelian and Thomistic Philosophy
Can Contribute to Christian Theology’? Michael Rota addresses the relation-
ship between Christian theology and the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions in
philosophy. More specifi cally, he considers the question, ‘What aspects of these
philosophical traditions can be of service to Christian theology?’ In Section
One, the focus is on two very general tenets of the Aristotelian tradition that are
essential to a proper reception of Christian revelation: (i) the notion that there
is such a thing as objective truth, and (ii) a certain epistemological optimism
according to which we really can know some important truths about reality.
In this section he also briefl y commends the openness and attention to a wide
variety of sources which we see in Aquinas’s work. In Section Two he focuses
in on two specifi c ways in which Aquinas’s thought can contribute to Christian
theology. After briefl y discussing Aquinas’s virtue ethics, he examines Aquinas’s
views on the rationality of religious belief, arguing that the conception of faith
and reason found in Aquinas’s works provides a sound orientation for funda-
mental theology. Thomistic views on the rationality of religious belief can both
account for the certainty of the believer and offer something to the agnostic
inquirer who has not yet received the gift of faith.
The discussion then moves to the Enlightenment and post- Enlightenment
traditions.
Merold Westphal asks: ‘Can philosophy in the Kantian tradition be a hand-
maiden to theology, a helpful resource?’ No, and Yes, and Yes. No, insofar as the
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy11
Kantian tradition represents the project of religion within the limits of reason
alone ; a tradition that both predates and postdates Kant’s own version. This
project fails to deliver the promised universality that overcomes religious par-
ticularism, since reason itself is plural and particular. In the process it eliminates
some of the essential claims of various theologies. Yes, insofar as post- Hegelian
Kantianism understands understanding hermeneutically and refuses to tie the
notion of truth to the illusory ideal of some unsituated absolute knowing. And
Yes, insofar as the Kantian tradition invokes the primacy of practical reason
over theoretical reason, whose limits are recognized. The claim is that theology
is better off when it embodies a hermeneutical humility about its theoretical
powers and their penultimate signifi cance in any case.
In his essay on Hegel, Nicholas Adams suggests that the relation between
philosophy and theology in Hegel is best understood when one takes account
of three factors. (1) The renaissance of interest in ancient Greek culture and
philosophy at the turn of the nineteenth century; (2) the reconfi guration of the
modern university in Germany, with a new separation of theology from phi-
losophy; (3) the increasing recognition by German thinkers that all thinking –
including articulations of faith – are historically shaped. Taken together, these
three factors lead Hegel to offer an historical account of forms of human self-
understanding, including religious faith, in a new university context, drawing
on an idealized image of ancient Greek culture. Hegel refuses a confl ict between
faith and reason, bequeathed by Jacobi during the so- called pantheism con-
troversy; he refuses a reason limited by transcendental idealism to make room
for faith, bequeathed by Kant; he refuses a theology forced to defend itself in
the terms set by the new critical philosophy, and refuses a philosophy whose
assumptions are solely determined by doctrine. In place of these refused direc-
tions, Hegel offers an account of human action and history in which divine self-
consciousness gradually unfolds through particular historical forms of human
culture and life. This produces a rethinking of key topics in Christian (especially
Lutheran) doctrine, including incarnation, the cross, the Trinity, theodicy, sacra-
ments, the relation of Christianity to Judaism, and many others. It also produces
a corresponding rethinking of key topics in philosophy, including substance,
time, self- consciousness, morality, judgement and many others. Understanding
Hegel’s handling of the relation between theology and philosophy means under-
standing the simultaneous rethinking of theological and philosophical topics.
Peter Scott , in his contribution on Marx, argues that central to critical/
Western Marxism is the criticism of ideas and discourses that obscure or mis-
represent the true, emancipatory interests of social agents. If thought and social
being do not coincide, as Marx argued, ideas may serve the dominant order and
legitimate and sustain relations of domination. It is this tradition of the inter-
pretation of Marx that has most concerned Western political theology. Thereby
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Theology and Philosophy12
political theology has been confronted by an epistemology for testing true and
false knowledge and a critical theory of human freedom in society. In theologi-
cal discussion, the issue is old and new: the truth shall set you free but what is
its cognitive content and how is such truth emancipatory? As noted by Latin
American liberation theology, an oppositional theology needs more than fi ne
appeals to Christian freedom. What is required is the development of theologi-
cal speech that specifi es the social conditions of theology’s emergence but is not
reducible to these same conditions. Interpreted thus, the appropriation by theol-
ogy of Marx may be understood as the extension of the critique of idolatry. That
is, does the concept of God legitimate capitalist order and support relations of
social domination? Just as there is no agreement on the signifi cance of the social
sciences for theology, neither is there any consensus on the theological employ-
ment of Marx’s writings. The options include: (1) If revelation judges reason,
Marx may be employed in the paradoxical task of undermining the claimed self-
suffi ciency of capitalist reason; (2) if ‘modern’ epistemologies of social theory
are injurious to the claims of revelation, then appeal to Marx’s ‘modernist’ epis-
temology should be resisted; or (3), in a natural theology framed for a political
theology, Marx specifi es the conditions for true knowledge of God and world
under capitalism. An unfashionable question now presents itself: do the fi rst and
third of these remain viable options in the theological appropriation of Marx’s
writings?
Terrence Merrigan in his discussion of ‘Theology’s appropriation of the
Existentialist tradition’ suggests that the presence of variations in Existentialism,
Personalism and Phenomenology within theological refl ection is the fruit of
a shared concern to accord human experience a place in refl ection on God’s
relationship to the world. The category of ‘experience’ has a very troubled
theological history, whether that history be Protestant (F. Schleiermacher) or
Roman Catholic (J. H. Newman – Modernism). That being said, however, to
pose the question of experience is to point to a fault line within Christian theol-
ogy itself – the fault line that opens up between Catholicism and Protestantism
regarding the nature and reception of revelation. This chapter treats the theo-
logical deployment of these philosophies as so many attempts to come to terms
with the peculiarly modern question of the place of experience in theological
refl ection (especially as regards the theology of revelation). It will also challenge
the rather blithe dismissal of experientially based (or existentialist) theologies
that has characterized some portrayals of the rise and (apparent) fall of these
movements within modern theology, and inquires whether they do not in fact
represent very genuine attempts to accord reason (in the fullest sense of the
term) its rightful place in theology.
Oliver D. Crisp argues that philosophers in the Analytical Tradition have
made one of the most signifi cant contributions to theology in the past quarter
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Theology in Search of a Handmaiden: Reason and Philosophy13
century, with the revitalization of philosophical theology as a distinct sub-
discipline. There has also been discussion of the project of Christian philosophy
as a way of approaching the whole discipline from a properly Christian world
view. Finally, there have been important contributions to central topics in phi-
losophy, such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, by Christian philoso-
phers. More recently, theologians have begun to invest in the tools of analytical
philosophy for theological ends. In this chapter, he explores what analytic phi-
losophy is, how it has been related to Christian theology and a Christian world
view more generally, and what the prospects are for future engagement between
philosophy in an analytical mode, and Christian theology. He also sketches out
ways in which theologians might appropriate this philosophical tradition for a
properly ‘analytic theology’.
Marcus Pound in the introduction to his essay on ‘Postmodernism’ places the
theological challenge of the postmodern era as being to think of what may be the
place of religion when the ‘wager of representation’ in which God becomes sim-
ply one sign among others is taken seriously. He then discusses three examples
of the re- enchantment of philosophy: Derrida, Vattino and Badieu. He begins
briefl y with a discussion of Lyotrard and Heidegger and examines in particular
the infl uence of this Existentialist thinker. He highlights the postmodern incre-
dulity with metanarratives and the destruction of modernity’s metanarratives.
His connection with ethics in the work of Derrida is particularly highlighted.
Derrida shows the importance of faith to reason but also the opposition he
draws between faith and institutional religion. Derrida and others also argue
for a faith that is not circumscribed by metaphysics. Whereas one of the results
of modernity was to privatize religion, now the private increasingly occupies
the public square. Likewise Vattino argues that theology has been enslaved to
metaphysics and celebrates the rise of secularism which, he feels, will enable
the recovery of Christianity, a position echoed also by Badieu. What links these
writers is the welcome they give to the post- metaphysical shift and the passing
of institutional religion.
Martin Ganeri OP in his essay considers the relationship between Christian
theology and the study of non- Western thought in the contemporary Western
academy. It offers a critical appraisal of the emergent discipline of compara-
tive theology, as exemplifi ed in the work of Keith Ward and Francis Clooney.
Comparative theology is promoted as a a way of doing theology in general,
rather than a discrete area of study within theology, one in which all areas of
Christian theology are open to enrichment and challenge through engagement
with non- Western traditions. This is a natural way in which contemporary the-
ology responds to the fact that religious and philosophical pluralism now plays
an increasingly routine part in refl ection and planning both in the Western acad-
emy and in Western society in general. Comparative theology continues and
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Theology and Philosophy14
expands earlier Christian theological encounter with non- Christian thought, be
it Greek, Muslim or Jewish. At the same time, it is more dialogical in char-
acter than earlier engagements. This chapter considers how leading compara-
tive theologians defi ne their task and what results they achieve. It explores to
what extent comparative theology can defend itself against the charge that it is
simply a form of intellectual imperialism in which non- Western traditions are
made conceptual resources for colonization and exploitation by Christian theo-
logians. This chapter takes as a particular example the considerable Christian
engagement with the Indian tradition of Vedanta, appraising the work already
done and suggesting future avenues of exploration.
These, then, are the ‘snapshots’ which do not represent or claim to be a full
account but provide suffi cient evidence to support our contention that the rela-
tionship between Theology and Philosophy has been, and can continue to be,
mutually benefi cial and a necessary stimulus to considerable further enquiry
and exploration. How this example of the interrelatedness of human knowledge
can raise possibilities for the other disciplines including theology then becomes
the subject of volume 2.

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Chapter 1
The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
(University of St Thomas, Minnesota)
Introduction
Early Christian missionaries, preachers and theologians were the fi rst to face
the problem of relating the gospel to the intellectual culture of their time. In
the history of Christianity, patristic theology provides the earliest paradigms of
relationship between faith and reason. What are these paradigms and to what
extent might they serve as points of departure for contemporary refl ection? Did
the Church Fathers subordinate the Christian message to ‘Greek metaphysics’
or did they use the Hellenic intellectual treasures wisely? The options identi-
fi ed in this question, as well as other more nuanced possibilities, are a matter
of much controversy among the historians, philosophers and theologians. This
controversy, which shows no signs of abating, tends to reveal as much about
the evidence under consideration as it does about the historical, philosophical
and theological assumptions of those involved in it. For example, a present-
day Christian Platonist will read, say, Origen or pseudo- Dionysius, in a way
different from a Barthian theologian, Neo- Kantian philosopher or an agnostic
historian. There is little hope of reconciling their interpretations without fi rst
considering their philosophical differences. The suspension of the interpreter’s
philosophical views, even if it is achievable, does not secure a hermeneutical
high ground. The matter is so contested that most scholars of Christian doctrine
have abandoned all hope of offering a grand narrative, and limit themselves to
contextualizing the contributions of particular patristic fi gures.
In what follows I do not claim to settle the debate of how the story of Christian
theology’s fi rst meetings with philosophy is to be told. I expect the subject to be
perpetually contested, as the other contributions to this volume will attest. My
own reading of what is a vast and complicated body of evidence has been informed
by careful navigation between the two extreme interpretations: one associated
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Theology and Philosophy18
with the German Protestant historian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930) and the
other with the Russian Orthodox historian Georges Florovsky (1893–1979). For
Harnack, the Hellenization of Christianity was a sign of intellectual capitulation
of the Christian message to Greek philosophy. For Florovsky, on the contrary,
‘Christian Hellenism’ was philosophia perennis , a transcultural and transhistoric
norm by which all subsequent theological projects were to be judged. Harnack’s
and Florovsky’s positions are important limiting cases, which may serve as con-
venient ‘bookends’ on a ‘bookshelf’ that receives several volumes a year.
1

Full disclosure: I am a historical theologian steeped in the Eastern Orthodox
tradition, whose schooling in the United States was largely post- Protestant,
and who has been teaching for the last decade at a private Catholic college
in Minnesota. Whatever the reader makes of my ecclesial and academic (dis)
locations, she should not be surprised to discover that I sympathize more with
Florovsky’s position than I do with that of Harnack.
Early Christian Apologists: Philosophy as Theology’s Handmaid
The story of Christianity’s fi rst encounters with philosophy begins on the pages
of the NT. One may recall the use of the ‘Logos’ concept in the prologue to the
Gospel of John, the Apostle Paul’s musings on how the knowledge of God avail-
able in creation could be turned into idolatry by sinful passions (Rom. 1.18–23),
the contrast drawn between the worldly wisdom and the gospel in 1 Cor. 1.18–31
(cf. Col. 2.8), Luke’s sample of an early Christian sermon preached to the tar-
get audience of the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers gathered in the Athenian
Areos Pagos (Acts 17.18, 22–31), as well as numerous other passages of the NT,
are clearly not philosophy- free.
2
Despite these important precedents, it would
be safe to say that Christian forays into philosophy in the apostolic period were,
compared to later periods, ad hoc. I say this not to diminish their import, but
primarily to register their character. Later Christian commentators would draw
on the just mentioned and other biblical loci classici continually.
The writings of the second century Apologists mark an important turning
point in the early Christian engagements with Hellenistic philosophies. In the
hands of the Apologists, philosophy became a polemical weapon, an apologetic
tool and a cultural bridge to the Greco- Roman world. Many Christian intellec-
tuals adopted, for example, select sceptical arguments against such traditional
religious practices as augury and divination. When Christians expressed res-
ervations about the crimes and misdemeanours of pagan deities, they echoed
earlier philosophical sentiments.
3
Moreover, a philosophical tendency towards
monotheism, however vague and tentative, proved equally useful in the devel-
opment of the Christian understanding of God.
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 19
However, unlike the philosophers, who were concerned to simply reinterpret
polytheism, the Apologists attacked all forms of polytheism as idolatry. Basing
their views in part on philosophical critique and on the OT, the early Christian
authors maintained that the gods, if they could be said to exist at all, were deifi ed
heroes and rulers, personifi ed human passions or malevolent angels (demons).
Such important vehicles of social cohesion as the Emperor Worship, mystery
cults, theatrical shows and other forms of entertainment were relegated by the
Apologists to the realm of the demonic. The Apologists were certainly not afraid
to offend their non- Christian interlocutors. In fact, one could count on the fact
that many pagans were indeed offended by a harsh rhetoric of some apologetic
tracts, commonly written in the form of public addresses and open letters.
What strikes one in reading the Apologetic tracts is the resilience and courage
with which a tiny minority of Christian intellectuals was determined to build a
potent and enduring counterculture. If we take into account the absence of mass
media and the relative diffi culty of access for Christians, at least in the fi rst three
centuries, to the people in power and other shapers of public opinion, we can
especially appreciate how daring and precarious the apologetic project was. It
would seem that the ‘inclusive’ pagan society was suffi ciently threatened by the
presence of a Christian minority to begin excluding Christians, fi rst by margin-
alizing them socially, then by persecuting them in an increasingly more organ-
ized manner. Apparently pagan inclusivity, then as now, had its boundaries.
Under such circumstances, it may have been tempting, but not particularly
constructive, for Christians to simply burn all bridges with the dominant pagan
culture. Merely saying ‘no’ to all aspects of pagan culture would have had the
social effect of turning Christian community completely inwards, perhaps even
converting it into a marginal apocalyptic group. Towards the middle of the
second century CE, philosophy became the main and most dignifi ed line of
communication with the non- Christian culture. It is telling that one apologetic
manoeuvre, commonly made by early Christian authors, was to refer to the
Christian teaching as ‘our philosophy’.
4
Thus, the Christian message was pre-
sented as not altogether antithetical to philosophical enterprise.
The defence of the faith against the objections of its pagan ‘cultured despis-
ers’ made the use of philosophical considerations expedient, even necessary. It
is in such circumstances that philosophy became for the fi rst time theology’s
‘handmaid’. The main inspiration for this approach came from the fi rst- century
Jewish theologian and apologist Philo of Alexandria (20 bce –50 ce ). In his
writings Philo wove philosophical refl ections with the scriptural exegesis in a
rich tapestry that would set an infl uential precedent for future Christian theol-
ogy. One could say that Philo had attempted a dehiscence, a conceptual bursting
out of the domains of knowledge that were commonly viewed as separate. In
Philo’s works, ethics and epistemology, philosophical anthropology and biblical
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Theology and Philosophy20
exegesis, theory of perception and mystical theology emerged as interlocking
components of a single synthetic vision. These domains of knowledge are so
closely intertwined in Philo’s thought that disentangling them with the purpose
of determining whether he was more a philosophical theologian, than, say a
mystic or an exegete, is a rather futile endeavour. Conversant with all major
philosophical teachings of his time, Philo Platonized scripture and ‘biblicized’
Plato. He read the cosmology of Timaeus into the book of Genesis.
5
He derived
the anthropology of Phaedrus out of the Mosaic writings. Even more tellingly,
Philo’s Moses climbed Mount Sinai to receive the vision granted to the dweller
of the Republic’s Cave.
6

It would be misleading to view Philo as an eclectic Middle Platonist thinly
disguised as a scriptural exegete. Such a characterization misses the intellectual
audacity of Philo’s synthesis. While his Platonic leanings are undeniable, it could
be shown that Philo subordinated, with varying degrees of consistency, Plato’s
metaphysics of the intelligible and sensible realms to the scriptural distinction
between the uncreated God and his creation. Furthermore, Philo operated with
more robust notions of the divine revelation and grace than those available to
the founder of the Academy.
7
The Philonic strategy of integration and subor-
dination of philosophy with revelation will be followed by the early Christian
theologians.
The Christian Apologists, notably Justin Martyr ( c. 100–165), Clement of
Alexandria ( c .150–215) and Athenagoras (second century ce ) received a philo-
sophical schooling comparable to that of Philo. Justin came to Christianity after
a long quest for true philosophy. It should be noted that in late antiquity, the
study of philosophy presupposed more than a mastery of a set of subjects, such
as logic, ethics, physics and metaphysics. More importantly, philosophy was
also a mental attitude, a way of life worthy of emulation.
8
Seeking a philosophi-
cal guide whom he could follow, Justin tried, according to his own account,
four philosophical schools. He recalled spending much time with the Stoics and
deriving most benefi t from the teaching of the Platonists. Justin’s account of
his philosophical quest, even if its historicity is questionable,
9
reveals how a
second- century philosopher- convert to Christianity could retrospectively evalu-
ate different aspects of his philosophical education. According to Justin, among
all Greek philosophical teachings, Platonism ranked the highest because its ulti-
mate goal was the contemplation of God ( Dial. 2.6). Roman Stoicism occupied
a less conspicuous place, for this philosophical school taught much about vir-
tue, but, Justin opined, little about God. Such a view of the respective values
of Platonism and Stoicism would become relatively common among patristic
theologians. In late antiquity Aristotelianism usually garnered less attention
than Platonism, and Epicureanism was invoked in a polite company as a foil for
more acceptable philosophical positions.
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 21
Upon his conversion to Christianity, Justin came to believe that the full-
ness of the knowledge of God was available only in the divine revelation. Such
knowledge depended upon God’s sovereign will to reveal Godself and upon the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
10
Justin drew on the rich biblical imagery of light
to emphasize that revelatory experience brought about a transformative illumi-
nation in the darkened soul.
11
This account of knowledge found echoes both in
Plato and in scripture. For Justin, the divine revelation was self- authenticating.
For the converted, the arguments from the fulfi lment of prophecy and from
miracles did not make the revelatory knowledge conveyed by the Holy Spirit
more certain.
12
Justin taught that unlike the revealed truth, the opinions of phi-
losophers were derivative, partial and often contradictory.
13
Justin also argued,
in line with Paul’s refl ections on the divine wisdom, that the divine Logos,
whose fullest revelation came in Jesus Christ, was partially available to the
philosophers through creation. Justin also explained the valid points of Greek
philosophy by recourse to a popular ‘plagiarism theory’, according to which
the philosophers borrowed their valid insights from the Jewish prophets with-
out due acknowledgement.
14

Following a path similar to Justin’s, Clement of Alexandria also embraced
Christianity after an extensive philosophical schooling. Importantly, the idea
that philosophy is ‘theology’s handmaid’ was introduced into Christian theol-
ogy by Clement under Philo’s infl uence. In the Stromata , Clement draws on
Philo’s allegorical interpretation of Abraham’s wife Sarah and her handmaid,
Hagar. On Clement’s reading, Sarah personifi es the revealed knowledge and
Hagar is an allegory of philosophy. In this context Clement points out that
Abraham, as a man of faith, had his fi rst fruitful intercourse with his handmaid,
philosophy, and only then brought forth the knowledge of the revealed truth
with his wife.
15

Responding to the philosophers who dismissed Christian appeals to faith as
mere opinion, Clement maintained that faith was a rational ascent to the non-
demonstrable fi rst principles. Thus construed, faith is what makes demonstra-
tion possible.
16
Viewed from a different angle, faith in the divine revelation is a
part of an overall cognitive transformation associated with conversion. Faith is
what makes the hearers of the gospel receptive. As Clement puts it, ‘faith is the
ear of the soul’.
17
Following a paradigm established by Philo, Clement located
his religious epistemology within his teaching on the attainment of perfection.
In line with Philo, Clement taught that philosophy was a divine gift to the
Greeks. Clement went so far as to claim that the Greek philosophy was a prepa-
ration to the Gospel for the Gentile Christians, comparable in value to the func-
tion of the OT for the Jewish Christians. Understandably, not all Christians
were willing to accord to philosophy the function of preparatio evangelica and
a measure of inspiration normally reserved for scripture alone. Many Christian
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Theology and Philosophy22
intellectuals, including Athenagoras and the author of the Epistle to Diognetus ,
differentiated quite sharply between the purely human wisdom of the Greeks
and the revealed knowledge available in scripture.
Patristic Voices of Caution against Philosophy
Throughout Christian history there have always been voices of caution that
questioned philosophy’s ability to serve effectively as theology’s ‘handmaid’. For
example, the author of Colossians warns his readers: ‘See to it that no one takes
you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradi-
tion, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to
Christ’ (Col. 2.8). Building on this claim, the second- century bishop Hyppolitus
diagnosed heretical Christian teachers, especially the Gnostics, with an overdose
of Greek philosophy. Hippolytus traced the teachings of diverse Gnostic groups
to specifi c philosophical schools. In this way he tried to establish a heretical
succession from philosophers, contrasting it with the passing on of divine rev-
elation from the apostles. Not surprisingly, Hippolytus concluded that far from
being theology’s handmaid, philosophy was instead ‘the mother of heresies’.
Numerous passages from other early Christian theologians may be quoted in
favour of a sharp opposition, a perceived antagonism between pagan philoso-
phy and Christian theology. To mention just one textbook example, Tertullian’s
question ‘What does Athens [i.e. philosophy] have to do with Jerusalem [i.e.
theology]?’ is often quoted (quite out of context) as implying the answer: ‘noth-
ing’. The views of Justin and Clement of Alexandria, discussed in the previous
section, are commonly contrasted in the textbooks with those of Hippolytus,
Tertullian and Jerome. Consider, for example, the following judgement of an
infl uential twentieth- century patristic scholar, W. H. C. Frend: ‘It is perhaps for-
tunate for the Church that Clement [of Alexandria] and Tertullian never met. If
they had, or if the view of Clement and Origen [regarding philosophy] had been
propagated in Africa and Italy, the schism between East and West might have
occurred in the third and not in the eleventh century.’
18

Without denying a measure of truth in Frend’s poignant observation, I pro-
pose to approach the matter somewhat differently. Clement’s view that phi-
losophy is theology’s handmaid and Hippolytus’s claim that Greek wisdom is
the mother of heresies could be regarded, I suggest, as two sides of the same
coin. Clement asserts that philosophy must serve theology (and not vice versa).
Hippolytus problematizes the matter: can philosophy, in practice, serve theol-
ogy without producing illegitimate offspring, namely, heresies? Clement and
Hippolytus both agree that philosophical teachings must conform to the revealed
truth. Obviously, Clement must not be interpreted as issuing a blank check to
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 23
any and every philosophy. Hippolytus’s statement must be construed as a warn-
ing, rather than an invitation to isolationism and obscurantism. Similarly, if we
take into account the fact that Tertullian was heavily infl uenced by Stoicism, his
question ‘What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?’ becomes a more open
one, instead of foreclosing all discussion with the retort ‘nothing’.
Patristic voices of caution, then, may be interpreted as asking the following
questions: what sort of philosophy could indeed be imported into theology
without compromising the integrity of the Christian message? In what capac-
ity should philosophy serve theology? (As logic? Metaphysics? Epistemology?
Cognitive theory? Anthropology? Ethics? Theory of language, or in some other
role?) Must all of these fi elds of inquiry be taken into account, or do only some
of them deserve attention? To what extent should philosophy determine the
methods, approaches and content of theology? It is clear that the character
of theological inquiry will depend upon an individual theologian’s responses
to these questions. Taken as a whole, the present volume will give a reader a
sense of the breadth and variety of answers that have been given historically
by different Christian theologians to these questions. In the discussion that
follows, I will focus on how the Church Fathers articulated a trinitarian ontol-
ogy navigating among various metaphysical options on offer in Hellenistic
philosophies.
Philosophy and the Search for the Christian Doctrine of God
What role did Greek philosophical thought play in the articulation of such cen-
tral Christian doctrines as the trinity and incarnation in the patristic period?
A famous German historian Adolf von Harnack maintained that Greek phil-
osophical teachings played a prominent, determinative and damaging role in
the formation of Christian doctrine. In his Dogmengeschichte (1898), Harnack
interpreted Hellenization of Christianity as a corruption of the original message
of the gospel by Greek metaphysics. Jesus, Harnack maintained, preached the
simple message of the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men.
19
The
Church had distorted this message by attempting to fi t it into an alien philo-
sophical framework, resulting in the especially pernicious doctrines of incarna-
tion, deifi cation and trinity. Gnosticism was a product of what Harnack called
the acute form of Hellenization. The theology of the Church Fathers did not
fare much better by comparison, since it too was a result of more gradual, but
equally damaging impact of Hellenization. As a result, the original message of
the gospel was obfuscated, corrupted and distorted. One studied doctrinal his-
tory in order to intervene in the course of history by purging biblical Christianity
of the alien accretions of Hellenism.
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Theology and Philosophy24
From the beginning, Harnack’s infl uential view met a considerable amount
of criticism. One of the critics of Harnack’s approach to Hellenization was
Russian Orthodox émigré historian Georges Florovsky. In a programmatic
essay ‘Christianity and Civilization’, Florovsky explained his notion of
Christian Hellenism and stated his disagreement with Harnack in no uncer-
tain terms:
It was a ‘New Hellenism’, but a Hellenism drastically christened and,
as it were, ‘churchifi ed’. It is still usual to suspect the Christian qual-
ity of this new synthesis. Was it not just an ‘acute Hellenization’ of the
‘Biblical Christianity’, in which the whole novelty of the Revelation had
been diluted and dissolved? Was not this new synthesis simply a disguised
Paganism? This was precisely the considered opinion of Adolf Harnack.
Now, in the light of an unbiased historical study, we can protest most
strongly against this simplifi cation. Was not that which the XIXth cen-
tury historians used to describe as a ‘Hellenization of Christianity’ rather
a Conversion of Hellenism ? And why should Hellenism not have been
converted? The Christian reception of Hellenism was not just a servile
absorption of an undigested heathen heritage. It was rather a conversion
of the Hellenic mind and heart.
20

It should be admitted that Florovsky’s Christian Hellenism was hardly a prod-
uct of ‘unbiased historical study’. Clearly Florovsky offers a highly selective and
idealized exposition of Christian Hellenism in response to Harnack’s equally
uncompromising denunciation of Hellenized Christianity. If Harnack advocated
a de- Hellenization of Protestant theology, Florovsky, on the contrary, proposed
a re- Hellenization of Russian Orthodox theology.
21
For Harnack the Hellenic
component in Christian theology was a temporary husk to be discarded and
even worse, an agent of corruption from which theology was to be purifi ed. For
Florovsky, Christian Hellenism was philosophia perennis , a perennial philoso-
phy, a transcultural and transhistorical norm uniquely articulated in patristic
theology. Christian Hellenism offered a standard against which all later theo-
logical projects, mediaeval and modern, were to be judged.
Harnack’s and Florovsky’s interpretations represent important limiting cases.
Both historians had a tendency to present an overly intellectualist account of
the formation of Christian beliefs, often ignoring social, political and other non-
philosophical factors. It is important to be reminded that in the patristic period,
the primary forum for engaging in doctrinal debates was local Christian com-
munities rather than philosophical schools. The social spaces within which such
debates were conducted were various missionary settings (e.g. a synagogue, a
marketplace, a theatre), local congregations, monastic centres, ad hoc gatherings
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 25
of bishops and presbyters, and later, somewhat better regulated councils, and the
emperor’s court. Even in such cases when the debates became rather ‘academic’,
the primary setting within which they were conducted was not a classroom or a
conference centre, but a local church.
Various points of doctrine were clarifi ed and debated while the Christian
leaders were engaged in preaching, catechesis, administration of the sacraments,
missionary work and the like. The philosophical background of the church lead-
ers involved in these debates varied considerably: some received extensive philo-
sophical training, some very little, while others had none. Given the importance
of philosophy in the Greco- Roman world, a measure of philosophical educa-
tion would have been to some extent taken for granted, especially in the urban
centres of the Roman Empire. Still, in the patristic period philosophical training
had neither the prominence nor the systematic character that it would acquire
during the High Middle Ages. It is important to emphasize that the Fathers
theologized while immersed in scripture, prayer, catechesis and other aspects of
the life of the church.
The Christian doctrines of the trinity and incarnation, as they have gradually
come to be articulated over a period of the fi rst fi ve centuries, represent com-
munal intellectual achievements that became permanent as a result of prolonged
and often acrimonious controversies. For a contemporary student of Trinitarian
and Christological debates, it is easy to lose heart and construe them as noth-
ing more than historical accidents, conditioned by the cultural, intellectual and
political limitations of those who put them forth.
However, several considerations militate against such a reading of evi-
dence. In particular, Harnack’s claim (echoed by many contemporary theolo-
gians) that Christian theologians simply sold out to the ‘Greek metaphysics’
is fl awed for several reasons. It is often overlooked that there was no such a
thing in the late antique world as a unifi ed ontological vision called ‘Greek
metaphysics’. The materialist monism of the Stoics differed considerably from
the ontological idealism of later Platonists. In turn, the adherents of both
schools were at odds with the Epicureans. With some justifi cation, the expres-
sion ‘Greek metaphysics’ is often taken to be a rather vague reference to
later Platonism, which in turn had absorbed some elements of Aristotelianism
and Stoicism. In my judgement ‘Greek metaphysics’ is a rather misleading
scholarly construct postulated analogously to the Trinitarian metaphysics,
that will indeed acquire a prominent place in the mediaeval Christendom.
The important point to stress is that in reality the late antique non- Christian
world, not unlike our own, subscribed to no overarching ontology.
22
While
the Greco- Roman vision of the common good included the desire for har-
mony between the human and divine realm, this vision did not receive a com-
mon metaphysical articulation.
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Theology and Philosophy26
In fact, what could be called a preferential option for later Platonism, was
already a theologically motivated choice that Christian authors made, when
they considered various philosophies for the position of theology’s handmaid.
To give just one example, Platonist participation metaphysics provided a more
suitable framework (than, say, the Stoic materialism) for the Christian thinkers
who sought to capture both the divine transcendence and immanence in their
theological vision. It should be noted, however, that Christian participation
metaphysics came to a straightforward rejection of the Platonic world view in
which the material cosmos was divine to the extent to which it confi rmed to the
intelligible cosmos.
23
Instead, Christian Trinitarian ontology towards the end of
the fourth century ce came to convey quite unambiguously that there could be
no hierarchy within the realm of the uncreated Godhead and that the world,
including human souls, was created and, therefore, ontologically differentiated
from God.
At the same time, the Christian doctrine of the incarnation stated that the
uncreated God uniquely bridged the ontological gap between himself and cre-
ation by uniting human nature with himself. In the incarnation, the tension
between the divine transcendence and the divine immanence came to be articu-
lated in a way that heightened the importance of the historical ‘scandal of par-
ticularity’. For Christians, the refl ection on the the manifestation of God through
the work of a Palestinian carpenter named Jesus became a fertile ground for new
metaphysical insights. It is not surprising that the non- Christian philosophers,
who made the effort to ponder the matter, saw the Christian idea of the divine
incarnation as logically incoherent, metaphysically impossible and soteriologi-
cally unnecessary. The amount of scorn that the second- century pagan philoso-
pher Celsus poured on the idea of the divine self- abasement in the incarnation
is indicative of this general philosophical attitude.
24

In many ways, then, Christian Trinitarian ontology was a considerable
departure from all metaphysical options that the late antique world had on
offer. In this sense it is appropriate to speak of the Trinitarian and incarna-
tional ontology as a Christian metaphysical innovation. However, it is a mis-
leading exaggeration to call Nicaea a ‘revolution’, as some scholars have done
recently.
25
Nicaea was not a revolution partly because, as I have already stated,
the late antique world knew no universally binding metaphysics against which
the Nicene Fathers could then revolt – the very idea of the ‘Greek metaphys-
ics’ is a Christian scholarly construct. Moreover, the Nicene faith was not a
revolution in a sense of introducing a cardinal metaphysical change into the
apostolic faith. Eventually accepted by the whole church, the Nicene creed had
had the impact of introducing greater clarity, cohesion and universality into the
ancient confessions of faith, largely by ruling out subordinationist and modal-
ist possibilities.
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 27
While not revolutionary, the Christian doctrines of incarnation and trinity
were indeed metaphysical innovations in the following ways. As I have empha-
sized, the Church at large did not canonize any specifi c pagan philosophy, in
a sense of unquestionably sanctioning an alien metaphysical system or epis-
temological theory. The preferential option for Platonism, mentioned earlier,
certainly did not amount to a wholesale endorsement of the Platonic meta-
physics, epistemology and anthropology. It is possible to narrate the history
of subsequent development of Byzantine theology as a story of love and hate
relationship with Platonism.
As one example of such a troubled relationship, let us briefl y consider the
history of the Church’s grappling with the theological heritage of Origen of
Alexandria ( c. 185–254). Origen’s views became a cause for controversy already
in his lifetime. In the next three centuries after his death Origen’s consider-
able corpus was copied, studied, interpreted, misinterpreted, translated, mis-
translated, hotly debated, mined for its extraordinary insights into all aspects
of the Christian doctrine, from Trinitarian theology to monastic spirituality. For
instance, the theology of the Cappadocian Fathers would have been as impos-
sible without Origen as the ascetic theology of Evagrius of Pontus. Then, in
the middle of the sixth century, some ‘Origenist’ ideas (i.e. the ideas that some
took to be Origen’s own teachings), such as the pre- existence and transmigra-
tion of the souls, as well as universal salvation, were condemned as heretical by
church councils and imperial decrees. In the East, Origen became a poster child
of improper use of Platonism, condemned in person by the Fifth Ecumenical
Council (553), with his writings ordered to be destroyed.
26
Yet in the very cen-
tury in which Origen was anathematized, a stronger dose of Platonism was
injected into the bloodstream of Christian theology through the writings of
Pseudo- Dionysius the Areopagite ( c. 500). Commenting on this peculiar devel-
opment, late Jaroslav Pelikan (1923–2006) wrote:
There is both historical signifi cance and theological irony in the chrono-
logical coincidence between the condemnation of Origen and the rise of
Dionysian mysticism, for most of the doctrines on account of which the
Second Council of Constantinople anathematized Origen were far less
dangerous to the tradition of catholic orthodoxy than was the Crypto-
Origenism canonized in the works of Dionysius the Areopagite.
27

Unlike Origen, Pseudo- Dionysius was accepted into the canon of authoritative
Church theologians with surprisingly little controversy, in part because his apos-
tolic credentials were little doubted at the time. Nevertheless, the Platonism of
the Dionysian corpus required at least as much apologetic and corrective work,
as did the Platonism of Origen’s works. The task was undertaken by Maximus
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Theology and Philosophy28
the Confessor, who arguably provided a ‘Christological corrective’ to the theol-
ogy of Pseudo- Dionysius, and by Gregory Palamas, among numerous others.
28

The appropriation of Platonism in the writings of Origen and Pseudo- Dionysius
remains a matter of much debate in contemporary scholarship, including mod-
ern Orthodox theology.
29
I would like to emphasize, however, that the sensitiv-
ity to the proper application of philosophical tools in theology is peculiar not
only to our critical age, but to the premodern period as well. It does not do
justice to the dynamic character of the Christian tradition to, so to speak, ‘freeze
the frame’ of scholarly attention on one particular patristic theologian (in my
example, on either Origen or Pseudo- Dionysius) and to isolate a single theolo-
gian’s reworking of Platonism from the rest of the tradition. It would be more
helpful instead to see the intellectual grappling with Platonism as an ongoing
conversation within the Church, indeed, a conversation, which continues today
(twentieth- century Russian Sophiology and Anglo- Catholic Radical Orthodoxy
come to mind).
More generally, from the standpoint of Eastern Orthodox theology, philoso-
phy accomplishes its servant function successfully if it provides theology with
the linguistic, metaphysical, epistemic and other tools for adequately expressing
the truth of the divine revelation. Not only the academic training (and for that
matter, not primarily the academic training), but also one’s participation in the
life of the Church is required to discern whether the relevant philosophical tools
are misused or applied adequately. The diffi culty is that the divine revelation
itself is not mediated in a culture- free or philosophy- free form. The truth of the
divine revelation is enshrined in scripture and tradition, confessed in the creed,
prayed in the liturgy, contemplated in the icons, received by the mind of the
church and proclaimed to the whole world. While philosophically informed, the
doctrines of the church seek to convey this truth in language informed by phi-
losophy and culture, but never determined by any one philosophical teaching.
To the extent to which the Church Fathers have succeeded in this endeavour,
their theological project remains paradigmatic for systematic theology today.
Notes
1 The most recent arrivals are Vasilios N. Makrides (2009) Hellenic Temples and
Christian Churches: A Concise History of the Religious Cultures of Greece from
Antiquity to the Present. New York and London: New York University Press;
Anthony Kaldellis (2007) Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of the
Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
2 For the studies of the philosophical underpinnings of biblical texts see, Mary Healy
and Robin Parry, eds (2007) The Bible and Epistemology: Biblical Soundings on
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The Greek Church Fathers and Philosophy 29
the Knowledge of God, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster; Paul K. Moser, ed. (2009)
Jesus and Philosophy: New Essays, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press;
James W. Thompson (1982) The Beginnings of Christian Philosophy: The Epistle to
the Hebrews, Washington, D.C.: Catholic Biblical Association of America; Abraham
J. Malherbe (1987) Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophical Tradition of
Pastoral Care, Philadelphia: Fortress Press.
3 The problem of anthropomorphism was raised in Greek thought as early as
Xenophanes (late sixth century bce ) and Plato, among others.
4 As quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiae , IV.26.7. For the discussion
of this passage see Robert Grant (1950) ‘Melito of Sardis on Baptism’, Vigiliae
Christianae 4, 33–6.
5 See David T. Runia (1986) Philo of Alexandria and the Timaeus of Plato, Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1, p. 407.
6 John Dillon (1996) The Middle Platonists Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
p. 143. For a nuanced discussion of how Philo’s account is different from that of the
pagan Platonists, see John M. Rist (1964) Eros and Psyche, Toronto: University of
Toronto, pp. 188–91.
7 As Joseph McLelland (1976) observes: ‘Philo’s contribution to mystical theol-
ogy is to insist on an element of divine inspiration or grace, and to reckon such
inspiration as a form of knowledge of God’, God the Anonymous: A Study in
Alexandrian Philosophical Theology, Cambridge, MA: The Philadelphia Patristic
Foundation, p. 42.
8 Pierre Hadot (1995) Philosophy as a Way of Life, Oxford: Blackwell.
9 For the discussion of this controversial question, see Leslie W. Barnard (1967) Justin
Martyr: His Life and Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University, pp. 5–11; Eric
Francis Osborn (1973) Justin Martyr, Tübingen: Mohr, J.C.B, pp. 66–8. Cf. Clement
of Alexandria, Strom. I. 1. 11.
10 Dial. 7.2- 3. Cf. Irenaeus, Haer. 4.20.5.
11 Dial. 7.3, 121.2, 122.3, 123.2.
12
Dial. 5.5; cf. Justin, De resurrectione, 1, where the certainty of divine revelation is
compared to the incorrigible nature of sense- perception, which can be verifi ed only
by recourse to sense- perception.
13 1 Apol. 46; Dial. 2.1–2. In 2 Apol. 13, Justin treats the partial knowledge of the
philosophers more positively, since such knowledge is a part of the Logos present in
all human beings.
14 1 Apol. 44. The plagiarism theory had a considerable following in late antiquity, see
Ps.- Justin, Oratio ad Graecos, 20, 26–7; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, VI.2–5.
15 Strom . I.5.
16 Stromata, II.2–4; VII.16.95. For the discussion of Clement’s account of the epis-
temological function of faith, see Jules Lebreton (1928) ‘La théorie de la connais-
sance religieuse chez Clément d’Alexandrie’, RSR 18, 457–88; Eric Osborn (2005)
Clement of Alexandria, Cambridge: Cambridge University, p. 18.
17 Strom. V.i.2.1.
18 W. H. C. Frend (1965) Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church, Oxford:
Blackwell, pp. 360–1.
19 As Harnack’s Das Wesen des Christentums (1900) is commonly summarized.
20 Georges Florovsky (1952) ‘Christianity and Civilization’, St Vladimir’s Seminary
Quarterly 1.1, 13–20, 14, emphasis in the original; reprinted in Collected Works
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Theology and Philosophy30
(1972–1979). Belmont, MA: Nordland Publications, Vol. 2, pp. 121–30. This point
is also emphasized in Florovsky’s (1951) ‘Review of Karl Friz’s Die Stimme der
Ostkirche ’, Theology Today 7.4, 559–60 and in (1959) ‘Review of Paul J. Alexander’s
The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople ’, Church History 28.2, 205.
21 Georges Florovsky (1957) ‘The Christian Hellenism’, Orthodox Observer 442, 9–10.
22 For a similar point, see Frances Young (1991) The Making of the Creeds London:
SCM Press. I would concede that Jewish monotheism was at least potentially a
confessional religion. But rabbinical Judaism knows no equivalents of the extensive
creed making and remaking that took place during the second–fi fth centuries in
Christianity.
23 See the classic work of Arthur H. Armstrong (1940) The Architecture of the
Intelligible Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus: An Analytical and Historical
Study, London: Cambridge University Press.
24 See Origen, Contra Celsum , IV.14–19, V.6.
25 See Richard Paul Vaggione (2000) Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution,
Oxford: OUP; David Bentley Hart (2008) ‘The Hidden and the Manifest: Metaphysics
after Nicaea’, in Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos, eds (2008)
Orthodox Readings of Augustine, Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
pp. 191–226.
26 Origen’s fate in the West was not quite as dire, as his writings continued to be used
as authoritative by the mediaeval scholastic theologians.
27 Jaroslav Pelikan (1971) The Christian Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, I: 348; Cf. John Meyendorff (1975) Christ in Eastern Christian Thought,
Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press (French original published in 1969),
p. 92.
28 For an illuminating survey of this development, see Andrew Louth ‘The Reception
of Dionysius up to Maximus the Confessor’ and ‘The Reception of Dionysius in the
Byzantine World: Maximus to Palamas’, in Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang
(2009) Re- thinking Dionysius the Areopagite, Chichester, UK: Wiley- Blackwell,
pp. 43–53, 55–69.
29 See my article ‘The Reception of Dionysius in Twentieth- Century Eastern
Orthodoxy’, in Sarah Coakley and Charles M. Stang (2009) Re- thinking Dionysius
the Areopagite. Chichester, UK: Wiley- Blackwell, pp. 177–93.

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Chapter 2
The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition
g. r. evans
University of Cambridge
A pronounced intellectual division opened up in the late antique world when, in
the last days of Empire, the Greek- speaking and the Latin- speaking ends of the
Roman Empire ceased to be able to speak one another’s languages fl uently. In the
East the educated Greek speakers were able to move with the evolution of late
Platonism, to enter into its special brand of speculative spirituality. On the other
hand, they became fi xed in the view that the Christian faith had been given in its
completeness at the beginning and was not a proper subject for rational analysis.
In the West, educated Latin speakers increasingly became separated from this
Byzantine evolution of late Platonism and depended on the Latinized Platonism
transmitted by Marius Victorinus and by Augustine, who himself had it second
hand. On the other hand, as the centuries went on, they found Aristotelian logic
an increasingly useful tool for philosophical and theological analysis.
The Latin speakers had to do their philosophy in a language still being devel-
oped as a vehicle of philosophical and theological discussion. Classical Latin
education included philosophy but its great objective was to produce fl uent
public speakers. The study of Cicero and Seneca provided stylistic and moral
examples. Augustine (354–430) confesses that he had trouble with Greek.
Gregory the Great (540–604) apparently had still greater diffi culty, despite
spending a period living and working in Constantinople. With the diminishing
familiarity with Greek on the part of educated people, and the need to develop
in the Latin language a comparable tool for abstract thinking, Augustine and
Boethius pushed Latin much further in this direction than even Cicero the aspir-
ing philosopher had done.
The problem of making Latin a fi t vehicle for philosophical and theological
discourse did not disappear with the centuries. It is diffi cult to establish con-
sistency in the mediaeval use of the Latin terminology. It evolved rapidly as a
technical language, especially from the eleventh century, but usage was far from
consistent between writers. In Anselm’s vocabulary faith is both fi ducia ,
1
faith
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Theology and Philosophy32
as ‘trust’, and fi des , faith as the ‘content’ of belief, what is actually believed.
Through trust in God the believer arrives at ‘knowledge’ of what he believes
and that includes content as well as affect. Cogitatio seems to mean ‘thinking’. It
can lead to scientia , knowledge. It can be conducted upon conceptiones. Neither
necessarily involves the complexities of believing. The vocabulary of intellectus
and intelligentia are both used, the fi rst for a faculty of ‘understanding’ and the
second for ‘understanding’ as ‘knowledge’, but neither consistently and both
with a range of association and some overlap with one another. Notitia seems
more closely tied to content, the actual information ‘known’. In Abelard, the
concept of ‘assent’ is used, to take the believer from thinking to believing ( cre-
dere est assensione cogitare ). The certainty or confi dence with which something
is known can vary. It may be no stronger than opinio . With the sophistications
of later mediaeval philosophy and theology came still further refi nements.
Philosophy and Theology
By the time this gulf of mutual understanding began to widen, Christianity had
already absorbed the higher intellectual culture of the Greek and Romans. It
is not easy to separate the Christian from the secular in the intellectual tradi-
tion of the Latin West, so intimately had they grown together by the end of
Empire. When Augustine became a Christian he had to decide how and whether
to modify his education, what to borrow, how to think and write as a Christian
without compromising the faith. But by then there was a philosophical and
theological platform on which he stood and from which it was no longer easy –
even if anyone had expressed the wish – to climb down in order to rethink the
whole project afresh.
Philosophy in the ancient world was more than the attempted formulation of
a rational account of the cosmos and the way it works. It implied a way of life.
It included the discussion of the action of supernatural beings. Plato’s Timaeus
discusses the Creator without any sense that a line could or should be drawn
between the natural and the supernatural. This made it easier for Christianity to
absorb ideas from philosophy, but it made it more diffi cult for it to fi x a bound-
ary between the two.
A key terminological and conceptual aid was provided by Boethius ( c .480–
524/5) in his De Trinitate. He develops – probably following Porphyry – a
threefold distinction of physica, mathematica and theologia .
2
Physica is the
study of the natural, material world. Mathematica is the study of abstract prin-
ciples derived from that world. For example, a triangle has geometrical proper-
ties which are themselves abstractions, though no triangle can be drawn in the
material world without its lines and angles being slightly out of true. Theologia
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 33
rises above this limitation. It soars by speculatio into the realms where reason
alone can take the mind. But Boethius’ theologia has its limitations nevertheless.
It can ‘speculate’ about the existence and nature of God and even about the laws
of nature. But it cannot by reason alone take the enquirer to the knowledge and
understanding of the incarnation, the death of Christ and its consequences for
the salvation of the world.
As it happens, Anselm of Canterbury had disagreed with this position. He
suggested in the opening scene- setting of the Cur Deus Homo that it might
be possible to remove Christ from the story ( remoto Christo ), and by reason-
ing alone ( sola ratione ) discover that he was essential to the redemption of
mankind.
3
But this was an isolated view. The general consensus was elegantly
expressed by Hugh of St Victor ( c .1078–1141). He proposed a useful distinc-
tion in the Prologue to Book I of his De Sacramentis Ecclesiae between the opus
creationis and the opus restaurationis .
4
The work of creation is susceptible of
rational analysis and can be discussed by a rational being on the basis of obser-
vation of the world. It includes the topics of the Boethian theologia, that is the
existence and nature of God as well as the creation of the world. The work of
‘restoration’, which includes Christ’s birth and life on earth and his death on the
Cross, can be known only as historical fact, from reading the Bible. It cannot be
worked out by reasoning alone.
Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) was still wrestling with the relation of phi-
losophy and theology in the opening questions of his Summa Theologiae. Is
philosophy a subject which embraces theology or is it the other way round?
By the thirteenth century the terminology had grown more complex. During
the twelfth century, the studies we would now expect to see under the heading
of ‘theology’ had usually been called the studium sacrae scripturae . It was still
more natural to speak of theologia in its ‘Boethian’ sense and with its narrower
remit. Philosophia could connote the writings of the ancient secular authors.
One would not meet a living philosopher in the street. But it was also possi-
ble to speak of gentiles , the massed and varied unbelievers to whom Aquinas
addressed his Summa contra Gentiles. Strictly this was a book for the use of
those who found themselves having to act as the Church’s apologists, preaching
against those who had not embraced the Christian faith.
The Nature of the Beast: A Rational Animal in the Image of God?
For Aristotle man is a rational animal. He has patterns of behaviour like any other
animal through which he fulfi ls his purpose in the double- ended Aristotelian tel-
eology in which the end is in the beginning. Unlike other beasts he can, observ-
ing the world around him, think and talk and exchange ideas about it with
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Theology and Philosophy34
other rational animals, and set out a sequence of rational argumentation leading
to conclusions which other human beings will be able to share. He can perceive
patterns and structures which enable him to postulate causes and effects and
suggest reasons for things and build up complex explanations about the cosmos
which go beyond what can be recorded by the senses.
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) seems to have had limited direct knowledge
of Aristotle, but he understood these basic ideas well enough. He came to believe
that man is not just a rational animal but a sinful rational animal, damaged in
this most distinctive feature of his nature, whose mind is clouded by sin and
his organs of knowing impeded from working effectively. This leaves him with
unfulfi lled longings and a baffl ed sense that he cannot think as clearly as he
wishes.
Augustine’s discussion of the relation between this baffl ed and frustrated
exercise of reason, and the faith which enables the sinner to glimpse what he
is missing, adopts the imagery of hunger. He cites Scripture. Those who ‘eat
and drink’ have found what they long for but they still long for more ( adhuc
quaerunt ).
5
Faith must seek if the understanding ( intellectus ) is to fi nd. But con-
versely, he cites Isaiah 7.9, ‘Man ought to know in order to seek God’. Ad hoc
ergo debet esse homo intellegens ut requirat deum.
6
Knowing and seeking, faith
and understanding are complementary and reciprocal.
In his De Trinitate, Augustine explores the question how this process works
in terms of the faculties of the human mind.
7
He fi nds in man a ‘trinity’
8
of
memory, will and understanding ( memoria , intellectus [or intelligentia] , volun-
tas ); which resembles the divine Trinity in that each is distinct and yet together
they form a single human mind. They are, in their way, both one and three.
9
He
identifi es another trinity, of ‘mind, knowledge and love, mens, notitia, amor ’.
There is the mind and the knowledge by which it knows itself and the love by
which it loves what it knows. In this way once more man is made in the image
of the triune God:
Ad imaginem dei quod est homo secundum mentem . . . et in ea quaedam
trinitas invenitur, id est mens et notitia qua se novit et amor quo se noti-
tiam suam diligit .
10

Faith Seeking Understanding
In the De Trinitate ,
11
Augustine proposes the idea that ‘faith seeks and the
understanding fi nds’ ( fi des quaerit, intellectus invenit ). This description of the
process of thinking about God evolved in the Proemium to the Proslogion of
Anselm of Bec and Canterbury (1033–1109) into ‘faith seeking understanding’
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 35
( fi des quaerens intellectum ),
12
What exactly is the process involved, Anselm
asked himself? He was always broadly confi dent that any rational person would
accept the truths of the Christian faith the moment he fully understood them.
But he was fi rm that the place to begin was not with open- ended enquiry but
by testing the assertions of the faith in order to see whether they hold. ‘For I
do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order
that I may understand’ ( Neque enim quaero intelligere ut credam, sed credo ut
intellegam ).
13
As support for this approach he cites Isaiah : Nam et hoc hoc credo:
quia ‘nisi credidero, non intelligam’ (Isaiah 7.9). The whole process – as Anselm
sees and presumably felt he experienced it – is one of personal divine guidance.
‘So, Lord, who gives understanding to faith, give to me, as far as you know it
to be for my benefi t, to understand that you are as we believe and that you are
what we believe’ ( Ergo, domine, qui das fi dei intellectum, da mihi, ut quantum
scis expedire intelligam, quia es sicut credimus, et hoc es quod credimus ).
14
So
for Anselm, faith seeking to understand is faith asking God to reveal himself.
The Proslogion, in which the economically expressed chapters of argument are
prefaced and ended by chapters of prayer and longing, is an experiment in the
method. There are obvious similarities with Augustine’s Confessions in the style
and the approach. But Anselm, unlike Augustine, is not telling the story of his
spiritual life. He is not exploring his own Trinitarian ‘psychology’. He is teach-
ing the reader a method of thinking.
Going Apart to Be with God: The Monastic and the Mystical Traditions
The Western tradition developed its own spirituality in the centuries after it
drifted apart from the Greek tradition which became in late antiquity so heavily
fl avoured with late Platonism and its brand of mysticism. This was characteris-
tically a practical ladder- climbing. At the top of the ladder the rational mystic
might experience rapture, but mostly he would simply be giving his mind to the
ascent towards God, seeking his face.
Cassiodorus ( c .485–585) was a busy administrator in the days when the
Empire was reaching its end. He chose to retire from public life and his job as a
senior civil servant, to spend time with the Psalms. He approached his reading
with the aid of Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos and accordingly he found
what he sought in the refl ective mental mastication and digesting of the text
which became a favourite metaphor for this close meditative reading.
In the same century, Benedict of Nursia was founding what became the
Benedictine order of monks. Unlike the monks of the East, these were to live
a community life and spend their time in worship, prayer and private reading.
Theirs was a contemplative life. They spent it, as far as they were able to do
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Theology and Philosophy36
so through the regular exercise of prayer, in the presence of God. A call to ‘go
apart’ was the way Anselm began the Proslogion. Close the door of your mind,
shut out external distractions, he urges:
Eia nunc, homuncio, fuge paululum occupationes tuas, absconde te modi-
cum a tumultuosis cogitationibus tuis.
15

William of St Thierry and other monastic writers of the twelfth century speak
of the monk’s cell as a microcosm of heaven in which he can practise being in
the presence of God.
As the mediaeval West of the time understood it, this was not a shapeless or
passive activity. Nor was it restricted to members of religious orders, though
their regular lives made room for it, and its practice was one of the chief pur-
poses of those lives. Anselm of Canterbury wrote a preface for a set of prayers
and meditations designed for private use and dedicated to a noble laywoman.
In it he suggests that the faithful soul may fi nd it helpful to begin with the text
he has provided, starting anywhere it wishes, and use it as a launching pad for
its own ascent into the presence of God.
16
In his Monologion he suggests a more
conscious and rational ascent, in which the mind is fi rst directed to any good
thing in the world, and then asks itself what is better, until it begins to under-
stand that the higher it climbs up the hierarchy of the good the closer it will
come to glimpsing what God is.
Bernard of Clairvaux describes a moment of rapture he himself experienced
by much the same method in his On Loving God. He describes a climbing by
steps or degrees. At the ‘fourth degree of love’ one loves oneself ‘only in God’.
The climbing aspirant fi nds himself on God’s ‘hill’ where he is pleased to dwell
(Psalm 24.3).
17
On that hill the faithful soul may stay only a moment in this life,
but it is an instant in which it experiences the emptying out of self, the com-
plete absorption in God which Bernard believes prefi gures the life of heaven. In
this life, alas, the rapt believer will be called down from this high place by the
demands of others and the distractions of daily life.
A similar ladder- climbing method, using thought and analysis to take the
mind on an upward journey towards God, was used by the Franciscan phil-
osophical theologian Bonaventure (1221–1274) in his Itinerarium Mentis ad
Deum. This is a combination of ratiocination and spirituality in which no one
can say where the reasoning leaves off and faith takes wings but the thinking is
found to lead to some form of direct experience of the presence of God.
Later mediaeval mysticism rediscovered a method attributed to Dionysius
the Areopagite, but actually worked out in the writings of the probably fi fth-
century Ps. Dionysius. He seems to have had some infl uence on John Scotus
Erigena ( c .815–877) who had some knowledge of the Greek tradition, but the
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 37
dissemination of his ideas in the Latin West was long impeded by the fact that
he wrote, inaccessibly to most, in Greek. He too thought in terms of a journey
and an ascent, a returning to God by efforts of thought and prayer. But there
was a radically different assumption about what it would feel like to come close
to God. Earlier mediaeval mystical aspiration had expected to fi nd that God
was more than all the good things they knew, but somehow familiar, resembling
what the faithful could see by studying his creation, later mediaeval mystics
such as Johann Eck followed Ps. Dionysius in holding him to be ultimately
unknowable. This is a negative mysticism. For example, we call God ‘infi nite’.
That tells us only what he is not. This school of negative mysticism uses reason-
ing only to arrive at the point where faith must launch itself into emptiness.
The Mediaeval Revival of Logic Redefi nes the Task
Gerbert of Aurillac ( c .946–1003) was at the forefront of a trend which was to
shape the later mediaeval approach to the use of reason in the West. From the
eleventh century, the study of the two texts of Aristotle’s logic which Boethius
had translated into Latin before his execution and the books on ‘topics’ he had
completed, together with Porphyry’s Isagoge ,
18
became much more sophisti-
cated. It moved beyond the relatively simple defi nitions of terms found in the
margins of the manuscripts of the Carolingian era.
19
It began to grapple with
the logic itself.
The interest of those who began to write and teach in this fi eld lay in the deeper
reaches of the philosophy of language. Augustine had begun the De Doctrina
Christiana by asking how language works epistemologically, what is the rela-
tionship of ‘things’ to ‘signs of things’, and of both to the ideas in the human
mind. In this period of crucial mediaeval development, signifi cation theory con-
tinued to attract students of Aristotle’s Categories and De Interpretatione, who
set these works besides what they read in the Roman ‘philosophical grammar-
ians’ such as Priscian and Donatus, and began to note and puzzle over discrep-
ancies. Gerbert of Aurillac was already beginning to do this in the De rationali
et ratione uti,
20
Anselm wrote a De Grammatico in which he tackled a similar
puzzle over the apparent confl ict between the teaching of the classical grammar-
ians and those of the classical logicians.
21

Probable and Necessary Arguments
In the Anselmian system, a faith confi rmed and grasped by the intellect as well
as on trust is a sure faith. Students of mediaeval logic became very interested in
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Theology and Philosophy38
the security of the methods of proving available to them. A syllogism’s conclu-
sion might be watertight from the point of view of validity but its truth was
only as safe as the propositions from which the conclusion was derived. It was
a ‘probable’ argument. On the other hand, a conclusion which had been arrived
at by the ‘demonstrative method’ was a ‘necessary’ truth.
The demonstrative method was essentially the method devised by Euclid
for the demonstration of geometrical theorems. It involved the use of self-
evident truths as a starting- point. These were the communes animi concep-
tiones, ‘common conceptions of the mind’, a phrase used by Boethius in his
De Hebdomadibus , and borrowed by Euclid’s twelfth- century translators to
render his Greek. Demonstrating what followed from one of these brought the
thinker to another truth which was equally certain once he had grasped that it
depended on a self- evident truth. It is probably the case that the method works
only for geometry, but theologians were naturally anxious to demonstrate truths
of faith in the same way.
Alan of Lille (d.1202) attempted to do this in the simpler form of a long line
of axioms, one leading to the next. He began his Regulae Theologicae confi -
dently enough with the axiom that ‘God is a Monad’, but he soon found himself
in a thicket of the undemonstrable with questions about the sacraments and
it is by no means clear from the surviving manuscripts that he succeeded in
completing the list even in draft.
22
Nicholas of Amiens (1147–1200) made a
more sophisticated attempt at applying the Euclidean method but he too retired
defeated.
But some authors perceived that self- evidency might not be a watertight uni-
versal attribute of a given axiom. Peter Abelard discusses what happens when
parents are of different faiths. He was aware of the infl uence of upbringing on
what people believe to be ‘obvious’. ‘Usually’ he asserts, the children follow the
faith of whichever parent they favour, and accept it completely ( inconcussa ). So:
plus in eis educatio quam origo sanguinis vel ratio posit.
23
This effect of ‘infl u-
ence’ is also seen in peer- pressure, in the way children tend to share their beliefs
with their friends.
24

Reasoning or Relying on ‘Authorities’
Proving by reason could be seen as stronger than proving by mere authority
in the sense that reason appealed to all reasonable people. On the other hand,
a syllogism whose premises included a quotation from Scripture could be said
to rely on the supreme authority of the word of God. The only proof for the
existence of God which relies on reason alone is the one Anselm advances in the
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 39
Proslogion, and he believed it to be capable of showing not only that God exists
but also what he is like (within the parameters of Boethian theologia ):
Unum argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum quam se solo indi-
geret, et solum ad astruendum quia deus vere est, et quia est summum
bonum nullo alio indigens, et quo omnia indigent ut sunt et ut bene sint,
et quaecumque de divina credumus substantia, suffi ceret.
25

The question what could be relied on by way of ‘authorities’ was the subject of
some discussion in Anselm’s lifetime and just afterwards. Gilbert Crispin (1055–
1117), who had been a monk at Bec and one of Anselm’s pupils, later became
Abbot of Westminster. It seems he was Anselm’s host while he was in England
on the business of the abbey of Bec in the winter when Lanfranc Archbishop of
Canterbury had died and Anselm feared – with reason – that he was likely to be
chosen as his successor.
Gilbert became the author of a treatise recording a Disputation with a Jew
and another Disputation with a ‘Gentile’. In the Disputation with a Gentile
26
the
conversation begins with a discussion of the authorities each will rely on. ‘I do not
accept your sources, nor authorities [extracts] taken from them. Nor do you accept
mine, and I take no authorities from them.’
27
It is pointed out that the Christians
assert that the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Jesus Christ have ‘one and the
same author’; but the Jews do not observe the law of the Christians, they oppose
it. Nor do the Christians observe the law of the Jews. They say it is supremely
empty and they argue about it and disagree with it.
28
So how are they to proceed?
The Christian suggests that they set aside all authority, including that of Scripture
and try to use reason alone.
29
This is an idea Gilbert could have borrowed from
Anselm, who had written the Cur Deus Homo on the remoto Christo basis.
A similar discussion takes place at the beginning of Peter Abelard’s Collationes ,
in which a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew hold a dispute about their beliefs.
‘It is for me, says the Philosopher, to question the others fi rst because I am
content with natural law’, which is ‘fi rst’.
30
The only ‘document’ for those who
rely on lex naturalis , he suggests, is the knowledge of ethics ( scientia morum ).
The Christians and Jews add laws or precepts, precepta , which the Philosopher
considers to be unnecessary additions ( superfl ua ).
31

Rational Argument and the Existence of God
What may be known of God by rational observation of the created world by a
thinker who is not prepared to rely on any authority ? One of the key mediaeval
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Theology and Philosophy40
questions about ‘revelation’ was how far God had shown himself, and things
about himself, in his creation. What he had revealed in that way he had made
accessible to any reasonable being. A key authority supported this view. Romans
1.19–20 says that God has made the truth about himself obvious. Reasonable
observers can see what he is like from studying the world he has made.
Anselm’s unique ontological proof in the Proslogion does not require even
this assistance. He argues that if God is that- than- which- nothing- greater- can-
be- thought he must exist in reality, for anyone who can entertain the concept of
a that- than- which- nothing- greater- can- be- thought can also think of something
which is more than a concept and ‘really’ exists. A that- than- which- nothing-
greater- can- be- thought which exists in reality is greater than a that- than-
which- nothing- greater- can- be- thought which is merely a notion in the mind. It
thus becomes that- than- which- nothing- greater- can- be- thought. So God exists.
Anselm is here making a fundamentally Platonic assumption about the nature
of reality, in which the intellectual reality, the reality of an ‘idea’, is greater than
the reality of a physically existing thing.
Aquinas discusses Anselm’s proof, which he treats as falling in the category
of the ‘self- evident’. He argues that God’s existence cannot be a self- evident
truth because not everyone believes in God. His own proofs all rely on the
Romans 1.19–20 principle. The fi rst is that God is Prime Mover of all the things
we can see being ‘moved’. He is Effi cient Cause (and the end of infi nite regress)
for all those things which are ‘caused’. He adduces the concept of possible and
necessary existence, arguing that what it is possible does not exist must possibly
once not have existed. This cannot be true of God. He argues from the existence
of ‘degrees’ in things to God as the highest. He argues from the very fact that the
universe is ‘governed’ by laws ex gubernatione rerum .
32

Authorship, Authority and Authenticity
For most mediaeval thinkers, it was natural to turn to authorities, even in fram-
ing a rational argument. In Greek there is a series of terms which express one
or more of the range of ideas connected in Latin with auctor, auctoritas , such as
‘witness’ or ‘testimony’, ‘expertise’ or ‘knowledgeableness’, ‘power’, ‘creation’,
‘doing’, ‘making’. The Latin has a cluster of etymologically allied terms, with
a signifi cant conceptual overlap in their meanings, and therefore potential for
causing confusion. In classical Latin an auctor can be an authoritative person,
someone whose advice or approval carries weight; someone whose teaching
or persuasion is felt to be authoritative; a witness, proof or authentication; an
expert; a source of evidence; a source; a standard. Auctoritas has a closely paral-
lel list of senses in the region of meaning we are concerned with. So auctor has
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 41
a range of classical meanings, including the modern English ‘author’ and some-
thing close to the notion of an ‘author- authority’. One reason for relying on a
text, but not the only reason, may be the name of its ‘author’.
Auctoritas can mean ‘an authority’ in the sense which would allow it to
include both ‘an authoritative author’ and ‘an authoritative text’. The mediaeval
emphasis is on the function of a piece of writing as something to be respected
or relied on, but the ‘authoritativeness’ comes to reside in the text itself. So
an auctoritas attaches, by transference, to the words as well as to the person
who writes them, and allows quite small portions of text to be referred to as
auctoritates. Employing this distinction, Peter of Poitiers ( c .1130–1215) says of
his compilation on confession that it has as many ‘authors’ as ‘authorities’ , tot
habet auctores quod continet auctoritates .
33

Authenticus is a late antique term, with a sense of ‘coming from the author’
and therefore genuine. ‘ Authenticus ’ is etymologically close to auctor , yet what
are described as ‘authentic copies’ are clearly not necessarily the authors’ actual
autographs. ‘This is not in authentic manuscripts’ ( hoc, quod hic positum est . . .
in authenticis codicibus non habetur), remarks Jerome.
34
Blessed are those who
are praised in ‘authentic manuscripts’,
35
cries the twelfth- century Orderic Vitalis
(1075–1142).
Nowhere is authorial authenticity so important to the mediaeval Christian
reader as in the text of the Bible. Salvation may depend on being quite sure
that one has got it right. The Scriptures could be regarded as divinely inspired,
directly dictated by the Holy Spirit to its human author, in the manner graphi-
cally portrayed in illuminations of the Gospel writers with the Holy Spirit as
a dove with its beak in Evangelist’s ear. Cassiodorus, writing on the Psalms,
makes a punctilious distinction between the moments when a prophet is being
a prophet and the moments when he is just telling us what he thinks as an ordi-
nary man. ‘In the [prophetical books of Scripture] God said some things and
not the prophets; and some things were said by the prophets and not by God’.
36

The trick is to know which bits are which.
37
Gregory the Great pointed out that
sometimes the prophets spoke at the bidding of the Holy Spirit and sometimes
of their own volition.
38

Even those parts of Scripture which do not contain prophecies were written
by human authors and have subsequently been copied. There were recognized
to be ‘human authors’ of Scripture, and a number of ideas circulated about
them, their contribution, and the distinction between the ‘primary and second-
ary authorship of Scripture’,
39
God’s words and man’s. There are different kinds
of authority even within Holy Scripture, explains Robert of Melun ( c .1100–
1167) in the mid- twelfth century. There are passages where the human author
is indeed important, passages ‘whose authority rests on their (human) author’s
name’: quarum auctoritatis causa penes ipsum auctorem solum consistit , such
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Theology and Philosophy42
as the prophets and apostles. Robert’s idea here is that the authority of proph-
ets and apostles does not derive from the latter approval of others, but their
inherent authority is the cause of what they say being ‘approved’ by latter ages
( sed auctoritas causa comprobationis ). Other passages whose authorship is
uncertain, such as the book of Job cannot carry an inherent authority. Their
authority rests on their ultimate acceptance: comprobatio acceptoris .
40
Robert
Grosseteste ( c .1175–1253) says something very similar half a century later in a
comment suggesting that even St Paul had to establish his credentials when he
wrote to the Galatians. He has to ‘show that he was knowledgeable and tell-
ing the truth’.
41
In the thirteenth century Robert Kilwardby ( c .1215–1279) was
routinely describing the human authors of Scripture as instruments of the divine
author.
42

For Roger Bacon (1214–1294) four things stand in the way of learning the
truth from the use of authorities ( sunt maxima comprehendendae veritatis
offendicula ): the use of weak and unworthy authorities; bad habits; lack of
common sense; disguising ignorance with a pretence of expertise.
43
Authorities
are not always right. That is a bold claim for a thirteenth- century commenta-
tor to make. Bacon’s explanation for this unreliability is that human authors
are all sinners; moreover, the span of knowledge is very great and no one can
master it all, nor can anyone avoid getting the odd detail wrong. ‘And therefore
it is fi tting to add to the authorities and to correct them on many points’ ( in
quampluribus ).
44
Indeed, the authorities correct themselves and one another,
and dispute what other authorities say.
45

The lesson Bacon draws is that we should prefer truth to authority, and put
the authorities right when we can see that they are wrong.
46
With heavy irony,
he points out that for warrant to do that we may rely on authority. ‘For Plato
says, “Socrates my master is my friend but truth is a better friend” ’ ( Amicus
est Socrates, magister meus, sed magis est amica veritas ). A similar alleged senti-
ment of Aristotle is cited.
47

Attitudes to Secular Knowledge, Islamic and Jewish Scholarship
There remained the question of the place of secular and non- Christian writings.
Adelard of Bath opens his book on the same and the different ( De Eodem et
Diverso ) with a prefatory letter to William, Bishop of Syracuse. In it he explains
that when he reads earlier authors on the sciences and compares them with the
moderns he is struck by the richness of the earlier ones and the comparative
silence of the latter. That is not to say that the ancients knew everything nor
that the moderns know nothing.
48
He has addressed himself in the courage of
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The Roman (Latin Western) Tradition 43
his scientiola , to William of Syracuse as to someone omnium mathematicarum
artium eruditissime .
During the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries the philosophical works of
Aristotle were brought into the nascent universities in Latin translations, both
directly from the Greek and via the Arabic translations from the Greek. Avicenna
(Ibn Sinna) ( c .980–1037) and Averroes (Ibn Rushid) (1126–1198) wrote mono-
graphs and commentaries some of which were also imported into the philosoph-
ical and theological literature of the Latin West. The Jewish thinker Maimonides
(1135–1204) also wrote on Aristotle and became infl uential in the West. These
new resources found their place only after some upheaval in the infant universi-
ties of Europe, for the views of Aristotle did not coincide at every point with
the teachings of the Christian faith, for example on the subject of the soul. The
University of Paris made various abortive attempts fi rst to ban the books and
then, when that failed, to ban selected opinions. However, the new material bed-
ded itself down. Johannis Blund, ( c .1175–1248) wrote a De anima ,
49
in which
the notion that man is an animal distinguished by rationality ( rationalis ), with
various newly realized Aristotelian aspects, sits perfectly comfortably with his
theology.
Conclusion
A basic acceptance of the ultimate unknowability of God seems to govern all
mediaeval efforts to wrestle with the problem of trying to use reason to under-
stand matters of faith. Abelard allows for the devout confession of faith by
believers who may not really understand what they are saying: quasi in pro-
latione verborum potius quam in animi comprehensione fi des consistat et oris
ipsa sit magis quam cordis.
50
Reason can go only so far. In the Summa contra
Gentiles , Aquinas accepts that while rational enquiry can establish a great deal,
it can never fully encompass knowing God.
But reason can proudly claim that it is intent on the pursuit of truth. The
Jew in Abelard’s dialogue poses the question whether if the Philosopher were
able to overcome his ‘simplicity’ by the force of his reasoning, Si forte simplici-
tatem mean philosophicarum virtute rationum superare videaris , that would
settle things.
51
The Philosopher’s position is that reason pursues the truth not
for glory but for its own sake: cum me videlicet ad veritatis inquisitionem, non
ad elationis ostentationem laborare non dubitetis.
52

Working within the parameters of these clusters of assumptions, mediaeval
thinkers sometimes throw up the possibility that knowledge may advance. ‘Are
reason and faith the same at different ages and in rustici and literati ?’ asks Peter
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Theology and Philosophy44
Abelard. Abelard’s Philosopher argues that intelligentia grows in the individual
with age, but there is no such guaranteed progress in matters of faith nullus est
profectus .
53
Young and old, educated and uneducated have the same belief. It is
considered no shame to say you believe what you can not understand ( Ut quod
se non posse intelligere confi tentur, credere se profi teri non erubescant ).
54
Roger
Bacon contends that human understanding progresses and develops down the
ages. One age ( una aetas ) is not enough for inquiry into many of the subjects the
authorities have written about. People are aware that many things which will
arise in time to come are unknown to us, and in future ages it will be wondered
at that we did not know things which will be then be obvious.
55
On the other
hand, new truth takes time to establish itself. ‘ Common’ sense ( sensus vulgi )
rushes to conclusions. Nam auctoritas solum allicit, consuetude ligat, opinio
vulgi obstinatos parit et confi rmat.
56

Notes
1 A term Anselm tends to use in his prayers and letters.
2 Boethius, De Trinitate, II, Theological Tractates, eds. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand and
S. J. Tester (1973) Harvard, p. 8, and cf. Porphyry, Isagoge, ed. S. Brandt (1906)
Vienna, p. 7f.
3 Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/Edinburgh, II.42.
4 Hugh of St Victor, On the Sacraments of the Christian Faith , ed. and tr. R. J. Deferrari
(1951) Cambridge, MA, Book I, Proemium.
5 Eccl. 24.1- 4.
6 Augustine, De Trinitate , XV.ii.2, CCSL, 50A, pp. 461–2.
7 Augustine, De Trinitate , XV.ii.3, CCSL, 50A, p. 462.
8 Inveniretur in mente evidentior trinitas eius, in memoria scilicet et intellegentia et
voluntate .
9 Augustine, De Trinitate , XV.iii.5, CCSL, 50A, p. 466.
10 Augustine, De Trinitate , XV.iii.5, CCSL, 50A, p.465.
11 Augustine, De Trinitate , XV.ii, CCSL, 50A.
12 Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/Edinburgh, I.94.
13 Proslogion , 1, Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/
Edinburgh, 1.100.
14 Proslogion , 1, S 1.100, and Chapter II, p.101.

15 Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/Edinburgh, 1.97.
16 Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/Edinburgh, III.3.
17 Bernard of Clairvaux, De diligendo deo , 10, Opera Omnia, III.
18 PL (Patrologia Latina) 64.
19 On these developments, see John Marenbon (1981) From the Circle of Alcuin to
the School of Auxerre: Logic, Theology, and Philosophy in the Early Middle Ages
Cambridge.
20 Libellus de Rationali et Ratione Uti , PL 139.157.
21 Anselmi Opera Omnia , ed. F. S. Schmitt (1946–1968) Rome/Edinburgh, I. 145.
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flows away into the oceans of the sea. From below came sound of
London's clocks chiming the quarters.
Thought died in her brain. Only the imaginative power was alive.
Imagination's self died. Only her soul was alive. And, with her soul,
she dreamed a dream.
She dreamed that her letter to Hector had been written, that Hector
had answered it. She saw herself setting out to meet him. He had
sent his car to fetch her from Embankment House. She saw herself
stepping into the car. It was their old car; but the man whose back
she could see through the plate-glass of the cabriolet was not their
old chauffeur. "I wonder what his name is," she thought.
The car set out, noiseless. It left Embankment House behind; it
crossed Putney Bridge. It came, between miles and miles of utterly
empty streets, into London. A peculiar grayness, neither of the night
nor of the day, a peculiar silence, almost a silence of death, brooded
over London. No lights gleamed from its ghostly houses; no feet, no
wheels echoed on its ghostly paving.
The car spun on, noiseless--beyond the ghostly gray into ghostly
green--and now it seemed to Aliette as though the time were
twilight-time; as though she were in Hyde Park; as though in a few
minutes she would make the remembered door in Lancaster Gate.
"Hector's house," she thought. And the thought frightened her. She
wanted not to go to Hector. She wanted Ronnie--her Ronnie. But the
car spun on.
Now, faltering and afraid, she stood before the door of her
husband's house. Now the door opened; and Lennard, subservient
as ever, led her into the recollected hall.
Lennard vanished; and suddenly Aliette's soul knew its dream for
dream.
Then the dream grew real again. Fearful and alone she stood in the
chill vastness of that shadowy hall among the recollected furniture.

She felt her breasts throbbing under the thin frock, felt her knees
tremble as she grasped the door-handle of Hector's study.
No lights burned in the study. It was all gray, gray as the streets
without. Hector was not there--only a face--a huge, cruel,
unrelenting face.
"So you've come back," it said.
She moved toward the face, across the gray carpet that gave back
no sound to her feet. But she could not speak with the face.
Between her and the face--as a great sheet of glass--slid silence, the
interminable unbearable silence of dreams. Through the glass,
Aliette could see every pore in the great face, every hair of its head;
but she might not speak with it, nor it with her. Then a voice, a voice
as of very conscience, cried out in her: "Your strength against its
strength. Your will against its will."
She felt her will beat out from her as wings beat, beat and batter at
the glass between them. The glass of silence slid away; and she
knew the face for Hector's. She said to it:
"Hector, I haven't come back. I'm never coming back."
"You shall," said the face, Hector's face; and now, under the face,
she knew feet, her husband's feet.
At that, terror, the hopeless panic of dreams, gripped her soul by the
throat, choking down speech. It seemed to her that she stood naked
in that gray and silent room.
But now, as a momentary beam through the grayness, another face-
-the face of her lover--was added to their silent company. And again,
"Your will against its will," said the voice.
Terror's fingers unclutched from her throat, so that her will spoke, "I
shall never come back, Hector."
The face writhed at the words as a face in pain; and suddenly,
knowing herself its master, she knew pity for the face, pity for the
thing she had done. Till once more she heard the inner voice

whisper: "No pity. Your strength against its strength. Your will
against its will."
"But I love you," pleaded Hector. "I need you."
She said to him, "My children need me, Hector. Set me free."
And once more the glass of the silences slid between them; once
more the interminable, unbearable silence of dreams held her
speechless.
Tap, tap, tap. Who was that knocking on Hector's door? It must be
Ronnie. Tap, tap, tap. Ronnie mustn't come in. Ronnie mustn't find
her and Hector alone together.
The glass darkled. Behind the glass Aliette could see Hector's face
blur and blur. The face vanished. She was alone, alone in Hector's
study. She was cold, desperately cold through all her limbs.
Tap, tap, tap. She heard a voice, a human voice: "Mr. Cavendish, Mr.
Cavendish. Are you there, Mr. Cavendish? You're wanted on the
'phone, Mr. Cavendish."

CHAPTER XXIV

1
Abruptly, as the strung ball snaps back to its wooden cup, Aliette's
soul returned to its body.
Waking, she knew that she had fallen asleep by the open window;
that somebody was knocking on the outer door of the flat,
somebody who called insistently, "Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Cavendish. I've
a message for you, Mr. Cavendish."
Her heart thumping, her head still muzzy with dreams, Aliette ran
across the sitting-room, out into the hall; unchained, unlatched the
door. The night-porter stood before her. His shirt was open at the
neck; she could see the veins in his throat throb to his words: "Is
your husband awake, madam? He's wanted on the telephone. His
mother's house. It's very urgent."
"Mr. Cavendish is asleep." Aliette's heart still thumped, but she spoke
quietly enough. "I'll go and wake him. Wait here, please."
She darted back to the door of their bedroom; knocked; opened.
The light by the bed still burned, showing her lover's face just
roused from the pillow.
"Am I wanted?" he asked.
"Yes, dear." Aliette controlled her nerves. "Bruton Street's asking for
you on the telephone. I'm afraid your mother's been taken ill."
"I'll be down in a second." He was out of bed and into his dressing-
gown before she could stop him. She thought, "If it's bad news, he'll
have to go to Bruton Street. He'll have to get dressed." She said,
"You'd better get some clothes on. I'll go down and find out exactly
what's the matter."
After a second's hesitation, he decided, "You're right"; and made for
his dressing-room. Aliette went back to the outer door. The night-
porter still waited. She asked him, "Who telephoned?"

"A servant, I think."
"Did she say why she wanted to speak to my husband?"
"No. Only that it was very urgent."
"Is the lift still working?"
"Yes, madam."
"Then I'll come down immediately."
Aliette's mind, as she followed the slippered man along the cold
stone corridor to the lift-shaft, worked rapidly. If Julia Cavendish had
been taken ill--and obviously Julia Cavendish must have been taken
ill--the sooner she and Ronnie got to Bruton Street the better.
She asked the porter, "What's the time?"
He told her, "Three o'clock."
"Can you get me a taxi?"
"I'll do my best, madam."
The lift was working badly. The slowness fretted her imagination.
Suppose Julia Cavendish were--more than ill; suppose she were--
dead?
At last they reached the ground-floor. The night porter, flinging back
the iron gates, let her out and made for the street. Aliette, running
to the telephone-box, picked up the receiver.
"I want to speak to Mr. Cavendish, Mr. Ronald Cavendish. Is that Mr.
Cavendish?" Kate's voice sounded stupid, excitable, over the wire.
"No, it's Mrs. Cavendish. Is that Kate?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
"Mr. Cavendish will be down in a minute. What's the matter?"
"Mrs. Cavendish has been taken ill. She's very bad indeed. She told
us to telephone for Mr. Ronnie."
"You telephoned for a doctor?"

"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. We did that first thing. But Sir Heron's out of
town."
"Then you should have telephoned to another doctor."
"We never thought of that." Obviously the maid had lost her head.
"We thought we'd better telephone Mr. Ronnie first. That's what she
said we was to do."
"Wait." Aliette thought swiftly. "Isn't there a doctor in Bruton
Street?"
"Oh yes, Mrs. Ronnie. Dr. Redbank."
"You'd better send for him immediately. Don't waste time
telephoning. Go yourself. . . . And, Kate, you can tell Mrs. Cavendish
that Mr. Ronald and myself will be round in less than half an hour.
Can you give me any idea what's the matter with Mrs. Cavendish?"
"I don't know, Mrs. Ronnie, but Smithers says she's very bad indeed.
Smithers says she woke up with her mouth full of blood. Smithers
says she doesn't know how she managed to ring her bell----"
The parlor-maid would have gone on talking, but Aliette cut her
short with a curt: "You're to go and fetch the doctor, Kate. You're to
go and fetch him at once. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Mrs. Ronnie."
Aliette hung up the receiver; turned to find Ronnie, apparently full
dressed, at her side; explained things to him in three terse
sentences; saw his face blanch; ran for the lift; swung-to the lift-
gate; pressed the automatic button; reached her own floor, her own
flat; twitched a fur coat from its peg; remembered something Mollie
had once told her about hemorrhages; darted into the kitchen;
snatched what she wanted from the refrigerator; wrapped a dish-
cloth about it; darted back to the lift.
Downstairs, Ronnie waited impatiently. "The taxi's here," he said.
They leaped into the taxi.

2
The shock of unexpected ill-news held both lovers rigid, speechless,
as their vehicle, an old one, rattled and bumped over Putney Bridge;
and when at last Aliette spoke it was of those trivial things with
which human beings console themselves against the threat of
disaster. "How on earth did you manage to get dressed so quickly?"
"The old school trick." Ronnie masked his anxiety with the
semblance of a laugh. "Trousers and an overcoat." But sheer anxiety
forced the next words to his lips. "What do you think can have
happened?"
"From what Kate said, it sounded as though your mother had had a
hemorrhage."
"A hemorrhage," repeated Ronnie. And then, under his breath, as
though trying to convince himself, "But she can't have had a
hemorrhage."
The taxi rattled on down a gray and empty King's Road, bringing
back to Aliette's mind the memory of that other drive she had taken
in vision-land.
"What's that?" asked Ronnie suddenly, pointing to the dish-cloth at
her feet.
"Ice. There's just a chance they won't have any."
They swung out of King's Road into Sloane Street. Under the lights
of Knightsbridge, Ronnie, looking sideways at his mate, marveled at
the composure of her face; marveled that her brain should have
acted so swiftly in crisis. His own brain felt impotent, dumb. His
heart hung like a nodule of ice in his breast. The nodule of ice sank
into his bowels, turning his bowels to water. The Wixton imagination
pictured his mother helpless, in agony. He thought, "Suppose we're
too late. My God, suppose we're too late."

"I don't expect there's any immediate danger." Aliette, fighting for
her own composure, guessed the unspoken thought in her lover's
mind. "Servants always exaggerate."
Ronnie wrenched down the window, leaned out. "Hurry," he called to
the driver, "hurry." The old taxi rattled to speed. Hyde Park corner
flashed by--Piccadilly.
"Don't worry, dear," Aliette managed to whisper. "The doctor will be
there by now."
Ronnie sat silent. It seemed as though, for the moment, he had
forgotten her presence. Nor could she be angry with him for that
forgetting. "His mother," she thought; "his mother!"
At last they made Bruton Street. Outside the open front door, waiting
for them, stood Kate. Kate, the immaculate cap-and-aproned Kate,
was in tears. "Oh, Mr. Ronnie," she sobbed, "I'm so glad you've
come. I'm so glad you've come."
"Doctor here?" Julia Cavendish's son, usually so affable with
servants, snapped out his question as though he had been speaking
to a defaulter.
"Yes, Mr. Ronnie. I fetched him myself. He's with your mother now.
He wants cook to go out and get some ice, but cook don't know,"
the domestically precise English vanished under stress of emergency,
"where to get no ice."
"Lucky you thought of bringing some." Abruptly, rudely almost,
Ronnie snatched the dish-cloth from Aliette's hand; and she watched
him disappear, three at a bound, up the green-carpeted stairs.
"Kate," she said quietly, "tell the taxi-driver to stop his engine and
wait. We may want him for something."

3
Ronnie, a little out of breath, found himself, on the second landing,
confronted at the closed door of his mother's bedroom by his
mother's woman, Smithers. Smithers was still in her dressing-gown--
her hair disheveled, but her black eyes unpanicked.
"You can't go in, sir. The doctor's with her."
"I've got the ice." He made to push past the woman, but she put a
hand on his arm.
"I'll take it to him, sir. Your mother said you wasn't to go in."
"Why not?"
"Because of the blood. After the doctor came, she said you wasn't to
see her till I'd put clean sheets on the bed. It's a hemorrhage, sir."
"I know. Let me go in." Again Ronnie tried to push past the woman.
Again she restrained him. Her black eyes seemed strangely hostile,
resolute.
"It's a hemorrhage," she repeated fiercely, "and it's her own fault.
Time and again I've told her she ought to heed what Sir Heron said.
But she wouldn't. She wouldn't give in." Then, accusingly, "Because
she didn't want you and Mrs. Ronnie to know."
"Know what?"
"That she had the consumption."
"Consumption!" The word struck Ronnie like the lash of a whip. He
saw accusation--an accusation of selfishness--in the woman's hostile
eyes. Those eyes knew his whole story. He wanted to say to them:
"We hadn't an idea. Honestly, we hadn't the slightest idea." Sir
Heron Baynet's reported diagnosis recurred to his mind. "She isn't ill,
but she has a tendency to illness." Either the specialist had made a
mistake, or else---- He realized, with a heart-rending clarity, that

Julia must have purposely concealed her danger, because--because
of his own troubles.
The bedroom door opened noiselessly, and a clean-shaven
intellectual face inspected him through gold-rimmed glasses.
"Are you the patient's son?" asked Dr. Redbank; and then, seeing
the dish-cloth in Ronnie's hand, "Is that the ice?"
"Yes. Can I come in?"
"If you like. But please understand she mustn't talk."
Ronnie followed the man into the bedroom, and closed the door
quietly behind him.
Save for the glow of the bed-lamp, the room was in darkness.
Making his way round the foot of the bed, Julia's son saw, in the
light of that one lamp--the shade of it was crimson, crimson as those
telltale marks on his mother's pillow--his mother's face.
The face lay on the stained pillow, pallid, motionless, the hair awry,
the mouth half-open as though in pain. On the chin and on the half-
open lips, blood clots showed like brown stains. But the blue eyes
were wide open. Motionless in their sockets, they recognized him.
Stooping down, Ronnie saw that Julia would have spoken.
Remembering the doctor's warning, he said: "You're not to talk,
mater. I'm here. Aliette's here. It's quite all right." It seemed to him
as though the blue eyes understood. They closed wearily; and a
sigh, almost a sigh of relief, came through the half-opened lips. He
thought, standing there by the bedside: "I am powerless. Powerless
to help. I can do nothing. Nothing. Why doesn't the doctor do
something? Why did he want that ice?"
Then, glancing toward the shadowy fireplace, Ronnie saw the doctor
at work; heard the faint smash-smash of the poker handle on ice in
a cloth. The doctor came to the bedside. He felt the doctor's hand
on his arm; heard his authoritative whisper, "Hold this for me,
please"; and found himself grasping a soap-basin.

The soap-basin was full of crushed ice, of the ice Aliette had
remembered to bring. The doctor had been crushing the ice. Now he
was feeding the ice to his patient. Piece by little piece he fed it--fed
it between those half-open lips.
Through interminable minutes Ronnie, holding the soap-basin,
watched. At last the doctor said: "One more piece, Mrs. Cavendish,
just one more piece. It'll do you good." His mother tried to shake her
head in refusal, but Dr. Redbank insisted. "There, that will do."
Somehow Julia's son knew her immediate danger over. For the first
time he could hear her breathing. Faint, irregular breathing. "She's
asleep, isn't she?" he whispered, looking down at the closed eyes.
But at that, the eyes opened again. His mother seemed to be
searching--searching for him about the darkness of the room. He
bent over her, and it appeared to him that her pupils moved. "Is
there anything you want, mater?" he asked, forgetful of the doctor's
warning. The eyes turned in their sockets.
Following their glance, Ronnie saw, beside the bed-lamp, a
handkerchief--a stained handkerchief. Scarcely conscious of his
action, he fumbled in the pocket of the overcoat he was still
wearing, found his own handkerchief, dipped it in the soap-basin,
and wiped the blood-clots from his mother's lips. Faintly, the lips
murmured: "Smithers--want Smithers--want clean sheets."
"Please don't talk, Mrs. Cavendish," interrupted the doctor's voice.
"You're all right now, mater." Ronnie grasped the situation. "Quite all
right. I know exactly what you want done. I'll tell Smithers for you."
"She'd like her maid," he whispered to the doctor. "She'd like clean
pillow-cases."
"Of course she would." The answer sounded loud, almost cheerful.
"Of course, she'd like clean pillow-cases. But not for another half-
hour, Mrs. Cavendish. I want you to rest. I must insist on your
resting."
Julia's eyes closed.

"We shall have to have a hospital-nurse," whispered Dr. Redbank. "If
you'll stay with her I'll go and telephone for one." He tiptoed from
the room, leaving mother and son alone.
For a long time, hours as it seemed, Ronnie stood watchful. His
mother must be asleep--safe--out of pain. A great rush of gratitude,
gratitude to some unknown deity, overwhelmed him. Quietly he drew
a chair to the bedside. Quietly he sat down. But the faint noise
disturbed the woman on the bed. Her eyelids fluttered; and she tried
to speak--indistinctly, incoherently, choking on each word.
"Ronnie,"--her first thoughts, as always, were for him--"did I--
frighten--you?"
"Mater," he implored, "please don't try and talk. If there's anything
you want, just look at it, and I'll get it for you.''
"Ice," she choked, "more ice."
Every movement of her lips frightened him, but he managed to keep
fear out of his voice.
"Good for you. I'll get it."
He took the basin of ice from the bed-table, and fed it to her bit by
bit, slowly, as Dr. Redbank had done.
The touch of her lips on his fingers almost unnerved him. The lips
were so weak, so loving, so piteously grateful as--piece by piece--
they sucked down the melting pellets. Controlling himself for her
sake, Ronnie realized a little of the self-control, of the unselfishness
which had so long locked those weak lips from revealing their own
danger. And again, at that realization, he felt his heart melting, even
as the ice melted.
"Good man!" It was the doctor--whispering. "She can't have too
much of that. I've sent your taxi for the nurse. It's her first
hemorrhage, I suppose?"
"Yes--as far as I know."

"H'm. I thought so. Frightening things, hemorrhages. But there's no
cause for immediate alarm. I'll wait till the nurse comes, and give
her a second injection. You'd better go down and look after your
wife."
On the landing, Smithers still waited. "Is she better, sir?" asked
Smithers.
"Much better, Smithers. She's out of danger. But you can't go in yet."
Tiptoeing downstairs, Ronald Cavendish knew that the woman was
watching him--blaming him. Half-way down, he hesitated. "I can't
face Alie," he thought. "I can't face Alie." Then he turned, tiptoed
upstairs again.
Together, in silence, the son and the servant waited outside the
mother's door.

4
Aliette, too, waited--waited downstairs in the dining-room where
Kate had insisted on lighting a fire for her--waited and waited while
the slow half-hours went by. She felt weary; but there was no sleep
in her weariness. Her ears, keyed to acutest tension, magnified
every whisper in the house of illness; Dr. Redbank's feet in the hall,
the jar of the front door, the taxi chugging away, the faint creak of
carpeted stairs, the fainter clink of crockery in the basement.
At four o'clock Kate came in with a pot of coffee; at half-past,
Smithers to ask if the nurse had arrived. Aliette suffered both maids
to go without question. In that well-ordered home she felt herself
the useless stranger. Her muscles yearned to be of use, to be doing
something, anything, for Julia. "I owe her so much," she thought;
"such a debt of gratitude."
The impotence of her muscles stung her mind. Her mind ached with
memories, memories of Julia, of her brusk kindliness, of her
courage. "I wonder if she knew," thought Aliette. And at that,
painfully, her mind conjured up the "scene" she had made--Julia
comforting her--Julia's unspoken challenge--her own promise. "She
knew then," thought Aliette. "She must have known. That was why
she wanted to be certain--of me."
At last the nurse arrived. At last Ronnie, tired out, white-faced, and
unshaven, left his post on the landing and joined her.
She asked him, "How is she?"
"Better. Much better. She's asleep."
"Isn't there anything I can do?"
"No, dear, nothing." His voice seemed curiously toneless, and after
two or three nervous puffs at a cigarette he again went upstairs.

Another half-hour went by. Already Aliette could see hints of dawn
behind the dining-room curtains. Now, knowing danger averted, her
mind reacted. She wanted desperately to sleep. Her eyes closed
wearily. But her ears were still keen to sound. She heard the doctor's
feet and Ronnie's creep cautiously downstairs, heard their whispered
colloquy at the dining-room door, woke from her brief doze before
they could open it.
"I do hope you haven't been frightened." Dr. Redbank smiled
professionally at the pale pretty woman by the fireside. "I hear we
have to thank your thoughtfulness for the ice. Most useful it was,
too. I have assured your husband that there is no cause for
immediate alarm."
"You're sure, doctor?"
"Quite sure. However, as I understand that your mother-in-law's
regular attendant is away, I purpose looking in tomorrow, or rather
this morning, at about half-past ten. Meanwhile, you must keep her
quiet; and, of course, no solid food." He shook hands with her; and
went out, accompanied by Ronnie. Aliette, still sleepy, heard the
front door close gently behind him.
"Good man, that," said Ronnie, returning. He sat down heavily at the
table, and tried to light himself another cigarette. But his hands
trembled. The smoke seemed to stifle him.
"Won't you have some coffee?" she asked, suddenly wide awake,
and as suddenly aware of the misery in his eyes.
"Thanks dear, not yet."
Rising, she laid a hand on his arm.
"Man," she ventured, "was it very terrible?"
"Dreadful." His voice, usually so controlled, shook on the word,
jangling her overwrought nerves to breaking strain. "She's dying.
Dying."
"But the doctor said----"

"Never mind the doctor. I know. And Alie," a sob tore at his
diaphragm, "it's my fault."
"Your fault?" Awfully, she guessed his meaning.
"Yes."
Her hand dropped from his arm, and they stared at one another in
silence.
"Tell me," she said at last.
"No. Not now. Not yet." The remoteness of his eyes frightened her.
"I'd rather know," she pleaded; and again, "Why is it your fault?
How can it be your fault?"
"I'd rather not tell you." Once more she caught that frightening
remoteness in his eyes--in his very voice. Then, awfully, his reserve
broke. "She knew all the time, Alie."
"Knew what?" There was no need for her question.
"That she had consumption. That her only hope was to go away. She
only stayed on in London for--for," the words choked in his throat,
"my sake."
Minutes passed. Through the chinks in the curtains Aliette could see
dawn growing and growing. Her mouth ached to comfort him; but
she dared not speak. Her eyes ached for tears; but she dared not
shed a tear. Superstition tortured her mind--it seemed to her as
though, Biblically, their sin had found them out. Then resolutely,
remembering the promise sealed by her own lips to the dying, she
put superstition from her.
"Not your fault," she said at last. "Not even our fault. Ronnie--
believe me--even if she did know that she--that she was very ill--she
knew that you and I loved her, that we couldn't, either of us, do
without her. She's--she's not going to die. Not with us, both of us, to
nurse her--to look after her."
"Alie--you--you believe there's a chance?" He rose from the table;
and she saw that the remoteness had gone from his eyes.

"Chance!" she smiled at him. "Chance! It's not a question of chance,
man. We'll make her get well."
And with those words, Aliette knew that she had paid a little of her
debt to them both.

CHAPTER XXV

1
Miraculously, as it seemed to her comforted son, death stayed its
hand from Julia Cavendish.
For three days and nights of morphia she drowsed away the effects
of that first hemorrhage. Heron Baynet, returning hot-foot to Harley
Street on his secretary's telegram, insisted--despite the fact that he
was a consultant--on ousting Dr. Redbank; on taking over the entire
conduct of the case in person.
A year ago the little keen scientist of the lined face, the fine
forehead, and the shining eye-glasses had suspected, warned,
begged his distinguished patient to let him radiograph her lungs;--
mentioned the possibility of a diabetic complication--advised
Switzerland. Now perhaps his advice, and the one slender chance of
life it offered, would be taken.
"How she tricked me!" he used to ruminate, looking down at the
tired face on the smooth pillow. "How she fought me!" For although
in his heart Sir Heron both pitied and admired this woman whose
stubbornness and stamina had so long eluded his aid, it gave him a
certain satisfaction, not altogether professional, to feel that she
would now be completely in his power. Yet--would she be completely
in his power? Already, on the fourth day of her illness, he sensed the
stubbornness and the false stamina of stubbornness renewing
themselves in her; already he perceived that his medical fight would
be two-fold--against his patient as well as against her disease.
"I suppose you're pleased," she managed to stammer. "You warned
me that this might happen if I refused to take your advice." And
after he had given her the morphia injection, "The less I have of that
stuff, the better. If I'm going to die, I'd rather die with my brain
clear."

"You're not going to die yet awhile," retorted the specialist. "Not if
you refrain from talking, lie perfectly still, and get away into the
country as soon as you're fit to be moved."
Julia smiled up at him without moving her head. "I congratulate you
on your bedside manner, Sir Heron, but you needn't be professional
with me. My case is hopeless. It always has been hopeless. You
haven't forgotten our compact, I hope? You won't tell my son or my
son's wife more than is absolutely necessary?"
"Of course I won't tell your son," he humored her; "not if you'll
consent to go to sleep."
"But I don't want to go to sleep."
"Oh yes, you do. Besides, if you go on talking, you'll have another
hemorrhage."
That seemed to frighten her. "Very well," she said, closing her eyes,
for already the morphia was pouring wave on wave of lassitude
through her body. "Very well, I won't talk. Do you think you can
manage to keep me alive for six months? It's rather important. I've
got work to do."
Thinking her brain already under the influence of the drug, he
humored her again. "We'll see about that in the morning. Meanwhile
I shouldn't worry. Your daughter-in-law and your secretary between
them will be able to manage quite well until you're up and about
again."
"It isn't that sort of work," began Julia Cavendish; and pretended to
fall asleep.
This pretense of falling asleep was a trick, learned from the drug.
One had only, Julia discovered, to pretend sleep, and nurse or doctor
left one entirely alone. Alone with one's dreams. Very curious, very
pleasant dreams hers were, too. All about a book. A book called--
Now what had she intended to call the book?--"Man's--Man's--Man's
Law." Yes--that was the title. If only--one took--enough morphia--
one could write--like--like de Quincey.

"I mustn't let them give me too much, though," thought Julia; and
fell really asleep.

2
For Aliette those first four days of her "mother-in-law's" illness were
almost happy. At Julia's particular request, both lovers had
abandoned the "ridiculous flat," to take up their abode in Bruton
Street; and the sense of self-sacrifice--for it was a sacrifice to
abandon the little home where she had been so safe and face the
inevitable difficulties of her anomalous position in Julia's household--
seemed yet another chance of repaying her debt.
Work (she found enormously to do) saved her from overmuch
introspection. Julia, the feudalist, had never learned domestic
decentralization; her daily secretary, Mrs. Sanderson, a gray-haired
gentlewoman with tortoise-shell spectacles and a diffidence which
only just avoided crass stupidity, had become a typewriter-thumping
automaton; her cook was a mere obedient preparer of ordered
meals, and even Kate seemed incapable of performing the simplest
household duty on her own initiative. Resultantly there devolved on
Aliette, seated of a morning in the novelist's work-room, the
manifold activities of a strenuous celebrity, a housekeeper, a woman
of property, and an information bureau. For, of course, everybody
wanted information about the celebrity's health.
The telephone and the telegrams were a curse. The press
association rang, apologetically, twice a day. The Northcliffe press,
commandingly, once. Julia's American publishers cabled almost
hourly; and hourly, scandal for the moment forgotten, one or other
of her private acquaintances quested for news of her. Even Dot
Fancourt rallied gallantly to the receiver. While as for the three other
sisters Wixton and their appanages, one would have imagined them
afflicted to the verge of suicide.
Of an evening, Ronnie helped Aliette to deal with the "family"; but
by day she had to cope with them single-handed. The "family" were
never satisfied with Mrs. Sanderson's report; the "family" demanded

to speak with the hospital nurse; the "family," barred by Sir Heron's
instructions from visiting, demanded to speak with Sir Heron himself.
Soon Aliette began to recognize their voices--Sir John Bentham,
courteous if a little aloof; Lady Clementina, full-throated and fussy;
May Robinson, piteous and protestant out of the depths of St. John's
Wood; Alice Edwards, distantly jovial on the trunk-line from
Cheltenham. "How they must be hating me," Aliette used to think.
On the afternoon of the fifth day, Julia--having coaxed permission
from a reluctant nurse--sent down word that her "daughter-in-law"
was to come up.
"You won't stay with her long, will you, ma'am?" said Smithers,
permanently on guard at the bedroom door. (Mysteriously, since
Aliette had moved to Bruton Street, the social sense of the basement
had substituted "ma'am" for Mrs. Ronnie.) "The doctor says the less
she talks, the better."
Aliette passed into the bedroom; and heard a weak voice say, "Leave
us alone please, nurse."
Nurse--a pleasant-faced creature very much impressed at finding
herself in charge of so literary an invalid--made her exit to a stiff
rustle of starched linen. Aliette moved across to the bedside.
Sunshine illuminated the elegance of the room, slanting down in
dust-motes from the three open windows on to the écru pile carpet.
Among Julia's cut-glass toilet-ware on the porphyry Empire wash-
table showed none of the paraphernalia of sickness. The pillow-
propped figure on the low mahogany and gold bedstead seemed, to
the visitor, rather that of a resting than of a dying woman. A frilled
boudoir-cap hid Julia's hair; a padded bed-jacket of crimson silk
swathed her shoulders.
"I suppose I gave you all a rare fright," she said, thinking how well
she had staged the little scene.
"We were rather frightened." Aliette took a chair, obviously arranged
for her, at the bedside; and began to talk aimlessly of this and that.

But Julia soon interrupted the aimless phrases. "Are my servants
behaving themselves?" she asked. "Are they making you and Ronnie
really comfortable? I told Smithers to maid you. I hope she's been
doing it properly."
"Beautifully," prevaricated Aliette.
"You're sure you wouldn't rather have your own maid? You could
shut up the flat easily enough. You don't mind coming to live with
me, do you? It's," the weak voice betrayed the first sign of emotion,
"it's bound to be a little difficult for you, but I'm not quite up to
running things myself yet. And Mrs. Sanderson is a fool."
"Of course I don't mind. It's wonderful to feel that I can be of some
use at last."
Aliette did her best to prevent the patient from talking; but Julia
Cavendish, feudalist, wanted to know a thousand domestic details.
Whether cook was being economical? Whether the new kitchen-maid
promised to be a success? If Mrs. Sanderson had remembered to
take carbon-copies of important correspondence? Whether the
"family" had been very troublesome?
"Families are bad enough when one's well. They're impossible in
illness," pronounced Julia. "I'm always glad my husband died
abroad. One day I must tell you about Ronnie's father." She relapsed
into silence, closing her eyes; and Aliette thought she had fallen
asleep. But in a moment the eyes opened again. "Talking of families,
my dear, how is your sister?"
"Mollie? Oh, Mollie's gone back to Devonshire."
"Is she engaged to young Wilberforce?"
"No. I don't think so."
"What a pity!"
The nurse, tapping discreetly, announced it "time for Mrs.
Cavendish's medicine"; and the invalid closed the interview with a

weak, "If the family call, for heaven's sake keep them out of my
room."

3
On the seventh day after the hemorrhage, Aliette's ordeal at the
hands of the Wixton family began.
Sir John and his lady, dissatisfied with the meager information
afforded them on the telephone, called in person to insist upon
seeing "some one in authority." But Julia's bell had rung four times
during the night, and nurse was lying down.
"Surely there's a day-nurse?" fussed Clementina.
"No, m'lady. Only Mrs. Ronnie, m'lady." Kate, erect and correct at the
front door, watched the pair of them whisper together; heard them
decide after some hesitation that they would like to see "Mrs. Ronald
Cavendish"; and showed them upstairs into the drawing-room.
Rising to receive her guests, Aliette was humorously aware of Sir
John's discomfort. She could almost read behind his keen brown
eyes the thought, "So this is the little lady there's been all the
trouble about, is it? Rather good-looking. I wonder what the deuce
one ought to call her, Mrs. Cavendish or Mrs. Brunton?"
"How do you do--er--how do you do?" he compromised. "And how is
your illustrious patient? I'm sure it's most kind of you to look after
my sister-in-law. Very kind indeed."
But there was little compromise about the breasted Clementina. Her
greeting, her scrutiny, her omission to shake hands, were definitely
hostile. In attitude she resembled nothing so much as a virtuous
English lady visiting the questionable quarter of Cairo. Aliette, her
sense of humor fighting against her resentment, invited the pair of
them to sit down, and offered propitiatory tea.
"Please don't trouble," retorted the female of the species Bentham.
"We've had tea. And besides, we wouldn't think of disturbing you. As
a matter of fact, it was my husband's idea that we should look in for

a moment to get first-hand news about dear Julia. In a few days, I
presume, we shall be able to see her ourselves."
That "dear Julia" made Aliette wholly resentful. "Ronnie's mother,"
she began stiffly, observing, not without a certain malicious
satisfaction, how Lady Bentham writhed at the phrase, "is going on
as well as we can possibly expect. But I'm afraid it will be some time
before Sir Heron will allow her to receive visitors."
"But surely her sister----" protested Sir John.
"Not even her sister, I'm afraid," decided Aliette; and Julia, informed
of the Bentham defeat, chuckled audibly.
But the interview, for all Julia's chuckles, left its scar on Aliette's
sensitive pride--as did her talk with May Robinson.
The tea-broker's scrawny widow called two days later in her 1908
Panhard; accepted tea, and stayed for a full three quarters of an
hour gossiping about her sister's symptoms. May, far from being
outwardly hostile, positively beamed with that particular brand of
offensive condescension which only those whose lives are devoted to
good works know how to assume toward "fallen sisters." With her
every non-committal word, the untempted widow contrived to
suggest, "Considering what a thoroughly bad woman you must be, I
think it remarkable, entirely remarkable and praiseworthy, not to say
Christian of you, to have given up your fast life so as to look after
my poor dear sister in her illness." Luckily for May, Paul Flower
arrived just in time to prevent Aliette from losing her temper!
Alice Edwards's visit, however--for reasons that can be imagined,
she did not bring her daughter with her--passed off easily enough. "I
never was any good in a sick-room," said the Anglo-Indian lady
brightly.
Followed, to Aliette's surprise, the admiral, who, calling to leave
formal cards, heard that she was at home and insisted upon seeing
her. The sailor only stayed his Victorian quarter of an hour;
managed, however, although Aliette did her best to restrain him, to
thrust a good Georgian foot into the conversational plate with his

"That boy of mine's putting you in a rotten position, me dear. But it
ain't my fault."
"Billy," Aliette, seeing his sorrowful face, could not refrain from
laughing, "you've got no tact. Of course I know it isn't your fault.
I've never really thanked you for what you tried to do for me."
"Me dear," retorted the admiral, "it's no laughing matter. Honestly,
I'm sorry I ever sired the fellow. But never you mind; just you keep
your courage up, and it'll all come out right in the long run."
"I'm keeping my courage up all right," said Aliette, still laughing; for,
somehow or other, Julia's illness had made her own affairs seem
rather petty.

4
After ten days of bed, the patient insisted on seeing Mrs. Sanderson.
"Sir Heron advises a few months in the country," she told that
secretarial automaton. "I shall take a furnished house; the bigger
the better. You'd better write to Hampton's and ask for particulars. It
mustn't be more than forty miles from town, so that my son can run
down for week-ends. You'll have to come with me, and I shall take
all the servants."
"Sir Heron says we must humor her," said Aliette, consulting Ronnie
over dinner. "He says that if she wants a big house, she must have a
big house. Nurse seems to think Sussex would be the best place."
"But, Alie, is she really fit to be moved?"
"Sir Heron says he wouldn't risk it with any one else, but that with
her constitution it's the best thing we can do."
Ronnie agreed. His mother's recovery appeared so rapid, her good
spirits were so infectious, that he had already persuaded himself of
her ultimate cure. Of the diabetic complication, definitely diagnosed
at last, neither he nor Aliette was informed, nurse and specialist
being alike constrained to secrecy by a patient whose brain had
begun to function so masterfully, even under the reduced doses of
morphia, that they were afraid to cross her will.
For now that the hemorrhage had eliminated all possibility of self-
deception from her imagination; now that she realized--despite Sir
Heron's confident reassurances--how at the best she could only live
two years, at the worst a bare six months, the plan, the final plan for
Aliette's release, had taken concrete shape in Julia's brain.
Wilberforce's revelations about the Carrington case had stuck in her
memory. Carrington, according to Wilberforce, had been broken by
the press. She, Julia, wielded a more enduring weapon.

It was strange, very strange, to lie there, on one's own bed,
surrounded by one's own cherished furniture; and knowing one's self
doomed, yet know one's self capable of wielding a weapon--could
one but forge it--which would outlast death itself. Yet could she, an
ill woman, a woman who had never known the financial need for
working swiftly, hope to forge her weapon, her sword of the written
word, within six months? "Yes," she decided, ruminating one late
afternoon behind the warm darkness of closed eyelids, "yes, it can
just be done."
There and then she wanted to begin. Then and there, opening her
eyes, she attempted to untuck the bedclothes. But her arms, weak,
almost powerless, refused their task. Even as she moved them, the
ghost of a remembered pain stabbed at her left lung; and,
frightened by remembrance of past agony, she desisted. "Not yet,"
she thought, "not yet. I must rest for another week, perhaps for
another fortnight. Fresh air might cure these lungs of mine, and
make me well again. What a fool I am to deceive myself! That must
be the consumption. Consumption always cheats its victims with the
hope of life."
And she fell to remembering Aubrey Beardsley, to comparing herself
with him, to conjuring up mental pictures of his "handkerchief-
parties," as he used to call them, when he would break off in the
midst of some gay anecdote, rush--silk pressed to mouth--from the
room, and return, gayer than ever, to carry on the game of make-
believe with his cronies. "Brave!" mused Julia, "but I mustn't be
brave like that. For Ronnie's sake I must husband every ounce of my
strength. Above all, I must find a house in the country."
The taking of that country-house, even though it had to be
accomplished by proxy, served in no small way to distract her mind
from gloomier thoughts. Mrs. Sanderson's inquiry had brought many
answers, and Julia used to sit up in bed of a morning, her secretary
in attendance, buff "particulars" from the house-agent's littered like
cards on the heavily embroidered eiderdown. These perused, she
would send for Aliette. "Take a car," she used to say. "Charge it to

my account. The brougham's too slow for long journeys. This lot,"
handing over a packet of slips, "look as though they might do. All
the rest are hopeless."
For the best part of a week, Aliette motored about the southern
counties. April was almost May; the blossomed countryside a dream
of green and white beauty. Rushing lonely through the sunlit air,
hedges, fields, and orchards streaming by, it seemed impossible that
any breathing creature should be near to death. Her mood expanded
to the expanding summer, so that she forgot her personal troubles,
too, in the sheer fun of her quest, and enjoyed every minute of it,
from the setting-out of midday to the evening consultations with her
"mother-in-law" and Ronnie about the places she had seen.
Finally, their choice narrowed itself down to two places--one, a
modern mansion perched high on the slopes that overlook Reigate
and Dorking; the other, an old-fashioned brown stone house roofed
with great slabs of Sussex slate, midway between Horsham and the
sea.
"Let it be Sussex," decided Julia; and to Daffadillies, as the brown
stone house called itself, some fortnight later, they went.

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Theology And Philosophy Faith And Reason Oliver D Crisp Gavin Dcosta Mervyn Davies Peter Hampson Editors

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