Christian Philosophy: Greek, Medieval, and Contemporary Reflections.

Meconi, David Vincent ; GUNN, ALBERT E.

SWEENEY, Leo. Christian Philosophy: Greek, Medieval, and Contemporary Reflections. New York: Peter Lang, 1997. xxxviii + 714 pp. Cloth, $55.95--Bringing decades of expertise to his examination of many diverse issues in the history of philosophy, Sweeney begins with Emil Brehier's criticism that "Christian" and "philosophy" are mutually exclusive in both content and method. Sweeney places himself firmly in the middle of this century's Thomistic renewal by arguing that no philosophy is absolutely free from belief and, as such, philosophy is only enriched in serving revealed truth. Sweeney, with Maritain and others, accordingly reads all of Greek philosophy as preparing the way for Christian revelation. Thus the first of five parts, Christian Philosophy: Fact or Fiction (pp. 3-71), meets Brehier's challenge by examining not only the possibility but the richness of Christian philosophy. Outstanding here is Sweeney's treatment of the otherwise neglected Collationes of Bonaventure and his understanding of pagan philosophy.

Part 2, Neoplatonism and Early Latin Authors (pp. 75-275), treats questions of the self, Augustine and Gregory of Nyssa on God, as well as the contributions Plato, Aristotle, Mani, Plotinus, and Boethius have made to our understanding of the individual. This section contains a very valuable essay examining Augustine's Neoplatonism as it struggled to accept an orthodox Christology.

The third part, Medieval Scholastics (pp. 279-438), contains Sweeney's excellent Collier's Encyclopedia entry on the five periods of Scholasticism. Here are also chapters dedicated to the epistemology of Guerric of St. Quentin, esse in Albert the Great's texts on creation, and idealis in the thought of Thomas. The final essay here characterizes much of Sweeney's work: How the question, "What does it mean to be real, to have worth, perfection, and value?" is answered, sets any philosopher's project. Thus for Plotinus, "to be real" is "to be one," determining his definition of God as complete unity disallowing any real perfection, whereas Aquinas's metaphysics of esse allows him to understand God as subsistent actuality containing all that is.

Existence and Existentialism (pp. 441-599) begins with a helpful chronology tracing the esse/essence distinction throughout Aquinas's earlier writings. Thomas's affirmation of esse as really distinct has led to various results: understood to be mysterious and thus philosophically meaningless, this affirmation of esse has resulted in the agnosticism of Milton Munitz; understood to be ultimately real, the primacy of esse has also resulted in the theism of Gabriel Marcel and the "authentic existentialism" of Jacques Maritain.

Further Contemporaries and Aquinas (pp. 603-98) first treats Whitehead's cosmology as a "monism of creativity" and concludes by showing how aspects of Aquinas's thought could help remedy some of today's philosophical ills. The patients Sweeney has in mind here are, again, Whitehead and various process theologians, atheistic existentialists, as well as Derrida and his deconstructionalist following.

Sweeney's latest work obviously is not a systematic treatment of Christian Philosophy, but rather a collection of essays showing the implications of that particular marriage. The most welcomed pieces are those treating Aquinas and Augustine, especially those showing the influences of Mani and Plotinus upon Augustine's thought. Although a majority of these essays have been published elsewhere before, as a collection they would prove a valuable resource for any advanced reader interested in medieval thought in particular, or the relationship of Christianity to the history of philosophy in general.

David Vincent Meconi, S. J., Xavier University.