James V. Schall, 'Returning to the Real', in: The University Bookman, Vol. 45, No. 1, 2007.

Margetekst
Henri de Lubac, the great French Jesuit theologian, had a collection of nineteen letters that he had received from the French historian of philosophy Étienne Gilson (Letters of Étienne Gilson to Henri de Lubac [Ignatius, 1988]). After Gilson’s death, September 20, 1978, de Lubac collected the letters and made his own comments on them, all of which are contained in the book.

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Gilson wrote the first of these letters on July 8, 1956, from 6, rue Collet, Vermenton, Yonne, his home. These letters eventually mention most of the great thinkers of modern philosophy and Thomism. The first letter to de Lubac is on the occasion of his (Gilson’s) reading of de Lubac’s book, Sur les chemins de Dieu. The book, Gilson remarks, “is such a pleasure that I cannot keep from writing to tell you.” As we shall see, profound theological and philosophical issues can come up in even a short letter, as is this one. But what I want to note first is simply the fact that reading a book, even a difficult book, is a pleasure of its own. And when we read a book, especially one that is good, we want to tell someone about it, especially the author, if we can find him.

A main “obstacle” to belief, Gilson remarks, is the topic of de Lubac’s book, namely “theological anthropomorphism.” I take this obstacle to consist in the heritage of Feuerbach’s finding God to be nothing but man-writ-large, so to speak. God is simply a projection of human desires. This is not Aristotle’s or St. Thomas’ effort to find the cause of human things, themselves obviously not self-caused. Rather it is the denial that there is anything other than human things, including the Godhead, which is just another variety of human aspiration.

Bron: Tilburg School of Catholic Theology
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