Between 1930 and 1932, philosopher Étienne Gilson (1884–1978) gave twenty lectures at the University of Aberdeen. In these Gifford Lectures, Gilson argued that medieval philosophy is the Christian philosophy par excellence. In two of the lectures, he challenged the common view that Christianity is radically pessimistic in light of the apparent widespread asceticism in the Middle Ages. While he acknowledged a “gloomy asceticism to which certain medieval authors succumbed,” he insisted — with the help of texts from Augustine and Aquinas — that authentic Christian belief is grounded in an affirmation of the goodness of Creation, a goodness that is not undone by the Fall. 

“No one, in fact, could be further than St. Augustine from considering the world in the state of fallen nature as worthless. His own metaphysical principles would forbid it, to start with. Since evil is but the corruption of a good and cannot possibly subsist at all save in this good, it follows that inasmuch as there is evil, there is also good. Certainly, we have travelled very far from that degree of order, beauty and measure which God bestowed on the world in creating it, but if sin had abolished all good it would have abolished all being along with the good and the world would no longer exist. In this sense we may say that evil could not eliminate nature without eliminating itself, since it would have no subject left to inhere in, there would be none of which it could be affirmed. It is not in the least surprising therefore to find St. Augustine indulging in genuine eulogies of fallen nature. If he deplores all that we have lost he never dreams of despising what remains; even our present miserable state has not lost all its glory in his eyes.”

Gilson observes that while St. Augustine was “quite sure that evil is powerless to destroy nature,” it is in St. Thomas — that is, in a medieval Christian philosopher that one finds the most thorough defense of the claim that the essential goodness of Creation, including the goodness of human nature, was not undone by the Fall. “Man’s metaphysical status is essentially unchangeable and independent of all the accidents that may befall him.

“When therefore the Renaissance is held up to our admiration for its discovery of nature and its worth, and opposed to the Middle Ages as the day of its unjust depreciation, we must carefully scrutinize the meaning of this assertion. In so far as it has any it can only be this: that the Renaissance marks the opening of an era in which man will profess to be satisfied with the state of fallen nature. And that, no doubt, happened, although to a much lesser extent than alleged; but it would be altogether unjust to conclude against the Middle Ages that having unfavourably compared the state of fallen nature with another and a better, it had no feeling left for it at all. . . . 

“[J]ust as it is not Christian to run away from the body, so neither is it Christian to despise nature. How can we possibly belittle these heavens and this earth that so wonderfully proclaim the glory of their Creator, so evidently bear on them the marks of His infinite wisdom and goodness? The true Christian feeling for nature is that which finds expression throughout the Psalms, and, above all, in the Canticle of the Three Children in the fiery furnace: Benedicite opera Domini Domino; laudate et superexultate eum in saecula [Bless the Lord, all ye works of the Lord, praise and exalt Him above all forever]. And after many centuries St. Francis of Assisi will echo that song in his Laudes and the Canticle of Brother Sun, wherein not only water, earth, and air, and stars, but the very death of the body itself, will receive their meed of praise and benediction. If anywhere the heart of man entered into fraternal communion with all that lives and breathes and has being, most assuredly it did so there; for this purely Christian soul it was altogether one and the same thing to love the works of God and to love God.

“Here perhaps we have arrived at the point where the mistake that obscured the significance of Christian optimism begins to become clear. Not even the Middle Ages knew any ruder asceticism than that of St. Francis — or any more absolute confidence in the goodness of nature. Far from excluding optimism, Christian asceticism is merely the reverse side of its optimism. Certainly there is no true Christianity without the contemptus saeculi, but contempt for the world is not the same thing as hatred of being — quite the contrary, it is hatred of non-being. By wrestling with the flesh, the medieval ascetic sought to restore the body to its pristine perfection; if he did not rejoice in the world for the world’s sake, it was because he knew that the true way to use the world is to restore it to its own integrity by referring it to God; the world that the Christian detests consists of all that mass of disorder, deformity and evil introduced into creation by man’s own voluntary defection. He turns away from these, no doubt, but precisely to adhere with all his heart to the order, beauty and good which was willed from the beginning; he works to restore these in himself and others; with an heroic effort he would clear the face of the universe and render it resplendent once more as the face of God. Nothing could be more positive than such an asceticism, nothing could be better grounded in hope and resolute optimism. The disaccord that persists between Christian and non-Christian on this point is of another order therefore than is usually supposed. The question is not whether the world is good or evil, but whether the world is sufficient to itself, and whether it suffices. The testimony, and, we may add, the secular experience of Christendom is, that nature itself is powerless to realize itself, or even fully to survive as nature, when it attempts to do this without the help of grace. If optimism thus consists, not in denying the existence of evil, nor in accepting evil, but in looking it in the face and fighting it, then we may legitimately speak of Christian optimism. The work of creation is shattered, but the fragments remain good, and, with the grace of God, they may be reconstituted and restored.”

— from Étienne Gilson, The Spirit of Mediaeval Philosophy (Gifford Lectures 1931–1932) (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936, 1964)

Related reading and listening

  • Cosmetic surgery and human perfectibility — Elizabeth Haiken examines the shift that occurred in 20th century America from a focus on developing character to a focus on developing “personality” and achieving physical perfection. (19 minutes)
  • Embodied knowledge —
    FROM VOL. 121
    James K. A. Smith advocates for a return to some pre-modern conceptualizations of the human body. (18 minutes)
  • The powerful presence of the body —
    FROM VOL. 9
    Painter Ed Knippers discusses how he attempts to capture the reality and mystery of the human body without reducing it to a wooden object or exalting it to the status of an idol. (7 minutes)
  • The Body Worlds exhibit and Western art —
    FROM VOL. 88
    Michael J. Lewis explores the effects of the Body Worlds exhibits on the moral imagination of the viewer, who encounters human cadavers in a mechanistic way erased of all moral context. (26 minutes)
  • Human nature through the eyes of Lucian Freud —
    FROM VOL. 7
    Art critic and sculptor Ted Prescott discusses the work of British realist painter Lucian Freud (notably, the grandson of Sigmund Freud). (8 minutes)
  • Depicting the human form —
    FROM VOL. 6
    Ted Prescott explains the history of portraying the nude human body in art and contrasts it with the way the naked human form is often used in advertising. (9 minutes)
  • Beauty, the body, and the “true self” —
    FROM VOL. 62
    Lilian Calles Barger shows the necessity and beauty of healthy embodiment and challenges gnostic ideas found in the church that particularly distort the experiences of women. (15 minutes)
  • The gift of meaningful work — In this lecture, D. C. Schindler argues that genuine work is inherently meaningful and facilitates an encounter with reality and therefore, ultimately, with God. (36 minutes)
  • The relationship between prudence and reality  — In this lecture, Ken Myers explains how the virtue of prudence is fundamentally connected with a deep and anchored understanding of reality. (54 minutes)
  • Festivity and the goodness of Creation — Drawing on Josef Pieper’s ideas, Ken Myers explains why the spirit of festivity is the spirit of worship, and that “entertainment” is ultimately an artificial, contrived, and empty effort to achieve festivity. (25 minutes)
  • Forms as portals to reality — Ken Myers explains the ancient classical and Christian view that music embodies an order and forms that correspond to the whole of created reality, in its transcendence and materiality. (54 minutes)
  • “Muscular Christianity” and sport as language — In light of this summer’s Olympic Games, we present two sports-related archive interviews: Clifford Putney on Protestant emphasis on fitness at the turn of the 19th century; and Andrei S. Markovits on Americans and soccer. (23 minutes)
  • A fearful darkness in mind, heart, and spirit — Roberta Bayer draws on the work of George Parkin Grant (1918–1988) to argue that our “culture of death” must be countered with an understanding of reality based in love, redemptive suffering, and a recognition of limitations to individual control. (33 minutes)
  • The artist’s commitment to truth — Fr. Damian Ference, author of Understanding the Hillbilly Thomist, explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy. (18 minutes)
  • Flannery O’Connor and Thomistic philosophy — Fr. Damian Ference explores the depths to which Flannery O’Connor was steeped in Thomistic philosophy, as evidenced by her reading habits, letters, prayer journal, and, of course, essays and fiction. (48 minutes)
  • Creation’s goodness and human faithfulness — J. Matthew Bonzo and Michael R. Stevens on Wendell Berry’s understanding of how Creation is a gift with certain givenness
  • Farming and our primal vocation — Shawn and Beth Dougherty make a theological case for biomimicry, or fulfilling our original vocation of tending the earth by working according to the nature of Nature. (68 minutes)
  • A theology of eating —
    FROM VOL. 113
    Theologian Norman Wirzba examines the relationship between food and faith. (24 minutes)
  • Honoring the pigness of pigs —
    FROM VOL. 137
    Popular innovator and speaker on farming practices Joel Salatin talks about the challenges of caring for Creation within an agricultural and food system that pays little attention to the purposes and inclinations of Creation. (25 minutes)
  • An account of God’s relatedness to time and space — Colin Gunton on the trinitarian conception of the divine economy in St. Irenaeus
  • The historian’s communal role as storyteller —
    FROM VOL. 127
    Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes)
  • What does it mean to be a creature? — Canon-theologian Simon Oliver explains how and why the doctrine of Creation is cardinal and must frame all theology. (62 minutes)
  • “Reading Lewis with blinders on” — Chris Armstrong explains how C. S. Lewis’s work is grounded deeply in the Christian humanist tradition. (45 minutes)
  • Developing a Christian aesthetic — In the inaugural lecture for the Eliot Society, titled “Faithful Imaginations in a Meaningful Creation,” Ken Myers addresses the question of the relationship between the arts and the Church. (59 minutes)
  • Creation as beauty and gift —
    FROM VOL. 67
    David Bentley Hart describes how the Christian understanding of Creation as beauty and gift, as the outward expression of the delight the Trinity has in itself, reveals a vision of reality different from the pagan or fatalist vision of reality. (12 minutes)
  • The sacramental vision of G. K. Chesterton —
    FROM VOL. 112
    Ralph C. Wood describes G. K. Chesterton’s imagination as especially fruitful in conveying grace and edification to his readers. (19 minutes)
  • The Life was the Light of men — In a lecture from 2018, Ken Myers contrasts the Enlightenment’s understanding of reason with the Christocentric conception of reason. (57 minutes)
  • Discerning an alternative modernity — In a lecture from 2019, Simon Oliver presents a summary of the cultural consequences of the comprehensiveness of the work of Christ. (28 minutes)
  • Lessons from Leviticus — The book of Leviticus may be assumed to be irrelevant for charting a way through the challenges of modernity. Theologian Peter J. Leithart disagrees. (22 minutes)
  • A theology of active beauty — In a 2010 lecture, George Marsden examines a few ways in which the distorting effects of Enlightenment rationalism were resisted in the work of Jonathan Edwards. (64 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 161 — FEATURED GUESTS: Andrew Wilson, Kyle Edward Williams, Andrew James Spencer, Landon Loftin, Esther Lightcap Meek, Andrew Davison
  • Understanding the doctrine of participation —
    FROM VOL. 150
    Theologian and priest Andrew Davison believes that retrieving the historic doctrine of participation is vital to help Christians escape from the default philosophy of the age. (32 minutes)
  • On Earth as it is in Heaven —
    FROM VOL. 108
    Hans Boersma — author of Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry — explains why Christians should reject the modern separation of Heaven and Earth and recover a “sacramental ontology.” (26 minutes)
  • Lilies as analogues for farming — Fred Bahnson on the wisdom of attending to patterns of Creation
  • Making peace with the land — Fred Bahnson challenges us to consider how we might honor our created and redeemed relationship with the earth as God’s stewards. (48 minutes)
  • Learning to see the world aright — Norman Wirzba on cultivating a Christocentric vision of Creation
  • This world is now my home — Belden Lane describes several approaches to understanding how we experience the sacredness of earthly places and how we learn to see God manifest in His Creation. (48 minutes)
  • Breaking out of the immanent frame — Norman Wirzba on the true character of Creation and of our creatureliness
  • Living in a meshwork world — Theologian Norma Wirzba believes that Creation is the “material manifestation of God’s love” and that this fundamental teaching affects everything, especially our understanding of the meaning of modern environmental crises and climate change. (17 minutes)
  • “Broken Bodies Redeemed” — Today’s Feature presents a reading of a 2007 article by Gilbert Meilaender that explores the significance for bioethics of the mystery of human being as body and soul. (39 minutes)
  • For the beauty of the earth — Dietrich von Hildebrand on how the love of God deepens our love for the beauty found in Creation
  • In the house of Tom Bombadil — C. R. Wiley explores the mysterious, “allusive” figure of Tom Bombadil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (17 minutes)
  • Sneaking past watchful dragons — Junius Johnson describes how Hans Urs von Balthasar’s understanding of Creation resonates with that of C. S. Lewis and Bonaventure, all three of whom served as mentors in his thinking about beauty. (18 minutes)
  • Faith born of wonder — Theologian Andrew Davison echoes a theme in the work of G. K. Chesterton, describing the work of apologetics as awakening a sense of wonder in the reality of Creation as a beautiful gift. (23 minutes)
  • Why “Creation” is more than “origins” — In this archive interview from Volume 121 of the Journal, Michael Hanby talks about why we shouldn’t assume that science can ever be philosophically and theologically neutral. (32 minutes)
  • Creation, natural law, and ecological concerns — Christopher Thompson discusses our need to grow in wisdom and humility, that we might flourish in this ordered cosmos in which we live. (16 minutes)
  • St. Thomas and the wisdom of Creation — Christopher Thompson offers a renewed vision of “the human person [as] an embodied, spiritual creature dwelling in a cosmos of created natures, intelligently ordered by God and capable of being intelligibly grasped by human reason.” (16 minutes)
  • Hans Boersma on For the Life of the World — Drawing from Alexander Schmemann’s book, Hans Boersma asserts that a recovered understanding of the relationship between God and Creation is essential to addressing a host of modern cultural crises. (17 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 142 — FEATURED GUESTS: Stanley Hauerwas, Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, Jeffrey Bishop, Alan Jacobs, D. C. Schindler, and Marianne Wright
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 139 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Bradford Littlejohn, Simon Oliver, Matthew Levering, Esther Lightcap Meek, Paul Tyson, and David Fagerberg
Tags: