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)

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