First Things RSS Feed - Peter Simpson https://www.firstthings.com/author/peter-simpson en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:53:50 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/peter-simpson 60 What It’s Like To Be a Christian https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/06/what-its-like-to-be-a-christian https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/06/what-its-like-to-be-a-christian Tue, 01 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400 Truths are one thing, the way they are set forth is another. These words express what many have judged, for good or ill, to be the particular spirit of the Second Vatican Council. The words come, in fact, from the Council itself, from John XXIII to be precise. They are found in his opening allocution to the Council Fathers, in which he commended to the Fathers the task of penetrating and expounding the doctrine of the Church in the manner the times require, and it is in the process of saying this that he makes his distinction between truths and ways :

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]]> The Christianity of Philosophy https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/05/the-christianity-of-philosophy https://www.firstthings.com/article/2001/05/the-christianity-of-philosophy Tue, 01 May 2001 00:00:00 -0400 The title of this essay is meant to be rather startling, and more startling than the phrase “Christian philosophy” which provoked no little controversy some few years ago. That phrase was introduced by the medievalist Étienne Gilson to describe the contributions to philosophy of such thinkers as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. Gilson conceded to opponents that there could no more be a Christian philosophy, in the strict sense of the term, than a Christian mathematics or a Christian physics. All these studies were, in their formal idea, unconnected with matters of religious belief. But he insisted that as a matter of concrete historical fact the lived Christianity of certain medieval figures had led them to philosophical developments and discoveries that would not have been developed or discovered otherwise. In this sense, he declared, there could be Christian philosophies. It is not my intention to enter again on this controversy here. I draw attention to it merely to show how different my own topic of discussion is from Gilson’s. Gilson was concerned with the question whether there can be a philosophy that is Christian. I am concerned with the question whether there can be a philosophy that is not Christian.

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