I’m surprised Dr Lagrange (along with Dr Gilson) haven’t received more attention in this thread as the pre-eminent Thomists of the 20th century;
I thought about Gilson for a moment, but he’s important mostly for summarizing and expounding medieval philosophy. I owe him a great debt in that regard, but I wouldn’t put him in a list of “top thinkers” in his own right. I have read much less of Garrigou-Lagrange–as you say, he’s not particularly original but certainly important.
Balthasar has received surprisingly little as well. Dr Lagrange may not have been the most original of thinkers, but he was a modern Thomist beyond compare (I don’t know if Oderberg will ever begin to compare, but, I have a feeling if Oderberg turned his mind to Religion, that he could).
I think my old friend Matt Levering is in the course of surpassing Garrigou-Lagrange. But that may be just my personal bias–I knew him for a year at Duke way back in the day, and naturally am happy (as well as envious) that he seems to be attaining a good deal of renown.
I just can’t help but feel there’s something off, when promoting popular apologists or aphorism-makers like CS Lewis and GK Chesterton as being on the same level as the Greats, or even the greatest of the modern apologists, such as William Lane Craig, who isn’t really that much of an original thinker in his own right, but a great distiller of information, teacher, and defender of the faith (even if it’s not the Catholic faith) against infidels: he has no problem cutting out the parts of a defense that “don’t fit” in a modern metaphysics, so that the argument might be better appreciated to the standard modern man who knows not of the Classics, but such is a slippery slope.
Well, I find little value in Craig, frankly. I don’t think he’s worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with Lewis or Chesterton.
But then, you and I view the world very differently, and that is reflected in our preferences here!
I took the OP post as an invitation to a serious ranking of Christian “thinkers,” which his impossible, but to a fairly impressionistic and personal list. And that’s what I provided. The omission of Augustine from my list is, objectively, unpardonable–but I’ve become rather disenchanted with Augustine in recent years and deliberately emphasized other figures. Obviously Augustine’s immensely important and of great value, but I would view him perhaps more the way you view Kierkegaard (I think I may view Kierkegaard that way as well, but I haven’t read enough of him to have an informed opinion).
Unless CS Lewis was the first person to articulate the argument from morality (I don’t know if he was): if he was, he deserves a mention along with the Greats.
Well, I don’t mention Lewis primarily for his arguments but for his wit and imagination–qualities which I gather you value less than I do
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I was thinking this morning about a way to rework the argument from morality, though. . . .
Unlike St Thomas and Karl Barth, yet, Alvin Plantinga is probably the most original of all Christian thinkers still living, but his religious ontology and epistemology is heavily stained by a Reformed conception of religion and a very analytic style of philosophy.
Agreed. I got to hear him in person last year–definitely a very interesting guy.
Balthasar was the most original in contemporary history, and is likely the greatest original Catholic philosopher since the decline of Scholasticism. Kierkegaard was one of the best in close to contemporary history, but his philosophy unwittingly (or not) opened the door for the academic decay of the Christian faith even more than the rise of the higher criticism, by leaving it open for such as Bultmann.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of von Balthasar and Kierkegaard is very limited. I suspect that if I read more von Balthasar, he’d’ be on my list–I’m not so sure about Kierkegaard because of his fideism.
Edwin
