"It is the highest possibility of philosophy to become, as metaphysics, the philosophy of religion, and to go beyond itself in the religious relation to God." It is this possibility that the author affirms, and for which he attempts to lay the groundwork. The pre-knowledge of Being grounds all our metaphysical understanding of the "that-ness" and "what-ness" of beings. God, as Absolute Being, becomes the unifying ground of both the ontological questioner and the objective world of his activity. The merit (...) of this work, and the source of much of its difficulty, is its attempt to bring together a modern subjective approach to ontology and religion with a wealth of scholastic concepts.--D. T. C. (shrink)

This book contains ten essays on the philosophical basis of religious thought as it has been represented in the Western and Islamic traditions. While the essays deal with a wide range of thinkers and intellectual developments--Greek philosophy, Christians, philosophers--the author states that they represent a general thesis: that Philo, as the unifier of Greek and Hebrew thought, "revolutionized philosophy and remade it into what became the common philosophy of the three religions with cognate scriptures.... This triple scriptural religious philosophy, which (...) was built up by Philo, reigned supreme as a homogeneous, if not thoroughly unified, system of thought until... it was pulled down by Spinoza." Wolfson brings a wealth of knowledge and scholarly detail together in a lively style.--D. T. C. (shrink)