Illtyd Trethowan

Trethowan died at Bath, Somerset, on 30 October 1993, having said shortly before that he was happy to die. An obituary said of him: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}

This kind of certainty fascinated Trethowan; it is the basis of his claim that our knowledge of God is given in experience. In the 1950s he defended it against criticisms of Modernism, but he felt the position was vindicated by Vatican II. It was a position that took its distance from the standard empiricism of his day which characterized much English-language academic philosophy of religion [e.g. Basil Mitchell, Antony Flew, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Richard Swinburne]. Trethowan had been educated in an Oxford dominated by ethical intuitionists like H.A. Prichard and W.D. Ross, and their non-natural theory of value was close to his own appreciation of the absolute in ethical experience, articulated most clearly in his books Absolute Value: a study in Christian theism and The Absolute and the Atonement. As noted by Baxter, Trethowan firmly held that:

He became a novice monk at Downside Abbey in 1932 and the same year was 'clothed' a monk under the name of Illtyd in honor of Saint Illtud. In 1938, he was ordained a priest and from then on taught philosophy to junior monks in the monastery. From 1936 to 1982, he also taught Classics and later English literature at Downside, a boarding school for boys attached to the monastery. Trethowan was the author of several religious books and many learned articles, translations and book reviews. From 1946 to 1952 and again from 1960 to 1964, he edited The Downside Review. He served as sub-prior of Downside Abbey between 1958 and 1991 and, when he retired, was given the honorary title of "Cathedral Prior of Ely". He was also a visiting professor in theology at Brown University.

Illtyd Trethowan (12 May 1907 – 30 October 1993), born Kenneth Trethowan, was an English Benedictine Monk, Catholic Priest, Philosopher, Theologian, and Author.

Born at Salisbury in 1907, Trethowan was the son of William James Trethowan, a solicitor, by his marriage to Emma Louisa Van Kempen. He was baptised in the Church of England as "William Kenneth" and educated at Felsted School and Brasenose College, Oxford. While at Oxford he contracted poliomyelitis and was left with a withered arm. In 1929 Trethowan was received into the Roman Catholic Church and took a job as a schoolmaster at the Oratory School, London, later transferring to Ampleforth.

But Trethowan argued no less tirelessly against efforts made in various forms of Thomism (as he saw it) to ground faith in reason rather than experience. His familiarity with several French thinkers of the nouvelle théologie was unusual in English theological circles before the Vatican Council. Bellenger noted that Trethowan was "particularly influential in introducing French Catholic philosophy to an English audience and in breaking the stranglehold of Thomism. Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) and Henri Bouillard (1908-1981), both victims of the official hostility to it in 1950, were important interlocutors for his own work; Dominique Dubarle (1907-1987) is another, a Dominican in fact, whose analysis of the modernist crisis interested him especially at the end of his life.

In relation to the mid-20th century tensions about the relation of philosophy to theology, Trethowan found a fellow spirit in Maurice Blondel (1861-1949). Like Blondel, Trethowan argued that left to its own resources philosophy can only reach an impasse, the only way out of which is to accept the notion of the transcendent, which opens the mind to the possibility of faith, the thesis of theology. (Trethowan’s contributions to Maurice Blondel may be found in The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma which Trethowan translated and edited with Alexander Dru). This approach to the concept of the supernatural is close to that of Henri de Lubac in his Surnaturel and to the early Karl Rahner

His interest in Walter Hilton reflects his interweaving of Augustinian biblical and liturgical spirituality with the English mystical tradition linking the Cloud of Unknowing and English Benedictine life revived in the 17th century in people like Augustine Baker. Trethowan understood the apophatic tradition but, like Cuthbert Butler (1858-1934), Abbot of Downside (1906-1922) an influential voice in that tradition, always understood contemplative prayer as an interplay of light and darkness. A reviewer summarized the work of Trethowan by noting: