Christian Thought and Classical Philosophy

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Christian Thought and Classical Philosophy

• HT 711

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Wrestling with our Terms

• What do we mean by Christian thought?
• Epistemology
• Hermeneutics
• Theology
• Apologetics
• Christianity and the World
• Christianity and the Market Place

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Wrestling with our Terms

• What is philosophy?
• Two Greek words philos sophia
• Literally, a friend of wisdom
• More generally, the study of knowledge, how it is
  attained, and how it translates into the actions
  of ones life

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Wrestling with our Terms

• PhilosophyOne profs description
• An attempt to understand why the experts in a
  given field say things that are so puzzling to
  the rest of us
• An unveiling of the assumptions and postulates of
  a given field
• An attempt to see the problems with those
  assumptions and postulates

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Wrestling with our Terms

• Philosophy according to Webster
• The pursuit of wisdom
• The search for a general understanding of values
  and reality by speculative, rather than
  observational, means
• An analysis of the grounds of and concepts
  expressing fundamental beliefs

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Wrestling with our Terms

• Philosophy applies rigorous thinking to the
  questions of
• How we know what we believe
• How we interpret the sources of our belief
• How we use language to articulate what we believe
• How we use language to justify what we believe
• How we translate belief consistently into action

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• Epistemology
• Hermeneutics
• Theology
• Apologetics
• Christianity and the World
• Christianity and the Market Place

• How we know what we believe
• How we interpret the sources of our belief
• How we use language to articulate what we believe
• How we use language to justify what we believe
• How we translate belief consistently into action

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• An Important Distinction
• Philosophy in A philosophy
• general
• The philosophy of
• The prevailing phil-
• osophy of

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• What is the relation between Christian thought
  and the prevailing philosophy of a given time?
• What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
• Philosophy is the handmaid of theology.
• Philosophy is humanitys reasoning apart from
  God.

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• Scripture
• Christian Non-Christian Thought
  Thought
• Prevailing Philosophy
• Current Expression of Christian Thought

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• A Sobering Illustration
• Three great eras of philosophical inquiry
• Ontological era
• Epistemological era
• Linguistic (analytic) era

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• A Sobering Illustration
• Some implications
• Philosophically, what we mean is no longer
  necessarily connected with what is.
• Expressions of Christian faith grounded in
  contemporary philosophy may give up the farm in
  ways that we do not even recognize.

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Christian Thought and Philosophy

• So what are we trying to do?
• We must understand the philosophy of a given time
  in order to understand the expression of
  Christian thought at that time.
• We must understand the philosophy of a given time
  in order to evaluate the expression of Christian
  thought at that time.

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I. Classical Philosophy

• prior to Plato

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I. Greek Philosophy prior to Plato

• Greek Ways of Thinking
• The Ionians and Pythagoreans
• Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Sophists
• Socrates

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I.A. Greek Ways of Thinking

• Three Key Concepts
• Dike (custom or the right)
• We should all know our place and stick to it.
• Arete (virtue or excellence)
• We should perform our function well.
• Theos (god or divine thing)
• Anything more than human

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I.A. Greek Ways of Thinking

• Two Key Limitations
• No distinction between the concrete and the
  abstract
• No distinction between being and becoming

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I.A. Greek Ways of Thinking

• One Key Question
• What is real?
• That out of which we come?
• That for which we strive?

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I.B. The Ionians and Pythagoreans

• Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes
• (early 6th cent. B.C.)
• Desire to understand the elemental stuff of the
  universe (either water or air)
• Belief that this elemental stuff is alive and
  divine

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I.B. The Ionians and Pythagoreans

• Pythagoras (late 6th cent. B.C.)
• The universe is a living organism.
• Essential unity between a persons life and that
  of the universe
• The human soul is a spark of the divine soul
  imprisoned in a mortal body.
• The soul goes through various transmigrations
  until it is re-united to the universal spirit.

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I.C. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Sophists

• Heraclitus (late 6th cent. B.C.)
• Labels such as good and bad are inappropriate.
• Harmony comes from tension between opposites.
• Everything is in flux/motion.
• The divine mind (logos) in us is identical to the
  divine Mind (Logos) of the universe.

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I.C. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Sophists

• Parmenides (early 5th cent. B.C.)
• Motion is impossible.
• The way we experience the universe is an
  illusion.
• Beginnings of abstract thought

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I.C. Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Sophists

• The Sophists (late 5th cent. B.C.)
• We cannot know anything with certainty.
• Protagoras
• Nothing exists.
• If something did exist, we couldnt know it.
• If we knew it, we couldnt convince anyone of it.
• Focus on what we should do
• Expediency, not right or wrong

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I.D. Socrates (d. 399)

• Denied the Sophists emphasis on expediency
  instead of truth
• Claimed to know nothing (Socratic method)
• Recognition of ones ignorance as a first step
  toward truth
• Disbelief in the sinful will of humanity
  wrongdoing is the result of ignorance