Christian philosophy is a term to describe the
fusion of various fields of
philosophy
with the
theological doctrines of
Christianity.
Reconciling Christianity with philosophy
As with any fusion of
religion and
philosophy, the attempt to reconcile Christianity
with certain philosophies is difficult. Classical philosophers
start with no preconditions for which conclusions they must reach
in their investigation. Classical religious believers have a set of
religious principles of faith that they hold one must believe.
Because of these divergent goals and views, some hold that one
cannot simultaneously be a philosopher and a true adherent of a
revealed religion. In this view, all
attempts at synthesis ultimately fail.
Others hold that a synthesis between the two is possible. One way
to find a synthesis is to use philosophical arguments to prove that
one's preset religious principles are true. This is known as
apologetics and is a common technique
found in the writings of many religious traditions, including
Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Another way to find a synthesis is
to abstain from holding as true any religious principles of one's
faith at all, unless one independently comes to those conclusions
from a philosophical analysis. However, this is not generally
accepted as being faithful to one's religion by adherents of that
religion. A third, rarer and more difficult path is to apply
analytical philosophy to one's own religion; In this case a
religious person would also be a philosopher.
The above outlines how some Christian philosophies conceive their
task. Others do not conceive the task of Christian philosophy in
this way. For instance, some think that proving the existence of
God is a meaningless endeavor since God's existence is not put in
question by Christian faith, but assumed. A Christian philosophy
which does not seek to prove the existence of God, but assumes it
as an ultimate out of which it forms its specific logic and
interest, is more apt to address a far different set of tasks in
order to reflect on the God-provided creation structures of
existence in their diachronic processes of change over time. For
such Christian philosophies, most of the questions above belong
instead to theology (if legitimate at all), whether the subdivision
of theology involved is
philosophical theology or
apologetics. Neither of these are disciplines of
philosophy proper, even though they may borrow methods from outside
theology as such. Those Christian philosophies that prioritize
creaturely existence with its God-lawed modalities and societal
spheres for daily life, do not accept the idea of separate fields
"religion" vs "philosophy" that then must be "reconciled." On this
alternative view of the Christian philosophical task, philosophy is
just one activity among many in a differentiated society, an
activity that is entirely appropriate to creaturely human
existence, and it may be pursued directly out of the depth of the
Christian religion without the mediation of some extraneous
reference. All religions, including the atheisms, have ultimate
values and therefore a religious depth-dimension of their own. The
problem of philosophy arises for them as something other than a
task given by God in Christ to humanity, and so theirs is the
problem of reconciling their activity as a deontological imperative
insofar as they deny that philosophy is inherent in the creational
ensemble as one task-activity among the many given by God.
Interaction between Christian and non-Christian
philosophers
There has been considerable interaction between Christian
philosophy,
Jewish philosophy and
Islamic philosophy. Many
Christian philosophers are well read in the works of their Jewish
and Islamic counterparts, and arguments developed in one faith
often make their way into the arguments of another faith. For
example, Christian philosopher
William Lane Craig is a popular proponent
of the Islamic
Kalam
cosmological argument for the existence of God.
Some modern day Islamic philosophers explore issues in common with
modern Catholic philosophers.
Reformational philosophy dialogues
across acknowledged differences with many other approaches to
philosophizing—with Christian synthetist views of many kinds, also
with some Jewish schools of philosophical thought, as well as some
secular philosophies such as Neo-Marxism along with other atheist
philosophical schools; whereas the dialogue with Islamic
philosophies is just beginning.
It's important to note there is not one single philosophy embraced
by all philosophers in any of the great religious traditions, not
all are dialogical, and atheist-humanist schools are as much in
conflict among themselves as are Christian and other
self-acknowledged religious schools of philosophizing.
Origins of Christian philosophy
In the case of
Reformational
philosophy the law-idea of Creation in relation to Fall and
Redemption clarifies the understanding of the exceptional role of
Jesus the Christ in Creation through the law-modalities that set
the conditions of existence for all creatures. There is no record
of any writing by Jesus, nor of any systematic philosophy or
theology in the formal sense. Several accounts of his life and many
of his teachings are recorded in the
New
Testament, and form the basis for some Christian
philosophies.
- St. Paul: Saul of Tarsus was a
Jew who persecuted the early Christian church and who helped to
facilitate the martyrdom of St Stephen, a Greek-speaking
Jewish-Christian. Saul underwent a dramatic conversion. He became a
Christian leader who wrote a number of epistles, or letters, to early churches, in which he
taught doctrine and theology. In some ways he functioned in the
manner of the popular marketplace philosophers of his day (Cynics,
Skeptics, and some Stoics). A number of his speeches and debates
with Greek philosophers are recorded in the Biblical book of Acts.
His letters became a significant source for later Christian
philosophies. See also Paul
of Tarsus and Judaism.
Hellenistic Christian philosophers
Hellenism is the traditional designation
for the Greek culture of the Roman Empire in the days of Jesus,
Paul, and for centuries after. Classical philosophies of the Greeks
had already expired and diluted beyond recognition except for small
bands of continuators of the traditions of the Pythagoreans, of
Plato, and Aristotle (whose library was lost for centuries). The
new philosophies of the Hellenistic world were those of the Cynics,
Skeptics, and increasingly the Stoics; it's these thinkers and
ranters who bring us into the world of Hellenistic philosophy.
Slowly, a more integral and rounded tendency emerged within
Hellenism, but also in certain respects in opposition at times to
it in regard to one philosophical problem or another, or an
ensemble of problems. Here are some of those thinkers most closely
associated with
Hellenistic Christian
philosophies, listed more or less in chronological order:
- Tertullian: Tertullian was a
philosopher before he converted to Christ; after that change of
direction he remained a prolific writer in the second century A.D.,
and is commonly called the "Father of the Western Church." He
developed the doctrine of traducianism,
or the idea that the soul was inherited from the parents, the idea
that God had corporeal (although not fleshly) existence, and the
doctrine of the authority of the gospels. He fought voraciously
against Marcionism, and considered Greek
philosophy to be incompatible with Christian wisdom. Toward the end
of his life, he joined the heterodox sect of Montanism, and thus has not been canonized by the
Catholic Church.
- Irenaeus of Lyons: Irenaeus is
best known for his writings arguing for the unity of God, and
against Gnosticism. He argued that
original sin is latent in humanity, and
that it was by Jesus' incarnation as a man that he "undid" the
original sin of Adam, thus sanctifying life for all mankind.
Irenaeus maintained the view that Christ is the Teacher of the
human race through whom wisdom would be made accessible to
all.
- Clement of Alexandria
- Origen: Origen was influential in
integrating elements of Platonism into
Christianity. He incorporated Platonic
idealism into his conceptions of the
Logos, and the two churches, one ideal and one
real. He also held a strongly Platonic view of God, describing him
as the perfect, incorporeal ideal. He was later declared a heretic
for subscribing to the "too Platonistic" doctrine of the
preexistence of the soul.
- Augustine of Hippo: Augustine
developed classical Christian philosophy, and the whole of Western
thought, largely by synthesizing
Hebrew and Greek thought. He drew particularly from Plato, the Neoplatonism of
Plotinus, and Stoicism, which he altered and refined in light of
divine revelation of Christian
teaching and the Scriptures. Augustine wrote extensively on many
religious and philosophical topics; he employed an allegorical
method of reading the Bible, further developed the doctrine of
hell as endless punishment, original sin as inherited guilt, divine grace as the necessary remedy for
original sin, baptismal
regeneration and consequently infant
baptism, inner experience and the concept of "self," the moral necessity of human free will, and individual election to salvation by eternal
predestination. He was a key
influence in the development of Western Catholic theology as well
as Protestant Reformed theology, particularly that of
French theologian, John Calvin.
- St. Athanasius of
Alexandria: father of trinitarian orthodoxy involved in the
formation of the Nicene Creed, who
vehemently opposed Arius, the unitarian bishop of Alexandria, and his
following.
- St. John Chrysostom
- The Cappadocian Fathers:
Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil the Great.
Medieval Christian philosophers
- Anselm of Canterbury:
Anselm is best known for the Ontological Argument for God's
existence, i.e.: God is that than which nothing greater can be
conceived. But to exist is greater than not to exist. If God does
not exist then he wouldn't be "that than which nothing greater can
be conceived." Therefore, God exists. Anselm was one of the first
western thinkers to directly engage the reintroduction of Aristotle
to the West. However, he didn't have all of Aristotle's works and
those he had access to were from the Arabic translations.
- Thomas Aquinas: Aquinas was the
student of Albert the Great, a
brilliant Dominican experimentalist, much like the Franciscan,
Roger Bacon of Oxford in the 13th
century. Aquinas reintroduced Aristotelian philosophy to
Christianity. He believed that there was no contradiction between
faith and secular reason. He believed that Aristotle had achieved
the pinnacle in the human striving for truth and thus adopted
Aristotle's philosophy as a framework in constructing his
theological and philosophical outlook. He was a professor at
the prestigious University of Paris
. Thomas Aquinas was a contemporary of
St Bonaventure, a Franciscan
Professor at the University of Paris whose approach differed
significantly from Aquinas'.
- John Duns Scotus: John Duns
Scotus is known as the "subtle doctor" whose hair-splitting
distinctions were important contributions in scholastic thought and
the modern development of logic. Scotus was also a Professor at the
University of Paris, but not at the same time as Aquinas. Along
with Aquinas, he is one of the two giants of Scholastic philosophy which led
to:
- William of Ockham
Renaissance and Reformation Christian philosophers
Modern and Contemporary Christian philosophers
An alphabetical listing:
- Karl Barth: A Swiss theologian, he
wrote the massive Church Dogmatics (German, Kirchliche
Dogmatik)—unfinished at about six million words by his death
in 1968. Barth emphasized the distinction between human thought and
divine reality, and that while humans may attempt to understand the
divine, our concepts of the divine are never precisely aligned from
the divine reality itself, although God reveals his reality in part
through human language and culture. Barth strenuously disavowed
being a philosopher; he considered himself a dogmatician of the
Church and a preacher.
- Joseph Butler
- John D. Caputo: American Catholic deconstructionist
theologian.
- G. K. Chesterton: A British Catholic author, he
applied Christian thought in the form of non-fiction, fiction, and
poems addressing a variety of theological, moral, political, and
economic issues, particularly the importance of seeking truth,
distributism, and opposition to
eugenics.
- Gordon Clark: American Calvinist philosopher and defender of Platonic
realism. He developed one variety of philosophical apologetics
known as presuppositional
apologetics.
- William Lane Craig
- Herman Dooyeweerd, who wrote
the monumental trilogy, A New Critique of Theoretical
Thought
- Mary Baker Eddy: Author of
Science
and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Eddy's "Christian Science" teaching is described
in the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy as a renewal of ancient
Oriental panpsychism, the most radical form of philosophical
idealism.
- Jacques Ellul
- John Frame: American Calvinist
philosopher in epistemology and ethics
- Etienne Gilson, who wrote The
Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, The Spirit of Thomism,
Being and Some Philosophers, and many other works. In the
field of Thomism he is considered one of the main figures credited
with starting the movement within Thomism known as Existential
Thomism, which emphasis the primacy of the act of Being (Esse) in
understanding everything else that is.
- Luigi Giussani, an Italian priest
of 1922-2005, who wrote the Why the Church?
- Francis
Hutcheson
- Immanuel Kant
- Søren Kierkegaard, the
father of existentialist philosophy
and particularly the school of Christian existentialism.
- Peter Kreeft, at Boston
College
- C. S.
Lewis, a literary critic of the first
order, a mythographer in his children's fantasies, and an apologist
for the Christian faith to which he adhered in the latter half of
his life. He claimed not to be a philosopher, but his apologetics
are foundational to the formation of a Christian worldview for many
modern readers.
- Knud Ejler
Løgstrup
- Bernard Lonergan: He was a
Canadian Jesuit. Lonergan
Institute is a center specializing in his works.
- Gabriel Marcel
- Jacques Maritain
- John Henry Newman
- Pope John Paul II, who wrote
Fides et Ratio
- Josef Pieper, a German Roman
Catholic philosopher orientated particularly on Plato and Thomas
Aquinas
- Alvin Plantinga. one of the key
figures in the movement of Reformed Epistemology, which synthesizes
Analytical Philosophy and Christian philosophical concerns. He
teaches at Notre Dame University.
- Egbert Schuurman, the leading
philosopher of technology who actively espouses a Christian
philosophical approach
- Melville Y. Stewart, editor, author of books in
philosophy of religion, and a Series on Science and Religion 科学与宗教
(5-volume Series in Chinese, and 2-volume Series in English).
Visiting Philosopher at various universities in China.
- Paul Tillich Rather than beginning
his philosophical work with questions of God or gods, Tillich began
with a "phenomenology of the Holy." His basic thesis is that
religion is Ultimate Concern. What a person is Ultimately
Concerned with in regard to their Ultimate meaning and being can be
understood as religion because, "There is nobody to whom nothing is
sacred because no one can rid themselves of their humanity no
matter how desperately they may try" (Young-Ho Chun, Tillich and Religion, 1998, pg.
14.
- Richard Swinburne
- Peter van Inwagen, who is one
of the leading figures in contemporary philosophy of religion
- Cornelius Van Til:
Dutch-American philosopher, who contributed especially in
epistemology and developed one variety of philosophical apologetics
known as presuppositional
apologetics.
- D. H. Th. Vollenhoven: Vollenhoven's
Calvinism and the Reformation of Philosophy (Dutch, 1933)
launched a philosophical movement that, after the massive
re-inforcing effect of his brother-in-law Herman Dooyeweerd's first
trilogy, Philosophy of the Law-Idea (1935-36), led to the
formation of the Association for Calvinist Philosophy in 1936. For
decades, Vollenhoven served as president of the aforementioned
association, which has become the Association for
Reformational Philosophy / Vereniging voor Reformatorische
Wijsbegeerte (VRW), still based in the Netherlands but with
ever-enlarging interest in the rest of the world. It can be debated
whether Vollenhoven's, his colleague Herman Dooyeweerd's, and many
among the subsequent generations of philosophers in the Reformational philosophy movement
are best described as "modern" or "postmodern," since they
anticipated numerous themes that resurfaced in postmodernism, yet
remain steadfastly and would-be distinctively Christian and
non-Roman.
- Ravi Zacharias: He is one of the
more prolific Christian apologists, with many years on record. He
is currently the president of Ravi Zacharias International
Ministries, an apologetic evangelistic ministry that reaches out
mainly to intellectuals and university students. His method is
mildly presuppositional, his style conversational.
- Dallas Willard: Notable Christian
philosopher at the University of Southern California. Willard has
written extensively in philosophy but also in practical Christian
theology with an emphasis in Christian spiritual formation.
See also
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