Can God be proven? Yes. Denying the provability of God is popular today, even for Christians. Faith and reason have been divorced, and we Christians sometimes swallow that pill without realizing it. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Faith seeks understanding, but it is built on it too. We believe in God for good reason or else we have no reason to believe in God.
Thomas Aquinas gives a series of five ways of proving the existence of God. The fourth way is taken from our idea of perfection.
Convivia aim to translate the riches of Christian doctrine to local churches, presentations should seek to be accessible and as jargon-free as possible, without sacrificing intellectual rigor. Davenant invites you to submit paper proposals in theology or philosophy in preparation for a 30-minute presentation followed by 30-minute discussion.
Protestantism was never meant to be anarchy. Today, every church does what is right in its own eyes to the detriment of the health of the church. At The Davenant Institute, our new Baptist Studies program seeks to draw from our rich tradition and to stand on the shoulders of giants, as we find contemporary application for time-tested doctrines.
In this interview on the Tea & Theology podcast, Tim Jacobs explains what distinguishes a Christian ethic and provides some historical background as well as application for daily life and the church.
Many Christians assume morality starts with duty to commands. We search the Bible looking for commands to obey. Yet swiftly we invent new rules, and eventually accidental legalism is born. Even healthy churches struggle with this subtle moralism that breeds Pharisaism, with honesty sacrificed for appearances, or compassion for authoritarianism. How can we reform our view of duty?
Is there a reformed virtue ethics? What is being asked here? With the natural law foundations long since abandoned, ethical discourse in the anglophone world has largely been focused on solving problems it has invented. Protestant moral theology has had its own rocky history developing in tandem with and greatly influenced by trends in secular philosophy. There has also been a slowly rising interest among Protestants to return to our roots.
In another special episode recorded at our 2022 National Convivium, Onsi and Colin are joined by Tim Jacobs, Davenant Teaching Fellow and (in a surprise apperance) Evan Zhuo, our Davenant House intern. They talk about the unique vibe of the Convivium, the surprising appeal of Reformed irenicism among Baptists, Herman Bavinck's forgotten teacher, and the diversity of philosophical positions within the Davenant Institute.
How did theology become systematic? What is the history of the literal interpretation of Scripture? Thanks to the adoption of Aristotelian scientific methods, learned from his philosophical methodology, theologians transformed the allegorical and mystical interpretation of Scripture into literal interpretation.
See how Peter Lombard, Albert the Great, and Aquinas transformed theology into the systematic theology we have today.
What is the relationship between the body and soul? What is reality? Church history has long used Aristotelian tools to answer these questions in theology, and I defend Aristotelian metaphysics in Four Views on Christian Metaphysics.
Four Views on Christian Metaphysics presents four prominent views held among Christians today on the major questions in philosophical metaphysics. What is the nature of existence itself? What is it for something to exist? What are universals? What is the soul? How do these things relate to God, in light of special and general revelation? The four Christian perspectives presented in this book are: Platonism, Aristotelianism, idealism, and postmodernism. The purpose of this book is to help Christians think deeply and carefully about a Christian view of the ultimate nature of reality and our place in it.
Pastor Tony interviews philosopher Timothy Jacobs of the Davenant Institute about why philosophy is important for our families. Listen and be blessed and also consider giving financial support for Tim's work with Davenant. Learn more at www.tljacobs.com/davenant
Modern science and the Christian community do not always communicate with each other as much as they should. While secular scholarship grows more interested in the health benefits of gratitude and other virtues from a neurological and psychological angle, Thomists will not be surprised that a health benefit is associated with virtuous activity. The close mind-body relationship of hylomorphism could equip scientists to explain mental health in non-materialistic and reductionist ways. More partnership could exist between psychology and philosophy as both help explain each other.
Special revelation is God’s instruction book. But what device is it an instruction book for? Which is prior, the device or the instructions? Can someone figure out how to use it properly without the instructions, even if imperfectly? Advocates of the natural law say “Yes.” God created human nature to function in a certain way. The way God ordered humanity and the rest of creation is an expression of his own orderly nature.
Aristotle’s On the Soul along with his Categories helps us define the soul and its powers., and consequently different essences, like human nature. It lays the groundwork of a Christian psychology as Thomas Aquinas develops Aristotelian psychology in a Christian way. In both Aristotle and Aquinas, this psychology establishes the groundwork for the natural law and Aristotelian ethics.
Plato’s Republic begins discussing the nature of justice and virtue and ends with prophetic words on how governments decay. As he defends philosophy, virtue, and government ruled by them, his timeless advice and warnings may seem especially pertinent today.
You think you think critically about what you watch or read? Think again. “We face spiritual threats in how we engage popular culture.” [Co-authored with Marian Jacobs]
Today’s politics maintains freedom of conscience & pluralism. But can conscience be wrong? Against the emotivist view, objectivism defines conscience clearly, encouraging freedom without anarchy.
Three aspects of Kierkegaard’s thought will be considered: (1) passion and interestedness, (2) authenticity as an existential virtue, and (3) Christian character and practice in classical virtues.
Will you examine your life and make it worth living? Will you find wise reasons for your beliefs and practices, rather than just going with the flow? Will you seriously consider the unfamiliar ideas of others, humbly admitting they might see something you don’t?
Semantic anti-realism holds that statements cannot have truth value if their truth criteria are beyond the ability of humans to recognize them. John Haldane proposes moderate compatibility with Aquinas. I disagree, and the denial of verification-transcendence denies the possibility of the analogy of being.
Aquinas’s discussion of free-will admits of causal influences. I argue that he is compatibilist and utilizes the principle of causation.
Jonathan Edwards defines virtue as “the beauty of those qualities and acts of the mind that are of a moral nature, i.e. such as are attended with desert or worthiness of praise or blame.”
The rise of virtue epistemology challenges the division of intellectual and moral virtue held by Aristotle and Aquinas who held that intellectual virtues were non-moral habits of the mind. I defend this against some objections.
Elizabeth Anscombe identifies three ways in which we use the word intention related to moral actions. I respond to two challenges by investigating Anscombe and Thomas Aquinas.
When a person tries to become virtuous that person must first recognize the virtue in other people before imitating them. This implies that the person already knows something of virtue. What is the nature of that knowledge?
In his historical tour of the proofs for and against God’s existence, Nathan Schneider unfolds the story of provers and their arguments from the ancient Greeks through medieval Muslims to today’s analytic philosophers and New Atheists.
Theological Metaethics is a topic seldom discussed by modern moral theologians who rest satisfied with conclusions in Normative and Applied Ethics. This is because moral theology tends to exhibit three fatal symptoms adopted from the Enlightenment:
A maxim or rule of ethical conduct advocating a reciprocal relationship. Stated as “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12 NIV; compare Luke 6:31).
Lists of positive and negative behaviors that display a normative ethic focused on good character and incorporate Hellenistic influence on biblical authors and historical theology.
Tim explains the often misunderstood philosophy of apologetics.