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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
