From Aristotle to Christ: How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith

by Louis Markos

Discover how Aristotelian thought has shaped Christianity through history and remains relevant for Christians today

When Christians of any age, country, or denomination debate the nature of the good life, the soul, free will, or design, Aristotle lies behind their logic as well as their rhetoric. Although Aristotle did not have access to the Bible's special revelation, he made full use of general revelation to arrive at deep truths about the nature of God, human identity, and the universe. In the Catholic Middle Ages the spiritual vision that undergirded Dante’s Divine Comedy was strongly indebted to Aristotle’s cosmology, and in the Protestant Reformation and Enlightenment the social vision of a well-run state was equally indebted to his political science.

In a follow up to his well-loved book From Plato to Christ, renowned scholar Louis Markos takes us on a vigorous and celebratory journey through the work of Plato’s greatest student, demonstrating Aristotle’s often unacknowledged influence on the Christian faith. In Markos’s hands, Aristotle is far from an irrelevant ancient philosopher but is instead an important conversation partner for some of history's greatest Christian thinkers and a thoughtful guide to today’s most challenging questions.

With this book, you'

Consider the influence of Aristotle's thought on the Christian faith,Carefully analyze several of Aristotle's best-known texts,Trace Aristotle's influence upon many key theologians in Christian history, andUnderstand Aristotle's continuing importance for Christians today.This book is a perfect addition to any classroom that seeks to understand how classical thought intersects with Christianity, both past and present. Grab your copy today and explore the relationship between Aristotelian philosophy and Christianity.

Genres: Philosophy, Christianity, Theology, Nonfiction, Christian

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Daniel Arter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book because I read the author’s previous book “From Plato to Christ” and greatly appreciated his ability to synthesize Platonic thinking over several millennia. With that said, “From Aristotle to Christ” does what “From Plato to Christ” does except for Aristotle instead of Plato.

This is worth reading if you’re interested in how Aristotelian thought has influenced Christian thinking and you aren’t necessarily a philosopher or someone who has read a lot of philosophy.

My one complaint is that the author changed his methodology just slightly by not separating Aristotle’s thinking from others as distinctly as he did in his previous book with Plato. Some may actually prefer this, but I did not.

[Zachary Horn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good. This is a really helpful introduction (no condescension intended) to the subject of the historic and ongoing relevance of Aristotelian thought to the Christian faith. Markos exposes some significant points of contact between Aristotle's philosophy and Christian ethics and aesthetics that need more attention. Given the brevity and summary nature of this work, there is quite a bit of simplification that occurs, but Markos is a thoughtful and immensely helpful guide. Markos does a fair bit of editorializing, which I quite enjoy, even if I register moderate disagreement at times. Enjoyed this quite a bit.

[Logan Drury · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be honest I’ve always enjoyed reading Plato compared to Aristotle. This is likely at no fault to Aristotle as most of his writings were likely lecture notes from his students or essentially information from his version of power point slides. I had always loved the beauty of Plato’s writings, allegories and storytelling compared to Aristotles dense lectures. But Markos is in the same boat as me and he gave Aristotle a chance.

This book was incredibly helpful and masterfully written and sectioned out. It turns out Aristotle, while perhaps not as charming as Plato is much more practical especially for Christian thought. Markos concedes where Plato is wrong about things having not known the God of Israel and also where Aristotle was. But like in the prequel of this “From Plato to Christ” he fabricates a strong argument for Aristotle providing the logic for Christianity with a general revelation.

One of the most challenging parts of Aristotle is his intense vocabulary since he is creating so many new categories and terms he was forced to create many words in the Greek language and the translated English vocab doesn’t always make sense. He does a good job breaking the terms down, but because of this I would recommend being familiar with at least a bit of Aristotle’s work (preferably his Nicomachean Ethics, Physics/Metaphysics, or On the Soul for the strongest Christian ties). Overall, as a fan of Plato I loved the prequel to this, but Markos may have allowed me to see Aristotle in a less stuck-up light.

@JakeNewton you gotta give this a chance

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aristotle, like his teacher Plato, had a particular way of asking questions about the world and organizing information in the way that seemed most logical to him with the information he had available. Even without the direct revelation of the Bible, Aristotle intuited some universal truths that have helped Christians to examine their faith more closely and find deeper truths in the Bible than Aristotle ever dreamed of.

Reading this book has helped me to look deeper into my own faith and ask myself, Why do I really believe this? Even seeing where Aristotle got it wrong has forced me to ask the hard questions and wonder, Why do I know that Aristotle was wrong about this? What does the Bible say about it, and how do I know that the Bible got it right? No wonder the subtitle of this book is "How Aristotelian Thought Clarified the Christian Faith"! It really forces you to think deeply and follow each train of logical thought to its conclusion.

I loved the writing style of this book! It's scholarly, but easy to read and understand even if you know nothing about Greek philosophy. We not only explore the way in which the pagan philosophies point to Christ and a Creator God, but also how ancient wisdom has shaped all of Western thought. Each chapter gives a synopsis of the basic ideas from Aristotle's writings and what he taught, and then we can analyze the main themes and symbols and see how they have been reflected in Christianity through the centuries. Although Aristotle believed a lot of misguided and false ideas, he still has some little nuggets of wisdom to teach us today.

The first section is titled "How To Think Logically" where we learn how to think about thinking, the essence of philosophy. We examine the Law of Noncontradiction which says that "something cannot be itself and its opposite at the same time and in the same way." Basically, there is a reality and a truth that cannot be something else. A thing can't be both wrong and right at the same time and in the same way. It must be one or the other. Absolute truth does exist. I loved the way that this chapter breaks down relativism and proves that it is a very poor erroneous way of trying to explain the universe. There is also a great quote from C.S. Lewis about the nature of God and reality, and how we can see the order in the laws of the universe and know that God is a logical God.

We spend some time exploring Aristotle's categories that divide things by their different qualities, by which we can form arguments and make positive or negative statements and arrive at logical conclusions with inductive or deductive reasoning. This type of careful step-by-step thinking is one of the reasons for most of the scientific discoveries of the modern age, mainly based on the Christian philosophy that the world created by God is rational and ordered and we can study and understand its workings. If you believe that the world came into being through chance, then you would expect to see chaos when you study science. But Christians approach science knowing that God created all things with a specific design and purpose, and they expect to find rational measurable natural laws that govern the universe. God also created our reason and gave us the ability to perceive reality as it truly is.

There is a section about motion and change in the world and how time continues in an ever-flowing present. This chapter examines the nature of time and how we perceive it, and there is a wonderful section about how Augustine examines the way that God exists outside of time, using Aristotle's arguments about the transient nature of time to prove that God is both eternally at work and eternally at rest.

Plato (Aristotle's teacher) believed that you are a soul that is trapped inside a body and that you could be reincarnated into some other body or form. But Aristotle disagreed with his teacher, and believed that the body and soul are fused together in their most intricate parts, and there can be no separation in their essence. Aquinas confirms this for the Christian, since we will have a body in the afterlife in heaven or hell, and even our soul in death has the imprint of the body as the physical representation of the potentiality of the soul. You are one being- with a soul and a body, and a mind and a brain, and a heart and a spirit, all working together to actualize who you are.

Then comes a section about cause and effect, and we examine four different types of causes: the material cause- what a thing is made of; the formal cause - the archetype or essence of a thing; the efficient cause - the primary source of change; and the final cause - the purpose of a thing.
So for mankind, we are made up of flesh and bone, our archetype is that we are mammals with a large brain size, our primary source is our biological parents, and our final cause is to glorify God who created us. Aristotle follows the logic backward to a First Cause, an Unmoved Mover, who started everything in motion at the beginning of the universe, but He Himself remains unmoved by a cause, uncreated. God must exist because there is no other explanation for the first cause of all creation. Everything in existence is caused by something that came before it, but God exists outside of the universe He created, outside of time or space. The chicken came before the egg, and God created the chicken.

The first cause also brings us to examine the final cause. "Telos" means the purpose or end to which a thing is moving. Aristotle argues that the reason we see mistakes and errors in the world is because we intuitively know the true telos for the universe, so when something does not align with the intended design for creation, we are naturally offended and upset by the tragedy. For Christians it is clear that this telos is designed by God for our enjoyment of His glory.

Now of course, Aristotle got a lot of things wrong. He imagined God as being perfectly at rest in eternal contemplation with no interest in puny human beings on earth. This "pure actuality" with no potent movement is Aristotle's logical conclusion after seeing an ordered and logical universe. Without the further truth of the Bible, Aristotle could not see the power of God's love and divine revelation of Himself in the person of Christ. Aristotle's initial arguments are useful to Christians for proving that there has to be an Unmoved Mover, proving the existence of God by pure logic; but God is not a God of only pure logic - He is also benevolent and active and very personal. This chapter analyzes writings from Anselm and Descartes and Leibniz and Alexander Pope to further explore the nature of God, showing how Aristotle's arguments were the jumping off point for many Christian thinkers of history.

I especially liked the chapter about the order of the cosmos and the way that Aristotle viewed the planets and stars with the moon as the dividing line between realities. It was really interesting to see how medieval scientists and poets like Dante and Chaucer were inspired by the "circles within circles" and the concept that the stars could balance providence and fate. Even as Christians, we have to wrestle with the paradox of free will and predestination, knowing that our individual free choices are part of a larger destiny, a greater "telos". Since God sees all of reality in an eternal "now" outside of time, Christians can rest in the knowledge that God's foreknowing of all that will ever happen has given us freedom to exercise our free will within His Love. The author says "...there is a divine providence that transcends our earthly fate, even when we are ignorant of it. God is in control, and He will work out His will, even if it should take a thousand years."

Then we come to a section about the "psyche", examining the body, mind, and soul and how they function together. Although Plato believed that the soul has three parts (rational, appetitive, and spirited), Aristotle believed that the appetitive part of the soul is present everywhere in the soul, guiding and regulating the desires of the person, moving us toward or away from something we want or don't want. What causes strife within a person's psyche is when they have opposite desires, like wanting to workout and be healthy but also wanting to stay in bed and eat chocolate. This is where Aristotle refines the ideas of virtue (courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice) that would shape all of Western civilization and set the foundation for the more specific Christian virtues (faith, hope, and love). In the end, Aristotle and Christian thinkers like C.S. Lewis come to the same conclusion that "virtue" is not a set of moral rules, but a certain quality that a person has after having developed a habit of following the moral rules. The virtue itself is that internal quality which prompts a person to have the desire to do what is virtuous. Training the will to choose the good for its own sake is the road that leads to virtue becoming a character trait.

Aristotle shaped our laws in more ways than we realize, because he recognized that attitudes matter as much as or more than actions. If you willing choose to commit a crime, you are much more guilty than someone who unknowingly or accidently committed a crime. Your intent matters. We are morally responsible for our own choices, and those choices shape our character for good or ill. The author says "Evil is evil precisely because we practice it knowingly." So we discern between a person's good and evil actions, not by their outcome, but by the person's intent. We either blame or pity the person because of Aristotle's distinction between attitudes and actions, and our justice system does as well.

I really loved the chapter about finding the "golden mean", the balance between extremes. Much of Christian thought is influenced by finding the perfect balance, the complete and full expression of virtue as it ought to be. There are many extremes that are explored in the Bible and Aristotle examines them too. The virtue of generosity could be twisted in different directions - you could be too liberal and generous with your resources to the point where you are wasting them, or on the other extreme you could be a greedy miser. The perfect expression of generosity is found in the middle, where you give freely, but with good stewardship and wise judgement.

The next few chapters examine our relationships with each other, showing how Aristotle viewed personal relationships in the family and community, where he got it wrong, and how the Bible shows us a better way to interact with our fellow humans. Aristotle had some terrible ideas about slavery and women's rights that are certainly a product of his time in history, but even in his errors there are kernels of questions that lead to a more Biblical relation between people under our Creator. It is only in the Bible that we learn we are created in equal dignity and value.

I was intrigued by Aristotle's praise of the life of contemplation, saying that the life where you have the leisure to just think and learn is the most perfect and complete way of life. But the Bible sanctifies work and contemplation in equal measure, while Aristotle looks down his nose at the working man. Even medieval monks influenced by this philosophy would separate themselves from self-promoting work to devote themselves to pure spiritual thought. In the modern day, we use busyness as a spiritual wall so that we don't have time or take time to be still and know God. In the light of the constant modern grind, it is interesting to see how Aristotle prioritized contemplative learning over commercial activity as a means of bringing true happiness and fulfillment to your life. But the Bible gives us a deeper truth, that all work is sacred when it is dedicated to God, bringing together spiritual contemplation and everyday tasks in a holy union.

There is a lengthy exploration of the Enlightenment movement and how Aristotle was closer to the absolute truth of Christianity than to the relativism of the Enlightenment. Aristotle had what the author calls a "long influence" on political thought, social management, and economic institutions of the West. The most important might be his strong belief in private property being the bedrock of civilization. There is a beautiful section that admires the work of Scottish philosopher Alasdair McIntyre, and how he used Aristotle's examinations of government and private property to argue for moral education that is then properly exercised in preserving that property.

There are chapters that examine types of government and the philosophy that the law should rule, no matter what type of government is employed to enforce the law. We explore "customary laws" which are instinctively known to all people in all cultures, and "written laws" which are the actual written codes of law for an individual country or city. We see how Aristotle's categories of law had an influence on the founding fathers of America with their belief in the inalienable rights that are common to all mankind.

And the final section is about poetry and the arts. I was delighted to see a quote from Dorothy Sayers about classical education needing a foundation in grammar, logic, and rhetoric in order to shape virtuous citizens. Each person needs the ability to think clearly and communicate clearly, or the author says they will be "left to the mercy of advertisers and propagandists." Aristotle was very adamant about the proper use of rhetoric, not to confuse the truth, but to clarify it and bring the listeners to a better understanding. The author shows how many Christian martyrs and great Christian philosophers used Aristotle's type of rhetoric to convince their audience of the truth of Christ. Although Plato condemned the arts as a mere imitation of a shadow, Aristotle saw that the arts, poetry, and theater could be used to reveal great truths about the world, and through a story provide a catharsis of emotion that teaches us how to be more virtuous. I especially loved the section explaining how Milton (my favorite poet) modeled his own poetry after Aristotle's philosophy of evoking cathartic pity and fear in his epics.

Overall, I enjoyed this book so much! It took me a long time to read, because I kept stopping to ponder and think and digest all the wonderful philosophy in each chapter. The best thing about this book is that it all points back to Christ! Every question that Aristotle asks, every philosophical exploration leads in the end to the Creator of all.

Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and honest review.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: Considers and appraises Aristotle’s influence on Christianity and how Christian thinkers appropriated his thought.

Louis Markos is a Platonist. And it seems axiomatic that Platonists and Aristotelians are two separate tribes, even though Aristotle was Plato’s student. Yet, if one didn’t know that Markos was a Platonist, in reading this book, one would think he was an Aristotelian. After a “yearlong dive” into Aristotle, he did not convert. But he came away with a deepened appreciation of Aristotle’s contribution both to philosophy and his influence (mostly positive) on Christian thinkers.

In this book, he addresses both of these. In so doing, he gave far more insight into Aristotle than my freshman philosophy class. And he helped me see how Christians used Aristotle as they clarified what the church believed. He does this in five parts.

Part 1: How to Think Logically

First of all, Aristotle articulated what it means to reason logically. From the law of non-contradiction to the correspondence theory of truth, Aristotle lays the groundwork for both the work of Aquinas and the scientific enterprise. Catholics, rightly or wrongly, drew from his distinction of substance and accidents in their doctrine of transubstantiation of the Eucharist. Dorothy Sayers draws on him to discuss the origin of evil. The syllogism became the basis for the Kalam cosmological argument (although Aristotle would have disagreed, believing both God and the universe were eternal. Augustine’s disagreement with Aristotle’s ideas of time led to his formulation of the timelessness of God. His ideas about the relation of body and soul also influenced Aquinas, as well as Dante.

Part 2: How to Read the Heavens and the Earth

To understand our world, we must ask questions of why, of cause. Aristotle clarified four types of cause: material, formal, efficient, and final. Markos notes how science often only recognizes two of these, the material and the efficient, failing to explain how matter can organize itself. He notes how important this also is for John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. Then Markos discusses how important this is to the argument for an Unmoved Mover. Without formal and final cause, we have only infinite regress. Yet Markos also detects the weakness in this. It can lead to the static, detached God of Deism, as it did for many in the 18th century. Finally, while we reject most of Aristotle’s cosmology in light of modern science, his belief in an ordered universe was consistent with Christian belief and Augustine’s and Boethius’ ideas of providence.

Part 3: How To Behave

Aristotle’s ideas of the soul and embodied life were vital to his understanding of ethics and virtue. Aristotle understood the importance of the choices we made in the formation of our character, and our agency in those choices. He influenced thinkers like Aquinas, Dante, Donne, and Lewis. Unlike Plato, however, he could not understand the virtue in suffering unjustly, as Christ did on the cross. However, Markos also shows how deeply insightful he was on the nature of friendship and his ideas of a life well-lived.

Part 4: How to Get Along with Our Neighbors

Much of this section draws on Aristotle’s Politics, tracing the rise of the polis from the family, and identifying the forms of government. Consistent with scripture, Aristotle warned of the danger of existing without the polis. Unlike Rousseau, we are not noble savages. Markos also introduces us to Alasdair McIntyre, and his “rescue” of Aristotle from Rousseau’s ideas, and how he enlarges with a Christian understanding Aristotle’s ideas of our telos, with its hope of forgiveness, redemption, and the welcome of God in the new creation. He shows Aristotle’s prescience in his understanding of the importance of private property for human order and flourishing. Likewise, Aristotle recognized the vital priority of the rule of law in any form of government, which Markos believe of vital relevance for our own day. He traces the direct arc from Politics to the Federalist Papers.

,b>Part V: How to Make Beautiful Things

This last section begins with the proper use of rhetoric. As Aristotle teaches, it consists in the integrity of the person (ethos), emotional force (pathos) and an appeal to reason (logos). He uses Polycarp and his final speech, facing martyrdom, as an example. He also addresses Aristotle’s ideas of poetry and tragedy, and how Christianity may extend these.

Assessment

I read a fair part of Plato’s works earlier in life. Markos’ account was so motivating that I ordered a couple of his recommended books including The Basic Works of Aristotle edited by Richard McKeon. He makes a good case for how Aristotle provide Christians the tools to articulate and defend their faith. At the same time, he shows what Aristotle failed to see, that was illumined by scripture. Finally, he shows where Aristotle may have led some astray, particularly the Deists.

Markos is a great teacher. He is clear and readable. More than that, I appreciate his effort to read, and assess Aristotle on his own terms. Finally, from Augustine to McIntyre, Aristotle has been part of the church’s conversation. So much that is part of the “furniture” of Christian belief, that we attribute to scripture, also reflects the interaction of the church’s teachers with Aristotle. Markos helps see that.

_______________________

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

[Rory Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is effectively two books. It is an exposition of Aristotle’s thinking, but it is also an exposition of how that thinking influenced Christian thinkers and theological expression.

This means that readers not only learn about Aristotle’s views, but they are also introduced to a wide range of significant Christian thinkers. This ranges from first century figures like Polycarp (Chp 20) to sixteenth century figures like Francis Bacon (Chp 3), to Enlightenment figures like Rousseau (Chp 17) and modern Aristotelian scholars like Alasdair MacIntyre.

Another strong feature of the text was the way that the author explained Aristotle’s disagreements with Plato, and noted Christian preferences for Aristotle’s approach. This included issues like Plato’s insistence that sin is ignorance, and it also included Plato’s scepticism about the value of arts and individual property.

One of the features which worked less well in the book, was that the text would sometimes slip from exposition of history and philosophy into defending an idea. This led to a defence of Intelligent Design in chapter 6 and a defence in chapter 16 of the idea that ‘most wives are happier… (when) led by a … patriarch…’ Both of those ideas are very controversial, and so they both needed far more detailed exploration than the book gave them. Perhaps it would have been better to leave them out of this text, and to explore them in a different book?

There was also an occasional tendency to over-egg the Aristotle analogies and attributions. This occurs in chapter 2 where Transubstantiation is cited as an archetypal example of a doctrine influenced by Aristotle. Yes, that was indeed a common reformation criticism of Catholicism, but is it entirely accurate? The theological language used in official documents (like the Council of Trent) is not the Aristotelian terms ‘substance and accident’ but it is instead the terminology of ‘substance and species.’ Arguably that language owes more to Augustine (eg Bk 7 of the De Trinitate) than it does to Aristotle. Issues like this are far more complex than the book allowed for.

Another example might query whether Christians really got their idea of the four cardinal virtues from Aristotle (or Plato), as Chapter 13 seems to suggest. What we have to remember is that until the Reformation, all Western Christians were reading the Latin vulgate which included a Deuterocanonical book of Wisdom. That book of Wisdom listed the four cardinal virtues as a scriptural text (See chp 8 verse 7). That being the case, how can we be so sure that Christians learned about the cardinal virtues from pagan philosophers, rather than from their Scriptural texts?

Overall, this is a very informative exploration of both Aristotle’s ideas and also of their reception in the Christian tradition. It will be of interest to any readers interested in how philosophical ideas have interacted with Christian faith. The complexity of the ideas means that the book will be enjoyed most by readers with a prior awareness of some of the issues.

(These are honest comments based on a free ARC digital version of the text).

[Michael Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

"From Aristotle To Christ" is a great read for anyone wanting to learn more about how Aristotle influenced Christian thinking over the years. Think that Christian believers like myself cannot learn from non-Christians? Well, think again. As the author rightly mentions, there are some examples in the Bible when God worked through pagans to believers (think of Moses' father-in-law Jethro in the 18th chapter of the Bible book of Exodus, for example).

The author describes 5 categories of Aristotle's philosophical thought on Christian thinkers: logic and science, metaphysics and cosmology, psychology and ethics, social and political science, and rhetoric and aesthetics.

Some of the very interesting examples the author mentions about Aristotle's influence on Christian thinking include:

- The virtue of friendship and how Aristotle devoted a lot of his thinking and writing on the subject.
- The importance of contemplation, especially on God. While Aristotle apparently was deistic in his belief about God, he did present some good thoughts on thinking about God.
- The importance of work and leisure.
- Importance of owning private property, as opposed to a communistic or socialistic takeover of a person's property.

The above are only a few examples: there are many more. As an academic read, the book is very informative, has excellent footnotes for clarifying a point as needed, contains a very helpful glossary for the reader not familiar with the terms used by the author, is well-organized, and is very suitable for either a college course or personal study.

Very good reference and title for anyone interested in this area. Recommended.

I was given a review copy by IVP in exchange for a fair review and appreciate the opportunity.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I give this a five-star just because it is much better than "From Plato to Christ", although this has some weaknesses as well, and may be a weak five or a strong four star. Instead of doing as in "From Plato..." by presenting Plato first and then some influences Plato had on history in the second half, this book goes through issue by issue and presents Aristotle, and then, in the same chapter, how the issue influenced a few people or ideas throughout history. Turns out, the influence of Astistotle looks like this to be much bigger and much more positive than that of Plato, whereas Markos shies away from the negatives (as Communism). Still, Louis Markos is an ardent Platonist, somehow, and I don't get why. He even says that one topic is the only one where he thinks Plato got it wrong, while multiple times he seems to point out that Aristotle got it still more right than Plato. And I can pinpoint many things Plato got wrong! It is just that they don't count, because Markos does not seem to take Plato as literally as Aristotle. I am a bit confused by this. It is not in small stuff that Aristotle swept Plato under the rug. I am more of an Aristotelian, and even more strongly so after reading these two books.

It makes better reading to go topic by topic, and it is nice to be shown how the ideas from Aristotle have developed in a Christian world, and how Christians have been inspired by him throughout the ages. It is a great work, as the main ideas from the whole of Aristotles corpus are discussed, and you will go away a much wiser person and more knowledgeable one concerning the origins of so many modern ideas.

[Joel Wentz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the structure of this one more than "From Plato to Christ," and found a few specific discussions quite interesting (ex. Aristotle's "causes" and the modern debate on creation v evolution). It's a helpful and readable summary of a lot of Aristotelian thought, but still skews a bit too introductory for my overall taste.

Video review here: https://youtu.be/YalwRDz-_eg