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Philosophy and the Christian: The Quest for Wisdom in the Light of Christ
Tertullian famously asked, “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” Since the first century, Christians have hotly debated the relationship between faith and reason, between Scripture and natural revelation, and between Christian doctrine and non-Christian philosophy. Too often, though, the history of this conflict has been misrepresented and misunderstood. Thus, before we seek to answer these questions for our own time, we must first come to grips with the answers of the past. What did "philosophy" mean for our spiritual forefathers? When Christian teachers raised warnings in the past about its dangers, what precisely did they have in mind? And most importantly, where does this leave the church today? This volume surveys how Christians have navigated this treacherous—but unavoidable—territory throughout the history of the Christian church. By careful attention to and critical reflection upon their examples, the Church today can be equipped with the discernment needed to continue the search for wisdom in a world groaning for the full unveiling of the light of Christ.
- GenresPhilosophyTheology
530 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2018
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56 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Minich
21 books19 followersJoseph Minich is a Ph.D candidate in Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas, and the Editor-in-Chief of The Davenent Press. His research interests include modern atheism, the nature of modernity, and the role of late modern technology in the formation of religious beliefs. Some of his writings can be found at The Calvinist International, Mere Orthodoxy, and in several edited volumes published by Davenant.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 31, 2018
This is an excellent set of essays on Christian philosophy from scripture, the church fathers, medieval and Reformation periods, down through post modern and neo-Calvinist schools.
January 10, 2019
What a fantastic book. I am of course quite biased, having written a few things for Davenant, but I really have to say I loved this book, which is a 500 page collection of essays covering various moments in history spanning from the church fathers to Heideger's version of postmodernism. This is $25 well spent, and if you are an academic or have ever been interested in Socratic dialogue as a way of life I would recommend Escalante's essay as alone worth the price of admission.
Okay, so a few comments on individual essays.
The first essay by Fulford and Haines is very good, the gist of which is to say that Paul's warning in Colossians not to let vain philosophy take you captive is primarily aimed, oddly enough, at a sort of Jewish mysticism, not even against the Greek philosophy of his day. It also deals with the larger question of whether Scripture is anti-philosophical in a satisfactory way.
Blake Adams's essay is very long, but genuinely a insightful grappling with the primary texts of the early church. I hope that he continues to read the fathers and develop as a patristic scholar. I especially liked this paragraph: "a new revelation does not call forth neologisms, and a new way of life does not require a new vocabulary which did not exist beforehand. A word is divine because God elects to speak it, not because God invented it. Indeed, every word spoken to Abraham was presumably in his own language--a language which he shared in common with his pagan family and neighbors which, for Abraham, existed long before God ever spoke in it. Divine truth does not exist in such otherworldly terms that it requires the spontaneous generation of a new language to convey it." That's eloquent and powerful truth, right there.
Christopher Cleveland gives a short but competent essay explaining that, no, the middle ages were far from a dark age for philosophy, and no they did not just submit Scripture to philosophy. A neglected point and an important one.
Andre Gazal gives an odder essay that argues that the pre-Reformation theologian John Colet's extreme statements about philosophy should be given a more careful reading. It's probably a good example of how we should read extreme statements that medievals and pre-moderns are wont to make.
I am quickly becoming an Eric Hutchinson fanboy. He's actually an entertaining scholar, and he deftly points out in this essay that Luther's negative statements about the value of reason and natural philosophy and Aristotle should be contextualized by the works-righteousness facets appropriated by late scholasticism. The quotes are there for all to see, and I would recommend this one perhaps to any Van Tilian who wanted to commandeer Luther.
Haines makes a point very similar, only with regard to the broader reformed tradition in relation to the natural law and natural revelation. It's very similar to his Davenant publication on Natural Law, though I wish that he could engage in more detail with Van Til and his followers and how they differ from the Reformed tradition (since they do affirm some sort of natural law). Still if anyone's in doubt about this, I would send them to this essay, since it's very comprehensive.
Nathan Greeley has a good essay that points to many of the Protestant philosophers who have done excellent work over the years. Again, it seems that the Scottish commonsense school of philosophy is tragically neglected (see Stokes). One hopes someone will resurrect them, and for the popular level too. I also like this essay because it shows how Aristotelianism was gradually displaced, and in a non-fall-narrative sort of way.
Doornbos has a very quick and summary essay showing that Van Til and Neo-Calvinism (particularly Dooyeweerd) are outside the Reformed tradition in some remarkable points. Again, I could have wished for more grappling with primary sources, but it's very accessible and makes the damning point that Dooyeweerd's supposedly fully consistent philosophy didn't promote much actual new philosophizing.
Stanley's essay on Heidegger is a little odd, since it's a very positive appraisal of postmodern musings. Still, I enjoyed it and enjoyed that a Roman Catholic Jew that went to the gas chamber in Auswitch actually engaged with and critiqued Heidegger! If you want to read Heidegger, read Edith Stein too.
Ryan Hurd's essay on Analytical theology is really good too. I highly recommend it for showing the problems and limitations of analytical theology and how it differs from classical theism, broadly conceived. It's also short, which is a benefit in such a strange field.
Derrick Peterson's essay is the only one in this book that I would give to a non-academic. It is hilariously entertaining, talking about flat earthism, the Galileo affair, and creatio ex nihilo as case studies in how "science" and "religion" have been bifurcated in historical reconstructions, usually for evil polemical purposes. (For instance, Calvin is CONSISTENTLY misquoted as anti-Copernican, but he probably never even heard of Copernicus, and even Luther may not have been referring to him.) So beware anyone that wants to pit science and religion against each other. More careful minds were at the wheel in the past. It's also a rousing defense of theology as the queen of the sciences. I hope to read more from this author.
Finally, Escalante offers an essay which seems to have been doctored minimally by Joe Minich (the style is pure Escalantese throughout, though without some of his occasional verbiage). This essay can be summarized easily: the basic theme is "No pain, no gain." Or in other words, true philosophy is not self-help, mental keeping in shape, or precisionism. It's about trying to understand and grow in one's understanding of the real world. This is kind of an academic manifesto for the life of the mind, and it's very entertaining. A great deal of it is spent on Roman Catholic claims to possessing true wisdom alone. That might be a temptation for others, but it has never been for me, so I wonder if these sections were as valuable. More pertinent to my life is the warning that ideology, all ideology, even Christian worldview ideology, can be a refusal to live in submission to reality as God has made it. Propaganda is propaganda and it's always bad insofar as it is propaganda, even if you're being led to the truth. Escalante qualifies this by pointing out that this does not mean complete openness and never-ending questing: this is an explicitly Christian attempt to know God's mind through knowing the world. This essay also has moments of entertainment and eloquence and it's actually one of the more dauntingly practical things I've read in a long time, since it's a call to know the world and not just books. This book calls, non-ironically, for being adventurous. He also hits on the great books mistake: "there is no philosophical canon in the strong sense, no 'one size fits all' canon of 'classics' or 'great books.' This is because each person is irreducibly particular, and while that which enables them to discover the world, including themselves, might often be 'classic'--Plato, Augustine, Luther, Lewis--it might very well be something entirely different which revealed to their particular eyes a certain common structure of reality. It could be a song of Bob Dylan, a conversation with one's auto mechanic, or finally getting better at growing tomatoes." Great stuff, and a fitting end to a great volume. Again, I highly recommend this book.
Okay, so a few comments on individual essays.
The first essay by Fulford and Haines is very good, the gist of which is to say that Paul's warning in Colossians not to let vain philosophy take you captive is primarily aimed, oddly enough, at a sort of Jewish mysticism, not even against the Greek philosophy of his day. It also deals with the larger question of whether Scripture is anti-philosophical in a satisfactory way.
Blake Adams's essay is very long, but genuinely a insightful grappling with the primary texts of the early church. I hope that he continues to read the fathers and develop as a patristic scholar. I especially liked this paragraph: "a new revelation does not call forth neologisms, and a new way of life does not require a new vocabulary which did not exist beforehand. A word is divine because God elects to speak it, not because God invented it. Indeed, every word spoken to Abraham was presumably in his own language--a language which he shared in common with his pagan family and neighbors which, for Abraham, existed long before God ever spoke in it. Divine truth does not exist in such otherworldly terms that it requires the spontaneous generation of a new language to convey it." That's eloquent and powerful truth, right there.
Christopher Cleveland gives a short but competent essay explaining that, no, the middle ages were far from a dark age for philosophy, and no they did not just submit Scripture to philosophy. A neglected point and an important one.
Andre Gazal gives an odder essay that argues that the pre-Reformation theologian John Colet's extreme statements about philosophy should be given a more careful reading. It's probably a good example of how we should read extreme statements that medievals and pre-moderns are wont to make.
I am quickly becoming an Eric Hutchinson fanboy. He's actually an entertaining scholar, and he deftly points out in this essay that Luther's negative statements about the value of reason and natural philosophy and Aristotle should be contextualized by the works-righteousness facets appropriated by late scholasticism. The quotes are there for all to see, and I would recommend this one perhaps to any Van Tilian who wanted to commandeer Luther.
Haines makes a point very similar, only with regard to the broader reformed tradition in relation to the natural law and natural revelation. It's very similar to his Davenant publication on Natural Law, though I wish that he could engage in more detail with Van Til and his followers and how they differ from the Reformed tradition (since they do affirm some sort of natural law). Still if anyone's in doubt about this, I would send them to this essay, since it's very comprehensive.
Nathan Greeley has a good essay that points to many of the Protestant philosophers who have done excellent work over the years. Again, it seems that the Scottish commonsense school of philosophy is tragically neglected (see Stokes). One hopes someone will resurrect them, and for the popular level too. I also like this essay because it shows how Aristotelianism was gradually displaced, and in a non-fall-narrative sort of way.
Doornbos has a very quick and summary essay showing that Van Til and Neo-Calvinism (particularly Dooyeweerd) are outside the Reformed tradition in some remarkable points. Again, I could have wished for more grappling with primary sources, but it's very accessible and makes the damning point that Dooyeweerd's supposedly fully consistent philosophy didn't promote much actual new philosophizing.
Stanley's essay on Heidegger is a little odd, since it's a very positive appraisal of postmodern musings. Still, I enjoyed it and enjoyed that a Roman Catholic Jew that went to the gas chamber in Auswitch actually engaged with and critiqued Heidegger! If you want to read Heidegger, read Edith Stein too.
Ryan Hurd's essay on Analytical theology is really good too. I highly recommend it for showing the problems and limitations of analytical theology and how it differs from classical theism, broadly conceived. It's also short, which is a benefit in such a strange field.
Derrick Peterson's essay is the only one in this book that I would give to a non-academic. It is hilariously entertaining, talking about flat earthism, the Galileo affair, and creatio ex nihilo as case studies in how "science" and "religion" have been bifurcated in historical reconstructions, usually for evil polemical purposes. (For instance, Calvin is CONSISTENTLY misquoted as anti-Copernican, but he probably never even heard of Copernicus, and even Luther may not have been referring to him.) So beware anyone that wants to pit science and religion against each other. More careful minds were at the wheel in the past. It's also a rousing defense of theology as the queen of the sciences. I hope to read more from this author.
Finally, Escalante offers an essay which seems to have been doctored minimally by Joe Minich (the style is pure Escalantese throughout, though without some of his occasional verbiage). This essay can be summarized easily: the basic theme is "No pain, no gain." Or in other words, true philosophy is not self-help, mental keeping in shape, or precisionism. It's about trying to understand and grow in one's understanding of the real world. This is kind of an academic manifesto for the life of the mind, and it's very entertaining. A great deal of it is spent on Roman Catholic claims to possessing true wisdom alone. That might be a temptation for others, but it has never been for me, so I wonder if these sections were as valuable. More pertinent to my life is the warning that ideology, all ideology, even Christian worldview ideology, can be a refusal to live in submission to reality as God has made it. Propaganda is propaganda and it's always bad insofar as it is propaganda, even if you're being led to the truth. Escalante qualifies this by pointing out that this does not mean complete openness and never-ending questing: this is an explicitly Christian attempt to know God's mind through knowing the world. This essay also has moments of entertainment and eloquence and it's actually one of the more dauntingly practical things I've read in a long time, since it's a call to know the world and not just books. This book calls, non-ironically, for being adventurous. He also hits on the great books mistake: "there is no philosophical canon in the strong sense, no 'one size fits all' canon of 'classics' or 'great books.' This is because each person is irreducibly particular, and while that which enables them to discover the world, including themselves, might often be 'classic'--Plato, Augustine, Luther, Lewis--it might very well be something entirely different which revealed to their particular eyes a certain common structure of reality. It could be a song of Bob Dylan, a conversation with one's auto mechanic, or finally getting better at growing tomatoes." Great stuff, and a fitting end to a great volume. Again, I highly recommend this book.
June 29, 2025
The book offers a good overview of how philosophy, natural theology, and apologetics are approached by the Reformed camp. The reader will learn about the foundations of the Reformed approach and the different variants found within. However, some of the essays were not on par with the rest of the book. Many of the contributors hold advanced degrees and training, while others did not. The book is a bit of a mishmash, with some advocating for natural theology, whereas others tending to dismiss the concept. Nonetheless, this is a good read for anyone interested in the Reformed take on philosophy.
May 12, 2025
A very helpful collection of essays, but the book builds to its final essay and a thorough defense of philosophy as a way of life and the possibility of Christian philosophy as way of life before God. Importantly, the authors make the case that such an idea is thoroughly consistent (even dependent) on Protestant and evangelical commitments to the priesthood of all believers and liberty of conscience.
August 18, 2024
A mixed bag goes from really good to difficult to understand. Does anybody really understand Heidegger? Lol.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews