Billie J. Cullison

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English Language

1 August 2013

Christianity and Philosophy

      When Christianity was applied to the ideas of philosophers who lived and died centuries before Christ, a sort of melding happened. The new philosophers saw matching points between what Aristotle (among others) and God had said. These philosophers used the Bible to fill in holes in Aristotle's ideas.

An example being that Aristotle believed there was a God that start all natural processes, but goes no further in explaining him. People then turned to the Bible to fill out Aristotle's idea.

     Philosophers, like Thomas Aquinas, went so far as to say one could prove the existence of God, or some formal cause, using Aristotle's teachings. He separated the idea into two paths, the 'theology of faith' and 'natural theology'. Basically, he explained that there are two paths to God, one being faith and the other being reason. It was ideas like this that showed how, if one understood and tried hard enough, one could find a cohesiveness between a centuries old philosopher's reason and the widespread faith still strong from the Middle Ages.

     He also spoke of innate natural truths that one could achieve through either faith or reason. Sophie's World describes it as a deaf person and a blind person near a thunderstorm. The deaf person knows of the storm because of the lightning. The blind person hears the thunder and perceives the storm that way. Of course, the storm would be easier to perceive and comprehend if one had both of those senses, it can still be detected. This is much like how an idea can be understood through reason and faith, but one may understand the expanse of the idea better if they looked at it through both points of view.

       In conclusion, the 'christenization' of philosophers brought together religion and philosophy in a palatable, cohesive way.