Philosophy: A Christian Justification (Part 1)

The first discussion I undertook with my class addressed the nature of philosophy and questioned whether Christians, followers of Jesus who attest that it is faith in the Bible’s divinely revealed teachings that leads to truth and true living, can rightly engage in philosophical discussion or whether such a thing is contrary to Christian teaching.

To begin the discussion it is best to understand what exactly philosophy is and what it is not. At its core the study of philosophy is the practice of thinking hard about life and its many facets. There are more rigorous definitions regarding philosophies relationship to first order disciplines like science or education and there are many specific subcategories to philosophy such as metaphysics or philosophy of the mind but at its core philosophy is about understand fundamental relationships in any area of thought and then describing them accurately. Philosophy is not a singular path to knowing what is true or better yet deciding what is true. Neither is it a area of study that requires its students remove themselves from practical concerns and become fanciful dreamers unhinged and unengaged in the matters of real life.

Essentially, philosophy is the pursuit or wisdom, which as the ancient Hebrews so well defined it is, the practice of knowing and doing what is good.

The aims of philosophy are simply to discover through the use of reason and based upon solid evidences what is real (in any field) and not just a matter of appearance. It might be understood that philosophy, properly practiced, is about defining things and concepts well and in a manner that makes their apprehension simple, their performance possible, and our interaction with them potent.

Philosophy, similarly to other disciplines of knowledge, uses simple methods; dialectic, the definition of terms, the identification of presuppositions, and the use of argument. Perhaps unique to philosophy is the intense demand for detail that is required for it is through the determined and focussed attention to detail that the philosopher is able to assemble great and powerful ideas.

To be continued…

 

Upcoming engagements

Date: July 2-6
Location: Pleasantview Bible Camp
Addressing: Junior High Camp
Subject Matter: Knowing God

An Invitation: Christian Philosophy

In lieu of my recent speaking engagements or teachings I want to over a summary of some of my lessons from the university class I offered in Lebanon.

As the title of the blog suggests my first lecture was title An Invitation to Christian Philosophy. Considering that this was a first year class I began by approaching a definition of philosophy in general. To begin, there is no airtight definition. I offered two distinct perspectives: 1) Etymologically the roots of the Greek words in the contraction mean to love (philein) wisdom (sophia). This might loosely define the principles and practices of right thinking and the reasoned pursuit of fundamental truths; and, 2) It might be understood as a second order discipline that studies first order disciplines as a negative check and a positive guide. For example, the philosophy of science may seek to describe right approaches to scientific study based upon perceptions of how we may interpret sense perception and experience or aim to rightly limit the spheres of scientific conjecture considering that as a discipline science is limited to describing tested and observable data and not making metaphysical claims outside its purview (science can tell us the nature of the universe, its age, and the processes of its current development but it cannot tell us what caused it to came into being, i.e. to be created).

Obviously are different ways of defining philosophy but I think that these two broad perspectives allow us a simple means of delineating the Christian study of philosophy into two trajectories. Firstly the Christian philosopher must seek to understand the nature of rational and reasonable thought, the principles of logic, the discipline of knowing with certainty and by causes, learning the methods of making ideas clear, adequately defining words, avoiding unnecessary verbal disputes and the use of argument by reason and evidence expressed through presuppositions and truth claims. Secondly the Christian philosopher must be able to apply all the previously mentioned skills towards answering the fundamental questions of human life including but not limited to: What is real and not just a matter of appearance? What can be known about being, good and evil, motion, the world, humankind and God?

In an effort to lead the students into such a study I broke the class into a series of lectures upon topics which would aid in such an enterprise. Discussions covered the following topics:

• A Christian Justification of Philosophy
• The Relationship between Philosophy and Theology or Reason and Faith
• The Reality and Nature of Truth
• Logic and Argument
• Epistemology
  • Can we know? The Skeptical Challenge?
  • What is Knowledge?
  • What is the structure of Justification?
  • Religious Epistemology.
• Metaphysics
  • What is the Nature of the World?
  • Are there Universals?
  • What is a Particular Thing?
• Philosophy of Religion
  • Does God Exist? (Part 1)
    • The Cosmological Argument
    • The Teleological Argument
    • The Axiological Argument
    • The Ontological Argument
  • What is God like? (Part 2)
    • Necessity
    • Aseity
    • Incorporeality
    • Omnipresence
    • Omnipotence
    • Omniscience
    • Atemporality
    • Emotion
    • Simplicity
    • Immutability
• Philosophical Analysis of Two Christian Doctrines
  • The Incarnation: Is it possible?
  • Particularism: Is Jesus the only way to heaven
• Human Nature
  • Do people have eternal souls?
  • Do people have free-will?
• Ethics
  • The Ethical Question – Is it important?
  • Relativism
  • Natural Objectivism
  • Nonnatural Objectivism
  • Case Study: Article, “Reconciling Normative Tensions in Biomedical Ethics” Ashley Moyse
• Discussion
  • Bertrand Russel
  • The New Atheism
  • Islamic Philosophy
  • The Trinity

In upcoming posts I will address these topics as I did in my course.