Living vs. Living well

Do cities still exist in the West? That is a question one must ask after reading Aristotle’s Politics (3.9). For him, a true city is not formed when people share a location, prevent injustice, and facility commerce. It is not merely for the sake of living. A true city is most importantly a political community …

Philosophical Issues and Developments in the Post-Reformation Era, 1

Philosophy was an “add-on” to theology for the post-Reformation writers. It was “an aid to learning” (“ancilla”) but it did not contain the substantive material that was to be considered when evaluating “theology proper” (i.e., issues surrounding the Doctrine of God, etc.). In other instances, it was found, some philosophies were outright hostile to Christianity. …

Natural Theology 3: Vermigli on the Natural Knowledge of God

Richard Muller rounds out the Reformers’s view of “natural theology” with a section on Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562). Vermigli was a “Thomist-trained” Italian who, “of all the early Reformed codifiers of doctrine, produced the most extended treatment of the problem of the natural knowledge of God in relation to theology.” It is telling that “in …

Aquinas gets this wrong, and much confusion follows

There are a lot of moving parts in this discussion, I admit. Here we have a discussion about a concept, in which the discussion moves from Aristotle to Aquinas to Scotus to Luther to Calvin to Turretin and Warfield. In my recent blog post, Luther’s Theology of the Cross and Metaphysics, I cited Muller as …

A Brief History of the Christian Doctrine of God Part 4: “Knowing God”

Richard Muller moves along to the 13th century, in which commenting upon Peter Lombard’s Sentences became normative for the study of theology. Even a younger Martin Luther commented upon the Sentences (though not upon the Doctrine of God) and Calvin viewed the work as foundational for Medieval theology. With that said, I’m skipping a lot …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 7): Logic and Categories

[Subtitle: How Aquinas Fudged Aristotle to Settle Transubstantiation]: In recent posts, I’ve cited Willem van Asselt with an overview of the Works of Aristotle, and also Arthur Lovejoy noting that “the God of Aristotle had almost nothing in common with the God of the Sermon on the Mount”. But that doesn’t mean that Aristotle didn’t …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 6): Fudging God?

“The Roman Communion is a creature of the 14th century and even more profoundly, of the 16th century (Trent). The sacramental system she reveres is a 14th century invention. As late as 9th century no one knew anything about 7 sacraments. Ask Radbertus and Ratramnus, and ask the latter about transubstantiation; he thought it was …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 5): The Starting Point

In this series, and following the work of Richard Muller (“Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics”), I’ve been making the claim that the Reformed Orthodox writers, who wrote in the two centuries following the Reformation, borrowed from Aristotle’s methods, but not much at all from his own lines of thinking. As a reference for those who may be …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 3): Borrowing methods, not concepts

In two recent blog posts describing the methodology of the Reformed Orthodox writers, I noted first that it was “nominally Aristotelian”, stressing, however, that it was so because that methodology was ancient and familiar, and second, that while they employed that methodology, they did so while avoiding Aristotelian concepts, employing Scriptural “content” instead. William J. …

Fudging Aristotle: A Digression (Part 2): “’Not Informed by God’s Revelation”

Ever since Tertullian famously asked “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” the relationship between theology and philosophy has been full of ups and downs. And while Christianity emerged from Old Testament Judaism, in Palestine, Christianity itself entered a world that was largely Greek-speaking and “Hellenistic” – that is, one that was shaped by Greek …