Athens and Jerusalem
The subject of how Christian theology has made use of philosophy, and especially the philosophical reflection of non-Christian authors, is a standard topic of prolegomena. The relevance of studying this to a Reformed audience is twofold. Our hesitation to looking into the philosophy-laden writings of so many of the early Christian thinkers comes from a very modern misapplication of the doctrines of total depravity and sola Scriptura—applications of those doctrines that the architects of early Reformed orthodoxy would not have drawn.
If the reader will pardon my mixing of two metaphors, we may summarize this dimension of the early Christian plundering of the Athenians’ gold in the following way:
Neither the unregenerate state of the philosophers, nor the extra-biblical status of their writings, prevented premodern Christian theology from appropriating wisdom where their thinking was indeed true.
On the other hand, there has long been a class of “theologians,” Étienne Gilson tells us, “according to whom Revelation had been given to men as a substitute for all other knowledge, including science, ethics and metaphysics … Reduced to its essentials, their position is very simple; since God has spoken to us, it is no longer necessary for us to think.”1
While this characterization may seem hyperbolic, it does mark a basic aversion to finding wisdom in pagan thought.
Platonic Thought in Patristic Theology
It is generally recognized that the earliest apologists planted the roots of “logos Christology” in their Greek philosophical background.2 By a more philosophical reading of texts like John 1:1, 14, 1 Corinthians 1:24, and Colossians 2:3, in Christ, “Reason became man.”3 The thornier question has been whether this was a good thing. The prevailing thesis for over a century has been that it was not.
Adolph von Harnack articulated what became a popular notion for generations of conservative Evangelicals—largely unaware of its liberal origins—namely, that Christian theology was distorted by Greek philosophical categories during this early period. At the very least, wrote Gordon Clark, such emphasis “was not capable of avoiding confusion.”4
The criticism against this early synergy between philosophy and theology often fails to indicate whether the problem had to do with method or content.
G. L. Prestige remarked,
“There is nothing particularly Hellenic, still less pagan, about rational method, except that the Greeks had the providential privilege of its discovery and development. In itself, it is part of the equipment with which human nature has been endowed by God who made mankind.”5
Opinions about Platonic influence on theological method are determined in large part by how one views that philosophy and its compatibility with Christian theology in the first place. If one does not know what Plato (or his successors) meant by concepts such as being, participation, forms, immortality, and the like, then it is unsurprising that one will fail to recognize whether these notions have been wholesale rejected, uncritically embraced, or else critically appropriated, often by other terminology.
Jordan Cooper offers a general summary in that, “The majority of Christian writers acknowledged both continuity and discontinuity between Christian thought and that of Plato, rejecting both a pure antagonism between the two as perceived by Tertullian, and a near total adoption of Greek thought forms as held by Clement.”6
We are given additional help when the fathers chronicled their own journey in and out of Platonism, as when Justin Martyr spoke of his hope that contemplating the immaterial would result in the beholding of God.7 The popular account of Tertullian’s antipathy toward the philosophers notwithstanding, he had no difficulty affirming both common notions and various conclusions about God drawn from them. For example, he did not hesitate to reference Plato’s forms as a way to apply Paul’s language in Romans 1:20:
The objects which are touched by the mind are of a higher nature, since they are spiritual, than those which are grasped by the senses. Since these are corporeal, any superiority they may display lies only in the objects—e.g., as lofty ones contrasted with humble—not in the faculties of the intellect over against the senses. For how can the intellect be considered sovereign above the senses, when it is these which educate it for the discovery of various truths? It is a fact that these truths are learned by means of parable forms; in other words, invisible things are discovered by the help of visible ones, even as the apostle says in his epistle.8
In his Life of Moses, Gregory of Nyssa presupposes quite a bit of common ground between Plato and the biblical authors. Two examples can be cited.
First, Gregory’s definition of truth and falsehood is entirely a function of apprehending the difference between being and non-being. This follows from Plato’s distinction between knowledge and opinion, the former corresponding to the unchanging realm of the forms, the latter, even where true, corresponding to the changing realm of appearances.9
Second, to speak of human virtue is to speak of participation in eternal attributes.10 When Plato spoke of the form of justice, for example, he was speaking of being in itself, rather than simply an instance of justice in the changing world. “Accordingly,” Socrates said, “in so far as the quality of justice is concerned, there will be no difference between a just man and a just society.”11 Both the just man and the just society may rightly be called “just” to the degree that they conform to, or participate in, the form called Justice.
Moreover, Jeroslav Pelikan identifies in Gregory a capacity to rebuke an idea arrived at “unphilosophically,” yet elsewhere he cautions that “nature was ‘not trustworthy for instruction.’”12
Augustine’s appropriation of Plato was of a critical kind.13 His Confessions evidence a precursor to this balance, as he speaks of truths he found “there” (in the Platonists)14 that were similar to Scripture, yet in the next breath something of the same truth found “nowhere” among them.15 Thomas Aquinas himself would recognize this balance in writing that,
“whenever Augustine, who was imbued with the doctrines of the Platonists, found in their teaching anything consistent with faith, he adopted it; and those things which he found contrary to faith he amended.”16
Against the notion of “baptized Platonism,” John Peter Kenney speaks of “adaptive novelty,” an appropriation that “was nuanced and complex and on-going.”17 Certainly notions like recollection, which Plato rooted in a preexistent life, were subsequently discarded by Augustine. However those elements which most profoundly highlighted the superiority of eternal, immaterial things remained central. “It is evident that none come nearer to us than the Platonists,”18 since they “have seen that whatever is changeable is not the most high God.”19
Aristotelian Thought in Medieval Theology
When we move forward into the scholastic era, Arvin Vos is clarifying in asking, “Was [Aquinas] basically an Aristotelian who also wanted to make room for the truths of revelation, or was he a Christian concerned to explain this truth in the most adequate way possible - which for him meant utilizing Aristotle?”20 The adequacy of this Christian handling of Aristotle must also be understood as a matter of apologetics with respect to Islam.
Thomas J. White puts it in this way,
“The debate was greatly affected by the influential interpretations and commentaries of the Aristotelian corpus effectuated by Avicenna and Averroes which presented diverse points of compatibility or incongruity with the confession of the Catholic faith.”21
In short, silence to Aristotle would have meant intellectual retreat.22 It was not that Christianity was to be modified to the Philosopher, but rather the burden was to show that Christianity could address Aristotelian categories and questions better than could Islam. Neither was Thomas simply baptizing Aristotle into Christian service.23 As Henry Koren pointed out, “Thomas widened the scope of Aristotelian metaphysics by adding to it many other elements, especially from Neoplatonic philosophy.”24
Aristotle’s philosophy implied three issues that Aquinas would have to handle differently as a Christian. These three have to do with the beginning of the universe, the immortality of the soul, and the omniscience and providence of God. Most famously to the student of historic philosophy, even while Aristotle formed a cosmological argument showing how the universe requires a cause, nevertheless it did not follow for him that it required a temporal beginning. One resolution for Thomas was to write the book On the Eternity of the World in 1270.
The question for him was not whether the Scripture was to be affirmed. Of course it was. Neither was the question whether the universe could have existed always and apart from divine causality. The sole question was whether reason per se could demonstrate that the universe must have a beginning.
Understanding the exact question is one entry-point into how Thomas (and classical theology in general) resisted the idea that something could be true in theology while false in philosophy, or vice-versa.25 It is not the case that Thomas was asking his readers to accept either Aristotle or Scripture. Rather, the reader was being challenged to rightly classify this article as belonging to faith and thus the authority of Scripture, instead of belonging to rational demonstration.
Concluding Thoughts
This brief summary of the use of Platonic and Aristotelian thought shows that not only did these great theologians, like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, appropriate important philosophical categories, but that they did so in a way that does no structural harm to Christian faith. On the contrary, such a harmonious relationship between the best insights of the Greeks and theological method allows the theologian to achieve greater clarity in apologetics and doctrine. It supplies the grammar of distinction by which a more profound theology may further develop orthodoxy and avoid error.
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1. Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 5, 6.
2. cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003), 83-87; 95-101.
3. Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought: Seeking the Face of God (Yale University Press, 2005), 15.
4. Gordon Clark, Thales to Dewey: A History of Philosophy (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1980), 214.
5. G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1936), xiii.
6. Jordan Cooper, Prolegomena: A Defense of the Scholastic Method (Just & Sinner Publishing, 2020), 121.
7. John Peter Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity: A Study in Augustine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 5.
8. Tertullian, A Treatise on the Soul, 18 (ANF 3:199).
9. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1978), 60; cf. Plato, Republic, V:476-479B; VI:507-511E; Meno 97b-98a.
10. Gregory of Nyssa, The Life of Moses, 31.
11. Plato, Republic, IV:434.
12. Jeroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Christian Encounter with Hellenism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 26.
13. cf. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967), 88-100; Henry Chadwick, Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 9-10, 17-31; Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (Cluny Media, 2020); B. B. Warfield, “Augustine’s Doctrine of Knowledge and Authority,” The Princeton Theological Review, Volume V, Number 3 (July 1907) 353-397.
14. Kenney suggests Neoplatonism is a “modern neologism” whose usefulness has come and gone. Better to simply see this era as featuring a development in Platonism proper: in “None Come Closer to Us Than These:’ Augustine and the Platonists”, Religions 2016, Vol. 7, (11), 115.
15. Augustine, Confessions, 7.9.14.
16. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Pt. I. Q.84. Art.5
17. Kenney, Contemplation and Classical Christianity: A Study in Augustine, 11.
18. Augustine, City of God, VIII.5.
19. Augustine, City of God, VIII.6.
20. Vos, Aquinas, Calvin & Contemporary Protestant Theology, 132.
21. Thomas Joseph White, Wisdom in the Face of Modernity: A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2016), 69.
22. cf. Copleston, A History of Philosophy, II. Pt. 2, 144.
23. cf. Gilles Emery and Matthew Levering, Aristotle in Aquinas’s Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)
24. Henry J. Koren, An Introduction to the Science of Metaphysics (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1955), 13.
25. cf. Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), 40; Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, 100.
