Philosophy Vs. Theology

[Slappo]

I think Pope Benedict XVI's Reggensburg Address would be a very interesting and insightful read for you on the western views, and those of our pope, on the relationship of Athens and Jerusalem.

http://www.zenit.org/article-16955?l=english

As it is very very dense, I recommend printing and highlighting. One of my philosophy classes at Franciscan University spent two or more weeks on this address alone.

Another insightful read on philosophy and theology might be Benedict's encyclical Spe Salvi article 6.Here is a taste of it.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi_en.html

[quote]Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human—the art of living and dying. To be sure, it had long since been realized that many of the people who went around pretending to be philosophers, teachers of life, were just charlatans who made money through their words, while having nothing to say about real life. All the more, then, the true philosopher who really did know how to point out the path of life was highly sought after.[/quote]



Really the relationship between theology and philosophy depends on what you truly understand philosophy to be. If you understand it to be what it has become today, then it is quite a different relationship then the understanding of the philosophy of the early Greeks.

[Slappo]

I know that my reply did not directly address your specific question as to how to tell the difference between philosophy and theology but I believe in seeing the relationship between philosophy and theology you can more clearly see how they both intertwine and are separate.

My views on the matter are quite different, I am sure, of those of Apotheun. I took a Christian Philosophy class, as a matter of fact, the only Christian Philosophy class that has been taught at Franciscan University (the brother who was teaching it taught it for one semester only, and the class was based on his doctoral dissertation and was quite intriguing)

If I get the chance I will post more later, but my internet use is very limited at the moment.

[kafka]

theology would be a reasoned or philosophical approach to the truths of Divine Revelation.

philosophy a reasoned approach to essential truths.

Divine Revelation is the Deeds and Words wrought by God in salvation history. So this includes even creation (without creation there would be no salvation) so sometimes they overlap. A philosopher could come to the conclusion that God created the earth and humanity but without Divine Revelation he may never know why. Or he may come to some correct conclusions that he would find in Divine Revelation since he might be led by God in a state of grace.

It seems pretty simple to me. I guess a lot of modern philosophers mix the two, especially the Germans.

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

Slappo...thanks for the links... I have read the Reggensberg address several times and Spe Salvi. Both are fabulous! I am not asking mainly for my sake, but for the sake of discussion. I have my on horse in the race as to what I think the distinction is. I have thought a great deal about this (I am working on my PhD in contemporary analytic philosophy at a state school), and since I am the only Catholic in the dept. this and similar questions arise often. I was mainly wanting to draw out a discussion in regards to specifics.

However, in response to your comment about the state of philosophy today in comparison to ancient philosophy...I do not think it is different in its aim, but only in its method...philosophy being the pursuit of truth via reason has its hand in MANY if not all the empirical sciences (especially physics). The pre-socratics were concerned about the nature of 'physics' (the nature of nature/change), and so we get philosophers who theorize about biology and astronomy and geology, etc. So, it was all considered philosophy (in some way). I think modern and contemporary philosophy is still concerned about these things (change, being, etc.).

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 02:49 PM' timestamp='1260395347' post='2016823']
As an Eastern (are you Catholic? or Orthodox?, just out of curiosity), can you say of God that he is not composite or that He is not finite? It seems if they are true statements, then we are able to know somewhat what God is like. [/quote]
Eastern Christians, both Catholic - which I happen to be - and Orthodox, like to use paradoxical phrases when speaking about God (e.g., God is indivisibly divided in His many energies, etc.). That said, I would never call God finite, nor would I say that He is composite, but I also would not say that His essence is to be infinite, nor that His essence is to be non-composite, because He infinitely transcends both of these concepts. In fact, God essentially transcends anything that we can conceive in our mind, which is why I reject the idea that there is analogy of being between God, who verily is, and creation, which comes from nothingness into being at His Word.

It is in coming into contact (experientially through worship) with God's energies that allows a man to formulate concepts (i.e., what the Cappadocians called "epinoetic conceptions") about God, but - even when this kind of concept formation occurs - the concepts themselves are distanciated from the energies that man experienced and which caused him to formulate the concepts in the first place. Moreover, there is a further distanciation when a man takes the concept that he has formulated about God's activity and puts it into words. To put it another way, nothing that we say about God is said about His essence, for He is [i]adiastemic[/i], while human beings are [i]diastemic[/i], and the gap between uncreated and created essence can only be bridged unidirectionally by God who bestows His energies upon man and the whole of creation. Here is what St. Gregory of Nyssa said about this issue:

"However, the person attempting to comprehend God who cannot be circumscribed by limitations, does not admit that God transcends the universe. He sets his own reason up in opposition, considering it to be such and such a thing which can contain any type of thought. He does not know that God in whom we believe transcends our knowledge and that every consideration befitting him serves to guard his true existence. Why is this so? Because every created being looks to what is connatural, and no being can remain in existence apart from itself. Fire cannot exist in water; neither can water be present in fire, dry land in the depth, water in dry land, earth in the sky nor the sky in the earth. Everything is limited by its own nature as long as it exists and stays within its own bounds. If anything created goes outside itself, it will lose its own essence just like the senses which cannot transgress their natural functions. The eye does not function like the ear nor does our sense of touch speak; hearing does not taste, but each sense is limited by the power natural to it. Thus all creation cannot transgress its natural limitations by a comprehensive insight; it always remains within its own bounds and whatever it may view, it sees itself. Should creation think it beholds anything which transcends it, this cannot be because it lacks the capacity to look beyond its own nature. The contemplation of beings is restricted by a certain notion of [i]temporal interval[/i] [[i]diastema[/i]] which cannot be transgressed. Indeed, for every conception which the mind gives birth an interval of time is considered along with the substance of that which had thought it; an interval of time is nothing other than creation. The good which we strongly encourage to seek, guard, to unite ourselves and cling to transcends creation and thought. Our mind functions by using intervals within time, so how can it grasp [God's] nature which is not subject to temporal extension? Through the medium of time the inquisitive mind always leaves behind any thought older than what it just discovered. The mind also busily searches through all kinds of knowledge yet never discovers the means to grasp eternity in order to transcend both itself and what we earlier considered, namely, the eternal existence of beings. This effort resembles a person standing on a precipice (Let a smooth, precipitous rock which abruptly falls off to a limitless distance suggest this transcendence whose prominence reaches on high while also falls to the gaping deep below). A person's foot can touch that ridge falling off to the depths below and find neither step nor support for his hand. To me, this example pertains to the soul's passage through intervals of time in its search for [God's] nature which exists before eternity and is not subject to time. His nature cannot be grasped because it lacks space, time, measure and anything else we can apprehend; instead, our mind is overcome with dizziness and stumbles all over the place because it cannot lay hold of transcendent reality. Being powerless, it returns to its connatural state. Our minds love to know only about God's transcendence of which they are persuaded because his nature differs from anything we know."

Ultimately, whenever a man talks about the divine essence, he is really talking about creation, because it is impossible for a man to transcend the diastemic gap (the interval of time, space, and movement) that essentially separates the creature from the Creator.

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 02:49 PM' timestamp='1260395347' post='2016823']
However, I am a fan of aseity so I think our predication of different properties of God is somewhat off the mark...God does not have different attributes, he is simple, His Truth is his Justice which is his mercy which is his prudence, etc. To us these are different properties...in God they are one. But this is off mark slightly from the original question... [/quote]
Easterners do not accept the concept of simplicity advocated by the Scholastics. Instead, Eastern theologians, following the teaching of the Holy Fathers of the East, make a real distinction (a [i]pragmatika diakrisis[/i]) - without a separation (a [i]pragmatike diaresis[/i]) - between the divine essence, which is utterly incomprehensible, and the divine energies, which come down to us giving us a real personal experience of God (See St. Basil, [url="http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3202234.htm"]Letter 234[/url]).

Edited December 9, 2009 by Apotheoun

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

Thanks!

Now, for the Western take on the roles?

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 03:36 PM' timestamp='1260398181' post='2016898']
Thanks!

Now, for the Western take on the roles?
[/quote]
Perhaps L_D will see your thread and post on Aquinas. I no longer have an interest in Aristotle, which has caused my interest in Scholasticism to wane over time.

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

HAHA... that is a pity!

What about Aeterni Patris??? You gotta show some love for that!

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 03:59 PM' timestamp='1260399558' post='2016922']
HAHA... that is a pity!

What about Aeterni Patris??? You gotta show some love for that!

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_04081879_aeterni-patris_en.html
[/quote]
Eastern theology has never used the categories of thought promoted by Scholasticism in doing theology. But of course Latin Catholics are free to honor the theological works of the Scholastics in their [i]sui juris[/i] Church.

[Fiat_Voluntas_Tua]

Zing!

What do you think of metaphysics (non-theological in nature) and philosophy of nature? What do the Eastern Father's say about secular philosophy?

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 04:06 PM' timestamp='1260399992' post='2016936']
Zing!

What do you think of metaphysics (non-theological in nature) and philosophy of nature? What do the Eastern Father's say about secular philosophy?
[/quote]
I agree with what St. Gregory of Nyssa said in the text I quoted earlier.

In other words, I do not believe that man can transcend the gap between the uncreated and created in philosophy. Philosophy, even when it claims the name Metaphysics, is really only talking about the created world, as St. Gregory said:

"Everything is limited by its own nature as long as it exists and stays within its own bounds. If anything created goes outside itself, it will lose its own essence just like the senses which cannot transgress their natural functions. . . . Thus all creation cannot transgress its natural limitations by a comprehensive insight; it always remains within its own bounds and whatever it may view, it sees itself. Should creation think it beholds anything which transcends it, this cannot be because it lacks the capacity to look beyond its own nature."

[Slappo]

[quote name='Fiat_Voluntas_Tua' date='09 December 2009 - 02:13 PM' timestamp='1260396810' post='2016867']
However, in response to your comment about the state of philosophy today in comparison to ancient philosophy...I do not think it is different in its aim, but only in its method...philosophy being the pursuit of truth via reason has its hand in MANY if not all the empirical sciences (especially physics). The pre-socratics were concerned about the nature of 'physics' (the nature of nature/change), and so we get philosophers who theorize about biology and astronomy and geology, etc. So, it was all considered philosophy (in some way). I think modern and contemporary philosophy is still concerned about these things (change, being, etc.).
[/quote]

Ahh but there is quite a difference. Especially in secular philosophy. As secular philosophy today limits the findings of truth to "some[b]thing[/b]" whereas the philosophers of old found truth in "some[b]one[/b]". Take for instance, the wisemen that visited the infant Jesus. They were following the ways of philosophy and allowed it to lead them to someone, the infant Jesus, and rejoiced when it did so. Philosophy, at least secular philosophy today, won't accept the truth to be someone rather then something.

[Mr.Cat]

Philosophy and Theology are not the same, but rather are distinctively different, to call philosophy subservient to theology seems dangerous and unwise to me. To imagine that somehow one’s theology is proven through philosophy seems like a warping and abuse of the schools of philosophy.