Jesus taught us that the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37). Loving God with all of our mind requires reconciling our lives with the Truth by which He calls us to live. This process of reconciliation requires not only a lifetime of learning the word of God, but also taking our doubts and our questions about the faith seriously. Doubts and questions often eat away at us when left unattended or simply pushed aside. Philosophy, on the other hand, holds a precious space wherein thoughts can be slowed down, articulated, held, examined, and explored for their truth and consistency. This is a caring and liberating practice. Thanks to philosophical inquiry, I better understand my questions about God, His goodness, and Christianity as a belief system and lived ethic. Time and again philosophical study liberate me from my dualistic, overgeneralized, black and white way of thinking into a world of rich, nuanced, and satisfying possibilities. I’ve also found a community of great minds throughout history who’ve had similar questions. What better company to think through your doubts and questions about God than that of St. Augustine or St. Thomas Aquinas? Both saints model what it means to use philosophy as a way to engage their questions and enlarge their faith. Similar to Augustine and Aquinas, philosophical inquiry too has made my faith more robust. In short, I find myself more able to love God with my whole mind, heart, and soul.

Ashley Potts, PhD, RMHI

https://drashleypotts.com

 

 

Ashley has her doctorate in Philosophy and Religion and a Masters in Mental Health Counseling from the University of South Florida. Ashley works for the Leadership Development Institute at Eckerd College and at a private practice located in St. Pete, FL. When she’s not facilitating leadership retreats, counseling, or teaching, Ashley loves reading and discussing Christian philosophy with friends, family, and anyone willing to join in.

The Bible is a book with many difficult terms. There are historical terms, legal terms, agricultural terms, and military terms. And there are philosophical terms. It’s not simply a matter of looking up the terms in a normal dictionary: we need knowledge of history to help us understand the Bible’s historical terms, and we need knowledge of philosophy to help us understand its philosophical terms. What, for example, is meant by the term ‘reason’, or ‘soul’, or ‘guilt’, as it occurs in the Bible? We do not necessarily need professional philosophers to explain these terms – indeed, most of us have some intuitive understanding of them – but we need to do some philosophy, even if only at a basic level, to understand them. But there is more. If we are to understand how the whole message of the Bible fits together then we need to fill in some of the gaps about which the Bible does not inform us. Just as historians can to some extent fill in the gap between the two Testaments, so philosophy can to some extent help fill in the gap between two parts of the Bible’s teaching. For example, the Bible teaches both that God is all-powerful (Matthew 19:26) and that he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13). Philosophy can – to some extent – fill in the gap, and explain how both can be true. Finally, philosophy can also help the church by rebutting bad arguments against Christianity. For example, many people think that the existence of evil, or the discoveries of science, have disproved the Christian faith. Philosophers are well positioned to show that these arguments should not rationally persuade anyone: ‘Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered’ (C S Lewis, ‘Learning in War Time’, 1939).

Daniel Hill

https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/daniel-hill/

Daniel Hill has taught philosophy at several different UK universities. He is also the Chair of the Tyndale Fellowship’s Study Group in Philosophy of Religion. He is the author of Divinity and Maximal Greatness (London: Routledge, 2004), Christian Philosophy: A–Z (with Randal Rauser; Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), The Right to Wear Religious Symbols (with Daniel Whistler; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and Does God Intend that Sin Occur? We Affirm (with Matthew J Hart; Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021, forthcoming). He is a member of a local church, where he helps with the crèche.

Philosophy is the systematic study of fundamental, general questions, such as such as the nature of the world, the grounds of human knowledge, and the evaluation of human conduct. Philosophy includes questions like “Does God exist?” “Do we have free will?” “What is knowledge?” and “What makes an action right (or wrong)?”

The church needs philosophy for at least three reasons. One, studying philosophy helps us to think clearly. This enables us to read and interpret Scripture well and helps us decide what views to take on non-core issues (like infant baptism or Calvinism/Arminianism). It also helps us disagree better with both those inside and outside the church. Philosophy emphasizes that finding the truth is more important than proving someone wrong or making yourself look good.

Two, studying philosophy helps us answer people’s questions, doubts, and objections (1 Peter 3:15). There are some challenging objections to the Christian faith, such as the problem of evil: why would an all-good, all-loving God allow evil? Not only is it good for Christians to be well-informed and aware of challenges like this, but studying philosophy also reveals a large number of answers that Christian philosophers have provided, such as the free will defense or the soul making theodicy. We can share these answers with people around us who face intellectual obstacles to embracing Christianity.

Finally, studying philosophy helps us be secure in our faith, knowing that Christian belief is reasonable and supported by good evidence. Part of studying philosophy involves learning arguments for God’s existence. Or, returning to our earlier example, while evil poses a challenge for Christianity, ultimately, by studying the answers to the problem of evil, we can see that it doesn’t render Christian faith unreasonable. Studying philosophy reveals that faith is not blind, but supported by evidence.

Liz Jackson

http://liz-jackson.com/

Liz Jackson is an Assistant Professor at Ryerson University. She completed her PhD in philosophy at Notre Dame. Her main philosophical interests are in epistemology (the study of knowledge and rational belief) and philosophy of religion.

 

The church needs philosophy because by doing philosophy we investigate topics vital to Christian thought and life: right and wrong, truth and error, God and humanity. In this way, it is like theology, another vital Christian practice. But whereas training in theology involves Scriptural exegesis and the study of previous theologians, philosophy focuses on integrating results from those sources with things we learn from history, science, personal experience, and logic. Since all creation is God’s, all truths are God’s truths, and so Christians can learn from any field of study; philosophy helps us take what we learn from all these sources and put them into a bigger picture.

For instance, how should we evaluate the moral responsibility of people with reduced capacity due to mental illness? A full Christian answer will draw from scripture (what does it mean to say humans are sinful?), science (how do mental illnesses change our abilities?), and reflection on the concept of moral responsibility itself (just what does it mean to be morally responsible anyway?). Studying philosophy is all about finding answers by learning to integrate all these different sources to discover a unified truth.

But it’s not just about finding answers—far from it. For Christians, Christ is the central Truth of the universe, and we are called to love God with all our minds. Philosophy helps us sharpen our minds, so we can offer their fruits to God: arguments, theories, syllogisms—all consecrated as a fragrant offering to God in Christ. It is not the only way to love God with our minds, but it is one way the church cannot do without.       

Matthew Baddorf

https://philpeople.org/profiles/matthew-baddorf

Matthew Baddorf is a tenure-track instructor at Walters State Community College, where he teaches a variety of lower-division courses. He also writes on ethics and philosophy of religion, primarily on the topics of collective moral responsibility and divine simplicity.

 

I have introduced the use of analytic philosophy to seminarians and pastors in Asia for some years. We have found that conceptual analysis, thought experiments, logic, and other philosophical tools are immensely useful not just for systematic theology and apologetics, but also for more practical areas like hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. Why? Philosophy enables believers to clarify and expand their grasps of those religious concepts like faith, salvation, God, etc., which, through overuse, have become dry cliches. Through scripturally guided philosophical analysis, believers can discern authentic meanings of concepts from common misconceptions about them. Moreover, philosophical thinking enriches or deepens believers’ understandings of religious concepts by finding out their entailments, implications, and extensions. For instance, Stump’s and Pinsent’s account of second-personal knowledge help me articulate more concretely the concept of the union with Christ, which provides believers with practical guidance in their spiritual life. 

Besides, I do not find that analytic philosophy is unsuitable for Eastern culture, which emphasizes more the roles of narrative, imagination, and holistic portrayal of reality (the so-called ‘both-and’ thinking, as being opposed to the ‘either-or’ approach). Not only can thought experiments and analyses widen one’s imagination and help one in articulating the essential messages of narratives, but they can also help one discover interconnections between different concepts.

Leonard Siddharta

https://www.sbc.edu.sg/%E6%88%B4%E6%B0%B8%E5%AF%8C%E5%8D%9A%E5%A3%AB/

Dr. Leonard Sidharta (Chinese: Dai Yongfu) is an associate professor at Singapore Bible College. He got his Ph.D. in philosophy of religion at Purdue University (USA), under the supervision of Drs. Patrick Kain, Jeffrey Brower, Michael Bergmann, and Mark Murphy.

Dr. Sidharta is currently a member of the Society of Christian Philosophers, and a special research fellow at the Institute of Christianity and Chinese Culture. Besides publishing papers on theology, philosophy, and spirituality, he was also involved in the translation and annotation projects of ancient religious documents in China.