We are well into our study of Aristotle in the Seminarium Theologico-Philosophicum (STP), my reading group in philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. This is hard, but essential to our task. But, you might ask, what is our task? Why would anybody spend weeks reading Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics? And why might you want to join us?
What we are doing
I have two goals. First, I want to give myself a professional-level expertise in the history of the philosophy of religion, with solid background in contemporary philosophy of religion. I also want to study the history and current research on the extensive series of issues in theology that are involved in the systematic defense of the belief in the Christian God. Second, I want to do this with other people who can help me stay committed to this enormous task and give me a sounding-board. That’s why the seminar is advanced, hovering somewhere between upper division undergrad and graduate level. Getting together a group of reading friends who are also well-trained in these topics would be a blessing to the Christian world.
When I developed an area of specialization in history of philosophy, with a focus on David Hume and Thomas Reid, I did so by reading slowly and carefully, asking hard questions and taking as long as required to write out answers. I did the same more recently with the book of Genesis and other theological topics. My firm and repeatedly confirmed view is that there is no better way to learn the history of philosophy or theology.
Think of it this way. Most people who are familiar with the classic arguments for the existence of God are not deeply acquainted with the details. They have gone through brief selections and textbooks (or YouTube lectures and blog posts); maybe they have had a course in philosophy of religion or apologetics in which a topic like the cosmological argument is covered for one or two weeks. We’re doing more—a lot more. We started with Plato’s Timaeus and Laws X. We are now deep in Aristotle’s Physics, working through his treatment of the infinite in Book III and heading toward the Prime Mover argument of Books VII–VIII and Metaphysics XII.
The Cosmological Argument, by the way, is not actually just one argument, but a type or collection of arguments, including Plato’s Self-Moved Mover Arguments, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover Arguments,1 Avicenna’s Kalaam Cosmological Argument, Aquinas’ First Cause Argument and Argument from Contingency, Leibniz’s version of the Argument from Contingency based on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, and more. We will also be reading ancillary material, such as a fair bit of Aristotelian metaphysics, because it is directly important to understanding these arguments in their detail. This will take us several months altogether.
But it will be just the first in what is roughly twenty units in all, covering not only the classic arguments for a creator but also life and goodness, natural law, the problem of evil, the nature of revelation, the metaphysics and epistemology of miracles, and a detailed philosophical theology of Scripture (entailing another long list of topics). At the end of each unit, I will share the corresponding chapter of my book-in-progress, God Exists. The reading list reflects the book’s structure, but since the book itself is a systematic exploration of the philosophical and theological questions that must be answered in a defense of the existence of the Christian God, it serves as a suitable spine for everything else.
Why study primary texts?
Most people who have opinions about the cosmological argument, the design argument, or the problem of evil have never read what Plato, Aristotle, or Aquinas wrote about these subjects. They have read about them—in textbooks, in summaries, in the reconstructions of modern analytic philosophers. This is a little like having strong opinions about Shakespeare based on “CliffsNotes.”
We need more philosophers—and philosophically-trained pastors and laypeople—who can deal with this material confidently, because it lies in the background of many hard questions about doctrine and Scripture. Only by spending quality time in conversation with the finest philosophers and theologians, reading their very words, can one really gain the facility needed for this task. Can you learn the basics of philosophy, theology, and apologetics from textbooks and other secondary literature? Yes, the basics. These can be useful at their best, but they are simply no substitute for the originals. When we read Aristotle’s Physics III.5, we discover that his denial of an “actually infinite body” is not a historical assumption but an interesting argument, one that directly supports the conclusion in VIII.10 that the unmoved mover must be entirely “without magnitude.” You cannot properly appreciate the structure of Aristotle’s argument without reading his words.
Primary texts are essential to the seminar. We work with Greek terminology, Bekker numbers, and the actual (sometimes obscure) verbiage of Aristotle himself, not as his words have been digested and reformulated by later commentators.
But we do not merely read hard texts. I post questions and invite answers, supplying my own, that become part of the record, available for seminar subscribers.
When I developed an area of specialization in history of philosophy, with a focus on David Hume and Thomas Reid, I did so by reading slowly and carefully, asking hard questions and taking as long as required to write out answers. I did the same more recently with the book of Genesis and other theological topics. My firm and repeatedly confirmed view is that there is no better way to learn the history of philosophy or theology.
Questions give you a specific goal. The material for the answer is in the text, typically in one or two paragraphs right in front of you. Critical questions force you to think hard about meaning and intertextual connections (i.e., related passages in the author’s corpus or in the writings of other thinkers). And while you might focus on individual questions, what emerges, if you ask enough of them, is a detailed and systematic comprehension of the subject as your author thought about it.
If you want to master the history of philosophy and theology, this is how it’s really done, in my opinion. And I’m walking the walk, doing the work myself. I invite you to do it with me.
What makes this unusual
One professor of philosophy told me that what we’re doing is actually hard to find even at modern universities. He was right. I think this seminar does something that is hard to find elsewhere.
If we manage to get through the full arc of readings, it will require several years. We will have worked through the major primary texts in the philosophy of religion and in the philosophical aspects of theology from Plato and Augustine to the present, with attention to how the arguments build on each other across centuries. I am not aware of another course that even attempts this. Graduate seminars cover pieces of the territory: a semester on Aquinas, a semester on Hume, a seminar on the problem of evil. But what we are doing is to trace the cumulative argument from Greek cosmology through medieval theology through modern philosophy, and then through the entire history of redemption—and its defense against critical attacks—as found in Scripture.
Those of us who complete this seminar will probably be better prepared in the history of the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology than many working philosophers of religion. Many philosophers of religion engage mostly with modern reconstructions—Craig’s kalām formulation, Plantinga’s modal ontological argument—without having worked through the texts those reconstructions derive from.
The seminar is also unusual in that, while it is focused at giving those engaged in apologetics a more thorough foundation in philosophy of religion, it’s not apologetics as such. Rather, it covers the primary philosophical and theological texts that apologetics draws upon.
Where we are and how to join
We are currently in the Aristotle unit, which will continue for another month or two. New participants are welcome. The earlier material, on Plato’s Timaeus and Laws X, is readily available to subscribers. Catching up is entirely feasible, and it is not really necessary for you to understand Aristotle. The seminar runs at a pace that accommodates working adults, as I’m one myself; we are not racing through material. The level is advanced, but if you have had a few philosophy courses (most relevant right now would be history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, and metaphysics) you will probably get something out of the seminar.
If you have ever wished that the conversation about God’s existence were conducted with more historical depth, more philosophical rigor, and more patience with the actual texts, this is the seminar for you.
Details on how to participate are available here. I hope you will join us.
Footnotes
- Plato and Aristotle each have two historically important arguments that are distinct from each other.[↩]
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