In preparing the present volume, the writer has been actuated by a conscientious desire to deepen and vivify our faith in the Christian system of truth, by showing that it does not rest solely on a special class of facts, but upon all the facts of nature and humanity; that its authority does not repose alone on the peculiar and supernatural events which transpired in Palestine, but also on the still broader foundations of the ideas and laws of the reason, and the common wants and instinctive yearnings of the human heart. He has also written on such topics as conscience in later Greek philosophy, the reception of Cicero’s natural right teaching in eighteenth century political thought, St. Ambrose’s De officiis, and the relationship between constitution and empire in Roman political thought. For instance, Christianity is a form of monotheism—the belief that there is one supreme being who is the beneficent source and sovereign of all things. The language they used in describing and defining the Trinity is, in fact, taken directly from Platonic and Greek philosophy. from Spain writes: Plato’s philosophy was by no means the historical ground from which Christianity sprouted. daily, and mediating on the scripture both night and day. The Philosophers of Athens (continued). However, Platonism was one of those philosophies that competed with Christianity in the early centuries of the church. We have supplied this link to an article on an external website in good faith. (If you haven’t received your first email within a few minutes, try checking your spam folder.). Chapter XIII. Why would a loving God send people to Hell? The Philosophy of Religion. (Answering the Euthyphro Dilemma), What is ‘good’? We have sent you an email that will allow you to update your details. Chapter III. In fact the word philosophy is of Greek origin, combining the words philia or "to love" with sophia or "wisdom." For instance, Plato’s theory of the forms, and especially his notion of the Form of the Good, were ‘rolled together’ into the mind of the God of Scripture. Christianity certainly didn’t start off as a Greek philosophical school of thought. Prov. The Propædeutic Office of Greek Philosophy (continued). Throughout the Bible, God calls Christians to be “philosophers,” that is, seekers and lovers of wisdom (cf. Philippians 1:23), as Plato did. Rather, God will subject the wicked to everlasting conscious punishment (Matthew 25:46). The method hitherto most prevalent, of treating the history of human thought as a series of isolated, disconnected, and lawless movements, without unity and purpose; and the practice of denouncing the religions and philosophies of the ancient world as inventions of satanic mischief, or as the capricious and wicked efforts of humanity to relegate itself from the bonds of allegiance to the One Supreme Lord and Lawgiver, have, in his judgment, been prejudicial to the interests of all truth, and especially injurious to the cause of Christianity. The Philosophers of Athens (continued). Rather, the Platonic term trias, from the word for three, was Latinized as trinitas— the latter giving us the English word trinity. It also means that Plato’s Demiurge is a superfluous concept; a poor substitute for the God who makes all things from nothing. Both believed in a supreme beneficent reality. A longstanding thesis holds that key aspects of early Christian thought were appropriated from Greek philosophy.