Indeed, given the warnings about philosophy and man's wisdom that Scripture gives us (Col. 2:8, I Cor. 2-3), we would be wise not to try to make firm claims about the nature, will, and Being of God on the basis of philosophy...
lol, there is. when Augustine is asking doctrinal questions, he focuses on Bible. But accepting Biblical doctrine gives him (Christian) opinions on certain matters. Now when he goes to ask *philosophical* questions, what happens?
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Augustine didn’t think the Bible was a philosophy handbook of course. He has a letter or sermon condemning ppl who bring ridicule upon the Church by acting as though the articles of faith give them technical expertise on q’s astronomy, etc
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But he still does have faith in the truth of the doctrine the Gospel *does* contain, and those truths can in effect serve as axioms for philosophical inquiry
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You say he’s a platonist and elsewhere imply he fell afoul of Paul’s strictures on pagan vanity
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But he wasn’t a platonist. Augustine’s philosophy is bizarre. His answers to a number of phil. questions are simply unique (well, him and Tertullian)
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It IS bizarre, but I don't think we can really deny that he was heavily influenced by platonic thought, even as he sought to differentiate Christianity from Platonism in areas such as creation, nature of the soul, etc.
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Just to be clear - are you saying some of Augustine’s epistemology, cosmology, sociological ideas in Civ. Dei come from Plato, etc? or that the soteriology and christology people call “Augustinian” is in fact just Platonism?
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I took you to be saying the latter - sort of a non sequitur otherwise Btw it’s not super-easy to say which way some of these lines of causation run.
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For example, Origen was the disciple of a Platonist, and also had some heretical views, and it’s pretty clear the heresies are just creative Platonic interpretations of Gospel
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He falls into Platonism, sadly
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