The grace of God which brings salvation has appeared to all men (Titus 2:11). Yet, we also know that this doesn't and won't happen Matt. 7:14).
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)
-
-
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.
-
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?
-
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.
-
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
-
But then for many later writers with similar views... were they influenced by Plato? neoplatonists? Or by Origen and the Alexandrian school of theology he founded?
-
Typically when secular historians take the reductive “Athens and Jerusalem” approach and claim the Christian tradition is a creative fusion of Paul’s ideas with Greek philosophy, they’re talking about the Alexandrine approach - Clement and Origen, free will, etc
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Augustine’s philosophy has made Christian scholars a little nervous ever since because they can see that yes, his stuff is more consistent with the literal sense of Gospel than any alternative It’s also CRAZY
-
If there was ever proof that any Christian ever put faith first and then built a philosophical system around it, it’s stuff like transduction of the soul
-
Understanding that will help clarify your sense of the difference between exegesis and philosophizing
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.