Theology’s use of philosophy: What are the roles of theology and philosophy? How theology can be informed by philosophy? Christian Standards: 1. Revelation supplies the content of theology. 2. Revelation should be turned to first (priority of Biblical revelation), before any philosophy. 3. Philosophy is helpful in so much as it aids the sharpening of intellectual and/or critical thinking abilities. 4. … sharpens the understanding of concepts and/or ideas. 5. … exposes the presuppositions foundational to ideas or systems of thought. 6. … traces the implications of ideas 7. … emphasizes the necessity to test truth claims.
Several significant philosophical movements of the twentieth century.
Pragmatism: Pragmatism is possibly the only distinctively American philosophy; John Dewey had profound influence upon it (educational philosophy); A ‘Metaphysics Club’ founded by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James in Cambridge, Massachusetts; common values found in view of truth, i.e., there is no absolute truth, but the meaning of an idea lies solely in its practical results, the goal then i snot metaphysical truth, but the meaning or truth of the proposition is its experienceable consequences.
Existentialism: Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855); Kierkegaard reacts against two things: 1. Philosophy of Georg Hegel (the whole of reality is rational) and 2. a cold, formal state church of Denmark; Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844 – 1900) atheism and emphasis upon the human will; Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel; Existentialism is a philosophy which emphasizes the priority of existence over essence; strong focus: the individual, human freedom, subjectivity and, of course, essence.
Analytic Philosophy: The meaning of language; clarity in concepts; analyzing what is being said and how; Socrates, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore; Philosophical focus shifted from “What is right, what is there, what is beautiful,” to “the meaning of language.” Language of ethics, science, religion (how it functions and what it signifies); Analytic philosophy asks, “What do you mean by that?” and/or “What kind of statement is that?” Two major stages of Analytic philosophy: 1. Militant/Dogmatic Stage (logical positivism). 2. Attempt to discover how language functions, rather than insisting upon a specific function.
Process Philosophy: Main philosophical question – does reality change or is it fixed? Heraclitus believed change is the essence of reality, Parmenides emphasized fixity (most philosophers understand both change and permanence to be aspects of reality; Alfred North Whitehead (father of Process Philosophy) emphasized change in reality; the basic units of reality are not bits of matter but moments of experience; the world is not made up of substances which change from one to another, but of dynamic processes; Final units of reality equals momentary states or experiences therefore I am a concrete new reality every fraction of a second; Names: Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb; Norman Pittenger.
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