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A History of Philosophy: 19 Neo-Platonism
and the Church Fathers; Arthur Holmes, Wheaton College
This is taken from a
series of eighty-one videos, presumably the lectures from a year-long course. I truly find the entire series thus far
fascinating. First, something on Holmes:
Arthur Frank Holmes was an English
philosopher who served as Professor of Philosophy at Wheaton College in
Illinois from 1951 to 1994. …Wheaton College President Philip Ryken said
"It would be hard to think of anyone who has had a greater impact on
Christian higher education than Arthur Holmes."
He was involved in the creation of the Society of Christian
Philosophers, what is today the largest subgroup of the American Philosophical
Association (APA). When he started
teaching at Wheaton, he set an objective to produce 100 graduates who would go
on to earn Ph.D.’s in philosophy. Some time
after his death, a count was taken: there were 116 identified.
Holmes wanted to separate the philosophy department from the
theology department at Wheaton; this generated severe pushback from the
faculty, believing it would serve to separate human reason from God’s guidance. He was called
to task on his desire:
When he arrived, they asked him to
affirm the college’s Statement of Faith. Holmes replied in his English-American
accent, “Sir, I wrote Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith.”
Now, on to the lecture.
In this lecture, Holmes offers the beginnings of the connections of
Greek philosophy and Christian theology:
Justin Martyr, from his address to
the Greeks: from every point of view it must be seen that in no other way than
only from the prophets who teach us by divine inspiration is it at all possible
to learn anything about God and true religion.
As if to demonstrate this:
Martyr cites Homer, Pythagoras, and
Plato when they had been in Egypt and had taken advantage of the history of Moses,
they afterwards published doctrines concerning the gods quite contrary to that
which they formerly had promulgated.
The reference to Homer isn’t clear to me, but I take the
point overall. Back to Martyr: he then seems
to contradict this point, or at least offer some room for nuance:
We have been taught that Christ is
the firstborn of God. We have declared
that he is the logos of whom all men are partakers, and those who live
reasonably (live with the logos) are Christians even though they had
been atheists – among the Greeks, Socrates, Heraclitus and men like that.
How did they know so much of the truth – without the prophets? We know that all men are in search of God,
but this does not necessarily make them all Christian.
Holmes summarizes Martyr’s logic: all Christians are
enlightened by the logos; Socrates and Heraclitus are enlightened by the
logos; therefore, they must be Christians. But this logic doesn’t quite hold: they could
all be enlightened by the logos, but not all be Christian. Both Christians and non-Christians are enlightened
by the logos; the two sub-groups need not intersect.
In other words, to varying degrees, all men are so
enlightened (all men seek God); yet not all men know the (meaningfully) full
truth.
Clement of Alexandria: Truth is illuminated
in the dawn of Light (capital L) – the barbarian and Hellenic philosophy is
torn off a fragment of eternal truth; not from the mythology of Dionysus but
the theology of the ever-living logos.
Holmes points to the first
eighteen verses of John’s gospel – this is what the early church fathers
are “playing with” (in Holmes’ wording), integrating or tying together Greek
philosophy and Jesus Christ as the logos. This same kind of identification continues
throughout the Middle Ages – from Augustine to Aquinas; it is lost sight of
when we get into modern times, but it is part of the medieval conception of the
framework.
