The Relationship of , and Science

This chapter is structured by a historical survey of grand philosophical programs.

Each philosophical program will be expounded enough to identify relationships to theology and science, and to provide a sample of each. More could be said about each philosophy, theology, and science contribution, which if the reader’s interest is peaked, I encourage following where the notes lead. One of the purposes of this paper is to show how philosophy changes theology and science with which it syncretizes. This will provide an opportunity to affirm aspects and to critique other aspects of the expounded. In the previous chapter I identified briefly my epistemic and theological method. This chapter provides a philosophical rationale for this previous sketched summary. If I provide a critique in this chapter as we travel through each philosophy

(such as under Kant) then any following philosophies, theology and science that depend upon such a perspective are also critiqued without further raising the point repetitively.

13 This survey includes: 1) -Tertullian, 2) -Augustine, 3) -

Aquinas, 4) Renaissance -Calvin and the Biblical theology movement, 5)

Descartes-Rationalists, 6) Locke and Newton-Edwards and Realism, with 7) Kant-Strauss, Ritschl and Crockett, 8) Romanticism-Evolution,

Pietism of Schleiermacher and Evangelicalism, 9) of Kierkegaard-Barth,

Bultmann and Tillich, 10) Marx-Liberation theology, 11) Pragmatisms-Liberation,

Evangelicalism, Relativity, and Quantum, 12) of Whitehead and

Teilhard de Chardin, 13) Postmodern language games with traditional Christian communities and their theological hermeneutic, and 14) Critical Realism of Shedd,

McGrath, Murphy, and Lakatos. I embrace a hybrid view of critical realism in a Lakatos’ . Throughout this survey, I will summarize some of the ways in which philosophy has affected theology and science, and highlight some of how it is affecting evangelical theology now. In the midst of this survey I will assess each view for warrant in a few of its core beliefs. This will provide us with the opportunity to evaluate whether these affects are appropriate and desirable.

I argue for philosophy’s role in theology to be streamlined to: 1) helping us be precise and coherent in our thought (as a critical realist), within a program of “back to the Christian textual roots” which Biblical theology largely provides,

2) helping us think through ramifications of our commitments and the relationships this identifies us with, and 3) providing any additional basic beliefs that are strongly warranted, but do not counter those of Biblical theology. 1 This chapter is not addressing

1 What I have in mind is “A Personal Statement,” and chapter on “ and Knowledge,” in Doug Kennard, The Relationship Between , , Biblical Theology and Contextualization (Lewiston: The Mellon Press, 1999), pp. 31–33 and 35–69.

14 the value or limitations of philosophy as a discipline itself; I leave that issue for others at another occasion.

Stoicism

By the time Christianity arrived, Stoic