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“Knowing what a thing is” and “knowing that a thing exists” are fundamentally distinct truths (Exodus 3:14). Introduction: Many philosophers believe that first century Christianity and the New Testament were heavily influenced by pagan philosophical systems. Nearly all of the medieval thinkers, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim were pre-occupied with some version of the attempt to amalgamate philosophy with religion. For example Philo Judaeus (Philo of Alexandria) (20 B.C.E.-50 C.E.) was an Alexandrian Jewish philosopher who tried to integrate Greek philosophy with Judaism by means of an mythical interpretation of the scripture. According to Philo, the personal God of scripture is identical with the Form of the Good in Plato. Accessed http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/plat.htm As the concept and practice of mysticism developed through the early centuries of church history, it took on a very different form in the West than it did in the East. While Eastern orthodoxy focused on the divinization of man and the spread of the holy spirit within the believer’s soul (as cited “Mystical Forms in Eastern Orthodoxy”, Affirmation & Critique. Vol. III, No. 4 October 1998) a different type of mysticism emerged in the West in which Greek philosophy was integrated into selected theistic ideas. Shortly after the death and resurrection of Christ, some in the ancient world who were philosophers also became Christians, while others who were Christians would eventually become philosophers. Already by the second century an attempt to reconcile Christian faith and pre-Christian learning had been undertaken. Church leaders such as Justin Martyr (executed in Rome, 165), Origen and Gregory of Nyssa (ordained Bishop of Nyssa, 372) are examples of prominent thinkers who tried to understand the relationship between Christian enlightenment and Greek philosophy. They then tried to articulate this relationship into a unified concept. They argue that the Christian Scripture, offered a rational understanding of the nature of divinity, the meaning of history, and the end of humanity in a way, which exceeded any previous natural philosophy. Since the beginning of the Christian era some have been convinced that Christianity answers questions raised by reason, but more comprehensively than philosophy has been able to. However, it was during the Middle Ages, in the thirteenth century, in the latin-speaking West that Christian philosophy found its most complete enunciation. Regarding the relationship between faith and reason in the Middle Ages, medieval philosophers did not believe that you could start from belief and then somehow arrive at knowledge.
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