The Stout of Mind and Heart at MBTS Seek Historical Answers to a Big Question

A number of my students from schools in S E Asia where I have taught, through the grapevine, discovered that I was teaching a course entitled The intersection of Christian Thought with Philosophy (Malaysia Baptist Theological Seminary April, 2019). To satisfy their initial curiosity and wet their appetite peradventure I might also come to their school sometime in the future and teach such a course, I decided to post here an edited version of my course description.

The Purpose of the Course was to provide a short introduction to “Christian Philosophy”. This is what I was asked to do. But as my title suggests, for me, ” the actual existence of an item called ‘Christian Philosophy’ remains an outstanding question. Certainly one can summon a particular philosophical insight to reflect on the Church’s beliefs, or one can start a conversation between the truth that the church received, handed down by the Prophets and Apostles of old, and a given philosophical idea alive in the world, but can Christian truth be transformed or morphed into a philosophy? Or can philosophy and Christian truth become fused or synthesized? After restudying the designation assigned me, teach an introductory course on ‘Christian Philosophy,’ I decided to employ a historical method organized around one basic inquiry. This question has to do with the major twists or flirtations in the ongoing romance between the church and philosophy from then to now, i.e. from the late Apostolic period to the present.