Midterm Questions Flashcards
What is this formula: R - F = M
Reason - Faith = Modernism
Anti-supernaturalism; you can know everything through science.
What is this formula: F - R = E
Faith - Reason = Existentialism
Metanarrative upper floor - you cannot know the meaning. You have to make up the meaning for yourself.
What is this formula: - F - R = P
No Faith + No Reason = Postmodernism
No hope, despair.
What must philosophy always be attached to?
Sociology.
What’s the best description to the Christian approach to life found in the Bible?
Pre-Modernism.
Rationalism focuses on what at the epistemological story of the starting point? What is Rationalism?
Thinking or the mind.
Empiricism focuses on what?
The senses.
What best describes Post Modernism?
Suspicious of metanarratives.
What did German historical criticism lead to?
Liberalism.
Who claimed in 400 BC that Relativism is knowledge?
Sophists.
Which 2 Greek philosophers had the greatest impact on religion?
Plato and Aristotle.
How did Plotinus baptize Plato?
- He took the Greek philosophical notions of Plato and put them in Christian language and injected it into Christianity.
- This is where we started getting weird ideas like the doctrine of the trinity.
When Plato spoke of the One, how much did he think we could know?
Not much, he was mostly agnostic.
What 2 things make up the universal that makes sense of all the particulars according to Aquinas?
- Metanarrative, upper and lower floors.
- Upper = intangible
- Lower = physical
- Faith and Reason
What was the new center of Enlightenment hope?
Reason.
What universal did Descartes start with?
His own mind.
Without scientific proof as the basis of knowing, what did the Enlightenment say you were left with?
Sense data.
Who believes there were no innate ideas or beliefs in us at creation?
John Locke.
Why is it important to understand what historical liberalism is?
- To see what it collapsed into.
- If you don’t understand Modernism, you’re not going to get Post Modernism and the context of disbelief today.
What did Modernism lead to?
Post Modernism.
Once Descartes proves his own existence, what did he attempt to go on from there through?
The existence of God.
In the Enlightenment, many Christian thinkers saw revelation as what?
- They saw it as an add on that was not essential.
- The stool
Contrast the upper and lower floors of the metanarrative.
- Upper = intangible things (i.e. love, faith, justice, etc.)
- Lower = tangible, physical world (everything that can be seen/touched, material things)
What is a metanarrative?
A grand story that makes sense of all the particulars, or a worldview.
Discuss how the metanarrative engages the upper and lower floors.
- The metanarrative is the universal that informs/makes sense of all the particulars.
- The doctrine of epistemology in its very function.
- Your metanarrative informs every aspect of life (i.e. what you see, what you know)
How was Aquinas the open door to liberalism?
Because he said that the mind was not fallen.
What was the next jump from Aquinas’s notion “We can start with ourselves alone and know God.”?
We can start with ourselves and know everything.
What 3 areas did rationalism affect or create: humanist approach to God and man.
- Natural religion = I believe only what I can see or what I can rationalize.
- Autonomous man = In 400 - 500 years we go from “intellect isn’t fallen” to “intellect is all we need.
- Romanticism = Left w/o a way to distinguish man from machine. Man is unique only if we accept Scripture. Rejects the basis of meaning, same as animals. Leaves man w/ meaninglessness.
