Midterm Questions

Question 1

What is this formula: R - F = M

Answer 1

Reason - Faith = Modernism

Anti-supernaturalism; you can know everything through science.

Question 2

What is this formula: F - R = E

Answer 2

Faith - Reason = Existentialism

Metanarrative upper floor - you cannot know the meaning. You have to make up the meaning for yourself.

Question 3

What is this formula: - F - R = P

Answer 3

No Faith + No Reason = Postmodernism

No hope, despair.

Question 4

What must philosophy always be attached to?

Answer 4

Sociology.

Question 5

What’s the best description to the Christian approach to life found in the Bible?

Answer 5

Pre-Modernism.

Question 6

Rationalism focuses on what at the epistemological story of the starting point? What is Rationalism?

Answer 6

Thinking or the mind.

Question 7

Empiricism focuses on what?

Answer 7

The senses.

Question 8

What best describes Post Modernism?

Answer 8

Suspicious of metanarratives.

Question 9

What did German historical criticism lead to?

Answer 9

Liberalism.

Question 10

Who claimed in 400 BC that Relativism is knowledge?

Answer 10

Sophists.

Question 11

Which 2 Greek philosophers had the greatest impact on religion?

Answer 11

Plato and Aristotle.

Question 12

How did Plotinus baptize Plato?

Answer 12

• 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.

Question 13

When Plato spoke of the One, how much did he think we could know?

Answer 13

Not much, he was mostly agnostic.

Question 14

What 2 things make up the universal that makes sense of all the particulars according to Aquinas?

Answer 14

• Metanarrative, upper and lower floors.
• Upper = intangible
• Lower = physical
• Faith and Reason

Question 15

What was the new center of Enlightenment hope?

Answer 15

Reason.

Question 16

What universal did Descartes start with?

Answer 16

His own mind.

Question 17

Without scientific proof as the basis of knowing, what did the Enlightenment say you were left with?

Answer 17

Sense data.

Question 18

Who believes there were no innate ideas or beliefs in us at creation?

Answer 18

John Locke.

Question 19

Why is it important to understand what historical liberalism is?

Answer 19

• 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.

Question 20

What did Modernism lead to?

Answer 20

Post Modernism.

Question 21

Once Descartes proves his own existence, what did he attempt to go on from there through?

Answer 21

The existence of God.

Question 22

In the Enlightenment, many Christian thinkers saw revelation as what?

Answer 22

• They saw it as an add on that was not essential.

- The stool

Question 23

Contrast the upper and lower floors of the metanarrative.

Answer 23

• Upper = intangible things (i.e. love, faith, justice, etc.)
• Lower = tangible, physical world (everything that can be seen/touched, material things)

Question 24

What is a metanarrative?

Answer 24

A grand story that makes sense of all the particulars, or a worldview.

Question 25

Discuss how the metanarrative engages the upper and lower floors.

Answer 25

• 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)

Question 26

How was Aquinas the open door to liberalism?

Answer 26

Because he said that the mind was not fallen.

Question 27

What was the next jump from Aquinas’s notion “We can start with ourselves alone and know God.”?

Answer 27

We can start with ourselves and know everything.

Question 28

What 3 areas did rationalism affect or create: humanist approach to God and man.

Answer 28

• 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.