Primary Authors & Sources
PHIL-101 builds its reading list from required primary and classical sources in classical greek foundations and ethical origins. The authors below are read as teachers across the centuries, not as entries in a bibliography. John Burnet contributes Early Greek Philosophy, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Eduard Zeller contributes Outlines of the History of Greek Philosophy and Socrates and the Socratic Schools, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Diogenes Laertius contributes Lives of Eminent Philosophers, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
Taken together, these readings form a coherent conversation across centuries — students encounter real arguments, not flattened summaries. Plato raises enduring questions about truth, the soul, and the good that patristic and medieval theologians answered in explicitly Christian terms, notably in The Republic. Aristotle defines the vocabulary of ethics, logic, and metaphysics that every later thinker — Christian or secular — must engage, notably in Nicomachean Ethics. Theodor Gomperz contributes Greek Thinkers and Greek Thinkers, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
What You Will Study
Students examine classical Greek philosophy from the pre-Socratics through Plato and Aristotle, studying metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and political thought that shaped Hellenistic world into which Christianity was born. Readings include primary selections from Plato's dialogues and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics alongside Reformed introductions explaining how patristic and scholastic theologians received and transformed Greek philosophy. The course treats philosophy as preparatory for understanding apologetic encounters in Acts, Johannine Logos theology, and Pauline engagement with Gentile wisdom. Students analyze strengths and idolatrous tendencies in classical thought without dismissing genuine insights into virtue, being, and reason that common grace preserves. Attention falls on how Greek categories entered Christian vocabulary through careful biblical filtering.
Course Objectives
Objectives include summarizing major positions of pre-Socratic, Platonic, and Aristotelian philosophy, explaining how Greek philosophy influenced early Christian apologetics and doctrine, evaluating philosophical arguments for God's existence and moral order from classical sources, and writing essays comparing Greek ethics with biblical wisdom. Students will identify concepts such as form, substance, and virtue in patristic texts studied elsewhere. The course cultivates intellectual humility and critical engagement with non-Christian thought. Students will articulate Reformed critique of autonomous reason while acknowledging philosophy's servant role under Scripture. Assessments require primary source summaries and apologetic reflections on Paul at Athens.
Ministry & Life Application
Classical philosophy equips ministers to understand the intellectual world of the New Testament and patristic era, improving apologetics and doctrinal precision in contemporary pluralistic settings. House church teachers in the Florida Keys encounter neighbors influenced by secular humanism and neo-pagan thought whose roots lie in Greek philosophy. Pastoral ministry gains tools for explaining how Christianity fulfilled and corrected ancient wisdom without syncretistic compromise. This course supports apologetics, theology, and church history across the curriculum. Congregations benefit when leaders can engage intellectual objections with historical awareness and biblical fidelity.