Sharmien V. Ventanilla Sir.

Paredes
II-BSA

Philosophy and Ethics

(Philosophy and Religion)

I. Scope of Report:

The Minds of the Later Greek Thinkers

The Greco-Religious Thinkers
The Early and Medieval Christian Thinkers
The Minds of the Forerunners of Renaissance

II. Discussion

The Minds of the Later Greek Thinkers

There are three views of religion based on the minds of the later Greek
thinkers:

Epicureans

Background: The taught of the epicureans were founded by Epicurus. According to

Epicurus faith is necessary in order for a person to live a prudent life which
later on, will bring a fuller life and lasting happiness.

This group supports the belief of polytheism in which the polytheists were
believer of many gods and goddesses. The view of Epicureans was from the doctrine
of Epicurus. According to Epicurus, gods are human-like but far more beautiful,
incorruptible (not subject to death), material, perfect, and inhabited in the
world. However these gods were not interested in men and did not interact with
humans, or neither create the world. These gods lived in a peaceful, contented
life, free from all worries and cares of men. These gods differ in sex, needed
food, spoke the languages of the Greeks. However even if Epicureans were
polytheist or believer of many gods there are still some distinction: (1) although
epicureans were believer of many gods this does not mean that they are worshipping
of all the gods in whom they believed, (2) there are different cities that
worshipped different gods, and (3) sometimes different gods were worshipped at
different times.

Stoics

The stoic on the other hand emphasize that there is only one God related to
the world just as there is only one soul per human body. According to the Stoics,
God has physical characteristics, bodily, but a body of high quality features. The
stoic opined that there is only one God responsible for everything in the
universe. Under the stoic doctrine, each person is a part of God and that all the
people form a universal family break down national, social, and racial barriers
and prepare the way to the spread of Christianity. The stoics believed that God is
an Omniscient God. They infer that He is the father of everything in the universe
that is why He is interested in the activity of humans. According to them, God
punishes the evil and rewards the good and that He lives in the farthest circle of
the universe but still know all from that point.
 Carneades

For Cardeanes, the views of the Stoics are ridiculous. According to him men
are incapable of knowing God that they cannot even prove the existence of God.
According to Carneades, we must be skeptical or not easily convince or drive by
any factors.

The Greco-Religious Thinkers

PHILO

Background: Philo was noted to have some from the great Hebrew tradition.

The Hebrew people emphasize the worship of "THE ONE". God is central to
their psyche or their spirit. Philo insisted that the nature of God was so far
from human understanding. For him, God is so far above man in greatness, goodness,
power, and perfection that we cannot know what he is but one can be certain that
He exists. Philo taught that God is the source of everything, is absolutely good,
perfect, and blessed. Contrary to this, Philo said that God cannot come in contact
with matter for He is so exalted or highly praise. However Philo taught that God
gives off light which combine in one power which Philo called "Logos" or the
divine Wisdom. According to him it was the divine Wisdom that create the universe,
and that the "Logos" is the intermediary between God and the world. Here we can
infer that God is separated from the world we dwell in.

PLOTINUS

Plotinus supported the same thing as Philo. He infers from Philo that that
God is the source of everything but God is so perfect that we cannot know anything
about Him. However, according to him, anything that people think about God is too
poor to be true of him. He infers that God is far above everything we, people can
think. He opined that God create the world through the means of emanations and not
directly. The world also depends upon God, but God does not need the world. For
from the view of Plotinus, "God is like an infinite stream which flow out but is
never exhausted".

For Plotinus, the main function of Philosophy is to prepare individuals for

the experience of ecstasy, in which they become one with God. For him God is
beyond rational understanding and is a source of all reality. Also, the universe
is a product by God by a mysterious process of overflowing divine energy. For
Plotinus the highest goal of life is to purify oneself of dependence on bodily
comforts and, through philosophical meditation, to prepare oneself for an ecstatic
reunion with God.

The Early and Medieval Christian Thinkers

Christianity is not really an old phenomenon for the world. The following
different views of early and medieval Christian Thinkers.

Apologists

From the Apologists arose the tradition to bless the marriage of

Christianity. According to them, through "Logos" or "Reason" God created the
universe. God is the First Cause of everything including changes. They infer that
because of God's existence order and reason are maintained and that all the
changes in the world are within God's control. According to them, God is the
source of everything, is good, and is eternal. For the Apologists God emits logos
or "divine wisdom" which is for them the source why the universe was created. For
them, God is a pure reason personified that means that they believed that God is
human or a person.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine emphasized the vast difference between God and the World. From
his viewpoint, God is eternal, powerful, transcended, all good, all wise, absolute
in many and every way; the cause of everything; the creator of the universe out of
nothing. For St. Augustine everything in this world is predetermined so that God
knew from the very beginning what will happen to the creation and creatures
throughout eternity and has dominance over it. God for St. Augustine is the
idealization of everything that man considers good and worthy.
St. Augustine believed that God was one but expressed himself in the
universe as three persons.

John Scotus Erigena

Background: John Scotus Erigina was an Irish monk in the 9th century that
developed an interpretation of Christianity in identifying the Divine Trinity.

Even if John Scotus Erigena supports St. Augustine that God was the source
of everything he argued that God and His creation are one contrary to St.
Augustine view. For him, God existence is in the world and that He is the world.
For him, God is perfect goodness, power, and wisdom, however he proposed that God
is never wholly known by men that although man can understand and know something
about God but up to limited extent. For him, God is in reality unknowable and
indefinable that men with his little brain cannot understand His nature.

Agnotism

Background: The developments of Christianity during the first century give rise to
the belief or view of Agnotism. For the people back then believed that God had to
be bridged by something or someone that is tangible.

According to the view of Agnotism, the Logos was the intermediate being that
it is between God and the world. Various thinkers of that time believed that Jesus
was the Logos that was sent by the Father. Also, the early Christians did not only
regard Jesus but were also concern of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The people
believed that Jesus, the Logos and the Holy Spirit were emanations of God.
From there, the concept of the Trinity arises. The Church taught God not
only as one but also as Three Persons: God, Christ or the Logos, and the Holy
Spirit.

Modalists

Modalists believed in the concept of Trinity. Modalists believed that all

three persons are actually God in three forms or modes. The Logos is actually God
creating; the Holy Spirit is actually God reasoning; and God is actually God
being. However from the view of the Modalists, questions arises whether Logos was
the same substance as God, or if Logos an emanation from God, or is it God in
another form

Athanasian Position

Background: Founded by Athanasius, the leader of a group of early Christian

thinkers.
 According to Athanasius, Christ is the principle of salvation and was
begotten, not made by the Father, God. Christ same with God is eternal and is of
the same substance as the Father. He infers that Christ as God shares the full
nature as the Father, and through Jesus, this Logos or Christ was united with a
human body. Added to this, the Holy Spirit that he maintained was the third being
or the third person. The Athanasian Position emphasize that God was conceived to
be a Trinity of the same substance or same nature: The Father, The Son, and The
Holy Spirit

Nominalism

Background: Roscelinus founded the movement Nominalism.

Roscelinus argued that what we see were the only real thing in the world
and that the general concepts of the world were just mere names or words. He
opined, that the simple things in life were the only realities and that those that
are complicated and hard to explain were just were words. He infers that there
could be no reality corresponding to the name God but he believed that there are
three persons with different substance that is equal in power. For him, Trinity is
not one but is three distinct beings. This belief was a denial in the doctrine of
the Church.

Realism

Background: Supported by the realist, Anselm whose works primarily centered on the
thought that universals exist.

Realists were contrary in the belief of Nominalist. The Realist claimed that
"Universals or the worldly things are the only real and that individuals are forms
insofar as they are within universals".

Saint Anselm
Saint Anselm infer that the idea of God as a being who exist, implies that
God must have existence and that man cannot argue inferentially from its
existence.

Abelard Frost

According to Abelard Frost the Trinity is consist of Father, Holy Spirit,

and the Logos. For Frost the three persons in the Trinity are the power (Holy
Spirit), good will (Father), and the wisdom of God (Logos).

Mysticism

Background: A movement from the Church, supported by a mystic, Richard of St.

Victor.

Based on the mysticism view, human knowledge through reasoning rationally

and logically cannot understood the nature of God, for His nature can only be
achievable through mystical experience. According to mysticism, God is reached
through contemplation or by deep thinking that we cannot gain an experience of
Divine and the Holy.

Richard of St. Victor

He noted that the goal of the mystics is "the mysterious ascension of the
soul to heaven, the sweet homecoming from the land of bodies, to the region of
spirit, the surrender of the self in and to God". However he infer that it is not
based on the capability of man neither on his skills to achieve God. It is only
God that can give man the blessings and the will to understand Him, also to
experience a mystical one and that man has to wait for this action from God.

Thomas Aquinas

Background: The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas was greatly influence by Aristotle.

Also called the Angelic Doctor and the Prince of scholastics, an Italian
philosopher and a theologian.

Thomas Aquinas adjust to the philosophy of Aristotle. For Aquinas, God is

pure form. This idea is actually from Aristotle. Aquinas allocated the principle
of the "prime mover" which is God. He infer that God is the unmoved mover. To
explain, God must be unmoved in order to be focus to create movement in the
universe. From the concept of Aristotle, Aquinas infer that things are related in
a graduated scale from lower forms of existence to the highest forms of existence.
Like, less object to more perfect object. He infer that at the summit of this
scale, God which is perfect can be found. He also emphasize that God is the first
and final cause of the universe.

John Duns Scotus

Background: John Duns Scotus was a theologian and a philosopher. Born in 1266 and
died in 1308.

For John Duns Scotus, God is a pure form or pure energy that God is the first
cause of everything. He is completely free, so free that He can will or not will
just as He wants. For Scotus, God is the cause of the universe that has a purpose
in creating and ruling the universe. For him philosophy and theology were distinct
but complementary for theology uses philosophy as a tool. In his viewpoint, the
primary concern of theology is God and his own nature. Scotus argue that through
faith a person may know with absolute certainty that the human soul is
incorruptible and immortal.

Meister Eckhart

He infer that God is inconceivable, and indefinable spiritual substance and

that God unite everything. According to Eckhart, God cannot reveal Himself but can
only be known only through the concept of the Trinity. For him, the Three Persons
of the Trinity flow out of God and back into Him that God is the ground of the
universe and all things are in God. The famous statement of Eckhart was "I’m God
communicating Himself. I am immanent in the essence of God. He works through me.
As I return to God in the mystic experience, I become one with God again".

The Minds of the Forerunners of Renaissance

Renaissance institutions were deeply rooted in older patterns of life and

traditional ways of thought, and these institutions were slow in adapting to new
conditions. The prestige of the church also suffered when some church leaders sold
their services, violated the biblical laws they were entrusted with upholding, and
lived no differently than secular merchants and political figures. Furthermore,
the leaders of the growing city-states, as well as the new monarchs, had much less
need of an alliance with the Catholic Church to maintain power than they had in
the past.

Nicholas Cusa
Background: A German cardinal, scholar, mathematician, scientist, and philosopher.
He is also a doctor of canon law. He argued that true wisdom lies in the
recognition of human ignorance and that knowledge of the deity is possible only
through intuition, a higher state of intelligence.

According to Nicholas Cusa, man could have an immediate intuition to God by

mystic's experience and that through this mystic experience with God, man solves
the contradictions and inconsistencies existing in the nature of God. Cusa infer
that through reason, we cannot know God, but beyond reason is this "learned
ignorance", or innocence that brings the supersensible experience of God.

Giordano Bruno

Background: An Itallian Renaissance philosopher and poet. He was imprisoned for

eight yeas for immoral conduct and was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori on
February 17, 1600.

Due to his studies based on the science of astronomy. He believed that God
is immanent in this vast universe. He infer that God is unity or God unite all the
opposites in the universe, a unity without opposites, which the human mind cannot
learn.

Jacob Boehme

Background: He received only an elementary education but was an assiduous student

of the Bible and the works of the Swiss alchemist and physician Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus. From an early age he believed that he saw visions, and throughout his
life he claimed to be divinely inspired.

Jacob Boehme emphasizes that everything exists and intelligible only through
its opposite. Thus, he believed that evil is a necessary element in goodness for
without evil the will of a person cannot distinguish right form wrong. According
to Boehme, God is the union of all opposites in the universe and that God is the
original source of all things. He infer that man sometimes are blind to see divine
things that can make opposites things united but God all these opposites are
balanced and united.

Sharmien V. Ventanilla Sir. Paredes

II-BSA

Philosophy and Ethics

(Philosophy and Religion)

I. Scope of Report:
 The Minds of the Later Greek Thinkers
The Greco-Religious Thinkers
The Early and Medieval Christian Thinkers
The Minds of the Forerunners of Renaissance

II. Discussion

The Minds of the Later Greek Thinkers

There are three views of religion based on the minds of the later Greek
thinkers:

Epicureans

Background: The taught of the epicureans were founded by Epicurus. According to

Epicurus faith is necessary in order for a person to live a prudent life which
later on, will bring a fuller life and lasting happiness.

This group supports the belief of polytheism in which the polytheists were
believer of many gods and goddesses. The view of Epicureans was from the doctrine
of Epicurus. According to Epicurus, gods are human-like but far more beautiful,
incorruptible (not subject to death), material, perfect, and inhabited in the
world. However these gods were not interested in men and did not interact with
humans, or neither create the world. These gods lived in a peaceful, contented
life, free from all worries and cares of men. These gods differ in sex, needed
food, spoke the languages of the Greeks. However even if Epicureans were
polytheist or believer of many gods there are still some distinction: (1) although
epicureans were believer of many gods this does not mean that they are worshipping
of all the gods in whom they believed, (2) there are different cities that
worshipped different gods, and (3) sometimes different gods were worshipped at
different times.

Stoics

The stoic on the other hand emphasize that there is only one God related to
the world just as there is only one soul per human body. According to the Stoics,
God has physical characteristics, bodily, but a body of high quality features. The
stoic opined that there is only one God responsible for everything in the
universe. Under the stoic doctrine, each person is a part of God and that all the
people form a universal family break down national, social, and racial barriers
and prepare the way to the spread of Christianity. The stoics believed that God is
an Omniscient God. They infer that He is the father of everything in the universe
that is why He is interested in the activity of humans. According to them, God
punishes the evil and rewards the good and that He lives in the farthest circle of
the universe but still know all from that point.

Carneades

For Cardeanes, the views of the Stoics are ridiculous. According to him men
are incapable of knowing God that they cannot even prove the existence of God.
According to Carneades, we must be skeptical or not easily convince or drive by
any factors.

The Greco-Religious Thinkers

PHILO

Background: Philo was noted to have some from the great Hebrew tradition.
 The Hebrew people emphasize the worship of "THE ONE". God is central to
their psyche or their spirit. Philo insisted that the nature of God was so far
from human understanding. For him, God is so far above man in greatness, goodness,
power, and perfection that we cannot know what he is but one can be certain that
He exists. Philo taught that God is the source of everything, is absolutely good,
perfect, and blessed. Contrary to this, Philo said that God cannot come in contact
with matter for He is so exalted or highly praise. However Philo taught that God
gives off light which combine in one power which Philo called "Logos" or the
divine Wisdom. According to him it was the divine Wisdom that create the universe,
and that the "Logos" is the intermediary between God and the world. Here we can
infer that God is separated from the world we dwell in.

PLOTINUS

Plotinus supported the same thing as Philo. He infers from Philo that that
God is the source of everything but God is so perfect that we cannot know anything
about Him. However, according to him, anything that people think about God is too
poor to be true of him. He infers that God is far above everything we, people can
think. He opined that God create the world through the means of emanations and not
directly. The world also depends upon God, but God does not need the world. For
from the view of Plotinus, "God is like an infinite stream which flow out but is
never exhausted".

For Plotinus, the main function of Philosophy is to prepare individuals for

the experience of ecstasy, in which they become one with God. For him God is
beyond rational understanding and is a source of all reality. Also, the universe
is a product by God by a mysterious process of overflowing divine energy. For
Plotinus the highest goal of life is to purify oneself of dependence on bodily
comforts and, through philosophical meditation, to prepare oneself for an ecstatic
reunion with God.

The Early and Medieval Christian Thinkers

Christianity is not really an old phenomenon for the world. The following
different views of early and medieval Christian Thinkers.

Apologists

From the Apologists arose the tradition to bless the marriage of

Christianity. According to them, through "Logos" or "Reason" God created the
universe. God is the First Cause of everything including changes. They infer that
because of God's existence order and reason are maintained and that all the
changes in the world are within God's control. According to them, God is the
source of everything, is good, and is eternal. For the Apologists God emits logos
or "divine wisdom" which is for them the source why the universe was created. For
them, God is a pure reason personified that means that they believed that God is
human or a person.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine emphasized the vast difference between God and the World. From
his viewpoint, God is eternal, powerful, transcended, all good, all wise, absolute
in many and every way; the cause of everything; the creator of the universe out of
nothing. For St. Augustine everything in this world is predetermined so that God
knew from the very beginning what will happen to the creation and creatures
throughout eternity and has dominance over it. God for St. Augustine is the
idealization of everything that man considers good and worthy.
 St. Augustine believed that God was one but expressed himself in the
universe as three persons.

John Scotus Erigena

Background: John Scotus Erigina was an Irish monk in the 9th century that
developed an interpretation of Christianity in identifying the Divine Trinity.

Even if John Scotus Erigena supports St. Augustine that God was the source
of everything he argued that God and His creation are one contrary to St.
Augustine view. For him, God existence is in the world and that He is the world.
For him, God is perfect goodness, power, and wisdom, however he proposed that God
is never wholly known by men that although man can understand and know something
about God but up to limited extent. For him, God is in reality unknowable and
indefinable that men with his little brain cannot understand His nature.

Agnotism

Background: The developments of Christianity during the first century give rise to
the belief or view of Agnotism. For the people back then believed that God had to
be bridged by something or someone that is tangible.

According to the view of Agnotism, the Logos was the intermediate being that
it is between God and the world. Various thinkers of that time believed that Jesus
was the Logos that was sent by the Father. Also, the early Christians did not only
regard Jesus but were also concern of the presence of the Holy Spirit. The people
believed that Jesus, the Logos and the Holy Spirit were emanations of God.
From there, the concept of the Trinity arises. The Church taught God not
only as one but also as Three Persons: God, Christ or the Logos, and the Holy
Spirit.

Modalists

Modalists believed in the concept of Trinity. Modalists believed that all

three persons are actually God in three forms or modes. The Logos is actually God
creating; the Holy Spirit is actually God reasoning; and God is actually God
being. However from the view of the Modalists, questions arises whether Logos was
the same substance as God, or if Logos an emanation from God, or is it God in
another form

Athanasian Position

Background: Founded by Athanasius, the leader of a group of early Christian

thinkers.

According to Athanasius, Christ is the principle of salvation and was

begotten, not made by the Father, God. Christ same with God is eternal and is of
the same substance as the Father. He infers that Christ as God shares the full
nature as the Father, and through Jesus, this Logos or Christ was united with a
human body. Added to this, the Holy Spirit that he maintained was the third being
or the third person. The Athanasian Position emphasize that God was conceived to
be a Trinity of the same substance or same nature: The Father, The Son, and The
Holy Spirit

Nominalism
Background: Roscelinus founded the movement Nominalism.

Roscelinus argued that what we see were the only real thing in the world
and that the general concepts of the world were just mere names or words. He
opined, that the simple things in life were the only realities and that those that
are complicated and hard to explain were just were words. He infers that there
could be no reality corresponding to the name God but he believed that there are
three persons with different substance that is equal in power. For him, Trinity is
not one but is three distinct beings. This belief was a denial in the doctrine of
the Church.

Realism

Background: Supported by the realist, Anselm whose works primarily centered on the
thought that universals exist.

Realists were contrary in the belief of Nominalist. The Realist claimed that
"Universals or the worldly things are the only real and that individuals are forms
insofar as they are within universals".

Saint Anselm
Saint Anselm infer that the idea of God as a being who exist, implies that
God must have existence and that man cannot argue inferentially from its
existence.

Abelard Frost

According to Abelard Frost the Trinity is consist of Father, Holy Spirit,

and the Logos. For Frost the three persons in the Trinity are the power (Holy
Spirit), good will (Father), and the wisdom of God (Logos).

Mysticism

Background: A movement from the Church, supported by a mystic, Richard of St.

Victor.

Based on the mysticism view, human knowledge through reasoning rationally

and logically cannot understood the nature of God, for His nature can only be
achievable through mystical experience. According to mysticism, God is reached
through contemplation or by deep thinking that we cannot gain an experience of
Divine and the Holy.

Richard of St. Victor

He noted that the goal of the mystics is "the mysterious ascension of the
soul to heaven, the sweet homecoming from the land of bodies, to the region of
spirit, the surrender of the self in and to God". However he infer that it is not
based on the capability of man neither on his skills to achieve God. It is only
God that can give man the blessings and the will to understand Him, also to
experience a mystical one and that man has to wait for this action from God.

Thomas Aquinas

Background: The philosophy of Thomas Aquinas was greatly influence by Aristotle.

Also called the Angelic Doctor and the Prince of scholastics, an Italian
philosopher and a theologian.

Thomas Aquinas adjust to the philosophy of Aristotle. For Aquinas, God is

pure form. This idea is actually from Aristotle. Aquinas allocated the principle
of the "prime mover" which is God. He infer that God is the unmoved mover. To
explain, God must be unmoved in order to be focus to create movement in the
universe. From the concept of Aristotle, Aquinas infer that things are related in
a graduated scale from lower forms of existence to the highest forms of existence.
Like, less object to more perfect object. He infer that at the summit of this
scale, God which is perfect can be found. He also emphasize that God is the first
and final cause of the universe.

John Duns Scotus

Background: John Duns Scotus was a theologian and a philosopher. Born in 1266 and
died in 1308.

For John Duns Scotus, God is a pure form or pure energy that God is the first
cause of everything. He is completely free, so free that He can will or not will
just as He wants. For Scotus, God is the cause of the universe that has a purpose
in creating and ruling the universe. For him philosophy and theology were distinct
but complementary for theology uses philosophy as a tool. In his viewpoint, the
primary concern of theology is God and his own nature. Scotus argue that through
faith a person may know with absolute certainty that the human soul is
incorruptible and immortal.

Meister Eckhart

He infer that God is inconceivable, and indefinable spiritual substance and

that God unite everything. According to Eckhart, God cannot reveal Himself but can
only be known only through the concept of the Trinity. For him, the Three Persons
of the Trinity flow out of God and back into Him that God is the ground of the
universe and all things are in God. The famous statement of Eckhart was "I’m God
communicating Himself. I am immanent in the essence of God. He works through me.
As I return to God in the mystic experience, I become one with God again".

The Minds of the Forerunners of Renaissance

Renaissance institutions were deeply rooted in older patterns of life and

traditional ways of thought, and these institutions were slow in adapting to new
conditions. The prestige of the church also suffered when some church leaders sold
their services, violated the biblical laws they were entrusted with upholding, and
lived no differently than secular merchants and political figures. Furthermore,
the leaders of the growing city-states, as well as the new monarchs, had much less
need of an alliance with the Catholic Church to maintain power than they had in
the past.

Nicholas Cusa

Background: A German cardinal, scholar, mathematician, scientist, and philosopher.

He is also a doctor of canon law. He argued that true wisdom lies in the
recognition of human ignorance and that knowledge of the deity is possible only
through intuition, a higher state of intelligence.

According to Nicholas Cusa, man could have an immediate intuition to God by

mystic's experience and that through this mystic experience with God, man solves
the contradictions and inconsistencies existing in the nature of God. Cusa infer
that through reason, we cannot know God, but beyond reason is this "learned
ignorance", or innocence that brings the supersensible experience of God.
 Giordano Bruno

Background: An Itallian Renaissance philosopher and poet. He was imprisoned for

eight yeas for immoral conduct and was burned at the stake in Campo dei Fiori on
February 17, 1600.

Due to his studies based on the science of astronomy. He believed that God
is immanent in this vast universe. He infer that God is unity or God unite all the
opposites in the universe, a unity without opposites, which the human mind cannot
learn.

Jacob Boehme

Background: He received only an elementary education but was an assiduous student

of the Bible and the works of the Swiss alchemist and physician Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus. From an early age he believed that he saw visions, and throughout his
life he claimed to be divinely inspired.

Jacob Boehme emphasizes that everything exists and intelligible only through
its opposite. Thus, he believed that evil is a necessary element in goodness for
without evil the will of a person cannot distinguish right form wrong. According
to Boehme, God is the union of all opposites in the universe and that God is the
original source of all things. He infer that man sometimes are blind to see divine
things that can make opposites things united but God all these opposites are
balanced and united.