Olivia Grounds

Mrs. Wilhelmus

AP English Language

11 August 2013

                                                            Faithfully Philosophical

            In a time, were Christianity and philosophy collided; there were two major philosophers that brought these two together. Their names were Aquinas and St. Augustine. They believed that Christianity and Philosophy could go hand and hand, not be a threat to one another. These two saw the likeness of the Christian religion and the philosophical ideas teachings that the two Greeks had. Aquinas and St. Augustine “Christianized” the philosophical teachings of Aristotle and Plato.

            St. Augustine was not always a Christian. He started off as a Manichaean, a religious sector that started in the Late Antiquity. He did not believe that everything had to be placed into the category of good or evil. So, when he came across Neoplatonism, he jumped aboard that ship pretty quickly. While he studied Neoplatoism, he found that Neoplatonist believed that there was a divine being. This helped sooth the problem of right and wrong. Later on, he found Christianity and he believed it was much like the teachings of Plato. He believed that Plato must known of Christianity because his teach was much like the ones in the Old Testament. He saw many similarities between the two, one being that both Plato and the Old Testament said that there was a god, and that that god must have had an the “idea” what the world could be. He saved Plato’s teachings this way, for the school that Plato built was taken down. Where students once learned philosophy in school, Christianity began to be taught and took its’ place. The combining of these ideas and filling in the gaps with his own conclusions made Plato’s teachings immortal.

            Aquinas, like St. Augustine, believed that there was an eternal power. He bridged the gap between Christian ways and Aristotle’s idea by knowing that faith and knowledge had to go together. He knew that there was not a way to disprove God, only one that would prove that there was a god. He preserved Aristotle’s much like St. Augustine preserved Plato’s, bringing the two together and showing the similar traits that both of them held.