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Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) was a rabbi, theologian, and physician, considered by many to be the greatest medieval Jewish thinker. Guide for the Perplexed addresses the conflicts between Judaism and the scientific and philosophic thought of the day, seeking to find a concord between the Old Testament, Aristotelian philosophy, and observable physical reality. In the excerpt below, […]
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Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) is often referred to as the “Father of Scholasticism” for his use of dialectics in his theological works, a method that would later become standard practice for scholastic writers. His ability to view issues from multiple perspectives and develop arguments reconciling seemingly contradictory presuppositions is on display in On the Fall
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On the Consolation of Philosophy was written in AD 523 during a year-long imprisonment that the Roman statesman Boethius served while awaiting trial, and ultimately execution, for the alleged crime of treason under the Ostrogothic King Theodoric the Great. Boethius was imprisoned due to treachery, and his experience of this injustice inspired him to question
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Considerable obscurity remains about the person of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, author of On the Divine Names. His writings, which are our only source of information about his life, suggest that he lived in the Early Middle Ages, perhaps around 500 AD. Though little is known about the life of Dionysius, his work was influential among
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Written in the early 5th century AD, The City of God is a cornerstone of Christian theology, presenting human history as a spiritual war between the Earthly City (the fallen City of Man) and the City of God. The Earthly City consists of those who devote themselves to the pleasures and concerns of the temporal
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Lucius Lactantius was an early Christian author (240–320 AD) who became an advisor to the first Christian Roman emperor, Constantine I. Lactantius’s A Treatise on the Anger of God, Addressed to Donatus is a short work arguing that God can be both kind and angry, and that God’s anger includes father-like corrective indignation, as well
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A central purpose of Against Heresies was to refute the heretical teachings of Gnosticism, which flourished during the early church period. Because many Gnostics held that spiritual knowledge was to be arrived at through interior means, and because many also claimed to have access to ‘secret knowledge’ about the nature of the universe, Gnostic beliefs
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The Encheiridion is a short manual of maxims compiled by Arrian of Nicomedia, a 2nd-century student of the Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus. True to the Stoic tradition, Epictetus asserts that it is our thoughts and judgements, not things themselves, which are the ultimate source of our suffering. Accordingly, Epictetus maintains that man can exercise a considerable
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Lucretius was a Roman poet and Epicurean philosopher born around 99 BC. His best-known work, On the Nature of Things, is a six-book epic poem exploring a wide range of philosophical questions, including how man should respond to the reality of evil and death. For Lucretius, the problem of evil was not a concern about
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In Timaeus, Plato explains the origins of the universe as an act of creation by a powerful and benevolent creator God who formed the cosmos into a harmonious whole from preexistent matter with the assistance of lesser divine beings whom he also created. Unlike the three Abrahamic religions, Plato’s supreme God is not omnipotent. However,