The influence of philosophy on religion
- Thread starter Yui108
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LightSpectra
me autem minui
I wouldn't say Greek philosophy influenced Christianity beyond some of the terminology being amalgamated. It's moreso the case that medieval theologians (particularly St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas) went through efforts to demonstrate that they weren't contradictory.
I'm less knowledgeable of Islam, but it's likely the same case for that. Islam was already well-established before scholars began comparing Greek philosophy with Islam, and theologians hiss at the thought of altering religious doctrine to fit foreign ideas.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
I doubt Scandinavia even had access to Greek literature before converting to Christianity, though I could be mistaken there.
Dragonlord
Fantasy Warlord
Why Socrates specifically?
Aristotle was practically revered by many Christian scholars in the Middle Ages, though I dunno how much he actually influenced Christian doctrine. But Socrates? My main take on Socrates is that he taught his pupils to basically question everything (very great simplification, I know), which seems to fit poorly with ANY authoritarian religion - I very much doubt that he would have been a great influence on Christianity in any way.
Also, as LightSpectra said, Northern Europe specifically did not, IMO, borrow much from Greek philosophy in any case. That was spread with the Roman civilazation, which never reached that far.
Sharwood
Rich, doctor nephew
I would assume Yui108 meant the Christian adoption of Platonic ideals - such as, the Forms - as useful to their purposes. I don't know how much Plato you've read, and I'm sure there are many, many people on the boards that understand him far better than I do, but to me, his ideas were very authoritarian; provided you were a member of the upper classes. Those ideals would be very useful to the nobility and clergy. I still don't know how much of that would have translated into Scandinavia though.
Socrates didn't influence Christianity much. I disagree, however, with Dragonlord's point that Socrates' questioning of everything must have sit poorly with Christianity. It's important to remember that Socratic questioning was an important influence on ancient scepticism, primarily that of the New Academy. And scepticism was an important philosophical movement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, influenced, to a large extent, by ancient scepticism (mainly the Pyrrhonian variety rather than that of the New Academy, but I've never really been clear on the philosophical differences between them). The interesting thing is that many of the early moden exponents of scepticism were theologians or religiously-minded philosophers who believed that sceptical philosophy was more in line with religion than any "doctrinaire" philosophy. Daniel Huet is a good example, or Blaise Pascal, or either of the John Du Hamels, and (my favourite) Simon Fouchet. All of these people thought that scepticism was more in line with faith, as traditionally conceived, than any other philosophical outlook was. As long as the mind thinks it understands reality, it lays claim to an authority over reality that is proper to God alone. On this view, the questioning of Socrates expresses a humility that is properly religious, and moreover, it reflects the fact that the universe, as God's creation, is comprehensible to God alone.
Plato influenced Christianity enormously, but largely at second hand - there's a big question mark over how much Plato most of the church fathers had actually read, and medieval theologians (at least in the west) had read none of his works at all apart from part of the Timaeus. He was influential more via Neoplatonism, by which I mean Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Porphyry. I don't think that Plato's political views were very influential at all on Christian theology, because those views had little or no influence on Neoplatonism. It was the spiritual and mystical side to Neoplatonism, which was itself a sort of exaggeration of certain elements of Plato's thought combined with a neglect of others, which appealed to the Christians. Remember that pretty much no Christian theologians read Plato himself to any great degree, and certainly not in entirety, until the Renaissance and people like Marcilio Ficino. So the influence of Plato's political texts upon Christianity was minimal, I think.
Aristotle was obviously a massive influence in both the east (via people such as John of Damascus and Leontius of Byzantium) and even more so in the west. This was true even in the early Middle Ages, when the only classical philosophy that anyone had access to consisted of Aristotle's Categories, his De intepretatione, Porphyry's Isagoge (an introduction to the Categories), and Boethius' commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry. The rediscovery of Aristotle's other works (primarily the Metaphysics) in the second half of the twelfth century then led to even more massive influence from Aristotle, of course. I don't think that LightSpectra is right to say that medieval thinkers were concerned merely to show consistency between Aristotle and Christian doctrine - on the contrary, Aquinas (for example) thought that Aristotle was right in most respects and sought to construct a Christian Aristotelian philosophy, although he did think that Aristotle was wrong in some respects (most notably on the question of the eternity of the world). Of course there were enormous controversies over this in the thirteenth century, with some people thinking that Aristotle should basically be completely avoided, and others thinking that he should followed in all matters. For a time, students at the universities of Paris and Oxford were in the odd situation of being compelled to read some Aristotelian works as core texts and forbidden from reading others. The importance of genuinely Aristotelian metaphysics in post-thirteenth-century Christian theology is shown by the resistance that theologians put up to alternatives to Aristotelian metaphysics when they later arose. Remember that Descartes got into a lot of trouble from theologians primarily because his theory of substance was incompatible with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which had been formulated in Aristotelian terms. So it wasn't that people thought Aristotelian metaphysics merely consistent with Christian doctrine - they thought it an essential part of it.
However, Aristotle's influence really became massive too late to count as a real influence on Christianity itself (it was more of an influence upon later Christian philosophy and theology). The church fathers uniformly hated Aristotle - Gregory of Nyssa called him an evil genius and said that Aetius fell into heresy basically by reading too much Aristotle.
Plato influenced Christianity enormously, but largely at second hand - there's a big question mark over how much Plato most of the church fathers had actually read, and medieval theologians (at least in the west) had read none of his works at all apart from part of the Timaeus. He was influential more via Neoplatonism, by which I mean Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Porphyry. I don't think that Plato's political views were very influential at all on Christian theology, because those views had little or no influence on Neoplatonism. It was the spiritual and mystical side to Neoplatonism, which was itself a sort of exaggeration of certain elements of Plato's thought combined with a neglect of others, which appealed to the Christians. Remember that pretty much no Christian theologians read Plato himself to any great degree, and certainly not in entirety, until the Renaissance and people like Marcilio Ficino. So the influence of Plato's political texts upon Christianity was minimal, I think.
Aristotle was obviously a massive influence in both the east (via people such as John of Damascus and Leontius of Byzantium) and even more so in the west. This was true even in the early Middle Ages, when the only classical philosophy that anyone had access to consisted of Aristotle's Categories, his De intepretatione, Porphyry's Isagoge (an introduction to the Categories), and Boethius' commentaries on Aristotle and Porphyry. The rediscovery of Aristotle's other works (primarily the Metaphysics) in the second half of the twelfth century then led to even more massive influence from Aristotle, of course. I don't think that LightSpectra is right to say that medieval thinkers were concerned merely to show consistency between Aristotle and Christian doctrine - on the contrary, Aquinas (for example) thought that Aristotle was right in most respects and sought to construct a Christian Aristotelian philosophy, although he did think that Aristotle was wrong in some respects (most notably on the question of the eternity of the world). Of course there were enormous controversies over this in the thirteenth century, with some people thinking that Aristotle should basically be completely avoided, and others thinking that he should followed in all matters. For a time, students at the universities of Paris and Oxford were in the odd situation of being compelled to read some Aristotelian works as core texts and forbidden from reading others. The importance of genuinely Aristotelian metaphysics in post-thirteenth-century Christian theology is shown by the resistance that theologians put up to alternatives to Aristotelian metaphysics when they later arose. Remember that Descartes got into a lot of trouble from theologians primarily because his theory of substance was incompatible with the doctrine of transubstantiation, which had been formulated in Aristotelian terms. So it wasn't that people thought Aristotelian metaphysics merely consistent with Christian doctrine - they thought it an essential part of it.
However, Aristotle's influence really became massive too late to count as a real influence on Christianity itself (it was more of an influence upon later Christian philosophy and theology). The church fathers uniformly hated Aristotle - Gregory of Nyssa called him an evil genius and said that Aetius fell into heresy basically by reading too much Aristotle.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Theophilosophy is my specialty, so I am happy to defend my statements here. St. Thomas Aquinas was obviously aware that revelation was superior to reason in the orders of knowledge, so it wouldn't have made sense to change Christianity to fit Aristotelianism. What he did was express Christian doctrines under Aristotle's system, which I would say is apposite to suggesting that Aquinas was demonstrating that the two were non-contradictory.
As I understand it, Descartes was criticized in his time for resisting Aristotelianism because it was widely regarded as being simply true; not because it was fundamentally synthesized with Catholicism at this point. While the Church uses terms from Greek philosophy like logos and transubstantiation to refer to its doctrines, I wouldn't say that this necessarily implies that Christianity is now inseparable from it. Rather, it is the case that they do not contradict each other, and Aristotelianism was such a useful and popular system that it remains in use to this day.
Right - or at least, of course, that's how he and other Aristotelians would have seen it. But they would have thought that both Christianity and Aristotelianism were true and always had been true; so to affirm the truth of both wouldn't involve changing either.
That doesn't seem to me to capture what went on at the time, though. People did argue about whether certain philosophical claims were consistent with Christianity, yes - for example the debate over unicity of form - but they also argued about whether they were true. Consider, for example, the dispute in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century between "Augustinians" and "Aristotelians" about how the mind forms concepts and thinks of things. Augustinians held that God is directly involved in this, while Aristotelians thought that he is not, and the mind "abstracts" concepts by itself. Augustinians such as Henry of Ghent argued that the Aristotelian position was at least rather impious, if not outright heretical, and also argued that the Augustinian position was the only one that could allow knowledge to exist at all. So that was a theological argument on the basis of consistency with Christianity, and a purely philosophical argument. Aristotelians such as Duns Scotus responded first by insisting that their view was consistent with Christianity, but also (and this is the point) philosophically by arguing that their view was actually true. In this case, Scotus argued that Henry's appeal to divine illumination didn't address scepticism at all and just led to absurdity. The attack was so effective that it basically killed the Augustinian theory stone dead for some centuries. So here, Aristotelians were not just arguing that Christianity and Aristotelianism were consistent, although that formed part of their argument; their main concern was to show that Aristotelianism was true.
No, there were purely philosophical objections, of course, but also there were theological ones like the problem of transubstantiation that I mentioned. The doctrine of transubstantiation requires that you can distinguish between a substance and its properties, because it states that in the Mass, the elements change substance but retain their properties. Descartes, however, held that the essence of physical substance is extension, which is one of its properties. So he could not make that distinction: for him, if something's extension remains exactly the same, the substance remains exactly the same, so on that view transubstantiation is a conceptual impossibility. Hence the hoo-hah. There were other theological objections to Cartesianism from other directions too, including from Reformed theologians such as Du Moulin, but I forget for the moment precisely what they were.
I think the way to see it is that certain forms of Christianity - such as Tridentine Catholicism - are more or less tied to certain philosophical positions - such a broadly Aristotelian metaphysics - but that Christianity as a whole is not because it has so many different varieties and traditions. That's part of the secret to Christianity's success, in that it's been able to "translate" itself into many different cultures; of course it's also been the cause of many of its internal divisions and problems. But that's another story.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
They would have thought that Christianity is undeniably true, whereas Aristotelianism appears to be true. I doubt many of them would have put them at equal tiers of certainty, but otherwise, I agree.
Yes, but I also point out that while the debate was about whether or not Aristotle was correct on this particular point, the main point of contention was that his position allegedly contradicted Catholic dogma. The topic at hand is how much Greek philosophy influenced Christianity, and I would argue that it changed Christian thinking little per se. What was far more important was how it was adopted into Christianity via St. Thomas Aquinas and the like. If Aristotelianism was true, it was only true insofar that it was not contradictory of Catholic theology.
I'm likely wrong here, as I'm only a bit acquainted with Cartesianism, but wasn't this dispute based on a misunderstanding of Descartes' philosophy? He brings up an example of wax in the Meditation on First Philosophy, whereby the same object can take different shapes and forms depending on its circumstances, even though fundamentally it's the same substance, and uses this as evidence that our senses cannot be taken as inherently reliable before reason.
I remain unconvinced that Catholicism is contingent upon Aristotelianism in order to be true. As highly revered as St. Thomas Aquinas is in the Catholic Church, his positions have not been declared infallible, so theoretically the Church could roll back to non-Thomistic theological outlooks.
It was controversial, of course; some would have taken the line you mention, others would have been harsher to Aristotle, and others apparently regarded them more equally. The doctrine of "double truth" which was attributed to the Averroists suggested that even where Aristotle disagreed with the church, he was still right philosophically while the church was right theologically. Whether any of the Averroists actually believed such an incoherent doctrine isn't clear, of course.
I don't think it was. I think the main issue was what position was true, not which one was most consonant with Catholic teaching. It also wasn't really about Aristotle himself; that particular debate was conducted in its own terms, with everyone appealing to Aristotle where he supported them, Augustine where he supported them, and anyone else where appropriate - as was usually the case. Remember that everyone, even supposed anti-Aristotelians such as Henry of Ghent, regarded Aristotle as an authority and appealed to him constantly. In such a context it was virtually impossible for Christian doctrine not to be interpreted in the light of Aristotle - the only question was how much. In the epistemological debate, it is true that one side was closer to Aristotle's own theory, but it wasn't cast in terms of "Aristotle or not", although later historians of ideas may have seen it like that. It was cast in terms of "Does it work like this, or like that?" and the real issue at hand was which theory best explained human cognition, not which one was most consistent with church doctrine. At least, that is how it appears to me.
Right, but Christian theology isn't a set body of thought that people just inherit and can take or leave as they like. It develops and is re-interpreted, and one person may understand it differently from another. One may say that a medieval theologian interpreted Aristotle (or whoever) in the light of Christian teaching, but one might equally say that a medieval philosopher interpreted Christian teaching in the light of Aristotle. In practice it was surely a bit of both.
An example: consider the debate over the unicity of form. Aquinas thought that every substance has only a single substantial form, and if the form changes, you get a different substance. A living body has one form and a dead one has a different form. This yields the odd conclusion that when somebody dies, they are transformed into a new substance. In fact Aristotle thought this too, and held that a dead cat (say) is called a "cat" only homonymously - it is not really a cat in the way that a live one is. Some people, most notably Robert Kilwardby and John Pecham, thought that this was absurd, and also heretical as it entailed that the dead Christ was a different substance from the live Christ. Defenders of the doctrine (not including Aquinas, who was dead when the dispute occurred) argued that this was not a heretical conclusion. So here we see a dispute of the kind you mention, where the issue is whether a certain claim is consistent with Christian teaching - but the reason there was a dispute is precisely because people disagreed over what Christian teaching was. Some thought that it was a Christian teaching that the dead Christ be identical in substance to the live Christ, and others didn't. And their view on this matter was influenced, to some extent, by their philosophical commitments.
Yes, the wax example is supposed to show that we understand the world through reason rather than sense, because the wax can change properties and yet we recognise it to be the same thing - but Descartes would not have accepted that it could change all its properties and yet remain the same thing. It was a fundamental tenet of Cartesianism - in fact arguably one of the most fundamental - that the essence of physical substance is extension (and the essence of mental substance is thought). Change the extension and you change the substance. If the wax were to change its extension, it would not remain the same thing. Conversely, if its extension does not change, its substance does not change, because the substance and the extension are exactly the same thing. This is why Descartes regarded the vacuum as conceptually impossible, because a vacuum is an area of extension that doesn't contain any substance (i.e. an empty space). In the case of the Mass, the bread's extension does not change, and neither do any of its other properties, yet it does become a different thing. That is also absurd on Cartesian principles. So this criticism wasn't based on a misunderstanding of Descartes at all - in fact many Cartesians recognised its force and wrapped themselves in circles trying to get around it. (Descartes himself didn't particularly care: his attitude to this sort of thing was "I've proved it, so if the theologians don't like it, that's their problem.")
Aristotelianism isn't the same thing as Thomism. To the extent that Catholicism requires you to distinguish between substance and properties, and to the extent that you call such a distinction Aristotelianism, Catholicism requires Aristotelianism. That's got nothing to do with Aquinas (who was around after the doctrine of transubstantiation was formulated - remember, as I said, that medieval metaphysics was deeply Aristotelian in many ways even before the rediscovery of Aristotle, thanks to the influence of the Categories and Porphyry). Of course you don't need the more specific arcana of Aristotelianism for that, only that basic principle, and I'd say it's a pretty reasonable principle, but it does still rule out some metaphysical systems, such as Cartesianism.
The example of medieval Aristotelianism isn't a very good one though, really, because the broad body of Christian doctrine was quite well established before these Aristotelian-specific points arose. I think a better example would be the blending of Christianity and Platonism in late antiquity, especially the third and fourth centuries - since Christianity was not so clearly defined then, and the philosophical influence was far greater. Classically educated theologians interpreted Christianity in ways drawn from their classical heritage. For example, figures such as the Cappadocians and Augustine re-invented Christian asceticism, of the kind that had been pioneered by Antony of Egypt and others, as a Christian version of the "philosophical life" championed by Cicero and other classical writers. In fact, Gregory of Nazianzus frequently uses the word "philosophy" as a technical term to refer to the life of Christian ascetic withdrawal and focus upon God. For these people, the practice of Christian religion and philosophy were exactly the same thing. Jaroslav Pelikan has written about this at some length in Christianity and classical culture.
My point is not that Christianity in general depends on any given philosophical system or set of ideas, because it clearly doesn't. But I do think that the various particular forms that Christianity has historically taken tend, as a rule, to depend upon at least elements of, and sometimes most of, the prevalent philosophical systems of the time.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
In the worldview of medieval theologians and philosophers, their fundamental basis of knowledge was the revelations of the Church, and everything beyond that was just in the details. (A few people, like Berengar of Tours, did in fact challenge the theology of the Church, but they were a tiny minority.) You yourself said that Henry of Ghent's position was that the Aristotelian one was "rather impious," so would not the bulk of the debate be about the internal consistency of Christianity?
Yes, that's exactly what I'm arguing. The threshold of the impact of Greek philosophy was Christianity being interpreted through its terms, not that there was any fundamental synthesis between the two schools. Now, you bring up the point of transubstantiation, which is indeed dependent on substances and accidents being distinguishable, but that's not inherently exclusive to Aristotelianism. There's really only a few positions you can take here.
Well, this then complicates the argument even further. What do we mean by Christianity? Are we referring to the Church, or are we referring to the collection of theologians and philosophers that were Christians themselves?
But this wasn't inherently a dispute over Christian doctrine -- it was a dispute over what constituted "substance" and whether or not that definition would result in contradiction within Christian dogma. Whether or not Christ was of the same substance the same both in death and the living is rather irrelevant unless you're expressing the terms in the circle of philosophy; afterall, what does the word "substance" even mean without given a context?
Ah, my mistake then. Well, as I said above, this doesn't necessarily imply that Catholicism is contingent upon Aristotelianism to be true. Both Aristotelianism and Cartesianism could be wrong in general, but this has no bearing on whether transubstantiation is a metaphysical possibility; the only major influence here is that Aristotle introduced the concept of substance versus accidents to the medieval world, but just using his terms does not necessarily imply that his system has to be internally consistent and scientifically accurate.
See above. But excuse me for using Aristotelianism as a synonym for Thomism. I was merely making the point of how Thomism is Christianity interpreted through Aristotle's philosophy, and Thomism appears to be the most influential and popular school in Catholicism.
I honestly think that the influence of Platonism on St. Augustine has been incredibly overstated. He trophies Plato for being highly accurate without Godly revelations, but it's not as if he completely adopted Platonic doctrines in his works. Most of the City of God and his other formulations could be deduced almost entirely from established Catholic doctrines from the era. Furthermore, I dispute that Christian asceticism was derived from Greco-Roman philosophy. Almost a perfect example was laid out by Biblical figures like Jesus and St. John the Baptist, it was only a matter of taking it literally as figures like St. Anthony did.
I'm not sure we really disagree much about the medieval issue. The disagreement seems to me one of interpretation - whether we think that a philosopher interpreting doctrine in the light of his philosophy really counts as the philosophy influencing his theology or not. I would say it does and you would say it doesn't. Perhaps that's not much of a disagreement.
I don't think so. First, that's just Henry. Second, and more important, it wasn't the bulk of the debate. The bulk of the debate, on that issue at least, revolved around whether it was true and didn't much take into account questions of piety. Of course, when they could, medieval philosophers would always accuse their opponents of impiety, but that was a matter of using any stick they could lay their hands on to beat the other bloke with. I don't think it was the main point at issue.
That's the real nub of the matter. What's the difference? If I'm an Aristotelian philosopher and I interpret Christianity through the terms of Aristotelianism, how does that actually differ from making a fundamental synthesis of the two? This is really the key question here, I think. You imply that there's a difference but I find it hard to conceive what it could be.
Well, quite.
Again, I think it was a dispute over all these things, over Christian doctrine as well as the meaning of philosophical terms. I just don't think that medieval thinkers would have made the distinctions to which you allude.
Right. The point, though, is that some metaphysical commitments are required by the doctrine. Not full-blown Aristotelianism itself, perhaps, but still, a bit. To that degree, theology is not independent of philosophy.
I must disagree with you there. Certainly Plato was not much of a direct influence upon Augustine, but then, he was not much of a direct influence on anyone in the fourth and fifth centuries (there is good reason to think that even people who read Plato read only anthologies and not the original texts). But there is immense influence from Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism upon Augustine. To list just a few of the most obvious examples: the identification of God with the Good and the Beautiful; the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible realms; the analysis of evil as deficiency; the emphasis upon creaturely free will; the emphasis upon the immateriality of the soul; and the identification of the Platonic Forms with ideas in the mind of God. All of these are very characteristically Middle Platonic doctrines (or Neoplatonic, in the case of the analysis of evil) and not particularly biblical. Now it's true that Augustine could have found some of these in the existing Christian tradition, especially in Origen and Marius Victorinus. But both of them took them direct from Platonism. All of these people were Platonists through and through - something which, as I say, was entirely consistent with not reading much Plato or even rating him very highly. In the case of Augustine, it is surely impossible to read the Cassiciacum dialogues and not think that here is someone who was consciously trying to model his work upon Plato's.
I might not have expressed myself very clearly there. Certainly Christian asceticism was not derived from Greek or Roman philosophy; on the contrary, it was an extremely important element of Christianity right from the start, especially in Syria. But in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, it was re-interpreted in line with Greek philosophy, as I said. Cassiciacum is, again, a good example of this: there, Augustine sought to live an ascetic lifestyle, set apart for God, inspired by the Egyptian desert fathers - yet he also conceived it as a philosophical retreat, where he and his friends would devote themselves to the philosophical ideal as found in Plato, Cicero, and the rest. So it was a sort of cross between Nitria and the Academy. Other examples of the same sort of thing from this period include Paulinus' monastery in Spain and the retreat that Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus set up at Pontus. These people were all aristocrats who were enormously influenced by the classical ideal of the life of philosophy, and who re-interpreted the traditional Christian ascetic ideal in its light. This, of course, transformed it. For example, learning had never been an important part of the Christian ideal or indeed of Christianity in general before. Ascetics had simply sought to live a life that they believed would train body and soul to be fit for Christ. The Christian philosophers added to this the idea of training the mind through rigorous study and intellectual contemplation - something that of course came from the classical tradition. Origen was again a huge influence here, with his belief that the human soul is fundamentally a mind (with some other bits unfortunately added - a view that comes straight out of Plato) and that spiritual progression is an intellectual progression. He thought that the spiritual life revolved around the intellectual study of the Bible, and that the more one understands the text, the closer one gets to God. This was a hermeneutic that derived partly from biblical examples (such as rabbinic-style exegesis as practised by Paul in a few passages), partly from extra-biblical Jewish traditions (such as Philo of Alexandria), and partly from pagan sources (such as the exegete Heraclitus' use of allegory in interpreting Homer). But it was married to a fundamentally Platonic understanding of human nature and spiritual progression. And that also had a very big and direct influence on later monasticism, via desert-dwelling ascetics who were themselves Origenists - above all Evagrius Ponticus, who formulated the original Eight Generic Thoughts (the ancestor of the Seven Deadly Sins) and conceived of them in fundamentally intellectualist terms.
I don't think so. First, that's just Henry. Second, and more important, it wasn't the bulk of the debate. The bulk of the debate, on that issue at least, revolved around whether it was true and didn't much take into account questions of piety. Of course, when they could, medieval philosophers would always accuse their opponents of impiety, but that was a matter of using any stick they could lay their hands on to beat the other bloke with. I don't think it was the main point at issue.
That's the real nub of the matter. What's the difference? If I'm an Aristotelian philosopher and I interpret Christianity through the terms of Aristotelianism, how does that actually differ from making a fundamental synthesis of the two? This is really the key question here, I think. You imply that there's a difference but I find it hard to conceive what it could be.
Well, quite.
Again, I think it was a dispute over all these things, over Christian doctrine as well as the meaning of philosophical terms. I just don't think that medieval thinkers would have made the distinctions to which you allude.
Right. The point, though, is that some metaphysical commitments are required by the doctrine. Not full-blown Aristotelianism itself, perhaps, but still, a bit. To that degree, theology is not independent of philosophy.
I must disagree with you there. Certainly Plato was not much of a direct influence upon Augustine, but then, he was not much of a direct influence on anyone in the fourth and fifth centuries (there is good reason to think that even people who read Plato read only anthologies and not the original texts). But there is immense influence from Middle Platonism and Neoplatonism upon Augustine. To list just a few of the most obvious examples: the identification of God with the Good and the Beautiful; the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible realms; the analysis of evil as deficiency; the emphasis upon creaturely free will; the emphasis upon the immateriality of the soul; and the identification of the Platonic Forms with ideas in the mind of God. All of these are very characteristically Middle Platonic doctrines (or Neoplatonic, in the case of the analysis of evil) and not particularly biblical. Now it's true that Augustine could have found some of these in the existing Christian tradition, especially in Origen and Marius Victorinus. But both of them took them direct from Platonism. All of these people were Platonists through and through - something which, as I say, was entirely consistent with not reading much Plato or even rating him very highly. In the case of Augustine, it is surely impossible to read the Cassiciacum dialogues and not think that here is someone who was consciously trying to model his work upon Plato's.
I might not have expressed myself very clearly there. Certainly Christian asceticism was not derived from Greek or Roman philosophy; on the contrary, it was an extremely important element of Christianity right from the start, especially in Syria. But in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, it was re-interpreted in line with Greek philosophy, as I said. Cassiciacum is, again, a good example of this: there, Augustine sought to live an ascetic lifestyle, set apart for God, inspired by the Egyptian desert fathers - yet he also conceived it as a philosophical retreat, where he and his friends would devote themselves to the philosophical ideal as found in Plato, Cicero, and the rest. So it was a sort of cross between Nitria and the Academy. Other examples of the same sort of thing from this period include Paulinus' monastery in Spain and the retreat that Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus set up at Pontus. These people were all aristocrats who were enormously influenced by the classical ideal of the life of philosophy, and who re-interpreted the traditional Christian ascetic ideal in its light. This, of course, transformed it. For example, learning had never been an important part of the Christian ideal or indeed of Christianity in general before. Ascetics had simply sought to live a life that they believed would train body and soul to be fit for Christ. The Christian philosophers added to this the idea of training the mind through rigorous study and intellectual contemplation - something that of course came from the classical tradition. Origen was again a huge influence here, with his belief that the human soul is fundamentally a mind (with some other bits unfortunately added - a view that comes straight out of Plato) and that spiritual progression is an intellectual progression. He thought that the spiritual life revolved around the intellectual study of the Bible, and that the more one understands the text, the closer one gets to God. This was a hermeneutic that derived partly from biblical examples (such as rabbinic-style exegesis as practised by Paul in a few passages), partly from extra-biblical Jewish traditions (such as Philo of Alexandria), and partly from pagan sources (such as the exegete Heraclitus' use of allegory in interpreting Homer). But it was married to a fundamentally Platonic understanding of human nature and spiritual progression. And that also had a very big and direct influence on later monasticism, via desert-dwelling ascetics who were themselves Origenists - above all Evagrius Ponticus, who formulated the original Eight Generic Thoughts (the ancestor of the Seven Deadly Sins) and conceived of them in fundamentally intellectualist terms.
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