Reason in Mystery

Abstract

The philosophy in Christianity is both inert and active. The late Greek metaphysics around which Christian doctrine first developed is Christianity's inert philosophical skeleton. Even if the dehellenizers could succeed in their efforts to remove it, Christianity itself would be unrecognizable without it. But the philosophy that is in Christianity actively, the enterprise of philosophical theology, is in it insecurely and only intermittently because it seems vulnerable to important religious and philosophical objections. As I see it, philosophical theology can be and actually has been successfully defended against those objections, and it is, I believe, incomparably the most interesting and important philosophy in Christianity—in fact, theonlyphilosophy of more than historical interest there really is in Christianity.