We turn our attention now to the early centuries of Christian history, and the tension that developed between two quite different visions of the Christian message. On the one hand, there were many who wished to find common ground between Christianity and Greek philosophy, producing a hybrid commonly called Gnosticism. Others hoped to define the Christian gospel in terms of traditional Jewish thought, continuing the Judaizing influence found in the New Testament.

The early expression of the Jewish emphasis arose generally out the the city of Antioch, which had become a center of Jewish Christianity after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. It was the Antiochan form of Christian teaching that eventually produced Arius, the man largely responsible for the crisis known as the Arian controversy, which itself led to the Council of Nicaea.

In this lesson we will be examining the earliest expression of this Jewish-oriented emphasis, and in later discussions we will see how the Antiochan influence became more refined until the church finally affirmed conclusively the doctrine of the Trinity.

1. Introduction to the Major Themes of Philosophy
2. The Ionian Philosophers
3. The Italian Philosophers
4. The Athenian Pluralists
5. The Life and Times of Socrates
6. Introduction to Plato
7. Plato's World of the Forms
8. Plato's Parable of the Cave
9. Dualism in Plato
10. Introduction to Aristotle
11. Aristotle's Metaphysics
12. Aristotle's Categories
13. Aristotle's Theory of Language
14. Aristotle's God
15. The Epicureans
16. Stoicism
17. Philo of Alexandria
18. The Christian Synthesis
19. Early Christian Apologists
20. Antiochan Christianity
21. Alexandrian Christianity
22. The Council of Nicaea
23. Manichaeism
24. Neo-Platonism
25. The Life of Augustine
26. Overview of Augustin's Thought
27. Augustin's Epistemology
28. Augustin's Epistemology (part 2)
29. Augustin's Theory of Faith
30. Augustin's Understanding of the Church
31. The Pelagian Controversy
32. The Pelagian Controversy (cont)
33. The Pelagian Controversy (concl)
34. Anselm of Canterbury
35. Anselm's Cur Deus Homo
36. Introduction to the Classical Synthesis
37. The Classical Synthesis (part 2)
38. Thomas Aquinas and the Five Ways
39. Art, Philosophy, and the Renaissance

This wide ranging course starts with the pre-Socratic philosophers of the ancient world, and traces the history of philosophical speculation across the ages up to the present. Included along the way is special attention to the greatest Christian thinkers in history, including Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin and many others.