The Christian era began with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was not a philosopher, but his followers soon found themselves in a conversation with the philosophical traditions that had come down from Greek thinkers. Plato and Aristotle had left in their wake an unresolved tension between rationalism and empiricism, and in some important respects, the Christian movement offered a synthesis of that tension.

Plato insisted on an eternal and unchanging world of forms, which he believed necessary to make sense out of the world of experience and change. Augustine would eventually locate Plato's world of forms in the mind of God, and he agreed that it was only this great divine reason that made thought and knowledge possible.

Aristotle, on the other hand, emphasized the world of nature, science, observation, believing that Plato's world of forms was too speculative. This empirical emphasis of Aristotle was also satisfied by Christ, who was viewed by Christians as the eternal become temporal and earthly. The apostle wrote, 'That which was from the beginning (eternal, rational) which we have seen (temporal, empirical)...' The gap between Plato and Aristotle was bridged by God becoming man, and western philosophy reflected that synthesis from then on.

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.