Philosophy vs. Theology?

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Here is a thread I began in another Catholic forum, and was just curious as to anyone’s thoughts here.

**I remember in a Protestant Bible College supported by the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ denomination taking courses on Philosophy. I also took a course on Theology. To this day, I still don’t understand the difference, other than the fact that Philosophy spans from the early pagan philosophers to Church fathers to more modern humanistic philosophers, whereas Theology is only that which is considered within a basic religious context.

I realize the actual definition of the terms; “Philosophy” literally meaning, “the love of wisdom” and “Theology” meaning the “study of God”.

My convert friend has always thought of “Philosophy” as a term only applying to either the pagan or modern humanistic thinking (a cuss word if you will). We both came from a broad Protestant background, but mostly influenced by the more conservative denominations…therefore the term “Philosophy” was mostly frowned upon. I explained to him that a lot of the early fathers of the Church were some of the most prominent philosophers in history. He said he thought of them more like Theologians, and asked me what the difference is. I was dumbfounded.

In simplistic terms I’m thinking that perhaps Philosophy are the questions whereas Theology contains the answers? http://forum.chnetwork.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/smiley-confused013.gif**
 
Philosophy is a more comprehensive discipline than theology because it includes metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics and aesthetics in addition to the philosophy of religion, science, mathematics…

Theology is concerned exclusively with religious topics - as one might expect from the origin of the word “theos” (God).

Both disciplines ask questions and give a wide range of conflicting answers and explanations!
 
They both seek the answers to man’s deepest questions. The difference is quite simple: Philosophy is limited to what man can discover based on reason and common experience. Theology uses our reason and common experience but departs from philosophy in that it uses revelation as well - in fact revelation is the primary source for theology while our raeson is secondary.

Certain distinctions in theology come from philosophy. The great theologians of the Church have built their theology upon philosophy and every seminarian needs to study philosophy first.

Hopefully that helps.
 
There exists an anti-intellectual tendency in some Protestant groups that believe all knowledge about God must come via revelation; anything else is man attempting to know what he can’t know on his own-and all such knowledge would necessarily be faulty/worthless. In Catholicism the two disciplines are complimentary. It’s acknowledged that man is a rational being who wants answers that can be supported by reason or in any case don’t contradict reason. Philosophy is just a formal way of doing what we all do naturally- wrestle with the truth regarding our existence. Theology provides answers to questions reason can’t obtain solely on its own but reason still must process that knowledge.
 
Boy, am I glad I started this thread. Such great responses. Thank you all. I would be interested to read anyone else’s response. 👍
 
I developed my own personal philosophy on the most important point for humanity, though I’m sure I’m not the first great philosopher to think of this one… :rolleyes:

I ask people, “What do you think is the most important issue for mankind?” Usually I’ll get some answer about salvation, or some other such thing. I tell them, actually I believe it can be recognized in the form of a question…who is God?

Almost inevitably somebody tries in vain to answer the question…missing the point. The point being, there is so much to that question that it would take a lifetime…perhaps an eternity…to answer. And then perhaps we wouldn’t even have the fullness of knowledge of God.

I’m so wise…and the most humble person I know…LOLOL 😃 …NOT!
 
fhansen said:
There exists an anti-intellectual tendency in some Protestant groups that believe all knowledge about God must come via revelation; anything else is man attempting to know what he can’t know on his own-and all such knowledge would necessarily be faulty/worthless. In Catholicism the two disciplines are complimentary. It’s acknowledged that man is a rational being who wants answers that can be supported by reason or in any case don’t contradict reason. Philosophy is just a formal way of doing what we all do naturally- wrestle with the truth regarding our existence. Theology provides answers to questions reason can’t obtain solely on its own but reason still must process that knowledge.
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Luther followed Ockham in nominalism - there is no human nature just this human and that human but we use meaningless terms like “man” for this category which appears to have something in common but doesn’t really.

Barth (19th cent.) explictly denied natural theology (the branch of philosophy dealing with what we can know about God without revelation). He is still fairly influential. This is done to protect God’s transcendence or to protect the idea that faith alone saves, but it makes that faith irrational (against reason) rather than super-rational (above reason) like we Catholics have it.

I have simplified these two thinkers immensely to give a basic explanation; one could study either in much greater depth.
 
I was really just trying to find a simple distinctive definition of the two terms. The best I could come up with is the following:

From the website saints.sqpn.com/ncd06535.htm the New Catholic Dictionary (forget the Catholic Encyclopedia for a simple definition)

This is only an excerpt of the long paragraph in which it defines Philosophy, touching on different branches of philosophy. However, I considered this to be especially relevant to this thread:

Men find that they cannot satisfactorily account either for themselves or the world, without the admission of. the existence of a supramundane being, God, the Creator. To Him is devoted a special branch of philosophy named theodicy, or natural theology, to distinguish it from theology based on revelation. Man then questions the conditions of knowledge and its validity and endeavors to give a critical account of it, which gives rise to the theory of knowledge, or epistemology. Man also observes that if he wishes to think correctly he must follow certain rules; these are supplied by logic. He finds that he must act, and act rightly; ethics supplies the rules of man’s conduct and the ultimate reasons of right and wrong.**

From the same website is the term, *Theology. *However, it was difficult because there are so many different branches of theology as follows:
Anyway, as such, I have come to the conclusion that there is no simple way of defining either theology or philosophy, or their distinctive qualities. 🤷
 
Genesius said:
Here is a thread I began in another Catholic forum, and was just curious as to anyone’s thoughts here.

**I remember in a Protestant Bible College supported by the Christian Church/Disciples of Christ denomination taking courses on Philosophy. I also took a course on Theology. To this day, I still don’t understand the difference, other than the fact that Philosophy spans from the early pagan philosophers to Church fathers to more modern humanistic philosophers, whereas Theology is only that which is considered within a basic religious context.

I realize the actual definition of the terms; “Philosophy” literally meaning, “the love of wisdom” and “Theology” meaning the “study of God”.

My convert friend has always thought of “Philosophy” as a term only applying to either the pagan or modern humanistic thinking (a cuss word if you will). We both came from a broad Protestant background, but mostly influenced by the more conservative denominations…therefore the term “Philosophy” was mostly frowned upon. I explained to him that a lot of the early fathers of the Church were some of the most prominent philosophers in history. He said he thought of them more like Theologians, and asked me what the difference is. I was dumbfounded.

In simplistic terms I’m thinking that perhaps Philosophy are the questions whereas Theology contains the answers? http://forum.chnetwork.org/Smileys/SoLoSMiLeYS1/smiley-confused013.gif**
Click to expand...
Philosophy deals with a whole range of problems such as; language, beauty, wisdom, science, mathematics. Theology deals with religious truth. Theology is a branch of philosophy, theology is philosophically driven. Philosophy is basicly existence itself. Anything could be a part of philosophy.
 
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