This is an outlined transcript of Dr. James Dolezal's interview with Theology in Particular, where he dealt with the Foundations of Philosophical Theology. James Dolezal is really a gift to the church. Despite his current condition, resulting from a recent accident, this archived lecture will serve the greater body of Christ's church in understanding that while Philosophy is subordinate to Theology, it remains a genuine science.

Theology in Particular | Episode 58 (Greatest Hits Replay)

Hosted by Joe Anady. The interview originally aired in September 2022.

If we despise what can be known through natural reason unaided by special revelation... we're despising the providence and the handiwork of God who gave us that reason, sustains it, and orders it to actually know things.

— James Dolezal

Prayer Request: James Dolezal

About two weeks ago, our brother was struck by a car while walking near his home. As I record this, it is my understanding that Dr. Dolezal is still in the hospital, sedated and intubated. Please pray for his recovery and for his wife and children during this difficult time. If you wish to receive updates on James' condition, you may go to caringbridge.org and search for James and Courtney Dolezal. His wife posts regular updates there.

About James Dolezal

Joe: Would you mind sharing with us a bit about your background?

James: Most recently I spent nine years as a professor in various ranks at Cairn University in Pennsylvania, just north of Philadelphia, teaching theology and philosophy and some church history there. Prior to that I was at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. I am married. We have three children and we are currently living in California. We've been here for about a year teaching. I'm still teaching for Cairn University and also teaching for a theological institute in Bakersfield. In addition to that, for the last few years I've had the privilege of serving as a visiting professor of theology at IRBS, teaching doctrine of God and also a course called Foundations of Philosophical Theology.

Why This Course Exists

Joe: That course title — Foundations of Philosophical Theology — catches my attention. It requires an explanation. It might make some people pretty nervous.

James: I talked with Dr. Renahan for some time before we launched this course. The concern was that there was an intellectual history, a conversancy with philosophical ideas, that really marks the Christian tradition from the second century right down through someone like Herman Bavinck or even Louis Berkhof — who is still conversant with that — and it's definitely there in the 17th-century English tradition, whether you're talking about Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Anglicans, or Particular or General Baptists. There was a language and a conceptuality. Our concern was a course that gave us an introduction to that, particularly in an age that's skeptical of philosophy.

Defining the Terms

What Is Philosophy?

Joe: What is philosophy?

James: Etymologically, love of wisdom. The ancients who gave it this name said that it was actually supposed to be a statement of humility. Rather than dare to claim to have attained wisdom, let us just describe this as the mind's inclination toward wisdom — therefore, love of wisdom. That doesn't really tell you exactly what it does. Let me give a more textbook-style answer. I'm quoting here from Paul Glenn in his Introduction to Philosophy. He says that philosophy is

"the science of all things naturally knowable to man, in as much as they are studied in their deepest causes and reasons."

There are a few elements in that. First, that philosophy is a science — that is to say, scientia, knowing. It is a discrete area of knowledge that is unique in as much as it has its own formal object. So it can share its material object with other sciences, but it has a formal perspective or point of view from which it asks questions and through which it seeks answers.

Second, it's a science of all things naturally knowable — which is to say the sources for our contemplation that furnish us with things to contemplate philosophically are things accessible to natural reason, in the order of creation.

The distinguishing feature is its formal object: "in so far as these are studied in their deepest causes and reasons." It's really studying being in general — particularly asking why. When you ask why, you're really asking what makes this so, or what is the reason for this, or what makes this to be so. Every why question is a question about a cause or a sufficient reason. The lower sciences — those with a more narrow focus — are asking only particular why questions in a narrower context. Whereas the deepest causes and reasons are trying to get at the causal principles that are general. Questions like: What is being? How is being diversified? That's not unique to physics or psychology or history or chemistry. Being as a formal object is unique to philosophy.

The Hierarchy of the Sciences

I want to position philosophy within a hierarchy. In an age of the internet where there's this democratization of knowledge where every area of human knowing stands shoulder-to-shoulder with every other, we're going to misunderstand philosophy's position. Philosophy is ranked hierarchically above the more compartmental sciences — not because it knows more about everything, but because its formal point of view is actually wider in scope and deeper in penetration in terms of causes. This doesn't mean that the philosopher knows everything that the physicist knows or everything that the chemist knows. He may be a good philosopher and not know much about covalent bonds.

Philosophy also informs in some respect all the sciences below it — not by doing their work for them, but by in a certain sense lending principles to sciences below themselves.

But we should also emphasize that philosophy is not the highest science. Among naturally knowable sciences, it's the highest. But that doesn't mean it's the highest among all human sciences, because the science of theology — which is based on special revelation — actually penetrates more deeply and sees things that natural reason unaided could never see: things like the Trinity, the Incarnation of the Son, the hypostatic union, special revealed facts about his resurrection from the dead and his second coming. Scripture shows us how to be reconciled to God, and natural law ethics — which is a subset of philosophy — doesn't do that. So philosophy ranks below theology but above other sciences: mathematics, and then even lower, physics and other lower sciences.

Even if the sciences are really distinct and each has an integrity of its own, that integrity exists within a hierarchy.

What Is Theology?

Joe: You've already begun to speak of theology and you've placed it higher than philosophy. Do you want to give a proper definition?

James: Etymologically, words or reasons about God. Theology is the foremost human science — it's often been called the queen of the sciences. Mathematics claims that now in an era that is obsessed. All the early modern philosophers were mathematicians. So of course they say mathematics is the queen of the sciences. But theology really alone has title to that rank. It is the foremost human science that studies God and all things in relation to him — as from him, through him, or to him.

The formal object of the human science of theology is actually God and then all creatures in relation to him, in so far as he has been specially revealed. So it's God as he has made known to us in the prophetic word. The sources for that exceed the sources of philosophy, which is not just reasons encountered with nature. This is actually the mind illumined by a source of knowledge with respect to things that are not available to us in nature.

Where do we get our principles for the science of philosophy? From nature itself. Things like the law of identity — whatever is, is — and the law of non-contradiction — a thing cannot be and not be at the same time and in the same respect. We don't require scripture to arrive at these things. But we do require scripture to arrive at even more blessed truths, like who God is in his three persons of existence, or how to commune with him.

The principles of the science of theology are derived from a still higher science. This is how Aquinas puts it at the very beginning of his Summa Theologiae: the science of God and the blessed — and by "the blessed" here I think he probably means holy angels and the souls of saints made perfect who are now enjoying the presence of God. They have a science in the sense of scientia, knowledge, and that knowledge which is original with God is shared in an immediate way — that is to say, not through a wearisome process of argument and reasoning. Michael and Gabriel aren't having theological discussions, moving from premises and trying to syllogistically arrive at conclusions. While they may know theological conclusions, they don't know them through the route of theological science as we know it.

So the principles of our knowledge actually exceed what is naturally available to reason through special revelation.

There are differing opinions on whether God himself has a theology. In the early reformed tradition, Franciscus Junius will say that there's an archetypal theology that's God's own theology, and then there's an ectypal theology. Others would say that God has archetypal knowledge or an archetypal science, but that that science is not actually theology in the sense of a human science. If we did ascribe a theology to God, it would be almost metaphorical in a certain respect.

What Is Philosophical Theology?

James: Let me put a little wrinkle in here. The word theology is a little squirrelly sometimes. It's used to describe what I just described — the knowledge of God and all things in relation to him on the basis of special revelation as its principle. But historically the term has also been used with a qualifier. The qualifier I'm thinking of in particular is natural. Natural theology is actually what the science of philosophy can say about God, minimally, when it gets to the end of its reasoning process.

When philosophy gets to the end of asking why, it comes to the ultimate why question. I have a book in my library titled that — The Ultimate Why Question. From the philosophical standpoint, you're asking for a causal explanation of things, and the question is: why something rather than nothing at all? At this point, you're looking for a complete and sufficient causal reason for the world. Philosophy asks that question — if it doesn't commit suicide before it gets there. That's a very real prospect, because once you start probing that question, you're going to arrive at the one for whom you are beholden for all things. And then there are moral obligations that come with that. There are lots of reasons why philosophers quit doing philosophy before they get to the ultimate why question — some of those are dread of what they will find and what obligations will be laid on them.

What can philosophy do in its final stage? It can ask why something rather than nothing at all, and it can contemplate what must the sufficient cause of all things be in order to be the sufficient cause of all things. I think this is arguably what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 1:20 — that man can, without special revelation, know the invisible attributes, the eternal power, and the divine nature of God, and also infer from that that he is obligated to give thanks to this God. This is actually what they don't do in verse 21 of Romans 1.

Natural theology is true, but it's incomplete. It knows God only as a causal first principle of the world. It knows that he ought to be worshiped and that he ought to be thanked for all things. It doesn't know how to be reconciled to him given our alienation from him on account of sin. It doesn't get you almost saved. It gets you massively obligated morally.

So what is philosophical theology? Philosophical theology is natural theology, and in so far as it is true and right — based upon a right contemplation of nature — it has a remarkable service to offer theology, but it's not usurpacious. It's not trying to push theology off its throne. It's not trying to reduce those things that special revelation alone gives us: Trinity, hypostatic union, union with Christ, the pouring forth of the Spirit, the second coming, the eternal state of the blessed and of the damned. Philosophy is not judging the truth value of those things. It's offering its resources in service to the articulation of things that of itself it could not discover.

The Relationship Between Philosophy and Theology

Philosophy as Handmaiden

Joe: Philosophical theology is natural theology, and you're placing it under theology and in service to it.

James: Yes. If the first principles of philosophical theology were derived from scripture, it would just be theology. And if the first principles epistemologically of philosophy were derived from scripture, it would just be theology, and then it wouldn't be a handmaiden — it would be subordinated to theology. We're going to have to distinguish these sciences in a hierarchical way to ensure that when we talk philosophically about God, we understand that while not untrue, that is a lower science pressed into the service of a higher one.

But here's the thing — they get along. They get along because the author of nature and the author of scripture, and the one who gave man reason and illumined his intellect even through the things that are made, is one. He is God. He is truth. So in principle, we should reject the idea that good philosophy and true theology are ever going to conflict, while also acknowledging that true theology — as that higher science — will exceed the vision of natural theology or philosophical theology.

Against Those Who Elevate Philosophy Equal to or Above Theology

Joe: What would you say to the person who thinks that philosophy is to be regarded as equal or superior to theology?

James: They're out there. Emanuel Kant wrote a book called Religion Within the Bounds of Reason Alone. You get that spirit in the early English Deist tradition as well — where basically these things are on par. Those ones wanted to say actually natural theology is all you can possibly hope to do.

The first thing I'd want to emphasize is that the immediate source of the principles for the science of theology — the science of God and the blessed — excels the principles of philosophy, which is the natural light of human reason as it contemplates the world of nature. The principles derived through special revelation excel those derived from reason. So natural theology and philosophy are just not going to take you to the deepest questions that we have. The deepest question is: how do I know and actually unite to this God? Natural theology will never tell you how to be reconciled and joined to him. That would be the first way I would distinguish those sciences.

Against Those Who Reject All Philosophy: Colossians 2:8

Joe: What would you say to the person who thinks that theology or the study of scripture is all that we need, and that all philosophy is to be avoided by the believer? They will often cite Colossians 2:8, which warns us about being taken captive through philosophy and empty deception.

James: I would want to emphasize and readily concede that saving knowledge does not require philosophical knowledge. There are certain first principles that you can't not know — that are necessary just to have language be intelligible to you, just to have statements about being be intelligible to you. But those aren't quite philosophy. Those aren't philosophical conclusions that are necessary; they're just things like the law of non-contradiction, which is a necessary constant for statements about being to hold together.

What I want to say is: before you do the science of philosophy — even if you never engage the science of philosophy — scripture alone is sufficient to give us a saving knowledge of God, which is our highest prize.

And I would also want to say that in one respect, one does not need the human science of theology to know God salvifically. We don't need the science that is extrapolated from the principles into a kind of system — creation, angels, man, sin, Christ, salvation, church, last things. One need not ever have read a theology book if one reads his Bible and believes it, before getting into the science of theology. Even more sufficient still is just the Bible and believing what it says.

Theology then is an attempt to understand that deposit given to us. To abdicate theology is to say that you don't want to grow in the understanding of that faith.

As for Paul's warning — "beware of philosophy" — I take and make this argument in my class at IRBS: when he says "philosophy and empty deception" or "vain deception," I think he's actually speaking by way of metonymy. So when he says "empty deception," that's actually characterizing the philosophy he's talking about. What he's warning against is not philosophy as a science, but empty and false philosophies — of which there are many.

I would want to say the same thing: beware of every false philosophy, of which there are many. In Paul's case, though, it's not Plato and Aristotle — though that was already in existence. He's actually referring to what he's calling philosophy: Jewish myths that deal with ascetic practices, certain legalistic approaches to festivals and diets, and also perhaps the worship of angels or demons. The vain philosophy is a vain philosophy that results in a false religion — and that's what he's warning them against.

There's a long commentary tradition on this particular text. I wondered if I could just read a little bit from John Davenant's commentary on Colossians 2:8, from the Banner of Truth Geneva series:

"Whether we speak concerning moral or natural philosophy, whether concerning any other branch of philosophy or the whole of a certain body, it is certain that that cannot be condemned, lest God himself be called into judgment. For philosophy is the offspring of right reason. And this light of reason is infused into the human mind by God himself."

Joe: This is a Protestant Anglican, but that's exactly what Thomas Aquinas says about reason — in his commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate — that reason doesn't exist independent of God making it be, sustaining it, and even ordering it to know things naturally.

James: Yes. So if we despise what can be known through natural reason unaided by special revelation, his point is we're despising the providence and the handiwork of God who gave us that reason, sustains it, and orders it to actually know things. Davenant goes on:

"Therefore, judge not the discipline of the Stoics or the Platonists or the Aristotelians to be true philosophy, but whatever among all these or others shall have been discovered, spoken, or written by the light of right reason."

In other words, he's saying: I'm not signing up for a philosophical system, but I'm signing up for true philosophy. He's saying he finds bits of it in Stoicism, Platonism, and Aristotelianism. This is actually the reformed tradition broadly — there's a very favorable commentary tradition on, say, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. You'll find a Southern Presbyterian like James Henley Thornwell frequently alluding to ideas of Aristotle favorably as if they were true.

Calvin himself makes a statement that I think should be out in the conversation. Calvin, talking about philosophers:

"Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God's excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall never reject the truth itself, nor despise it, wherever it shall appear, unless we dishonor the Spirit of God. What then? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observations and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? What shall we say of all the mathematical sciences? Are these the ravings of mad men?"

That's Calvin saying that if we despise the true wisdom of natural philosophy given to pagans, we're despising the Spirit who kindled that knowledge in them — given that the Spirit of truth is actually the Spirit of truth in both scripture and nature.

The concern here is that philosophy not be allowed to falsify scripture. True philosophy has a handmaid role to play in helping us articulate and conceptualize things said in scripture, but it doesn't have veto power or a falsification role with respect to scripture. It does have veto power over other false philosophies — a true philosophy can show a false philosophy to be false. It can't show scripture to be false.

The Benefits of Philosophy for the Christian

Understanding Causality and Guarding Theological Language

Joe: How does philosophy help us? Why study it? Why engage in philosophical theology?

James: Most generally, true philosophy teaches us how to ask causal questions. Since Christians worship the one who is the absolute first and complete cause of all that comes to be, it is beneficial to us to know how to inquire reasonably about causality.

Causality is not all of a single sort. Aristotle observes a four-fold causality: final causality, material causality, efficient causality, and formal causality. These are all different ways of causing. If we understand that not all causing is of the same sort, it's going to help us avoid attributing causality to God mistakenly.

For example: God is the first and complete efficient cause of all things, including all matter. In which case, the world doesn't have a material cause from God. When I say God's the cause of all things, I don't mean that he's the material cause of all things, because God isn't material and he doesn't tinker with already existing material. God causes material, but he's not a material cause. If you don't understand material causality, it's harder to make that qualification — which is a true qualification that agrees with scripture.

Sometimes knowing philosophy actually guards us from unwittingly saying things about God that wouldn't actually be right, biblically. Or at least it gives us a conceptual language to articulate what the Bible already requires us to believe. Think of it as a handmaiden: a handmaiden goes around the house and keeps things dusted and the furniture straight. It helps with the presentation of the house, but that doesn't mean the handmaiden is the mistress.

Apologetic Value

James: Philosophy also has an apologetic value. At IRBS we put this with our apologetics courses. First, it can prove the existence of God to reason by way of the cosmological argument — which Turretin and others will say is a great benefit to the pagans that we engage. Secondly, while philosophy cannot demonstrate the mysteries of the faith like the Trinity or the Incarnation, it can be used by the Christian theologian to expose philosophical objections to the faith that are unreasonable. When bad philosophy comes and offers arguments against the faith, good philosophy — while it cannot prove the faith — can show bad philosophy to be an unnecessary or unreasonable conclusion. It cannot prove the faith, but it can expose unreasonableness as a kind of servant. True philosophy can serve theology by falsifying bad philosophical arguments against theology. That's not philosophy proving articles of the faith, but rather defending them from false philosophical arguments.

Faith and Reason

Joe: What is the relationship between faith and reason?

James: First, faith and reason cannot be opposed to each other since the author of scripture and the author of nature — and the one who created and sustains reason — is one, and he is truth itself. So in principle, faith and reason do not oppose each other.

Nevertheless, faith exceeds reason, particularly in as much as it is derived from a higher principle, namely special revelation. But while it exceeds reason, it cannot be unreasonable or opposed to reason. So we can talk about truths that are beyond reason's ability to discover. But once faith makes that discovery through scripture, reason can then offer its services to help order and articulate what faith or scripture furnishes to our knowledge.

We can distinguish the role of reason in the moment of discovery — which would be natural philosophy and even natural theology — and then the role of reason in relation to faith, not in the moment of discovery, but in the service it offers to ordering our thoughts about what faith has disclosed.

Both faith and reason are gifts from God of which he is the ultimate source. He creates these gifts and gives them to us. He implants reason in the mind of every man, and even that — as Calvin says — is not itself eviscerated. It is convoluted, but it is not lost. True philosophical insights still remain even for the pagans after the fall.

Historically, I should emphasize that there is a lot of modern concern about the autonomy of human reason — that natural philosophy is guilty of a kind of autonomous use of reason. But even someone like Van Til would say there's never any real autonomy of reason. In my own research, I have found that to also be the position of Thomas Aquinas — that human reason does not exist independently of God, but that in fact God is the one who made it to be and sustains it. He didn't just make it be and sustain it; he's actually the one who orders it toward every act of knowing that it successfully achieves. God made the world intelligible. He planted intellect and reason in man. He brings man's mind into contact with things through the senses. He gives man the ability to arrive at universals through having received particulars. None of this is actually taking place independently of the providence of God in whom we live, move, and have our being.

What we should say, though, by qualification: we're not saying that special revelation is itself the principle for all epistemology. Reason does not require special revelation as an epistemological principle. What it requires as an epistemological principle is the intelligibility of nature. What it requires as a causal principle is God — who made it, gave it to us, sustains it, and orders it successfully to all of its knowing. At no moment does our reason act independently of God — even if reason can act independently of special revelation, such as what might be indicated in Romans 1:20.

Joe: So what you're saying is that those who do not have access to scripture or to special revelation can still know things that are true about the world.

James: They can still be reasonable. And in so far as they're reasonable, I'll side with Calvin and say: if we reject their wisdom, if it is true, that's an offense against the Spirit of God who gave them that reason and sustains it.

Which Non-Believing Philosophers Came Closest to the Truth?

Joe: Who from among the non-believing philosophers came closest to the truth, in your opinion?

James: That's a hard question. Let me say emphatically on the front end: both Plato and Aristotle come much closer to the truth than Democritus did before them. Democritus is the materialist philosopher who famously said there is nothing but atoms and the void — bits of matter in the space between them, that's pretty much all there is in the universe. That's secular philosophy today, by the way. Secular philosophy today is basically materialism — atomism, but this time with microscopes.

Democritus is so much farther from the truth than both Plato and Aristotle, who both appeal to immaterial realities as underlying and even causally accounting for the visible material world — even though they're still pagan. That is just so much closer to reality than Democritus's materialism.

We have to be careful when we talk about pagan philosophers — they engage in mortal battle with each other over philosophical disagreements. Christians very early indicated that in those battles among the pagan philosophers, they took sides. With Plato and Aristotle — and maybe Plotinus — over against all forms of materialism. If anti-materialism is essential to Platonism and Aristotelianism, then we should agree that far with them.

When it comes to a transcendent cause — a cause that transcends our world — you probably get more of that flavor in the Good of Plato or the One of Plotinus. There is a transcendence: an immaterial, perfect source of all being. Plato and Plotinus did not believe that the Good or the One was the creator of the world, and Christians had to immediately correct that error. But they did say that there was one causal source or fountain of all things that itself was not just another material bit — that in fact superseded in excellence and in being all things that flowed from it. That's a philosophy that's moving you squarely into Romans 1:20 territory.

Aristotle, though he may get close with his own Unmoved Mover — which by the way is not quite Aquinas's Unmoved Mover, there's a difference — does better in terms of natural philosophy accounting for the intrinsic causal principles of things in the world. His hylomorphism — that things are composed of matter and form — corrects a mistake in Plato. Plato said the forms of things — dogness, catness, humanity — don't actually exist in individual humans, cows, cats, and dogs. The whatnesses of things exist in a different world. Aristotle corrects that by saying the form, the whatness of a thing, is actually in the individual. There's actually humanity in Joe. Your whatness doesn't exist in a separated world. I think Aristotle is right about that and Plato is wrong about that.

So there's transcendence with regard to the first cause in Plotinus and Plato that captures the imagination of the early Christian theologians including Augustine, and continues to enamor later theologians. But Aristotelianism in terms of a natural philosophy of things in this world achieves so many more convincing insights than even Platonism. So what do the Christians do? They take the truth wherever they find it, in whoever's hands they happen to find it. Some hybrid of Plato and Aristotle in terms of philosophical knowledge.

Aquinas is not an unbelieving philosopher, but he makes his own contribution that I think sees something of depth and causal explanation that actually exceeds Plato and Aristotle — and that's his whole doctrine of existence, his philosophy of esse or the act of to-be. The insight that things are composed not just of matter and form but of existence and essence — that existence is itself a discrete intrinsic principle causing a composite thing to be — we have to wait for medieval Muslims and medieval Christians before we start hearing things like that. You don't really have pagan philosophers who seem to achieve that level of insight.

Which Christian Theologians Best Used Philosophy in Service of Theology?

Joe: Who from among the Christian theologians provides us with the best example of using philosophy in the service of theology?

James: Let me give a gallery of people that do this with more or less success. Starting from the second century: Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyon, Augustine of Hippo, Hilary of Poitiers, John of Damascus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Boethius, Anselm of Canterbury, Albert the Great — the mentor of Aquinas. In the 13th century: Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Duns Scotus. Fast forward to the reformed tradition: Peter Martyr Vermigli, Girolamo Zanchi. Into the English tradition: William Perkins, William Twisse, Stephen Charnock, John Owen, and let me throw in a Baptist — John Gill.

If I had to pick one who was probably most successful at doing philosophical theology as a Christian: Thomas Aquinas.

The Example of John Owen

When you read John Owen and Owen is arguing against the Socinians — who have a biblicistic, hyperliteralistic method of theology and a false doctrine of God — Owen shamelessly appeals to Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles and to the commentaries of Cardinal Cajetan — Thomas de Vio — who was notoriously anti-Reformation. He's the one who was supposed to elicit a retraction from Luther. Yet, a century and a half later, here's John Owen citing that very same cardinal for the cause of God and truth against the Socinians.

And he doesn't qualify it or offer an apology when he does it. He just quotes Cajetan and moves forward, because no one doubted Owen's anti-Romanism — that was unquestionable. But that did not prevent him from resourcing that medieval and later medieval Catholic tradition fruitfully, because he was interested in the truth and he believed that in that one respect — and in many others actually — they had it. Why shouldn't we avail ourselves of it? Some of what Thomas is doing kind of enters into the bloodstream of both the Catholic and Protestant traditions.

Recommended Resources

Joe: Could we conclude by suggesting some recommended resources?

James: Let me give a few intro volumes. These are the kinds of books that helped me when I was trying to get into this. My seminary training initially did not prepare me for this. These books were mostly written by 20th and early 21st century Roman Catholics. When I read these, I began to read my own tradition with more understanding — they were describing a thought world that would have been the thought world of the English Puritans. I understood John Owen and Stephen Charnock better after having read some of these authors.

A couple of older works that can be found in used book places and some of which are reprinted:

These are not unqualified recommendations — my only unqualified recommendation is the Bible. That's not a recommendation, that's an insistence. These are just recommendations. With qualifications, I think they are generally reliable guides into the subject.

There is a learning curve for us in 21st-century Western culture. The learning curve is a little steep on the front end. But there are dictionaries to help with that and also the internet. You can find nice philosophical word lists with little explanations for free online. At IRBS, I require Bernard Wuellner, A Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophy, and we do sort of vocab quizzes out of that dictionary — because learning the grammar is essential to becoming conversant with this kind of thought world.

*This interview originally aired in September 2022 as Episode 58 of Theology in Particular, a podcast of International Reformed Baptist Seminary (IRBS). IRBS is a confessional seminary committed to the inerrant and infallible Word of God as summarized in the Second London Confession of Faith.

May the Triune God be praised!