Theology for Dummies - Philosophical Theology

Wikipedia: "Philosophical Theology is the disciplined employment of philosophical methods in developing or analyzing theological concepts."

While it is argued when this discipline appeared, there can be no doubt as to its purpose: take any theological concept and trace how it developed and ask the questions: "Is it philosophically sound?"; "Does that theology make sense; is it logical?"; "Does it line up with how we understand the world and God?", etc. Take any theological idea and take the questions philosophers ask and ask them to analyze that theological idea. That is the aim and purpose of philosophical theology

I really got into philosophical theology in seminary. There are certain disciplines of Christianity like apologetics (defending the faith) and issues like the problem of evil that require some philosophy in them.

Before I go further, I know a lot of Christians like to quote Paul from Colossians 2:8. But in all cases, the point is not against philosophy in and of itself but against 'vain' or 'empty' philosophy. It might be said the philosophical theology is how you tell the difference between 'vain' philosophy and solid philosophy.

In any case, no one can escape using philosophical theology from time to time. We are always as Christians checking to see if our doctrines are sound. We all ask of the Bible and what we believe: Does this make sense? We all use logic and reason as we approach Scripture and that makes use in a limited sense philosophical theologians.

Philosophical Theology proper though will take any doctrine or theological concept and put it through the wringer and see if it holds up. Probably the most famous is Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason where he argued that the old doctrines of revelation must give way to the new because of new theories on knowledge.

For myself I find that philosophy can be a good way to test a theological idea to see if it is sound. Logic does have its place as we analyze the Scriptures. Where it can fail is that if the Bible says: "A is true, but philosophical theology says 'A is not true' you still have to side with the Bible and say 'A is true'. You just may have to think real hard to get it to make sense or come at it from a different angle of thinking that satisfies the philosophical objections to 'A' being true.

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