Classics
The study of ancient Greece and Rome reveals enduring questions about God, virtue, and the good life—and how Athens prepared the way for Jerusalem.
Virtue and Ethics
Classical ethics explored the good life and moral virtue. The Greeks asked: What is the good life? How should we live?
Christianity adopted and transformed classical virtue ethics. The cardinal virtues were completed by the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love.
- Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, justice, temperance, courage—adopted and transformed by Christianity. Aquinas integrated them into a comprehensive moral theology.
- Eudaimonia: Human flourishing as the goal of life—fulfilled in Christian beatitude. The Beatitudes complete what Aristotle began.
- Natural Law: Stoic natural law influenced Christian moral theology. There is a moral law written on the heart, accessible to reason.
- Moral Realism: The Greeks assumed that virtue and vice are real, not mere convention. This moral realism is confirmed by theism.
Athens and Jerusalem
The synthesis of Greek philosophy and biblical revelation shaped Western thought. This synthesis was not syncretism but fulfillment—reason completed by faith.
The Logos of Greek philosophy became the Logos of John's Gospel. The rational principle ordering the cosmos is identified with Christ—the Word made flesh.
- Logos: Greek concept of rational order—identified with Christ in John's Gospel. 'In the beginning was the Logos.' Philosophy finds its fulfillment.
- Patristic Synthesis: Church Fathers used Greek philosophy to articulate Christian doctrine. Justin Martyr, Clement, Origen, Augustine—all drew on Greek thought.
- Perennial Philosophy: Enduring truths discovered by reason—confirmed and completed by revelation. Truth is one; all truth is God's truth.
- Convergent Epistemology: Greek philosophy and Hebrew revelation converge on the same God. Multiple independent paths lead to the same truth.