We have much the same program for the Anglican communion. The recent influx of Reformed background evangelicals seems to distort the tradition, at least from Richard Hooker’s embrace of a Christianized Platonism. If one accepts the Old Greek for the OT, it becomes evident that ‘Moses spoke Greek.’ The Lutheran apologetics that contrasted Hebrew and Greek and ‘apocalyptic’ vs Hellenism are just plain wrong. Paul’s ‘doctrine of God’ from whom, through whom, to whom are all things has an ‘exit and return’ structure similar to Platonism. Thanks for the post. I need to read your books!
Thanks to new friendships, my sympathy with the magisterial Reformers has grown somewhat. Nonetheless, the full Calvinist system was imposed on England only for the 15 years that Cromwell was in charge. It seems strange to define a 1500 year old church by only a hundredth part of its history. The seventeenth century divines evince the older tradition, in continuity with mediaeval English Catholicism, which fostered critics of the clerical excesses (e.g. Chaucer) against which the Reformation railed, and calls for the lay reading of Scripture in a language the people could understand (e.g. Walter Hilton). That either of these concerns were only Puritan is an oversimplification which fits into precisely the narrative which the Hampton Court conference and 1662 Prayer Book so firmly rejected. That we now find advocates of the 1662 BCP calling also for the abolition of episcopacy and introduction of lay presidency at Holy Communion is ironic in the extreme. The core of Anglicanism is a liturgical, sacramental faith which, you rightly say, supposes a realist and therefore in Western tradition Platonic metaphysics, which ancient Jews such as Philo found in their Scriptures as readily as Ambrose, Augustine, the Cappadocians and Dionysius - all of whom the English divines read and admired. It echoes through the Benedictines and Dominicans into the life of the English Church, and again in Hooker, Andrewes, Taylor, Herbert, Cudworth, Traherne, all the way to Pusey and Keble, T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams, and C.S. Lewis. This is no creative anachronism propounded by the Oxford Movement, as some of our Evangelical brethren claim. They drew on a continuous tradition. It is in the very blood of Anglicanism.
Thank you for this article. It provided some clarity to some things I've been reading and mulling over lately. The biggest problem with nominalism, in my view, is that if there is no such thing as a universal nature in which particulars participate, how can the three Persons we worship possibly be one God? If you throw out Platonist (and Neoplatonist) metaphysics, you really can't have Christianity anymore.
Might I be correct in assuming, based off the definition you provide, that when you speak of "Platonism" you refer to the philosophical school also called "Realism," and by the same metric that when you and Boersma speak of "Sola Scriptura," you refer more specifically to Nuda Scriptura?
It seems that theologians often critique other fields, setting their work above other disciplines. I’m curious if you think that theology should be critiqued from the outside? I think there is some interesting empirical evidence from neuroscience, psychology, quantum physics, philosophy, etc. that push against some of the claims about metaphysics. I just get the sense that theologians are accountable to no one and their claims are untestable.
We have much the same program for the Anglican communion. The recent influx of Reformed background evangelicals seems to distort the tradition, at least from Richard Hooker’s embrace of a Christianized Platonism. If one accepts the Old Greek for the OT, it becomes evident that ‘Moses spoke Greek.’ The Lutheran apologetics that contrasted Hebrew and Greek and ‘apocalyptic’ vs Hellenism are just plain wrong. Paul’s ‘doctrine of God’ from whom, through whom, to whom are all things has an ‘exit and return’ structure similar to Platonism. Thanks for the post. I need to read your books!
Thanks to new friendships, my sympathy with the magisterial Reformers has grown somewhat. Nonetheless, the full Calvinist system was imposed on England only for the 15 years that Cromwell was in charge. It seems strange to define a 1500 year old church by only a hundredth part of its history. The seventeenth century divines evince the older tradition, in continuity with mediaeval English Catholicism, which fostered critics of the clerical excesses (e.g. Chaucer) against which the Reformation railed, and calls for the lay reading of Scripture in a language the people could understand (e.g. Walter Hilton). That either of these concerns were only Puritan is an oversimplification which fits into precisely the narrative which the Hampton Court conference and 1662 Prayer Book so firmly rejected. That we now find advocates of the 1662 BCP calling also for the abolition of episcopacy and introduction of lay presidency at Holy Communion is ironic in the extreme. The core of Anglicanism is a liturgical, sacramental faith which, you rightly say, supposes a realist and therefore in Western tradition Platonic metaphysics, which ancient Jews such as Philo found in their Scriptures as readily as Ambrose, Augustine, the Cappadocians and Dionysius - all of whom the English divines read and admired. It echoes through the Benedictines and Dominicans into the life of the English Church, and again in Hooker, Andrewes, Taylor, Herbert, Cudworth, Traherne, all the way to Pusey and Keble, T.S. Eliot, Charles Williams, and C.S. Lewis. This is no creative anachronism propounded by the Oxford Movement, as some of our Evangelical brethren claim. They drew on a continuous tradition. It is in the very blood of Anglicanism.
Thank you for this article. It provided some clarity to some things I've been reading and mulling over lately. The biggest problem with nominalism, in my view, is that if there is no such thing as a universal nature in which particulars participate, how can the three Persons we worship possibly be one God? If you throw out Platonist (and Neoplatonist) metaphysics, you really can't have Christianity anymore.
Might I be correct in assuming, based off the definition you provide, that when you speak of "Platonism" you refer to the philosophical school also called "Realism," and by the same metric that when you and Boersma speak of "Sola Scriptura," you refer more specifically to Nuda Scriptura?
It seems that theologians often critique other fields, setting their work above other disciplines. I’m curious if you think that theology should be critiqued from the outside? I think there is some interesting empirical evidence from neuroscience, psychology, quantum physics, philosophy, etc. that push against some of the claims about metaphysics. I just get the sense that theologians are accountable to no one and their claims are untestable.