I just wrote the following post, and then didn’t feel like quoting Schleiermacher because what I was going to quote from him is very long; and I just don’t feel like transcribing something like that right now. Nevertheless, I thought I’d share what I did write as a prologue to what I was going to share from FS (maybe I’ll share that at a later date).

Is it possible to be aphilosophical when doing Christian theology? This is a question that has honestly been at the bottom of almost everything I have ever endeavored as a theological stinker (thinker). When I say “philosophy” what I usually have in mind is what we have inherited via the classical philosophers (i.e. Aristotle, Plato et al.), and their metaphysical categories. What this style of thinking fosters is a rather speculative way in regard to thinking Godness concepts; a discursive route to God; a route that does not, in itself, require special Revelation in order to conceive of God. Just recently this was illustrated for me by David Bentley Hart as he was interviewed for a series of videos done by Notre Dame. He was being interviewed by pagan, Robert Kuhn, and in one of the interviews Hart says that the Trinity could actually be conceived of, at a metaphysical level, without referring, in a first order way, to Christian categories, per se (although this was only a thought experiment in order to illustrate that the Trinity itself is not a foreign idea and has some convergence with God concepts found in such diverse systems as Hinduism and Judaism). I say this only illustrates my question because it underscores how the philosophy itself can be abstracted in such a way as to speak God without reference to Jesus Christ. Some might counter: yes, but this is only to show that there is an inner coherence to the concept of Trinity vis-à-vis modal logic and human discovery. Maybe so, but then this again takes us full circle and gets me back to my original question: is philosophy a necessary prerequisite for the doing of Christian theology?

It is an interesting question to me, really. I don’t think many in the church realize how contingent their weekly sermons and bible studies are upon the informing categories of philosophy (whether that be good or bad philosophy). The early church, at least at the ‘Fatherly’ level were aware of their Hellenic (Greek) context and the role that such categories played in their “grammarizing” of the Christian faith. So this latter point, in regard to the early church, brings us to another question: if philosophy is somehow a maiden (and not a mistress) to Christian theology: is it possible to appropriate the categories of philosophy in a non-correlationist way? In other words: is it possible to plunder the spoils of the Egyptians, take the categories of speculative philosophy (speculative because they are categories that are purely originate from the wits of self-reflecting humans, and thus categories that are ostensibly discovered in the treasure chest of the universe and its latent intelligibilities), and then allow such categories like immutability, impassibility, simplicity to be pressure cooked by Christian Revelation to the point that they have been transformed and retexutalized by a whole other universe of special knowledge? And if this is possible, and an advisable way, how do we discern that such categories have actually been adequately evangelized in such a way that they are not just some sort of hybrid golden calf that neither truly represents the reality of God or a calf; how do we discern that we have done an adequate job in the evangelization process of metaphysics such that they are no longer referring to pagan concepts but genuinely Christian ones—ones revealed and regulated by Jesus Christ himself?

Friedrich Schleiermacher has some thoughts on the speculative-philosophical approach to God,[1] he writes (in extenso):

[1] I am currently reading Friedrich Schleiermacher’s two volume Christian Faith, so be expecting, at points, posts with reference to FS. Let me also caveat something: I am reading FS because I want to be a responsible ‘theologian’ and engage with the formative thinkers of our modern/post-modern time. While I fundamentally disagree with FS’s low view of Jesus Christ (in regard to FS’s subordinationist view of Jesus), I still think it is possible to glean some important insights from him in regard to the theological enterprise. In this instance—what I am sharing from him in this post—I have found something worthwhile in FS’s thought; so I thought I would share that with you all.