Sublime

There is an old Scholastic distinction between religious treatises written “de Deo uno” and those written “de Deo trino”: between, that is, those that are “about the one God” known to persons of various faiths and philosophies and those that are “about the Trinitarian God” of Christian doctrine.

The authority of science, which is recognized by most philosophers of the modern epoch, is a very different thing from the authority of the Church, since it is intellectual, not governmental. No penalties fall upon those who reject it; no prudential arguments influence those who accept it. It prevails solely by its intrinsic appeal to reason. It

What was influential was the separation of Church and State, with the clear implication that the State could only be part of the City of God by being submissive towards the Church in all religious matters. This has been the doctrine of the Church ever since. All through the Middle Ages, during the gradual rise of the papal power, and throughout the

He took over Aristotle’s traditional proofs for God’s existence, and argued that they can establish a foundation of Reason upon which Faith can operate. This stress on the Aristotelian proofs would have a tremendous influence on all subsequent Christian apologetics.

The first great period of Catholic philosophy was dominated by Saint Augustine, and by Plato among the pagans. The second period culminates in Saint Thomas Aquinas, for whom, and for his successors, Aristotle far outweighs Plato.

Augustine of Hippo. He was converted from neo-Platonism to Christianity