Who's who in Philosophy

Ever needed a short list of philosophers and their significance to the apologetic enterprise? Here is my first stab, I'll probably have to edit this post a lot.

Pythagoras - (500 B.C.) Held the view that all things are numbers. A correct view of reality then must be expressed in terms of mathematical formulas. He was a numerologist who discovered the ratios of concord between musical sound and number - thus creating a doctrine of the "music of the spheres" with a significance in the operation of the world in harmony with the universe. His views can support a predestination of types, and were very popular throughout history.

Parmenides - (440 B.C.) Believed that Being is rational, that only what can be thought can exist. Since "nothing can be thought (without thinking of it as something), there is no nothing, there is only Being." He believed that Being is uncreated, indestructible, eternal and indivisible. He also believed that Being is spherical because only a sphere is equally real in all directions. His arguments lead him to deny motion - there could be no place where Being was not, if Being was at all.

Zeno - (490 B.C.) proved the impossibility of motion by the use of reductio ad absurdum defending Parmenides.


The Sophists - (5th and 4th cent. B.C.) Used argumentation to promote themselves - heavy on skepticism and cynicism. They were more rhetoricians than philosophers. They asserted that there is not objective reality, and if there were, the human mind could not fathom it. What matter to them was not truth but manipulation and expediency.

Protagoras - (422 B.C.) Taught the way to success is through a careful and prudent acceptance of traditional customs - not because they are true, but because an understanding and manipulation of them is expedient. His famous claim is homo mensura - man is the measure.

Socrates - (399 B.C.) Socrates' discourse moved in two directions - outward to objective definitions, and inward, to discover the inner person, the soul, which to Socrates, was the source of all truth. For Socrates to say "man is the measure" meant very little if you don't have objective understanding of what "man" is. May have invented the Socratic method - where questions are asked back and forth until problems are found with any given truth statement.

Plato - (347 B.C.)

Aristotle - (322 B.C.)

Epicureanism - (270 B.C.)

Neoplatonism -

Augustine - (354 - 430 A.D.)

Anselm - (1033 - 1109 A.D.)

Maimonides - (1135 - 1204 A.D.)

Thomas Aquinas - (1225 - 1274 A.D.)

William of Ockham - (1280 - 1349 A.D.)

Descartes - (1596 - 1650 A.D.)

Spinoza - (1634 - 1677 A.D.)

Leibniz - (1646 - 1716 A.D.)

Locke - (1632 - 1704 A.D.) First British empiricist (empiricist believe that all knowledge derives from experience)

Hume - (1711 - 1776 A.D.) British empiricist who believed that only synthetic claims can describe reality and these claims are necessarily a posteriori. Therefore all true knowledge about the world must be based on observation. He claimed that there is only 3 categories for analysis; analytic, synthetic, or nonsense. For Hume the question: "does God exist?" was not analytic, nor was it synthetic (based on sense data) therefore was nonsense.

Kant - (1724 - 1804 A.D.)

Hegel - (1770 - 1831 A.D.) German Idealist

What is Machen's view on the doctrine of God in light of liberalism

In the book "Christianity and Liberalism" Machen sets forth a basic contrast between Liberal theology and orthodox theology. In chapter 3 he turns his attention to this contrast in the doctrine of God and the doctrine of man - which he says are the "two great presuppositions of the gospel." Machen shows that the liberal approach is diametrically opposed to the Christian. Where the liberal thinks, "we should not seek to know God, but should merely feel His presence" the Christian says, "Certainly it does make the greatest of difference what we think about God; the knowledge of God is the very basis of religion." - This expression "the very basis of religion" or something similar is repeated very frequently to express the character of Machen's objection to the liberal, that is at the very heart of the matter - it is the difference between belief and unbelief - between heaven and hell.

Concerning the liberal idea, the basic thought is that famous phrase, "the universal Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man" a universalism to be sure. To the liberal God is not so much a person but merely a part of the great cosmic scheme, both micro and macro - He is eroded away into the working of nature and nothing more.

Machen in contrast, has a view of God that has content. God is personal. God is a Father in a peculiar sense. God is separate and transcendent from his creation.

Westminster Confession of Faith 7:1

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obediance unto him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of him as their blessedness and reward, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant