The eighth chapter of Soccio’s Archetypes of Wisdom discloses the differences between Christian values and classical Greek ones. Whilst Christians were theological, or concentrated on God as a savior of their souls, Greek philosophers believed that objective knowledge and logic would lead them to life improvements. To border the rationality, Greek had the basic principles of reason, the initial laws that could not be disproved and on which all the other knowledge could rely in the sense of rationality. Contradictory to the principles of reason, the Bible was the central aspect of Christian philosophy (Soccio, 2016). In medieval Europe, Christian philosophy mainstream was called scholasticism, which focused on the logical and linguistical analysis of texts and arguments defending Christian beliefs.
Theologists tried to prove and explain the existence of God, and one of the most famous was The Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas which include motion, cause, necessity, degree, and design. The explanations of Thomas were critiqued by many as they were not convincing God’s existence but stating the possibility or probability of God (Soccio, 2016). The major issue in theology is the problem of evil that puts under the question God’s omnipotence and omnibenevolence. In other words, if God is powerful, why does He not fight or prevent evil? Thomas Aquinas thought that no one could knowingly choose to create evil (Soccio, 2016). Thomas also stated that evil is necessary for the good of the whole universe, and God willed the real possibility of evil.
Reference
Soccio, D. J. (2016). Archetypes of wisdom. An introduction to philosophy (9th ed.). Cengage Learning.