This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

Finishing the Long Overdue Seminary Thesis

Tripp and I are partnering together in a bid to get our respective theses off the ground and into the hands of the faculty readers. In Tripp's case, he's right on track with finishing up his degree at Seabury. In my case, three years of PhD work have delayed the completion of my thesis (Master of Theological Studies), much to the displeasure of my wife.

So, knowing our respective significant others would not view it kindly if Tripp and I goofed off a Saturday afternoon spent together with the intention of completing our rough drafts, we've agreed to get together Saturday at my casa for a day in front of the word processor. Accountability is the great task master.

As an initial offering, here's my thesis statement and first page.

Thesis
The purpose of this thesis will be twofold. First, to determine as closely as possible how Clement envisioned philosophy, as an activity of more or less stated aims, and to what extent this activity was preparatory for and participatory in the truth of the Christian faith. Second, to determine what usefulness Clement's understandings of philosophy and faith may have for the church in twenty-first century U. S. society. [Thesis:] Clement's view of philosophy as a tutor preparatory for the Gospel rightly emphasizes the providential activity of God in the endeavors of human reason and delimits such endeavor over against the full revelation of God in Christ. This thesis proposes to contribute to this discussion in a venue, philosophical endeavor, that is more and more becoming a partner in theological projects.

Introduction
In the early centuries of the Church, philosophical systems and terminology were utilized at the service of Christian apology and Christian theology. More specifically, the philosophy derived from Plato was mined for resonances through which Christians could communicate sustained reflection on the deposit of faith that had been handed down to them. In the ensuing centuries, particularly through the development in the West resulting from the Renaissance and Enlightenment, philosophical endeavor began to distance itself from overt Christian commitments, so that by the twentieth century, philosophy had ostensibly thrown off religious constraints. However by the beginning of the twenty-first century, philosophical reflection on arguments proposing to demonstrate the existence of God, combined with critiques engendered by Marxist and deconstructionist thought, had both diminished the hegemony philosophical speculation held in academia and refurbished serious religious commitments within the philosophical reflection on the being and existence of God.

Although philosophy of religion is currently finding its own way in relation to what might be called theological reflection, there are other resources which may also help both those engaged in philosophical reflection on God as well as those engaged in theological speculation. In the second century after the birth of Christ, Christian writers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus of Lyons, and Clement of Alexandria, were coming to grips with the thinking of the philosophy of their own day and the faith with which they had been entrusted by the Apostles and their disciples. By returning to the early centuries of the Church and examining the writings of the second century apologists, especially Clement of Alexandria, Christians can come to some important understandings of the relationship between philosophy and theology as both types of human reflection assist Christians in thinking about God in philosophical and theological terms.