Hello I am agra man I came across this site and saw that it had this section on Christian Philosophy. To be honest I have heard of it but never really got into what it is so I am niave in this area. And a friend of mine well we got intoan argument because he was saying some really odd things calling it philosophy things about mother earth using the mind to sync to the spirit even going so far as to explain how mother earth has some kind of life energy that using the mind with the spirit creates an aura of protection and just odd stuff he said there was a marriage with the angels and the church before creation and that divorce was in heaven with us and them
I love talking with him about the things of God we have a blast but the things he was saying here well he didn't take to well to me warning him about all this stuff even though there was absolutely no evidence of what he said what so ever he just saw it as truth and saw me as being petty and attacking him.
I tried first before even confronting him to understand what he meant about it being philosophy he said it is basically adding to an already established thing. Ok for studying and research looking at things from a different perspective maybe I can be on board with that but to say it as fact though well I wasn't having that.
But I wondered if perhaps the argument could have gone different if I had understood what Christian Philosophy is so what is it exactly what the reason to study it and what purpose does it serve?
Consider these things...
What is Christian Driving?
What is Christian Eating?
What is Christian Art?
What is Christian Writing?
What is Christian Barbecue?
...
I would say that these things, are the way a person with a Christian Worldview, thinks about these topics.
Philosophy, historically, has a number of different disciplines:
-- Ontology. what exists, and how we perceive that these things exist
-- Epistemology what truth is, and how we demonstrate that something is true
-- Formal Logic. formal methods of reasoning that work
-- Moral Theory. how we think about what we consider to be right and wrong.
The "Christian" form of Philosophy, is the Christian ways of thinking about these topics.
Note that "philosophy" means in the Ancient Greek, the love of wisdom. But the METHOD of discovering and discussing wisdom, historically, is through thinking/reasoning. So, philosophy is applying reason/logic, to try to explore all these different topics.
The anti-intellectual Christian groups often assert that applying reason/logic to any of these areas, falls into the category of "vain philosophy". But, we have the Apostle Paul, who wrote 60% of the New Testament, and most of the theology in the New Testament, using logic all over the place. If we assert that all thinking, is "vain philosophy", then we are denying the divine inspiration of much of Paul's writing in the New Testament.
Orthodox Christianity has always embraced the goodness of the intellect/mind/logic, as far as it can reach. Not all topics can be explored by reason/logic.
The Protestant Reformers in the 1400's often had a negative view of reason/logic (Luther and Calvin did). Unfortunately, this lead many Christians to avoid philosophy, and rigorously applying the mind to reason about all sorts of topics. However, the ancient Jews understood that when humans were "made in the image of God", a lot of this revolves around our intellectual abilities, and our ability to reason about all sorts of topics.
I hope that this helps.