The History of Ancient and Medieval Western Philosophy: How the Great Philosophers Shaped the Christian Defense of Truth | SELF-PACED Course
Instructor || Welcome to the Course!
Copyright Restrictions
FREE PREVIEWCourse Guidelines
Course Outline
FREE PREVIEWDr. Geisler's Course Notes, and Primary and Secondary Sources
Beginning of Course Survey
Primary Sources Infographic PDFs
Aristotle's Categories
FREE PREVIEWPlato's Republic Books 1 - 7
Aristotle's Metaphysics Book XII
Plotinus’ Enneads
Augustine’s City of God – Books 11 and 12
Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Contra Gentiles
Lesson 1 Questions to Download
FREE PREVIEW1.1 | Socrates: The Gadfly of Athens and the Birth of Moral Inquiry
FREE PREVIEW1.2 | Socrates, Truth, and General Revelation: Can Reason Lead to God?
Knowledge Check #1
Answers to Questions
Socrates Apologetics Toolkit
FREE PREVIEWLesson 2 Questions to Download
2.1 | Plato: Why Objective Truth Requires Something Beyond This World
2.2 | The Theory of Forms: Defending Objective Truth in a Relativistic World
2.3 | The Form of the Good: Is There an Ultimate Standard of Reality and Morality?
2.4 | Plato’s Dualism: The Soul, the Afterlife, & the Limits of Greek Philosophy
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #2
Plato Apologetics Toolkit
Lesson 3 Questions to Download
3.1 | Aristotle: Bringing Forms Down to Earth
3.2 | Motion, Causation, and the Four Causes
3.3 | The Unmoved Mover and the Foundation of Classical Theism
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #3
Aristotle Apologetics Toolkit
Lesson 4 Questions to Download
4.1 | Jesus: The Claim to Be Truth Itself
4.2 | Jesus and the Fulfillment of Philosophy
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #4
Lessons 5-7 Questions to Download
5.1 | The One Beyond Being: A God Without Personality or Thought
5.2 | Unity vs. Multiplicity: Does Ultimate Reality Erase Distinctions?
6.1 | Pantheism Explained: How Everything “Flows” from the One
6.2 | Is Matter Almost Evil? The Dangerous Hierarchy of Being
6.3 | Beyond Reason: The Mystical Leap That Abandons Truth
7.1 | Can We Speak Meaningfully About God? The Problem of Negative Theology
7.2 | From Plotinus to Modern Skepticism: Why God Becomes Unknowable
7.3 | The Long Shadow of Plotinus: Pantheism, Islam, and Modern Theology
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #5
Lessons 8-9 Questions to Download
8.1 | Augustine’s Conversion and Intellectual Awakening
8.2 | Grace, Predestination, and the Turning Point of 417
8.3 | Faith and Reason: Why Augustine Was Not a Presuppositionalist
8.4 | The Argument from Truth and Divine Illumination
9.1 | The Classical View of God and the Defense of Divine Attributes
9.2 | Augustine’s Love Ethic and the Nature of Moral Obligation
9.3 | The Problem of Evil: Evil as Privation
9.4 | Moral Conflict: Lying, Absolutes, and the Greater Good
9.5 | Augustine’s Influence: From Medieval Theology to Modern Christianity
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #6
Augustine Apologetics Toolkit
Lesson 10 Questions to Download
10.1 | Anselm: Faith Seeking Understanding
10.2 | The Ontological Argument: Can God Be Proven by Definition?
10.3 | Necessary Being, Contingency, and Kant’s Critique
10.4 | Avicenna and the Contingency Argument: The Islamic Roots of Scholastic Thought
10.5 | The Rise of Islamic Philosophy
10.6 | Al-Ghazali and the Crisis of Causality
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #7
Lessons 11-13 Questions to Download
11.1 | Why Aquinas Matters: Faith, Reason, and Natural Theology
11.2 | Aquinas the Thinker: His Works and Influence
11.3 | How We Know: Aquinas on Faith, Reason, and Knowledge
11.4 | From Knowledge to Reality: Being, Causality, and Metaphysics
12.1 | Creation, Necessity, and the Nature of God
12.2 | The Five Ways: Overview of Aquinas’ Arguments
12.3 | The First Way: Motion (Unmoved Mover)
12.4 | From Motion to Pure Act: Why God Must Exist
13.1 | From the Five Ways to God’s Nature: Pure Act, Eternity, and Infinity
13.2 | Knowing God by Analogy: How Creation Points to the Creator
Answers to Questions
Knowledge Check #8
Aquinas Apologetics Toolkit
End of Course Survey