The Relationship between Philosophy and Theology

Although modern thought tends to assume a sharp disjunction between philosophy and theology,
it is not at all obvious how to distinguish them in a principled way. Suppose that we take
philosophy in the broadest sense to be the systematic use of human reason in an effort to
understand the most fundamental features of reality, and suppose that we take theology in the
broadest sense to be the study of God and all things in relation to God. Then we should expect to
see considerable overlap between the two: after all, God, is surely one of the fundamental
features of reality, and one to which all the other features presumably relate.

In practice, when we survey the history of Christian thought, we do see considerable overlap
between philosophy and theology. With respect to their topics of inquiry, philosophers and
theologians alike ask questions about epistemology, axiology, and political theory, as well as
about metaphysics and fundamental ontology. Similarly, with respect to their methods of inquiry,
philosophers and theologians alike interpret authoritative texts, deploy arguments, and marshal
evidence to support their conclusions. Here one might insist that Christian theological claims are
grounded by appeals to “faith” or “authority”, whereas philosophical claims are grounded by
appeals to “reason”. This contrast is promising when suitably developed, but it is not as sharp as
one might initially suppose. Theology also makes appeals to common sense and ordinary human
reason, and philosophy also has its versions of faith and authority.

Of the making of typologies there is no end, but it is still worth examining some of the most
common ways that Christian thinkers throughout the centuries have understood the relationship
between philosophy and theology. Without this historical background, it becomes all-too-easy to
draw the relationship in naïve, anachronistic, and overly simplistic ways. In fact, no single
interpretation of the relationship between philosophy and theology can claim overwhelming
support from the Christian tradition. From outside the Christian tradition, while many non-
Christian thinkers see philosophy and theology as quite distinct, others deliberately blur the
distinction between them—because they think that theology is actually just misguided
philosophy.

At the top-level of the proposed typology, we can distinguish between “Integration” and
“Contrast” views. Integration views do not distinguish philosophy and theology at all, whereas

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Contrast views do. We can disambiguate the “Contrast” category into “Cooperation” views,
“Disjunction” views, and “Conflict” views. The most prominent Cooperation views treat
philosophy as a valuable, perhaps even necessary, tool for theological inquiry, and still allow
some degree of overlap between the two. Disjunction views, by contrast, regard philosophy and
theology as non-overlapping forms of inquiry, which feature distinct and ultimately unrelated
goals and methods. “Conflict” views treat philosophy and theology as not only distinct but
mutually antagonistic.

These categories are crude. They could each be further divided, and subdivided again. They
focus mainly on different Christian attitudes toward the interaction of philosophy and theology,
rather than on the attitudes of non-Christian philosophers. Some non-empty categories are
omitted altogether. But these categories do capture much of the landscape, and at least show that
there are more options available than a naïve conflict between faith and reason.

1. Integration

The Integration model treats philosophy and Christian theology as continuous, integrated
activities. On this model, rational inquiry about God does not sharply divide into discrete
activities called “philosophy” and “theology”. Instead, there is simply the single, continuous
intellectual task of trying to understand God, and all things in relation to God, using all of one’s
intellectual resources. This account does not deny the importance of faith or revelation to the
Christian intellectual life; rather, it denies that faith and revelation properly belong to a separate
activity called “theology” in distinction from another activity called “philosophy”. According to
this view, when we engage in rational inquiry of any sort, we should draw on every available
source of knowledge that is relevant to that inquiry. So when we engage in rational inquiry about
Christian topics, we should draw on scripture, Church tradition, and other such sources of
knowledge, whether we call the resulting inquiry “theology”, “philosophy”, or something else.
To do anything else would be to hobble our inquiry from the outset, according to the Integration
view.

This account of the relationship between philosophy and theology has deep roots in the Christian
tradition. Before the rise of the medieval university, it was the dominant view, and it still has
contemporary defenders (discussed below). Patristic thinkers did not typically describe their own

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intellectual work as “theology”. The term “theology” already had a fixed meaning in late
antiquity. It meant “poetic speech about the gods”, and was in general associated with pagan
story-telling and myth-making: the great “theologians”, were Homer and Hesiod. Even though
Christian thinkers like Gregory of Nazianzus sometimes acquired the honorific title
“Theologian”, they did so because of the lyrical and poetic quality of their writing, not because
they wrote about Christian doctrinal topics (Zachhuber 2020; McGinn 2008).

The general term that early Christian thinkers used to describe their intellectual work was, more
often than not, simply “philosophy” or “Christian philosophy”. Christianity was regarded as the
“true philosophy” over against the false philosophical schools associated with pagan thought.
(See Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 8.1; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.28.3, 1.28.4
1.80.5,6; Augustine of Hippo, Against Julian, 4.14.72.) This usage is consistent with Pierre
Hadot’s (1995) claim that in Greco-Roman antiquity philosophy was understood as a
comprehensive way of life. Christianity, on this model, is analogous to a philosophical school, in
Hadot’s sense (see also Zachhuber 2020).

The Integration account continued to be the default account of the relationship between
philosophy and theology into the early Medieval period. Before the rise of scholasticism in the
great Western universities, there was no sharp distinction between philosophy and theology.
Anselm of Canterbury, for example, certainly has the concept of a line of inquiry that proceeds
using reason alone, without appealing to revelation, but he does not label that inquiry
“philosophy” in distinction from “theology”. Moreover, in his own writings, he frequently blurs
any such distinction, as he seamlessly moves between rational reflection and argument, on the
one hand, to prayers, meditations, and exclamations of thanksgiving, on the other (e.g.,
Proslogion 1–4). Like many premodern Christian thinkers, Anselm also held that intellectual
inquiry and personal holiness are linked, so that the more one grows in Christian virtue, the more
rationally one is able to think about God (Adams 2004; Sweeney, 2011). This understanding of
inquiry and virtue is also a hallmark of the Integration account.

2. Contrast

Unlike the Integration model, the Contrast model insists that philosophy and theology are
fundamentally different forms of inquiry. Strictly speaking, there can be many different Contrast

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models, because the relevant sense of “contrast” comes in degrees. I focus on three: Cooperation,
Disjunction, and Conflict. On the Cooperation account, philosophy and theology remain close
cousins. When rightly pursued, they cannot really conflict, and they can even overlap in their
respective topics of inquiry, sources, and methods. Nevertheless, the Cooperation account holds
that the overlap between philosophy and theology is only partial, because they each begin from
different intellectual starting points and appeal to different sources of evidence (Baker-Hytch
2016; Chignell 2009: 117; Simmons 2019). On another version of the Contrast model,
Disjunction, philosophy and theology are even further apart: although they still do not conflict,
and may even consider the same topics in an attenuated sense, their starting assumptions and
methods of investigation are different enough that they share no significant conclusions. Finally,
Conflict accounts assert that the conclusions of Christian theology are positively irrational from
the point of view of philosophy. Although some historically important Christian thinkers might
seem to endorse Conflict, closer inspection shows that they do not. Nevertheless, in the popular
imagination, a persistent assumption holds that Christianity requires a sharp conflict between
theology and philosophy—or at least faith and reason—and so it is worth briefly discussing why
Conflict has had few traditional defenders.

2.1 Cooperation

On the Cooperation account, philosophy and theology are understood to be different, but
mutually supporting, intellectual activities. For Christian thinkers who advocate Cooperation,
philosophy and theology form a coherent, mutually supportive whole. They are not in conflict
with respect to their conclusions, since truth cannot contradict truth, but they differ with respect
to their foundational axioms, goals, and sources of evidence. Philosophy is understood as a
preamble to theology, while theology completes and fulfills philosophy. Thomas Aquinas is a
foundational advocate of the Cooperation account (Summa Theologiae 1.1.1–8, Summa Contra
Gentiles 1.1.1–9, Hankey 2001). Often the relationship between philosophy and theology is
described in hierarchical and instrumental terms: theology draws on philosophy as needed,
because philosophy is instrumentally useful to theology. According to a traditional metaphor,
philosophy is the servant of theology (ancilla theologiae, literally “handmaid” of theology; see
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1.1.5). In a more contemporary idiom, theology uses

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conceptual tools provided by philosophy in the pursuit of its own distinctive intellectual task:
elucidating the meaning and truth of revealed Christian doctrines.

On the Cooperation account, theology differs from philosophy chiefly because theology assumes
the truth of divine revelation, whereas philosophy does not. Philosophy takes its foundational
axioms and assumptions from generally available truths of human reason and sensory
experience. Philosophy and theology also differ in the way they argue and in the kinds of
intellectual appeals that are proper to each. Theologians can appeal to revelation—scripture and
authoritative Church tradition—in order to generate new lines of inquiry, and can treat revealed
truths as evidence in their investigations. For their part, philosophers must appeal only to
premises and evidence that are in principle available to any rational inquirer.

This distinction between “revealed truths” and “truths of reason” implies that at least some
revealed truths are not also truths of reason. By hypothesis, such truths would have remained
unknown and unknowable had they not been revealed by God. (It therefore follows that without
revelation, Christian theology could not exist, on the Cooperation account.) Paradigmatic
instances of revealed truths are the doctrine of the Trinity, and the doctrine of the Incarnation.
Throughout the centuries, most, though not all, broadly orthodox Christian thinkers have held
that human beings could not reason their way to the truth of these doctrines without the aid of
divine revelation.

According to Aquinas, theologians use the conceptual tools furnished by philosophy to elucidate
the contents of revelation. Just like philosophers, theologians make arguments, and their
arguments appeal to common standards of logic and rigor, even though they also draw on
theology’s own unique (revealed) axioms and sources of evidence (Summa Theologiae 1.1.1).
Philosophical arguments cannot prove the foundational truths of revelation, according to
Aquinas, but at the same time, revelation and reason cannot conflict. (That God exists is a truth
of reason, not revelation, for Aquinas—see Summa Theologiae 1.2.2, reply to obj. 1.)
Theologians can therefore use common standards of philosophical reasoning to answer any
putative objections to their theological claims, by showing that any alleged conflict is only
apparent. So, for example, even though it is not possible to establish that God is triune by means
of philosophical arguments, it is possible to use philosophical arguments in a defensive mode, to
answer objections alleging that the doctrine of the trinity is logically incoherent. When arguing

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with other Christians, theologians can appeal to revelation to support their claims. When arguing
with opponents who do not accept revelation, they cannot (Summa Theologiae 1.1.8). Yet this
restriction is not really a disciplinary maxim designed to oppose philosophy to theology, but a
pragmatic admission that one cannot successfully persuade opponents by appealing to premises
they deny.

2.2 Disjunction

Like Cooperation, the Disjunction view holds that philosophy and theology are different forms of
inquiry. Similarly, like Cooperation, the Disjunction view also that agrees that there can be no
real conflict between the conclusions of philosophy (when true) and those of theology. But the
Disjunction view goes further: Disjunction advocates deny that there is any significant overlap
between philosophy and theology at all.

Disjunction does not subordinate philosophy to theology or treat philosophy as an essential tool
for theology. Instead, to borrow a term from contemporary science and religion debates,
philosophy and theology are “non-overlapping magisteria” (Gould 1997). In particular,
Cooperation’s appeal to the distinction between truths of reason and truths of revelation does not
suffice to distinguish philosophy from theology, according to Disjunction advocates, who instead
appeal to various more fundamental distinctions of method or approach (see discussion below).
Of course, even those who explicitly advocate Disjunction will occasionally deploy some
methods associated with philosophy: carefully defining terms, making formally valid arguments,
uncovering contradictions in opposing views, etc. Yet these methods are found in any form of
rational inquiry, and so (presumably) they do not belong to philosophy alone.

Any given thinker’s view of Disjunction will of course depend on their underlying construal of
philosophy and theology. Some thinkers—even some Christian thinkers—endorse the
Disjunction view because they deny that theology is really a propositional, truth-apt discourse
that proceeds by way of arguments and evidence. Instead, theology is something else entirely—
poetry, perhaps; or a form of worship, praise, or prayer (Caputo 2015). This view of theology
implies a sharp contrast with Aristotelian and scholastic philosophy, modern philosophy, and
contemporary Anglo-American Analytic philosophy, though perhaps not with philosophy tout
court. Philosophers might associate this view with the “expressivist” or “emotivist” critiques of

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theology that were common in the heyday of logical positivism. But in fact, versions of the
“theology as poetry” view are found throughout the history of Christian thought (Beggiani 2014).

Other versions of the Disjunction view figure even more prominently in the Christian tradition. It
rejects the synthesis of philosophy and theology that characterized late medieval scholasticism.
Accordingly, philosophy and theology proceed from entirely different perspectives, with
different starting points and different goals (1539 [1966: 244]; Grosshans 2017). Philosophy
considers its objects of inquiry from the perspective of common human reason and sense
experience, with the goal of trying to understand things as they actually are in the real world.
Theology considers its objects of inquiry from a creational and eschatological perspective, with
the goal of trying to understand them in relation to God as their creator and final end.
Furthermore, “creation” and its cognates are properly theological terms whose meaning derives
from scripture and revelation, and which should not be identified with any philosophical notion
of a first cause or prime mover; mutatis mutandis, the same point hold for creation’s final end in
God.

Even when philosophy and theology do consider the same object of inquiry—for example, the
human being—this difference in perspective ensures that the lines of inquiry remain completely
separate. To more elaborate, for example “Philosophy or human wisdom defines man as an
animal having reason, sensation, and body” and then goes on to explore this definition. But his
exploration only serves to contrast this philosophical view of the human being with the
perspective of theology. Theology, form the fullness of its wisdom, defines man as whole and
perfect… made in the beginning after the image of God… subject to the power of the devil, sin
and death…freed and given eternal life only through the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

2.3 Conflict

None of the three views considered so far—Integration, Cooperation, and Disjunction—assume

any real, essential conflict between philosophy and theology. All three views allow for apparent
conflict, due to errors of reasoning or interpretation, or when either discipline departs from its
own proper sphere, but they do not assert that Christian theology or Christian faith is irrational
from the point of view of philosophy, nor do they hold that any significant Christian doctrinal
claims can be falsified by sound philosophical reasoning. Throughout the history of Christian

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thought, many prominent Christian philosophers and theologians have criticized philosophy, or
fulminated against what they regard as philosophical overreach, but few if any have regarded
philosophy and theology as essentially incompatible, in the sense just outlined. Popular
understandings of “faith” and “reason” often posit a deep and abiding conflict between the two,
and so it is important to emphasize just how rare that position has actually been among major
Christian philosophers and theologians. Key figures who are often regarded as Conflict
advocates, turn out, upon closer inspection, to hold a different view.

For example, the Patristic theologian Tertullian famously asks “What has Athens to do with
Jerusalem?” but he never actually asserted the irrationalist credo “I believe because it is absurd”
(De praescriptione haereticorum 7; De carne Christi 5.4; see also Harrison 2017). Instead, like all
the Patristic fathers, Tertullian regarded human reason as one of God’s greatest gifts; ratio
(reason) is one of his most frequently used nouns, and his own writing draws heavily on the stoic
philosophy of his day (Osborn 1997).

Turning to a putative modern irrationalist, Søren Kierkegaard presents the incarnation as a

paradox that offends human reason in his (pseudonymous) 1844 Philosophical Fragments, but
close reading shows that “paradox” and “offence” do not equate to “formal contradiction” (1844
[1985: 53, 101]; Evans 1989). Rather, the incarnation seems paradoxical only to fallen, sinful
human reason (1844, [1985: 46–47]). So the “offence” of the incarnation resolves into the claim
that the doctrine of the incarnation had to be revealed, because its truth exceeds the limits of
fallen reason. But, as discussed above, accepting this claim about the incarnation has been the
norm throughout the Christian tradition. Moreover, according to Kierkegaard, even though the
truth of the incarnation exceeds the limits of human reason, the claim that reason has limits is
itself one that can be assessed by human reason (1846 [1992: 580]; Evans 1989: 355).

Finally, the twentieth century theologian Karl Barth’s famous “No!” to philosophical reasoning
about God is also best understood as a rejection of philosophical overreach rather than a rejection
of philosophy per se (Brunner & Barth 1946). According to Barth, we cannot establish the truth
of theological claims using generally persuasive arguments available to any rational enquirer.
But Barth had no quarrel with using philosophy in an Anselmian mode, to elucidate and clarify
the implications of divine revelation, and in principle he even allows that there could be a
genuinely Christian philosophy (1932 [1975: 6]; Diller 2010).

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These prominent Christian thinkers all criticize what they see as philosophical hubris, but they
do not set philosophy and theology as such in essential opposition, and they do not agree that any
belief-worthy Christian doctrines actually are irrational—still less that they can be falsified by
sound philosophical reasoning. On this line, when there is an apparent conflict between a
philosophical conclusion and some Christian truth, the conflict is treated as a sign that
philosophy has overstepped its own proper boundaries, not a sign that Christian truth actually
conflicts with human reason. By and large, even the sharpest Christian critics of philosophy have
held this view.