Who Is He Talking About?

Paul and the Philosophers

Dear Friends,

Step into my study! Shall I fill you a pipe? Pour you a dram? Excellent!

Perhaps you remember a few years ago I wrote a number of essays on the theological “retrieval” movement. I gathered them together in my book The Magnificent Pig. Thankfully, I was then able to move on to other things because it isn’t exactly my favorite topic. The devotees of the movement do not appear to have moved on to other things. Matthew Barrett, Professor at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, has been prolific in beating this particular drum: Christian theology must recover the “classical” Medieval synthesis of the Bible and Aristotelian philosophy, as best exemplified by Thomas Aquinas. He has even argued at length that this was one of the aims of the Reformation, counterintuitive as that is. That book was subjected to withering scrutiny in a symposium at the London Lyceum, but Barrett has, as far as I can see, completely ignored those critics.

Today I’d like to show you this interesting post from Barrett.

If you wonder what the big deal is or why I get animated by this topic, look no further. In two succinct sentences, Barrett makes three claims: 1) Students do not read Aristotle. 2) Therefore, they are ignorant of “basic metaphysics.” 3) They do not know why this “basic metaphysics” is “critical” to theology.