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Article: The deist minimum.
- Article from:
- First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Institute on Religion and Public Life. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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As Christianity spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, it became apparent that the biblical doctrines concerning God, morality, and future retribution had similarities with the philosophical speculations of the Platonists, Aristotelians, and Stoics. The Fathers and medieval theologians had no difficulty in admitting this; on the contrary, they saw it as a confirmation of the truth of revelation. Human reason at its best, they explained, is able to discover some of the doctrines that God revealed through the prophets and Jesus Christ.
This being granted, revelation was still necessary for two reasons. First, because even the naturally knowable truths were ...