Intellectualist Model: Faith as Believing

The period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE and the conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BCE.

• Aristotelian Age

• Platonic Age

• Hellenistic Age

• Byzantine Age

He was influenced by neo-platonism which is a revival and religious reinterpretation of the Philosophy of Plato (427-347 BCE)

• St. Benedict of Nursia

• St. Thomas Aquinas

• St. Augustine

• St. Anselm

A major doctrine of Plato

• Cogito Ergo Sum

• Doctrine of the Trinity

• Doctrine of Forms and Matter

• Notion of Two Worlds

Unchanging, fixed, permanent

• World of Ideas

• World of the senses

• World of the underworld

• World of the ephemeral

The world of ideas cannot be divorced from the world of the senses.

• Augustinianism

• Aristotelianism

• Platonism

• Hellenism

Faith for him is intellectual assent to the conceptual truths communicated by God.

• Augustine of Hippo

• Thomas Aquinas

• Plato

• Aristotle

Immediate precursors of rationalism.

• Age of Reason

• Age of Enlightenment

• Age of Faith

• Age of Mythology

Rationalism is characterized by the following, except

• It recognized only one norm for attaining knowledge, namely rational truth.

• It is through reason alone that one can arrive at the truth about God.

• It rejected the belief in revelation containing truths that cannot be explained by human reason.

• It holds a profound distrust of the Bible.

The Vatican I document (1869-1870) which rejected rationalism.

• Dei Filius

• Nostra Aetate

• De Fide Catholica

• Pastor aeternus