Christian Philosophers: 15 Famous and Modern Thinkers

The Christian philosophers most worth knowing run from Boethius and Anselm through Aquinas, Scotus and Pascal to the analytic revival led by Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston. This list gives fifteen of them, with the question each still sets for a Christian thinker and the book to start with. It is written for a reader already inside the arguments, so each entry spends its words on the question and the first book to open, and leaves the long biographies to the encyclopedias.

Key takeaways

• A Christian philosopher argues in the open. The premises and inferences are there for any careful reader to inspect, believer or not.
• The medieval questions are still the live ones. Eternity, necessary being and how words reach God were set by Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas and Scotus.
• 1978 began the modern revival. A new society gave believing philosophers a home and a journal of its own.
• The oldest open question is where Frame-Indexed Classical Theism enters. Between Thomist analogy and Scotist univocity, it asks what rule governs a word said of God and of us.

What is a Christian philosopher?

A Christian philosopher is a Christian who does philosophy: someone who argues from premises and inferences open to inspection, often on the questions Christian belief raises. That separates the work from theology, which reasons from revelation within the Church's confession (the companion list of Christian theologians covers that side), and from apologetics, which defends the faith to people outside it. The roles overlap, and several names below hold two of them at once; William Lane Craig, for instance, is both a philosopher and an apologist.

The line begins early, in the second and third centuries. Justin Martyr (c. 90–100 to 165), known as Justin the Philosopher, defended the faith in his First Apology. Clement of Alexandria (c. 147 to c. 215) brought Greek learning into Christian teaching in the Stromata, and Origen (c. 185 to c. 253) wrote On First Principles. Augustine, who belongs to both lists, is treated with the theologians.

The rule for the fifteen below is the same one that governs the theologians list: each name still sets a question that later thinkers have to answer. The list is not a ranking; it runs in order of time. The essays filed under Christian philosophy on this site take those questions one at a time.

Free — the complete book

Get Book 1: Resolving the Free Will Dilemma free when you enter your name and email.

This essay takes one piece of it. Resolving the Free Will Dilemma takes the whole dilemma from first axiom to conclusion — the complete book, free.

No spam. Unsubscribe in one click.

Volume One is free; read it and judge the method for yourself.

Which medieval Christian philosophers still matter?

The famous Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages set the questions the modern revival went back to. Five of them still carry most of the weight: Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham.

Boethius

Boethius (c. 480–524) was imprisoned by Theodoric around 523 and wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in prison. In Book V he defined eternity as "the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life", and he used that definition to show how God can know a future free act without forcing it.

The question he set is still argued in the debates over whether God knows the future: can God know what we will do without fixing it? Start with Book V of the Consolation.

Anselm of Canterbury

Anselm (1033/4–1109) was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 until his death, and he is regarded as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God. His Proslogion argues, in the spirit of his phrase "faith seeking understanding," that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, and that such a being cannot exist only in the mind. Philosophers have attacked and repaired the argument for nine centuries.

The question he set is whether God exists necessarily, which bears directly on God's aseity. Start with chapters 2 to 4 of the Proslogion.

Thomas Aquinas

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) gave Christian philosophy two of its most-used tools in the Summa Theologiae: the Five Ways, which reason from the world to its cause, and the doctrine of analogy. Analogy says our words are true of God in senses related to, yet distinct from, their senses of creatures. Eleonore Stump's Aquinas (2003) is one modern study of how far it reaches.

The question he set is in what sense our words are true of God, and Thomism is the school that grew from his answer. Start with the Summa, First Part, Questions 2 and 13.

John Duns Scotus

John Duns Scotus (c. 1265/66–1308), called the Subtle Doctor, pressed the weak point in analogy. He argued for the univocity of being: the concept of being means the same thing said of God and of creatures, or we have no concept of God at all. He is also known for haecceity, the "thisness" that makes an individual this one and no other.

The question he set is whether anything we say of God must mean exactly what it means of us. Our article on Duns Scotus follows the argument further.

William of Ockham

William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347) is known for the razor that bears his name, the principle that explanations should not multiply entities beyond need. The nominalists of the fifteenth century regarded him as a founder of their movement. Applied to universals, the razor suggests that "humanity" or "goodness" names no real common nature, only a likeness among individuals.

The question he set is whether universals are real or only names, and nominalism is the position that grew from his answer. Its consequences for how we speak of God's goodness are still argued.

See the whole Many Beings series on the books page.

Which early modern thinkers should you know?

After the medieval schools came two thinkers, Pascal and Kierkegaard, who worked outside them and are read today as much for the question each pressed as for any system.

Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) was a mathematician and physicist before he was a religious writer. He left the Pensées incomplete at his death, and they were published in 1670. Their best-known passage is the wager: when reason cannot settle whether God exists, the wise bet is on God, because what is staked is finite and what may be won is infinite. The argument has been attacked and refined ever since.

The question Pascal set is what a reasonable person should stake a life on under uncertainty. Start with the Pensées, read in short sittings.

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is widely considered the first existentialist philosopher. In Fear and Trembling (1843) he reads Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac as a test that ethics alone cannot pass. In Philosophical Fragments (1844) he asks how a truth that arrives in history can be the ground of eternal happiness.

The question he set is whether faith can be reached by argument at all. Start with Fear and Trembling.

Download Volume One free if you want an argument you can check for yourself.

What changed in 1978?

In 1978 a group of believing philosophers founded the Society of Christian Philosophers. William Alston was among its co-founders, and he and Nicholas Wolterstorff helped found its journal, Faith and Philosophy. The society gave believers in philosophy departments what they had lacked in the secular academy: a place to argue from Christian belief with full analytic rigour, in front of peers who would press back.

The movement's signature idea arrived in 1983. In Faith and Rationality, edited by Alvin Plantinga and Wolterstorff, Plantinga, Wolterstorff and Alston developed what came to be called Reformed epistemology: the claim that belief in God can be rational without being inferred from other beliefs, as belief in other minds is. Whether or not a reader accepts it, the claim changed what believing philosophers felt they owed their critics.

The obvious objection is that this lets any belief count as rational without evidence. The reply turns on conditions: a belief formed in the right circumstances can be rational without an argument behind it and still be overturned by a good argument against it. That reply is itself open to attack. Putting such claims where peers would attack them was the revival's achievement.

Volume One costs nothing; get it here.

Who are the most important modern Christian philosophers?

The eight modern names on this list, from Plantinga to Zagzebski, built on that revival. Each of them is still read by those working on the questions they set.

Alvin Plantinga

Alvin Plantinga (born 1932) is the leading figure in Reformed epistemology. His books include God and Other Minds (1967), The Nature of Necessity (1974), God, Freedom, and Evil (1974) and Warranted Christian Belief (2000). He received the Templeton Prize in 2017. His free-will defense, first proposed in 1965, argued that the existence of God and of evil are logically consistent, and it reset the debate over why God allows suffering.

The question he set is whether belief in God needs evidence to be rational. Start with God, Freedom, and Evil, which is short.

Nicholas Wolterstorff

Nicholas Wolterstorff (born 1932) is Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale. In Reason within the Bounds of Religion (1976) he argued that a Christian scholar's faith rightly governs which theories he will accept, and in Justice: Rights and Wrongs (2008) he grounded human rights in the worth God bestows.

The question he set is how far faith should govern what a scholar accepts. Start with Reason within the Bounds of Religion, which is short.

William Alston

William Alston (1921–2009) co-founded the Society of Christian Philosophers and was, with Plantinga and Wolterstorff, one of the three figures behind Reformed epistemology. In Perceiving God (1991) he argued that experience of God can justify belief in roughly the way sense perception justifies belief about the physical world.

The question he set is whether religious experience counts as evidence. If it does, the ordinary believer who has never read an argument for God may still believe with good reason. Perceiving God is demanding and rewards the effort.

Richard Swinburne

Richard Swinburne (born 1934) was Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford from 1985 to 2002. His trilogy, The Coherence of Theism (1977), The Existence of God (1979) and Faith and Reason (1981), argues that theism is coherent and, on the total evidence, more probable than not.

The question he set is whether God's existence can be shown probable. His method treats God as an explanatory hypothesis and weighs it as a scientist weighs a theory. Start with The Existence of God.

Marilyn McCord Adams

Marilyn McCord Adams (1943–2017) was a philosopher and Episcopal priest, and from 2004 to 2009 she was Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. In Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God (1999) she argued that the debate over evil had avoided its hardest cases, the evils that seem to ruin a life, and that only a God who defeats those evils within each life can be called good to that person.

The question she set is whether God can be good to someone whose life evil has wrecked. Start with Horrendous Evils and the Goodness of God and read it slowly.

Eleonore Stump

Eleonore Stump (born 1947) has taught at Saint Louis University since 1992. With Norman Kretzmann she wrote "Eternity" (1981), the paper that revived Boethius's definition for analytic philosophy, and her books include Aquinas (2003) and Wandering in Darkness (2010), on suffering read through biblical narrative. She gave the Gifford Lectures in 2003.

The question she set is whether a timeless God can act in time. Start with Wandering in Darkness if suffering is your question, or the 1981 paper if eternity is.

William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig (born 1949) is both a philosopher and an apologist. In The Kalām Cosmological Argument (1979) he defended the argument that the universe began to exist and so has a cause, and he defends Molinism, the view that God knows what every free creature would do in any circumstance.

The question he set is whether an actual infinite can exist in the real world. Start with The Kalām Cosmological Argument. Volume Five of the Many Beings series, Resolving Potential vs. Actual Infinity, engages his finitism directly.

Linda Zagzebski

Linda Zagzebski (born 1946) pioneered virtue epistemology in Virtues of the Mind (1996), which treats knowledge as the product of intellectual virtues such as open-mindedness and care. In Divine Motivation Theory (2004) she grounded ethics in the motives of God. She was president of the society from 2004 to 2007.

The question she set is whether knowing well is a kind of virtue. Start with Virtues of the Mind.

The series that argues this case is on the books page.

Where does Frame-Indexed Classical Theism fit among Christian philosophers?

Brett D. Henderson is a Christian philosopher and theologian, and his Many Beings series argues a position called Frame-Indexed Classical Theism (FICT). It takes up the oldest question on this list. Words whose content involves time, possibility, agency or value are true of God and of us analogically rather than univocally, and the classical dilemmas commit one equivocation, which the series names the Many Beings Fallacy. Index the word to the one who apprehends it, and the dilemma dissolves.

Its place among the rival positions is precise. With Thomist analogy, it holds that such words are neither univocal nor equivocal when said of God. With Scotist univocity, it grants that something must stay univocal, and it locates that in logic and arithmetic. Against both, it states the rule for which words cross from creature to God. It is not relativism: there is one reality, God's frame is its ground, and the human frame is a real but bounded way of knowing it.

Its lineage includes Boethius on eternity, Aquinas on analogy and the Reformed distinction between God's knowledge of Himself and the knowledge fitted to creatures. Each volume is written in formal logical notation for peer scrutiny, in the spirit of the revival described above. The statement of the position sets out what it claims.

If you want the argument itself, start with Volume One.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the greatest Christian philosopher?

Augustine and Aquinas are the usual answers, and lists of the greatest Christian philosophers almost always begin with them. Among the living, Alvin Plantinga is the name most often given; he received the Templeton Prize in 2017. Greatness here is tied to a question: Boethius for eternity, Anselm for necessary being, Aquinas for analogy.

Is William Lane Craig a philosopher or an apologist?

Both. Craig is an analytic philosopher whose The Kalām Cosmological Argument (1979) is a work of philosophy, and he is also a public apologist who defends Christian belief to a general audience. The two roles use the same arguments addressed to different readers: the academic work is written for peers, and the apologetics for anyone who will listen.

Who were the early Christian philosophers?

The earliest include Justin Martyr, known as Justin the Philosopher, Clement of Alexandria and Origen, all writing between the second and third centuries. Augustine, who is treated on the theologians page, is claimed by philosophers and theologians alike.

Can a Christian be a serious philosopher?

The record since 1978 answers that. Believing philosophers have founded a society and a journal, received the Templeton Prize, given the Gifford Lectures and led divisions of the American Philosophical Association, as Linda Zagzebski did in 2015 to 2016. The question is now argued on the merits.

Where should I start reading Christian philosophy?

Begin with a short classic, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy or Anselm's Proslogion, then read one modern work on the same question, such as Plantinga's God, Freedom, and Evil. Reading an old answer and a new one side by side shows how much of the question has stayed the same. Our list of the best philosophy books suggests more.

Where to go from here

The best way into this list is through a question, not a name. If eternity troubles you, read Boethius and then Stump. If the problem of evil does, read Plantinga and then Adams. If it is how a human word can be true of God, read Aquinas and Scotus side by side. That disagreement is still open, and reading in pairs like this keeps the old and the new in one conversation, which is how the revival itself began.

The Many Beings series is one answer to that open question. Volume One, Resolving the Free Will Dilemma, is free to download, and the full series is on the books page.