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427 BCE
Plato
(427–347 BCE), who developed the metaphysical theory of Forms (abstract entities corresponding to the properties of particular objects), was also one of the first thinkers to consider the idea of creation and to attempt to prove the existence of God -
384 BCE
Plato's student
Plato’s student Aristotle (384–322 BCE) developed his own metaphysical theory of the first, or unmoved, mover of the universe, which many of his interpreters have identified with God. Aristotle’s speculations began a tradition that later came to be known as natural theology -
300 BCE
The Stoicism of the Hellenistic Age
The Stoicism of the Hellenistic Age (300 BCE–300 CE) was characterized by philosophical naturalism, including the idea of natural law (a system of right or justice thought to be inherent in nature) -
44 BCE
De natura deorum
De natura deorum (44 BCE; “The Nature of the Gods”), by the Roman statesman and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero, is an invaluable source of information on ancient ideas about religion and the philosophical controversies they engendered. -
1033
Christianity
The Platonism of Augustine exercised lasting influence on Christian theologians and was given renewed expression in the writings of the theologian and archbishop Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109), whose ontological argument has remained at the center of philosophical speculation about God’s existence -
1225
A new outlook on philosophy
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), the foremost philosopher of Scholasticism. Aquinas’s grand achievement was to wed Aristotelian methods and ideas with the Augustinian tradition of viewing philosophy as an ally rather than an opponent of religion, thus providing a new philosophical direction for Christian theology. -
1400
More thoughts
the early 14th century, philosophers as diverse as al-Fārābī, Avicenna, al-Ghazālī, Moses Maimonides, and John Duns Scotus explored reason and revelation, creation and time, and the nature of divine and human action. -
New directions
In the 17th century the philosophy of religion was taken in new directions by René Descartes in France and John Locke in England. The significance of Descartes and Locke lay in the fact that they were self-confessedly philosophical innovators. -
David Hume
philosopher David Hume (1711–76)—e.g., that the evidence is compatible with a large number of hypotheses, such as polytheism or a god of limited power, that are as plausible as or more plausible than monotheism—the argument from design continued to be very popular in the 19th century -
New times to come
. In the 1920s and ’30s the logical positivists, and later the non cognitivists, declared that metaphysical and theological (as well as ethical and aesthetic) sentences are literally meaningless because they cannot be verified through sense experience.
