To begin, we will explore the nature of God, as understood by the ancients, and how the ideas of the Greek philosophers will have significantly altered how God is understood by Christians after the first-century CE. You will see how the ancients rejected an embodied God in favor of an immaterial Deity, leading to the classical Christian doctrine of the Trinity. You will deal with ethical theory as offered by Aristotle and Jesus, why morality seeks both human excellence and happiness, and on what basis people ought to be moral. Also studied will be physics and theories of reality, including the first claims that atoms are the basis of reality existing in a continuum called the Void, as well as an exploration of how humans can learn or know things. In one semester, you will be able to explain Western religion, and the difference between the first Christians and classical Christianity, offer reasons why one ought to be moral, deal with theories of reality, and offer insight as to how one determines the truth of all things.
