Logic and Early Christianity

Abstract

The paper considers the relation of early Christianity to the history of logic, that is, the role of the early Christianity in the development of logic as a discipline. In effect, two questions are raised: First, what was the attitude of the early Christian writers towards logic and dialectics? And second, how does the period and whatever could be found there relate to the subsequent development of logic? The suggested conclusion is that the enmity of early Christians to logic can be explained by the divergent standards of truth: revealed and non-intellectualist nature of its central doctrines, also by the association of logical matters with pagan philosophy. On the other hand the period seems to have laid the grounds for the subsequent rediscovery of internal need for the standardized criterion of truth, and so the resultant establishment of logic as an important discipline, and thus this period is essential for understanding the subsequent flow of the history of logic. Hence the gap in the history lurking between pagan Antiquity and Boethius can reasonably be filled.