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This question currently has 2 vote-to-close with the reason "General philosophical or sociological questions are off-topic unless clearly asking for a doctrinal answer." although this question clearly links the concept of truth with progressive revelation of one of God's attribute (God is truth).

I would like to open discussion on clarifying this site's position on philosophical questions that are regularly included in all modern systematic theologies, which have traditionally been covered in the Introduction (Prolegomena) section. Some Church Fathers, most notably St. Augustine, Boethius, and St. Thomas Aquinas, became famous because of their philosophical work within their theologies. Therefore, we may want to expand the coverage, or at least have a better guidelines on what types of questions belong to Philosophy.SE and what types belong to C.SE.

Another observation: many of philosophical questions are actually Christian apologetics, shouldn't they belong here?

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    Thank you. The question of God's relationship to Truth, as Truth is clearly a theological one AND philosophical one simultaneously...I'm sure the likes of Aquinas wouldn't have "closed" this inquiry. To be honest, some users on this site seem great, but there's a certain petulance and aggressive down voting impulse that I encounter here. It's enough to make me just stay away.
    – curiositasisasinbutstillcuriou
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 22:11
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    @curiositasisasinbutstillcuriou Please don't be discouraged by the downvoting. Although most users are not well-versed and rather suspicious of philosophy, the moderators & some long-time contributors / visitors here have enough appreciation to realize the role of philosophy in theology. Welcome to C.SE! Please continue to post questions and don't be afraid to open a meta question to challenge close votes. One metric regardless of whether it is a philosophical question is whether there is enough objectivity to an answer, otherwise it's too opinion based, which is not good for any SE sites.
    – GratefulDisciple
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 23:39
  • Thanks for this comment. I appreciate it. I had never used metaquestions before, actually. Thanks.
    – curiositasisasinbutstillcuriou
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 23:46
  • @curiositasisasinbutstillcuriou To challenge a closed question on meta, use the support tag and the specific-question tag with a link to the question (in the main site).
    – GratefulDisciple
    Commented Feb 4, 2021 at 23:53

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The question starts with "Must a Christian", which is a classic bad question smell.

I think, if you reformulate the question "is Bernard Williams full of beans?" you're heading in the right direction.

But a more concise question (which you give in your answer) is "what objections have been made to the claim that xxx". I wouldn't raise a stink about that, even though it's a nebulous list question.

In a general sense, Christian philosophical questions (just not existential questions) are topical as is apologetics. But I don't want anyone to confuse topical with answerable. Questions still need to be answered from an identifiable perspective.

I've asked lots of Natural Law questions, I've had a few closed because they were too esoteric (like Is HIPAA a violation of Natural Law), so I think it is a crap-shoot. I don't think we're ever going to have a hard and fast rule.

I do know that if someone asks a question that only God can answer, that that question should be deleted.

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  • Thanks for the advice from someone who is been in the site much, much longer than I am. But what about "Are philosophical questions bordering on Christian theology on topic?" itself? In addition, I would appreciate some general sense of community's potential interest in philosophical questions.
    – GratefulDisciple
    Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 16:55
  • @GratefulDisciple can someone ask a philosophical question without having a school of thought behind that philosophy?
    – Peter Turner Mod
    Commented Feb 5, 2021 at 22:06
  • To answer your question: maybe, just like there can be question (like church history) that isn't tied with a denomination. I just cannot think of one right now. I'm with you on making sure the question is not open ended, and certainly identification of a school of philosophy (Aristotelian, Platonic, Idealism, etc.) is an obvious way to ensure specificity. In the example question, the OP cited the most mature work of a famous British analytical philosopher and identified it as such, so it's specific already.
    – GratefulDisciple
    Commented Feb 6, 2021 at 7:06

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