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pre-eminent example is one s own body, which can either
be possessed as an object or lived as a being. Marcel also
developed the distinction between problem and mystery.
A problem is rooted in an object that stands before one,
requiring reduction and ultimate elimination through
technique, while a mystery is an inexplicable and ine-
liminable reality within which an individual personally
participates. Marcel castigated other existentialists for
their bleak perspectives, and sought to demonstrate
the centrality of God to each moment in the lives we
are given. His sober but optimistic philosophical work
carries through into his plays, e.g. The Broken World.
Marcel delivered the Gifford Lectures in 1949 50, later
published as The Mystery of Being.
See existentialism
Further reading: Lapointe and Lapointe 1977; Marcel
1965 and 2001; Moran 1992
Maritain, Jacques (1882 1973): A wide-ranging French neo-
Thomist philosopher, Maritain wrote over eighty mono-
graphs, some popular and some scholarly. He also main-
tained a vigorous interest in politics and social affairs,
serving for four years as French ambassador to the
Vatican. Maritain thought that there were various dif-
ferent forms of reality that could not be reduced to
each other, for example, the physical and the spiri-
tual, and he expounded in his The Degrees of Knowl-
edge (1932) the various different corresponding forms of
knowing reality, of which science and religious faith were
just two.
See Thomism
Further reading: Allard and Germain 1994; McInerny
1988; Maritain 1944, 1948, 1955, 1982 and 1995
Martyr, Justin see Justin Martyr
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Marxism: The philosophy of Marxism (often called, follow-
ing Engels, dialectical materialism ) was, according to
Engels, the science of the general laws of motion and
development of nature, human society and thought , and,
in particular, the law of the transformation of quantity
into quality, the law of the unity and interpenetration
of opposites, and the law of the negation of the nega-
tion. Marx s own attitude to philosophy, however, is per-
haps best summed up in his famous dictum the philoso-
phers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it . The main influence of Marxism
on Christian philosophy has been the naturalistic account
of religion that Marx put forward. Marx said that the
critique of religion is the foundation of all critique and
famously described religion as the opium of the masses ;
that is, he thought that religion was a tool used by the
ruling classes to keep the others submissive. Critics have
claimed, however, that this position is simply assumed,
rather than argued for, by Marx and his followers, and,
even if it were true, that fact would not imply that the
religion itself were false. Nevertheless, some Christian
philosophers have taken the social and economic critique
of capitalism seriously and endeavoured to construct a
Christian version of it. Liberation theology is one such
result.
See materialism
Further reading: Carver 1991; Kolakowski 1981; Mac-
Intyre 1953 and 1995
materialism: Materialism is a philosophy of the ultimate con-
stituents of reality that generally postulates either (1)
all that exists is material, or (2) all that exists is either
material or dependent upon the material. The first view
has an ancient pedigree in Greek atomism, but has al-
ways struggled with the location problem for putative
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118 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY A Z
non-material entities such as universals and mental
events. In this regard, the second view is appealing insofar
as it allows non-material entities such as mental events,
so long as they depend upon physical states. Both (1) and
(2) raise the question of epistemic justification: why be-
lieve that everything is material or dependent upon the
material?
Sometimes naturalism is used as a synonym for ma-
terialism . Naturalism is also occasionally distinguished
as the view that all reality will be finally explicable in a
completed natural science. This view avoids the further
worry that a future science might do away with concepts
of the material altogether in favour of (say) forces or some
heretofore unconceived reality. Even so, naturalism raises
the same question of epistemic justification: why think
that natural science is the standard of all knowledge?
Is this not a case of unjustified scientism? While material-
ism is commonly associated with atheism, both Tertullian
and Thomas Hobbes held a form of materialism, as do
Mormons today.
See Hobbes, Thomas; Tertullian, Quintus Septimius
Florens; Russell, Bertrand; science; science and religion
Further reading: Beilby 2002; Brown, Murphy and
Malony 1998; Craig and Moreland 2000; Papineau
1993; Rea 2002
maximal greatness see greatness, maximal
meaning see hermeneutics
medieval philosophy see philosophy, medieval
metaphor: A metaphor is a statement of a certain sort that is
not meant to be taken literally. When the Bible describes
God as a rock it does not mean to be taken literally;
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rather it means to be taken as affirming of God some of
the attributes of a rock, such as stability, permanence, de-
pendability and so on. Some Christian philosophers claim
that all talk about God is metaphorical, but this view
is problematic: surely there must be some literal truth
underlying the metaphor, as there would seem to be in
the case of describing God as a rock . Nevertheless, it
is certainly the case that metaphor plays an important
part in the Bible s description of God and this is entirely
understandable, since many of our words are intended
primarily for discussion of finite physical things rather
than for God.
See language, religious
Further reading: Black 1962; Ramsey 1957 and 1971;
Ricoeur 1977; Soskice 1985
metaphysics: Metaphysics (or first philosophy ) is the study
of ultimate reality and its structure. It involves ontology
or the study of what exists (the dispute between athe-
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