Fennie pray a cost in the news

and there's to all of physical

and bless you all of physical.

He bless you, Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at

King's College London and the LMU in Munich.

Online at www. History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, Here comes the Sun, the Trinity and the Eucharist.

Louis Carroll's through the looking glass contains a scene in which Alice, in discussion with the white Queen, says that she cannot believe impossible things.

The Queen responds,

I dare say you haven't had much practice.

When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why sometimes

I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." From which you might infer that the

White Queen would have felt quite at home in the Middle Ages and not just because she was royalty.

Medieval philosophy is notoriously intertwined with Christian theology and some Christian doctrines may seem to involve embracing the impossible.

In modern times, philosophers have sometimes taken this to be a great virtue.

Serenkirkegaard put the notion of the absurd at the center of Christianity, arguing that we should not and indeed cannot

rationally accept the idea of God's incarnation as a human.

It can be believed only by faith.

The medievals were far more inclined to think that reason goes hand in hand with faith.

By this stage I've hopefully managed to disabuse you of any notion that medieval's thinkers spent all their time thinking of nothing but

faith, ignoring the deliverances of natural reason. We've also seen that when they did think about theology,

they often took a highly rationalist approach.

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