Certamen Philosophicum: Philosophical Combat for Divine and Natural Truth

The correspondence between Orobio and Bredenburg brings to light the superiority of classical philosophy over the faulty reasoning of propositions influenced by Spinoza's philosophy. Through meticulous logical analysis and verification of Jan Bredenburg's propositions, Isaac Orobio exposes and reveals the inherent contradictions of modern philosophical materialism. For Isaac Orobio, Spinoza and his contemporaries conceal the heresy of a new pantheistic atheism that replaces God with "Nature," relying on new sophisms, whose principles are self-necessary and independent of disciplines, ignoring all common foundations of logic, grammar, metaphysics, and ontology. Isaac Orobio rejects this fragmentation of the notion of truth between science and religion, and vigorously defends the foundations on which science and religious thought converge through simultaneous and logical truths that allow for a rational understanding of the existence of a necessary being, creation from infinite possibilities, and the limitations of existing finite agents. Through these propositions, his work becomes an essential reference for those seeking to grasp the challenging interaction between reason, faith, and existence, forming a crucial reading for philosophers, theologians, and anyone interested in the classical foundations of faith in relation to reason. This translation aims not only to make this fundamental work of classical philosophy accessible to contemporary readers but also to illuminate, through notes, the connections between Orobio's classical context and the modern existential questions that persist to this day.