The Quest of God . . .

PHILOSOPHY SPEAKS FOR GOD

Philosophy is a lovely word, simple and full of meaning. It was the Pythagoreans who coined it from two of their Greek words, making it mean love of wisdom. Since that time it has come to have a less felicitous connotation, for even in university circles it is often viewed as a formidable discipline that one might just as well bypass. In one academic situation it was my pleasure to address a question to the eminent President DuBridge of Cal Tech, who, in replying, studied me quizzically, and said, “I am afraid of philosophers.” He was of course being facetious, but it still represents a rather common attitude that might best be described as suspicious.

At my own Texas Woman’s University, philosophy has had such a struggle through the years in gaining a beachhead among the offerings that they have never yet had even one man giving all of his time to the discipline, even though there are now better than 4,000 students. Across town is North Texas State University with 13,000 students, but philosophy has not yet gained even departmental status, and it takes only three professors to teach all the philosophy, while it takes upward of 100 people to teach the English and even art requires 15 or 20.

This of course is Texas, where something like philosophy has to fight for a place alongside football, Neiman-Marcus, oil wells and cattle; and that is tough competition among a people that prefer to be where the action is, whether ideas are or not. So it helps matters to say that up North and East philosophy fares better, if not excellently. And the discipline becomes august in stature in the European universities, especially in their early history. If the deans of ancient St. Andrews, Glasgow, Cambridge, Berlin or Paris universities had been told that some day people would be doctors of philosophy or even bachelors of art without having a single course in philosophy, they could not have believed it, for to them philosophy was education.

I remind my college girls that their teachers are not doctors of English, chemistry, history, or what have you, but doctors of philosophy (Ph. D.’s) in English, chemistry, etc. In this way I can dramatize the eminence of my discipline in the history of education, if not in present-day practice, for it was philosophy that mothered the disciplines that now make up the liberal arts and sciences.

If philosophy is the proud mother of the academic world who is now sadly neglected by her children, the attitude that religion has toward her is even worse, certainly among fundamentalists I find philosophy viewed with suspicion especially among my own people in the Churches of Christ. None of our colleges has a philosophy department or hardly any courses to speak of. Only recently has any of our men been so bold as to pursue a graduate degree in philosophy. Those among us who serve as philosophy professors in state or private universities can be counted on one hand with fingers to spare. There is something wrong with us. Even our courses would be off-limits to the Church of Christ students, if some preachers had their way, which is somewhat the case with the state university as such.

When I have occasion to give witness to my Christian faith in the classroom, which is often, there is surprise on the part of those that have been conditioned not to expect such at a state university and especially in a philosophy course. We are tainted with the wisdom of this world or something bad, even though somehow we manage to educate men for the faculties of our Christian colleges, granting them advanced degrees, who are not so tainted. I yet have not gleaned enough of the world’s wisdom to figure that one out.

Part of the problem is that they can quote a Bible verse against philosophy. That lovely couplet of love and wisdom, which Pythagoras fashioned long ago in all innocence, found its way into some English versions of the Bible in such a way as to make philosophy suspect to many biblicists. How can you have philosophy in America’s Bible belt with something like Col. 2:8 confronting you? “See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ.”

Since the time of Tertullian (160-230 A.D.) philosophy has been attacked as unfriendly to Christian faith, and Col. 2:8 has often been used to support this view. In his Prescription Against Heretics Tertullian wrote: “These are ‘the doctrines’ of men and ‘of demons’ produced for itching ears of the spirit of this world’s wisdom: this the Lord called ‘foolishness, and ‘chose the foolish things of the world’ to confound even philosophy itself . . . Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy. . . From all these, when the apostle would restrain us, he expressly names philosophy as that which he would have us be on our guard against.” Then he quotes Col. 2:8.

It may therefore appear daring for us to contend that philosophy is compatible with religious faith, and especially foolhardy for us to argue that it is a discipline used of God in His pursuit of man. Philosophy speaks of God and philosophers have been his envoys. It is an instrument of the divine quest. That is our thesis, the prescriptions of old Tertullian not. withstanding!

Our thesis is supported in part by the fact that Christian writers, even long before Tertullian, have extolled philosophy as “the divine gift to the Greeks” and “the handmaiden of God.” As early as 150 A.D. Justin Martyr was saying: “Philosophy is the greatest possession, and most honorable, and introduces us to God.” He was himself among the philosophers before his conversion, and in becoming a Christian he thought it proper to continue wearing the philosopher’s cloak, for in Christ he has found the true philosophy. Justin found a hero in Socrates since that old philosopher realized his own ignorance and looked to God for true wisdom. Justin thought philosophy became “many headed” and arrogant when it forsook the spirit of Socrates.

It was Clement of Alexandria (about 200 A.D.) who saw philosophy as a forerunner of Christianity. “Before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness,” he wrote. To him philosophy was “a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith.” He speaks of Greek culture with its philosophy as “preparatory culture” that came from God rather than men. Indeed, it was given of God by means of angels! Perhaps he had Tertullian in mind when he wrote: “I say this much to those who are fond of finding fault. Even if philosophy were useless, if the demonstration of its uselessness does good, it is yet useful. Those cannot condemn the Greeks who have only a mere hearsay knowledge of their opinions, and have not entered into a minute investigation.” He could have added that the straightlaced Tertullian also objected to Christians acting upon the stage.

There is also support for philosophy in the Bible itself. The magi who spent many months in a pilgrimage to see the Christ child were students of both books and stars, astronomy-philosophers of Persia. The Bible calls them wise men, and so wise were they that they could read the signs of the times and know that the world ruler had been born in a remote land. Is it not noteworthy that God would reveal His mind to philosophers relative to the most important event of all history?

And was not Paul a disciple of poets and philosophers, and does he not often quote them in his writings? He quotes from Aratus, who was a student of Zeno the Stoic, in Acts 17:28 “For we are also his offspring.” But the apostle said “Some of your poets” in the plural, so he may have also had in mind Cleanthes, a Stoic philosopher, who in his Hymn to Zeus identified himself with all that lives, animals as well as men, by saying “for from him we are offspring.” Paul said this in the city of the philosophers, demonstrating to the Athenians that he was acquainted with their wisdom, and on that same day he disputed with the Stoics and Epicureans in their classrooms, insisting that in Christ the philosophical quest of truth finds its culmination.

In 1 Cor. 15:33 he quotes from one of Menander’s comedies: “Bad company is the ruin of good character,” and in Titus 1:12 from the Cretan philosopher Epimenides: “Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons.” Paul adds to this last quotation: “And he told the truth!” Epimenides is introduced by Paul as a Cretan, who in turn is quoted as saying Cretans always lie. So Paul contradicts his own reference by insisting that at least one Cretan is truthful!

Were these moral judgments quoted by Paul sources of divine wisdom? Did God burn it into the moral consciousness of Menander that “Bad company is the ruin of good character” so that humanity might be blessed by such truth, that it might be quoted by His own envoy to the Gentile world? Did God inspire Aratus to write about mankind as God’s offspring so that Paul could use it in behalf of the gospel 350 years later? If God plans the sparrow’s flight, He is surely at work in the minds of those who write for future generations.

Take Epimenides. He was considered one of the seven wise men of the ancient world. To Plato he was “a divinely inspired man” and “a man dear to the gods.” Even more noteworthy is that, according to the historian Diogenes Laertius, it was Epimenides who urged the Athenians to build an altar “to the appropriate god,” which led to the erection of the altar to the unknown God, to which Paul makes reference in Acts 17.

Even from these fragmentary quotations we have a strong case for saying that the wise men of the ancient world had some knowledge of the true God of heaven. Their study of philosophy caused them to recognize God as the heavenly parent of all men, that He revealed a moral law to them, and that such things as lying and gluttony are wrong. Paul says Epimenides was a prophet, meaning of course that he was considered such by the Cretans. But was he not a prophet of God too? An envoy of the moral law among the Greeks at about the same time Malachi was to the Jews. Did not Paul say that Epimenides told the truth—truth that found its way into the Bible? Where did the old wise man get that truth?

Remember that it was Paul who said that God has never left Himself without witness. Does it not seem that these old philosophers were witnessing for Him in the ancient pagan world?

John also drew upon philosophy in the account of the gospel that he composed for the Greek mind. When he wrote “In the beginning was Logos, and Logos was with God, and Logos was God,” he was dealing with an idea that went back 600 years into Greek thought. It is odd that it started at Ephesus in about 560 B.C., the very city where John was later to relate the concept of the Christian faith. Heraclitus was an Ephesian philosopher who students remember as “the apostle of change” in that he insisted that everything is in a constant state of flux. One cannot step into the same river twice, he contended, for things change that fast. Yet the universe is not chaotic, but purposive and orderly. There is a pattern and design to all of nature and the controlling power is Logos.

Heraclitus taught the ancient Greeks that Logos is the source of man’s reasoning powers, and it is that which enables him to distinguish between right and wrong. “All things happen according to Logos” and “Logos is the judge of truth,” he said. Indeed, to Heraclitus Logos was the mind of God that rules the universe and controls the life of every man.

The Greeks were fascinated by this grand concept, and they never let it die. It was the Stoics who made the idea so popular among the masses that John could write of Logos as if it were a term of ordinary conversation. The Stoics explained that it was Logos that gave meaning to the world and to human existence. It is “the Reason of God that pervades all things,” and it was this Reason that explained all mysteries.

Philo, an Alexandrian Jewish philosopher, is another of that era that spoke of Logos in terms similar to that of the apostle John. He said all that the Stoics and Heraclitus had said, but added the idea that the Logos is the intermediary between the world and God, a kind of priest that sets the soul before God. In his many writings he refers to the Logos 1300 times!

How much John was influenced by these sources in his use of Logos we cannot, of course, know. It is clear enough, however, that in writing to the Greeks about the Christ he made use of a great idea that their own sages had long since conditioned them to reverence. To them the Logos was the preserving, guiding, creating power of God. So John is saying to them: “Your parents and grandparents taught you about Logos, how it creates and preserves the universe, how it gives you the power to reason, and how it mediates between you and God. I am telling you that Logos has become a Person and dwells in flesh like we do, in order to bring us salvation. Jesus the Christ is Logos.”

Here we have an elegant illustration of how Greek philosophy helped to prepare the minds of the people for the implantation of gospel truth. The apostle Paul tells us that it was in “the fulness of time” that God sent forth His son. History had to ripened to the degree that man would be receptive to God’s quest through the Christ. The philosophers were thus tutors unto Christ, preparing the Greek mind in a way not too different from the way John the Baptist and the prophets prepared the Jewish mind.

Not only has philosophy spoken of God in the ancient world, but in the modern world as well. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the French mathematician philosopher, is called “the father of modern philosopher” in that he gave the world an approach to truth that was radically different from the obscurantism of the medieval fathers. He took up where the Greek philosophers had left off 2,000 years before, seeking to transcend the long parenthesis of monasticism, sometimes called “the Dark Ages.”

Descartes was a great doubter, determined to accept nothing as true that he could not prove positively. His “Rules for the Direction of the Mind” has been an inspiration to scientists for generations, forming a basis for the scientific method. He undertook to apply these rules to all of life’s experiences, even his own existence, and thus refused to accept as true even what seemed obvious, such as whether he was at the moment seated before the fire! He might be dreaming or he might be deceived. So he came to question his own existence until he could establish it on rational grounds.

But he who started by doubting his own existence ended by knowing with certainty not only his own existence but the existence of God as well. His famous saying “I think, therefore I am” was the basis of his reason. If 1 think, 1 have to exist, even if 1 am deceived or dreaming. Thus he established with certainty his own existence. He went on to argue that proof of his own existence necessarily proves the existence of God, for “something cannot proceed from nothing.”

He reasoned this way too: (1) I have an idea of God. (2) Everything, including my idea, has a cause. (3) Since the greater cannot proceed from the less, nothing less than God is adequate to explain my idea of God. (4) Therefore God exists.

One might not go along with this kind of reasoning, and many philosophers do not. But it supports our thesis that philosophy is a discipline friendly to religious faith. If a “father” of philosophy like Descartes would attempt to prove beyond doubt the existence of God through reason alone, then surely philosophy is on speaking terms with religion.

There is, of course, good and bad philosophy, and there are false systems of philosophy; but the same is true of art, music, literature, and everything else. And whenever any system of thought arbitrarily seeks to undermine and adulterate the good and the true and the holy, it is to be, once it is thoroughly examined, summarily rejected. We take it that this is what Paul had reference to in deprecating “philosophy, falsely so called” in Col. 2:8.

Philosophy is of God and speaks for God. The sound may often be uncertain, but this too is important, for even a gnawing doubt can be healthy. Not the least of philosophy’s gifts to man is the cultivation of an uneasy conscience. God’s concerned ones come from such ranks.—the Editor