One of the reasons for my starting this blog was to try to think through what the best relationship between Christianity and an activity like philosophy could be. See my first post here. It’s my hope that this question interests not only those who dabble in philosophy, but other Christians who may be curious whether there is a relationship between their vocations or areas of work; their hobbies or ‘regular/neutral’ activity, and their belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and is now Lord. Art, sport, commerce, music, law, government, medicine, media – you name it! – how should anything like this fit with my faith? This is the question of integration.
Anyway, this big question which motivates my blogging is sometimes obscured by all the small, fragmented posts which tip-toe around this issue and poke it with a stick.
But here is a quote which tackles this central question head on. And it’s from none other than – the Pope! Or at least, a previous Pope. Read this quote a few times, and think about whether
1) You think this is a good picture of faith and philosophy, and
2) Whether this principle that John Paul II is espousing is one that throws any other areas of your life into a helpful light. The quote is somewhat bizarre, but pretty stimulating I think.
Put your thinking caps on…
Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself fully as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its critical and rational resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just how in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds to the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed it is then that philosophy sees all its enquires rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary ‘the table at which faith sits in thought’.
– John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998)
To my lights, this quote walks a tightrope which many theories of integration walk. On the one hand, it affirms that God exists, and that all good things are created by God – including abstract human activities like philosophy. On the other hand, it wants to say that this human activity is at its best when it is orientated towards God, when it is talking about Christianity, when it is coming to the aid of the more important activity which is theology. This amounts to saying: created things are kinda good, but they need to be explicitly and fruitfully giving themselves over to the causes of God to be their best. From my (quite limited) reading, the most well-known Christian philosophy buys into this approach – such as Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Norman Geisler etc.
What troubles me about this is the small place that this theory has for philosophy qua philosophy as a part of life. What troubles me about this is the implicit spiritual elitism which carves the world up into ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ categories and then maintains that the secular things are actually only good when they get a bit of the religious in them, or when they subordinate themselves to the religious. Implicit in this view is the idea that if you aren’t working full-time in ministry, theology, charity or some such endeavour, then you are doing something second rate.
This is a view which can then colour a whole outlook on life.
I think Calvin’s mysterious, restrained and humble remark is gesturing more in a direction I’m comfortable with. Calvin wrote,
Shall we say the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably?
– John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), II.ii.15
On Living Your Philosophy
September 18, 2009
Nowadays, if a philosopher finds he cannot answer the philosophical question ‘What is time?’ or ‘Is time real?’, he applies for a research grant to work on the problem during next year’s sabbatical. He does not suppose that the arrival of next year is actually in doubt. He insulates his ordinary first order judgments from the effects of his philosophizing
– Myles Burnyeat, The Original Sceptics (1998), p. 92
I recently attended an open lecture at the Presbyterian Theological Centre, in which UK philosopher/theologian/blogger Paul Helm spoke about the intellectual biography of John Calvin. One of his central points was that although Calvin wrote in the sixteenth century, his writings are much more at home in and indebted to the world of ancient thought, rather than modern thought. Helm suggested that it makes more sense to read him in light of Plato, the Stoics and Augustine, then it does to read him in light of medieval, early modern or Enlightenment figures. Helm used the above quote from the brilliant classicist and philosopher Myles Burnyeat to bring all this into focus.
Burnyeat argues that what classified the ancient philosophers was a commitment to live their philosophy. These days, he says, philosophical activity is thought to be more theoretical inquiry then it is life guiding wisdom. Philosophers are expected to write logically tight, rigorously argued, interesting and abstract papers, rather than wander the market place in search of an honest man (like Diogenes did), or heroically stare death in the face because you are convinced of the maxim that nothing can harm a good man after death (like Socrates did).
Helm’s point was that Calvin bought into this ancient conception of philosophy, and it permeated his thinking about religion. Religion is far from a theoretical, cool, abstract, detached type of inquiry (at one point, Helm surprisingly stated that Calvin derisively refers to this kind of activity as ‘theology!’), but religion is meant to energize and guide your life, it is meant to be the practical wisdom that you consult in all things.
I found this to be a really interesting suggestion from Helm, and one I will keep in mind as I read Plato and (hopefully!) Calvin/Calvinists. But I suspect that his allegedly neutral-historical-lecture had an implicitly pointy provocation.
I felt like Helm was suggesting that those Christians who claim to stand in Calvin’s legacy ought to think about whether they are of a similar frame of mind. Do we tend to insulate our first order beliefs from our religious convictions? Do we live our religion? Are we more like the ancient philosophers whose knowledge and thoughts led them to do certain (crazy!) things? Or are we more like the insulated academic who professes to be a specialist in radical theories of time, but has no doubts that tomorrow will come like it always has? Are we insulating ourselves from our knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
Know Thyself
August 4, 2009
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1938)
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
– Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
Humanity never achieves a clear knowledge of itself unless it has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize itself.
– John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1560)
Taken together, these three quotes paint a rich picture of the importance and the challenge of self-knowledge. Kant suggests that having a correct and detailed knowledge of yourself is necessary for living well, but warns that gaining such knowledge is often the outcome of prolonged and painful periods of introspection. Periods in which we may come face to face with a realistic image of ourself that grieves us, disappoints us, or demands much of us. 
Wittgenstein adds that such knowledge is elusive and hard to come by. It is hidden behind a misleading web of images that we construct about ourselves, and in order to grasp it we need to stop lying to ourselves. It is as though we know that coming face to face with ourselves very well may cause us pain like Kant suggests, and so our minds grab readily onto deceit to avoid this pain.
Calvin suggests that the most important way in which can free ourselves from such deceit is by ensuring that we do not engage in introspection without first considering our being and place compared with God, and indeed not before contemplating God alone. If we do this, Calvin envisions us coming to terms with our smallness, our finitude, our limits and our weaknesses which we try to keep from ourselves. Without contemplating God, there is little hope of our escaping the deceit Wittgenstein suggests is our default position.
What I love about these three quotes taken together is the similarity between Kant and Calvin in emphasising the ethical direction of self-knowledge, and the sober warning from Wittgenstein. Do you think these quotes establish the importance of introspection and frame it in the right way? Is a right knowledge of oneself necessary for living well, and so something we ought to be chasing after?
