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
