Reflections on Biblical and
Christian Philosophy

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the Purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery. (Quoted in Titus et al from Language, Truth, and Logic, 2^nd rev. ed., New York: Dover, 1946, page 33)

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“It is difficult for me to draw any sharp distinction between a Christian theology and a Christian philosophy. Philosophy generally is understood as an attempt to understand the world in it broadest, most general features. It includes metaphysics, or ontology (the study of being, of what “is”), epistemology (the study of knowing), and the theory of values (ethics, esthetics, etc.). If one seeks to develop a truly Christian philosophy, he will certainly be doing so under the authority of Scripture and thus will be applying Scripture to philosophical questions. As such, he would be doing theology, according to our definition. Christian philosophy, then, is a subdivision of theology. Furthermore, since philosophy is concerned with reality in a broad, comprehensive sense, it may well take it as its task to ‘apply the Word of God to all areas of life.’ That definition makes philosophy identical with, not a subdivision of, theology.

If there are any differences between the Christian theologian and the Christian philosopher, they would probably be (1) that the Christian philosopher spends more time studying natural revelation than the theologian, and the theologian spends more time studying Scripture, and (2) that the theologian seeks a formulation that is an application of Scripture and thus absolutely authoritative. His goal is a formulation before which he can utter, “Thus saith the Lord.” A Christian philosopher, however, may have a more modest goal—a wise human judgment that accords with what Scripture teaches, though it is not necessarily warranted by Scripture.

A Christian philosopher can be of great value in helping us to articulate in detail the biblical world view. We must beware, however, of “philosophical imperialism.” The comprehensiveness of philosophy has often led philosophers to seek to rule over all other disciplines, even over theology, over God’s Word. Even philosophers attempting to construct a Christian philosophy have been guilt of this, and some have even insisted that Scripture itself cannot be understood properly unless it is read in a way prescribed by the philosopher! Certainly, philosophy can help us to interpret Scripture; philosophers often have interesting insights about language, for example. But the line must be drawn: where a philosophical scheme contradicts Scripture or where it seeks to inhibit the freedom of exegesis without Scriptural warrant, it must be rejected.” (Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, page 85-86—Ed's emphases)

James Jordan

“Philosophy… a word for non-religion, as least traditionally…. an icon of the mind… more subtle than (idolatrous) worship through images…. The development of ‘philosophy’ … which came about the same time as the prophetic movement was raised up by God among His people… Buddha … Confucius … Lao-Tse … Plato and Aristotle.

Virtually from the beginning, philosophy was political philosophy, designed to support the city of man. Philosophy was the religion of the state, the new form of the “court prophet” … (rejecting) personal gods and worship … (debating) what ‘ultimate being was like. Full-fledged philosophy arrived with Socrates and Plato, who sough to bring this horrible thinking into the city and persuade the people to stop worshipping personal spirits and refound their cities on the empty consolations of philosophy….

The differences between Confucius, Plato, and Buddha should not blind us to their fundamental sameness…. Lao-Tse, the Plato of China, advocated an inner contemplation. Plato advocated a new and more radically anti-God political order, wherein contemplated abstraction such as the Good would replace the worship of living gods. Buddha took a more anti-political position, leaving the city to do its business while advocating a kind of dropping our of society. But this position is still in the overall context of doing philosophy (religion) in political terms. Aristotle, heir of Plato, managed to reconcile Plato’s radical ideas with practical politics, as Confucius, heir of Lao-Tse, did in China.'

http://www.biblicalhorizons.com/open-book/the-case-against-western-civilization-parts-1-7/

Carl F. H. Henry

In Augustine's view, philosophy is serviceable to explicate the wisdom found in Scripture.  Since the living God has spoken in special revelation known in the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, the Christian philosopher should not hesitate to make full use of what the Greek philosophers did not know.  The task of philosophy is to show men the way to blessedness, and Christianity exhibits this way as provided by Jesus Christ alone, Christianity can be considered a philosophy, the term being sufficiently broad to include theology.  Although in his early works against skepticism, he defines certain normative principles without reference to Scripture, divine revelation and authority rather than human reasoning are for him the starting point of 'Christian philosophy'; not philosophical speculation, but inspired Scripture constitutes the gateway to truth.  (Henry, God, Revelation..., pages 183-184, Vol. 1)

C. Stephen Evans

Enlightenment critiques of the reasonableness of religious belief point to defects not so much in religious belief as in the conceptions of knowledge uncritically adopted as the basis of these critiques.  Maybe religious knowledge looks dubious because we have the wrong idea about what it is to know something and how we know what we know.  (Quoted in Moreland, Philosophical Foundations..., page 154)

William Shakespeare

“Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy.”

Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Herman Bavinck (1854-1921)

Philosophy always has a special character about it and can become the portion of only the few.  These select ones, who can devote their whole lives to the discipline of learning, can traverse only a small part of its terrain, and they remain strangers to the rest.  Whatever satisfaction knowledge can give, therefore, it can never, because of this special and limited character, satisfy the general deep needs which were planted in human nature at creation, and which therefore are present in everybody.

Philosophy, whenever after a period of decay ... enters upon a period of revival again, always begins with an extraordinary and exaggerated expectation.  At such a time it lives in the hope that by means of continued serious investigation it will solve the riddle of the world.  But always after this young over-excitement the old disillusionment enters in.  So far from decreasing, the problems increase as the study proceeds.  What seemed to be self-evident proves to be a new mystery, and the end of all knowledge is then again the sad and sometimes despairing confession that man walks about on the earth in riddles, and that life and destiny are mysteries.

Philosophy ... even though it could arrive at much more certainty that it is now able to achieve, would still leave the heart of man unsatisfied.  For knowledge without virtue, without a moral basis, becomes an instrument in the hands of sin for conceiving and executing greater evil, and then the hear that is filled with knowledge enters into the service of a depraved heart.  In this sense the Apostle writes: Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and have not love, I am nothing (I Corinthians 13:2).  (Our Reasonable Faith, pages 20-21)

These modern movements are all alike seeking after religion, after the supreme good, abiding happiness, true being, absolute worth.  Even though the word “religion” be avoided and the new-fashioned term “world-view” preferred, in point of fact the satisfaction of no other need is aimed at than that which used to be supplied by religion.  As to the proper definition of such a worldview, there exists considerable divergence of opinion.  But whether … we define philosophy as the theory of “the determination of values” … the science of “normal consciousness”, or … a mode of viewing the world and life “which shall satisfy both the demands of reason and the needs of the heart,” in any case it is plain that philosophy but seeks to vindicate the higher ideals of humanity, to satisfy its deepest needs.  Philosophy wishes itself to serve as religion, and from an attitude of contempt for all theology has veered round to a profession of being itself a search after God.  (Ibid, pages 31-32)

K. Scott Oliphint

'There is no significant body of knowledge that is taken to be universally true with respect to the subject matter of philosophy.... a discipline such as philosophy has had a few millennia to define itself, and has thus far not been successful.'  (Reasons for Faith, page ix)

Greg Bahnsen (1948-1955)

"Just think of the Continental rationalists (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz), who began with supposedly clear and distinct, 'self-evident' ideas (notice their internal, subjective character), and yet derived from them radically and embarrassingly different conclusions about reality (dualism, monism, pluralism).  Then consider the British empiricists (Locke, Berkeley, Hume), who traced the mind's ideas back to individual sensation (notice again the internal, subjective locus), only to render a 'substance' that unites properties inexplicable (Locke), to dispense with material substance (Berkeley), and then to lose altogether any mental substance or 'self' that unites perceptions (Hume).  As Kant concluded, to the degree the mind knows its own inner contents (constituted by its own activity in forming the input of the senses), it still has no knowledge of things-in-themselves outside the mind.  The predicament is that man as a knower can never 'get outside' the ideas formed within himself.  When the unbeliever begins his philosophizing  with himself at the center, he ends up unable to escape himself (subjectivism); and since every unbeliever faces the same dilemma, nobody can speak with authority about objective reality for anybody else (relativism)."  (Van Til's Apologetic: Readings and Analysis, 315)

Johann Georg Hamann (1730-1788)

"Philosophical genius expresses its power through striving, by means of abstraction, to make what is present absent; it disrobes actual objects into naked concepts and merely conceivable attributes, into pure appearances and phenomena." Hamann was a contemporary of Kant, experienced a dramatic conversion to Christianity, and was a strategic force in the Counter-Enlightenment.   

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

René Descartes (1596-1650)

Descartes, writing to Picot, who translated the Principia Philosophiae into French, observed: "Thus the whole of philosophy is like a tree: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches that issue from the trunk are all the other sciences . . ."

Friederich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir; also that the moral (or immoral) intentions in every philosophy constituted the real germ of life from which the whole plant had grown.

Indeed, if one would explain how the most abstruse metaphysical claims of a philosopher really came about, it is always well (and wise) to ask first: at what morality does all this (does he) aim?  Accordingly, I do not believe that a “drive to knowledge” is the father of philosophy; but rather that another drive has, here as elsewhere, employed understanding (and misunderstanding) as a mere instrument.  But anyone who considers the basic drives of a man to see to what extent they may have been at play just here as inspiring spirits (or demons or kobolds) will find that all of them have done philosophy at some time—and that every single one of them would like only too well to represent just itself as the ultimate purpose of existence and the legitimate master of all the other drives.  For every drive wants to be master—and it attempts to philosophize in that spirit.

To be sure: among scholars who are really scientific (19^th century meaning) men, things may be different—“better,” if you like—there you may really find something like a drive for knowledge, some small, independent clockwork that , once well wound, works on vigorously without any essential participation from all the other drives of the scholar.  The real interests of the scholar, therefore lie usually somewhere else—say, in his family, in making money, or in politics.  Indeed, it is almost a matter of total indifference whether his little machine is placed at this or that spot in science (19^th century meaning), and whether the “promising” young worker turns himself into a good philologist or an expert on fungi or a chemist; it does not characterize him that he becomes this or that.  In the philosopher, conversely, there is nothing whatever that is impersonal; and above all, his morality bears decided and decisive witness to who he is—that is, in what order of rank the innermost drives of his nature stand to each other.  (Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by Walter Kaufmann, Vintage Books, 1966, ¶6)