Philosophy 2: What Is Philosophy?

“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God…” (Hebrews 5:11–6:1, ESV).

Having done a bit of ground-clearing in the first paper, let’s turn our attention to what philosophy actually is. While the first paper may have hinted at a definition, it wasn’t nearly sufficient for our purposes. The definition I operated from, as a matter of convenience, was “to set the mind on things above.” My three primary reasons for doing this were 1) my Christian readers would not argue with the importance of setting one’s mind on heavenly things. 2) I wanted to show that the Scriptures themselves draw a distinction between elementary, earthly things and heavenly things. And, 3) I wanted to impress into the reader’s mind that the Bible does indeed teach that we have access to these heavenly things.

In this section of Hebrews, the author actually urges Christians to stop thinking as children and to move on to what is mature. They are instructed to do this by leaving the elementary doctrine of Christ, meaning those basic teachings they had already heard over and over again, and to go on to maturity. In other words, the writer of Hebrews is exhorting these Christians to leave the milk and seek the meat, to take what they have learned and learn more about those things. The pursuit of wisdom causes the Christian to mature and to grow, which is why philosophy is absolutely indispensible to our faith.

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

The word “philosophy” comes from two Greek words. The first is “phileo,” meaning “brotherly love,” or as C.S. Lewis once described it, “friendship love.” The second word, “sophia,” means “wisdom.” Wisdom is sort of like a conductor for knowledge. It shows which knowledge is important and worth going out and getting more of. So, “philosophy” is “the love of wisdom,” and the “philosopher” is “one who is a loving friend to wisdom.” So when people rail against philosophy, what they are really saying is that they despise wisdom and the pursuit of worthwhile knowledge. But, what such people really mean to say is that they despise the confusion of man’s opinions and speculations with Biblical truths. Nonetheless, as we shall see, philosophy is not man opining or speculating. It is not wise to throw out the baby with the bath water, so to speak.

Philosophy consists of three major branches or categories. I like referring to them as 1) The Word, 2) Revelation, and 3) Worship. Although these are not their more academic labels, the Bible uses these terms to refer to the same things. The academic names given to these are as follows: 1) Metaphysics, 2) Epistemology, and 3) Ethics. So, let’s deal with each of these in turn.

When I use the word “metaphysics,” it is likely to bring up some rather questionable mental images for many of us. Perhaps it’s something like a swami floating in the air in a meditative trance? Whatever strange, esoteric images this word may conjure up, rest assured that’s not what is being referred to here. Metaphysics simply deals with what real. It deals with reality. It asks the question, “What exists?” and “What kind of a thing is it?” You, reader, ask this question all the time, whether or not you are aware of it: “Is that true?” Ever asked that question? You are essential asking, “Is it real? Does that state of affairs really exist?”

“Metaphysics” comes from two Greek words: “meta,” referring to that which is “beyond,” “transcendent,” or “encompassing.” The term also refers to changes or transformations in the very nature or essence of something, such as in the word, “metamorphosis.” The second word, “physis,” means “nature,” which derives from the Latin word, “natura.” It is also where we get the word “physics.” Metaphysics studies the physical universe, or nature, as well as objects that exist beyond nature, in other words, “super-nature.” So metaphysics studies being and essence. Being deals with the existence of a thing: Does it exist? Essence deals with the nature of the thing: What kind of a think is it? If something exists, it is a thing with a nature. It is a thing that has content, namely, attributes. Thus, this branch of philosophy studies the being and essence of all things, as well as causality.

 It might be uncomfortable to see eternal, and invisible things as “objects,” since we are so acclimated to seeing objects as physical things, but that is what philosophers originally meant by this term. There is a reason why the meanings of such words like “object” and “subject” or “objective” and “subjective” have been turned upside down and distorted, it’s really the same reason we don’t care for words like “philosophy” and “metaphysics.” We will delve into the history of this shift in thinking later, but what happened was that objective, eternal things got supplanted by the subject, or man, the knower. Man, the knower, became “the measure of all things” and the “determiner of truth,” so philosophy collapsed into naturalism. The church led the assault on philosophy, denying the knowability and the clarity of God’s speech in creation. We’ll later look into how that happened, but suffice it to say, the reason pastors and other Christians see philosophy as an enemy today is because they drank the secular humanist’s kool-aid.  This is also the major reason why the church is dying off in the West.

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world…,” (Psalm 19:1–4).

Moving on, the word “epistemology” also consists of two Greek words: “pistis,” meaning “faith,” and “logos” meaning “word.” Anytime we see the word “ology” at the end of a word, it refers to the study of it, e.g., biology, anthropology, psychology, Christology, sociology, theology, and so forth. Indeed, another word sometimes used as a synonym to metaphysics is “ontology,” meaning the study of “ontos,” or “being.” What epistemology deals with is truth criterion. It asks the question, “How do you know that you know?”

Because of the reasons I mentioned before, epistemology is not widely understood. Visit almost any college or university, and the professors there think it means, “How do you know?” One professor might mean, “How does the human brain learn?” This would be a question of interest to neurologists, cognitive scientists, or psychiatrists. Another professor might mean, “How do YOU know? Tell us about your journey, your upbringing, or your past experiences.”  In other words, “Tell us about how that hamburger in your skull manipulates a meaningless existence to determine truth and meaning for yourself.”

That’s not what epistemology means. Epistemology asks a much deeper question about knowledge: “How do you know that you know?” To put it another way, “How do you know that what you are saying is true knowledge, and not opinion or mere speculation?” This question flies in the face of those who think philosophy consists of mere human speculations. The statement, “You can’t build a ladder of reason up to God,” should be highly problematic to the Christian thinker for a number of reason. For one thing, it assumes that human agency is autonomous, as though man can build up anything by his own volition. For another, it assumes that reason and knowledge originate in the human knower, the subject, when they do not.

The knowledge of a thing originates from the thing being known, the object. If the object had no existence, then we couldn’t know it because it doesn’t exist to be known. All knowledge, meaning actual knowledge of a thing, is known to man by it being revealed to him, which is to say, by revelation. So if a man “reasons his way to God,” it isn’t because he built his own ladder out of nothing whatsoever, but because God revealed something of Himself to the knower. I understand that this is the opposite of what we have been taught to think, but we have been taught a bad definition of reason fashioned by earlier Rationalists through the filter of Modernists and Postmodernists who reject Rationalism. But the Bible doesn’t teach Rationalism, it teaches Monotheism, or as the secular world sometimes calls it, Realism.

So how does philosophy separate speculation from knowledge? Well, epistemology makes use of coherent, orderly, and systematic thinking to do this. It’s called “logic,” which also derives its name from the Greek word “logos.” The apostle John makes heavy use of this philosophical term, which was well-known to the Greco-Roman philosophers of his time. The term, usually translated as “word,” in English bibles, also means “the rational ordering principle.”

In John 1:1, the biblical writer makes use of a second philosophical term, “arche.” In our bibles, the words “en arche,” are translated “in the beginning.” This is a good translation, but it loses the Greco-Roman philosophical nuances in English bibles. The term “arche” did not just refer to the beginning of time, but also to the first thing epistemologically and the highest thing in existence. It is that which from all other things find their being. It is the thing which brought all other things into existence, organized them into a coherent system or unity, and animated them. John was declaring, to those familiar with Epicurean and Stoic philosophies, that Jesus was “en arche ho logos”—that One in the beginning. This is why the prologue of John’s gospel is riddled with philosophical terminology.

What is behind logic is Jesus, the logos, or the truth. Truth is a single, unified thing. It doesn’t change or contradict itself. And truth is revealed in all the things God has made. To be rational is an acknowledgement that there really is a rational, ordering principle behind all of nature, that it must be objective, unchanging, binding on all other things, eternal, invisible, and infinite. To deny the existence of truth or any part of its essence is also to deny the validity of your own statements and claims. Logic does not judge God, and it certainly does not build “a ladder of reason” up to Him, but it does judge our statements about everything, including those about God. It separates the rational from the irrational, the valid from the invalid, or the possible from the impossible. Logic affirms everything, but judges our statements about those things.

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.” (Romans 1:18–25)

Sin and denial of God is intrinsically irrational. If God truly is the rational ordering principle and creator of all things, then it follows that all things accord to Him. What this means is man does not sin because he is using “human reasoning,” but that he isn’t being reasonable at all. Instead, he is suppressing the truth, the reality of how things really are, unconsciously, in his unrighteousness. He does it because he is a thing, with a fallen and sinful nature.

We will return to the topics of epistemology, knowledge, and logic in a future paper. There is much more to be said, and this branch of philosophy is going to be the primary focus. First, we still need to further articulate what “knowledge” really is. Second, we need to into some good depth concerning logic, its laws, what it is, and so forth. Third, classical philosophy fell away from Western thought because of a lot of very bad ideas about epistemology from the period of the Enlightenment to our own times. All other worldviews, or so-called “philosophies,” actually fail truth criterion rather miserably, which will be demonstrated in these papers. For the time being, suffice it say that all of nature is merely an echo of the utterances of God, and both Scripture and reason bear witness to this invincible truth.

Ethics is the third branch of philosophy. It too comes from the Greek, “ethos,” which means “character.” It asks the question, “In light of the way things are, how then should we live?” How a man is to act, depends upon what sort of reality this is, which is why ethics comes after metaphysics and epistemology. To put the law at the top, which Scripture does not do, or at the center of existence, is called “legalism.” For those of you with some biblical knowledge, this was why Jesus told the religious leaders that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, then declared Himself as being greater than the Sabbath (cf., Mark 2:27). Jesus was declaring to them the actual order of the universe in terms of the law’s relationship to Himself and the Sabbath’s relationship to man, revealing its purpose in God’s design.

So ethics comes out of what kind of reality existence actually is. Man beholds the things of God because they are speech from the mind of God to the mind of man, either he will see and worship, or turn away and sin. But if all is nature, then there really is no reason to act in accordance with any ethical standard, since none exist except in the human imagination. Matter and molecules are not sufficient causes for ethical standard by any rational criteria whatsoever. We have just as much cause to react to the imagined morality of others as we do a madman babbling about monsters under his bed.  Either there is something real that is sufficient in itself to cause an objectively binding law, or no such thing exists at all. The naturalist is stuck with this hairy dilemma, no matter how he tries to tap dance his way out. He will fail the logical test of cause and effect.

However, worship is central and foundational to Christian ethics. Since all things are made by Him, and through Him, and for Him, as John 1:3 and Romans 11:36 tell us, and since God made all things, both visible and invisible, as Col 1:16 declares, there exists no thing that is not for God. As it is written, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God,” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Although it does indeed equip us to make a defense, philosophy is not merely a matter of apologetics. Even though it arms us to effectively attack the strongholds of the Lord’s enemies, it is more than just polemics as well. As necessary as philosophical thinking reason is in those endeavors, its primary purpose is to behold the things of the Lord, both the visible and the invisible, in order to discover and to know their purpose and their design that we may worship in Him as He created us to do. The search for knowledge, wisdom, and truth in the Lord is how we grow into maturity as disciples of the Lord, Jesus Christ. To prefer the elementary teachings, for their childish simplicity, is unbiblical, preferring the milk of the Gospel over the weightier matters of the Gospel, the meat of the word.  The teacher that encourages the sheep to not use their minds, keeping the flock from reaching maturity, will have to give an account to the Lord one day. Let us pray that we all use our minds in an orderly, purposeful way to consider the many, many things our Father has revealed to us.