Well, supposing one is a Christian, then there obviously can be no non-Christian philosophy, for what is a philosophy that excludes the most important facts and principles of existence? That's not philosophy, rather, the opposite: love of ignorance. It is also idolatry.
A genuine philosophy must begin with an acknowledgment of its own impossibility -- or in other words, that we are not God. Otherwise, one is essentially claiming that "There is no God, and I am him." But if there is no God, then only he could know it, for it requires godlike vision to make such a categorical claim.
"Philosophizing," writes Pieper, "means asking what is the meaning of all that we call 'life' or 'reality' or simply this 'totality.'" And if you imagine you're actually capable of fully comprehending the meaning of life-reality-totality, then -- well, you're not God, but you certainly think you are.
Which is a real danger. It is a danger because the only possible stance toward infinite reality is a humble openness that can never be fulfilled from side of finitude. We can only form a loving relationship with the object of philosophy.
Only? Only?! What a dangerous and dismissive little word! You're telling me we can only form a dynamic and fruitful relationship with the living ground of being? I'll take it.
What's the alternative? Only idolatry.
I suppose philosophy was ruined when it became a mere academic discipline. A degree in mathematics or engineering is one thing, but to be a credentialed philosopher is to not know what philosophy is. Or, a person who is only a philosopher isn't even that. Likewise an "academic theologian," because one cannot think about God without thinking in -- or better, with -- God. There can be no such thing as "impersonal" theology, any more than there could exist an "impersonal psychology" or "empirical logic."
Pieper:
a person cannot be called wise, but at most he can be called one who lovingly seeks wisdom.... The essential philosophical question is about the search for a wisdom which -- in principle -- we can never "have" as a possession as long as we are in our present condition of bodily existence.
So, the first philosophical question is whether philosophy is even possible. Yes, so long as it is understood as loving-relation as opposed to a one-sided possession. The latter is strictly impossible. Crowning it with a PhD is like covering a dungheap with snow (to borrow an analogy from Martin Luther which he used in a very different context).
Even God doesn't "possess" wisdom; or at least he is never possessive, in that he -- literally -- never stops giving it away. According to Christian metaphysics, the very essence of God is the loving generation of wisdom in the Son; there is nothing prior to this inspiraling dance of perichoresis or circumincession. In a roundabout way, God is only the perpetual gift of wisdom.
Which is only the whole point. Or at least a Big Hint. In America on Trial: A Defense of the Founding, Reilly quotes Justin Martyr:
The Logos is the preexistent, absolute, personal Reason and Christ is the embodiment of it, the Logos incarnate. Whatever is rational is Christian. And whatever is Christian is rational.
Which answers the question posed in the title of this post. "Christianity," says Reilly, "contains an invitation to reason because God's rationality guarantees reason's integrity." For backup, he calls in James Schall, who writes that "What is revealed does not demand the denial of intellect, but fosters it."
For "If God is Logos, reason and revelation are not at an impasse." And any so-called philosophy "that a priori excludes the possibility of revelation is a philosophy that is not true to itself. On its own terms, philosophy must remain open to revelation" (Reilly).
Me? I think the philosophizing intellect is already a revelation. You might say it is the "first revelation," in that it is a necessary condition to receive the others. No intellect, no problem. But with intellect, life is an endless problem.
If you want to see it that way. Instead of problem, I would say mystery-adventure-love story. If that's not the form of your life, then you do indeed have a problem. But only a problem.
13 comments:
No intellect, no problem.
Well, for the one without the intellect anyway. For everyone else...
It's like self-interest: say what you want about it, but at least it saddles society with one less burden.
Am I being too Christian when I say it wasn't very Christian of God The Father to have His Innocent Son tortured and crucified as a scapegoat when a peaceful transition would have sufficed. How can anyone feel it's o.k. to pray to this devil.
That's one way of looking at it.
So Anon opens his mouth emptily;
He multiplies words without knowledge.
Why are anti-Christian bigots always so woefully catechized? Oh, right.
Anonymous @5/06/2020 03:56:00 PM,
Apparently it was part of the plan, right from the start. You see, in the spiritual world time has no meaning, so God already knew everything that's going to ever happen in our little universe way back when he very first created it. IOW, if he wanted the most efficient way to destroy this universe he'd simply snuff out the moment of creation (or perhaps the moment he first thought of creation?). Nobody would be the wiser. This conversation would have never happened. In fact, maybe it's not happening right now and we just don't know it yet.
What you are speaking of is The Force Universe, Version 16. From our relative framework, that universe existed a very long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. In that universe Anakin was supposed to bring balance to the force but that flippin Kylo Ren screwed everything up with much aid from CGI, trying to compensate for very poor scriptwriting. Thankfully God learned from that one.
So be pleased that your own adventures are much better and make much more sense. The Innocent Son being tortured and crucified was part of the plan. God knew what was coming when he got us all into this mess.
But there are some who theorize that when God created this "self-interest" universe, full of hungry tardigrades and ravenous black holes, that he made Satan just a bit too powerful and now it's really Satan who's running things. That would mean that the real God is being held in a metaphysical force field of some sort and that somebody somewhere needs to think of a way to get him freed.
Hello All:
Christianity is a monotheist religion and Christian philosophy tends to be much the same as Islamic, Hindu, Vedic, Jewish, and OnaNo philosophy in essence. These all posit the existence of God and the stress the importance of moral conduct. There is wider variance only in the details.
So there is no philosophy that is not Christian, and the same could be said about the others.
The outlier is Buddhism, cut from a different cloth.
The main problem with any religion is the insistence that no others will work. I'm not sure why people insist on exclusivity.
The religious generalist is the outlier; she will tend to think all religions will work if applied diligently.
Now, it's time to talk about murder hornets. Why are they here? Who sent them? Have you seen one?
Murder hornets sound much worse than they are. But if they really are that bad, and if the government says that something needs to be done about them, then the government is probably behind it all and they just want your tax money. Unless the hornets are Islamic of course. Or Chinese. In which case this anonymous comment trying to entice trollish speculation must certainly be coming from a communist/satanist.
I still remember the age of Pascals Wager. As a little boy everybody in my town was a Christian. Yet you could still talk to anybody in a curious and speculative sense and ask probing questions. Like, why do they talk about dinosaurs in terms of millions of years while the Bible talks days? My cousin once replied to me about that, simply: "Maybe God is using a different concept of time?> He is after all, God." He was 14 years old. Today a typical 41 year old Christian will just glare at you and say: "I bet you're one of those Trump haters, aint cha"?
Everybody knew that Christianity was a faith yet nobody wanted to risk waking up one day surrounded by all these creepy little horned creatures poking sharp objects at them for forever.
What was different then from now, is that you could speculate. And if you were one of those fools who confused speculation with doubting, well then, enjoy the rest of your eternity with your creepy creatures. Your family might rubbing halos with awesomeness in the awesome place. And you'll be forgotten, forever. Why not play it safe, bro?
I noticed that this site is one of the only places where people can speculate. Yet even here, speculation has its limits. If speculation gets a little too 'trollish', then little horned creatures will start poking at you. And it sure seems like forever.
Something is different, then from now.
I would argue that what is called the spirit world is mostly time with very little space.
That is how the damned and the blessed are very close and very far.
This is why one should be careful whom they insult or curse because of perceived flaws. One could be in a place of trading places and that is a crush. The old high made low and so on and so forth.
I'm friends with two very nice therapist ladies. They do not know each other. I do contracting work for them.
Both are INFJ-ish, around 50 years old, good genes attractive, good parents from good families who hailed from small towns in Kansas and Nebraska. They've been faithfully married to men they met in their hometown youth. Both husbands are successful at their corporate MBA-type jobs, enough to buy nice large homes, but they hate their jobs.
Both ladies have two daughters apiece, all in college with two in grad school. Both families have had to move their families every few years for work. Dallas, Erie, Tucson, Santa Fe and Seattle are a few of the places.
Neither family is even remotely Christian. In fact, both ladies and one husband have openly stated to me that they could never be Christian. Yet both ladies are religious, in their own way. They tell me they're not "into the woo", yet one practices Buddhist yoga and the other some kind of native American shaman stuff I've never heard of.
I'm not sure why I'm bothered by this. I'm intrigued about their religious choices. Maybe I'll ask them some day, since they seem to enjoy sharing some of their private thoughts with me. I'd like to know what the turn-off from Christianity is.
Anonymous 04:19:
The therapist ladies you have described could be Transcendentalists. This is a uniquely American spiritual path, born in New England in the 19th Century.
The two chief apostles are R.W. Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau.
No, you don't have to know or read the Transcendentalist literature to practice it. Some people just slide right in to it.
Practicing Buddhism, doing Yoga, and native American shaman stuff are used as tools by the Transcendentalist. What they are trying to do is "transcend."
The Transcendentalist does not see God as having a personality or being a person, and there is where it does not conform to Christianity.
A Christian believes God is a Person and you can talk to God as one would talk to any person.
The Transcendentalist may offer some prayers to God but relies more on trancing out and concentrating on God and is not trying to talk to God with words.
Transcendentalists were the forerunners of all later "New Age" mystics and in fact were the house philosophers for the Hippy Movement.
Now you know. So get out your bong and take at least 3 good rips. Thank you. Damn the Murder Hornets, full speed ahead.....
I'm not so sure about this murder hornet craze. I mean, the natural range of this creature includes all of breadbasket China. They're saying that murder hornets will wipe out American bee populations, ruining the pollination of food crops. Yet China still produces more of agricultural-practically-anything than anybody else. You think pumpkins are an American thing? Nope. China grows more. Apples? China by a long shot. Even in corn they're second in the world to "cornbread, cornfed, and high fructose USA" and catching up.
So who's doing all the pollinating over there?
Satan. After the bees were murdered and Satan installed communism, all comrades shorter than 4'6" were required by commie law to work the fields with their little pollination brushes. Randy Newman once said that short people got no reason to live. Well now they do.
Short people in America will now be supporting statist/athiest revolutionary outfits like the Democratic Party and the liberal Methodist Church, in their quest for power after the bees are gone. I'm seeing the tee-shirts already. They think they're hiding behind their N-95s, but I'm not fooled. Trump needs to be ready with the derogatory tweets.
Okay, rant over. Do transcendentalists think they're going to heaven? What's in it for them, doing all this witchcraft?
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