If Christ is the Answer, What is the Question?

What does Christianity say about reality: what does it presume, and what does it add that we couldn't have just as well figured out on our own? 

As to the former, I think it presumes a philosophy of common sense realism; after all, Christianity is a non-starter if, for example, existentialism is case, existentialism being for Sartre the attempt to draw out the implications of a strict atheism.

Nor can Christianity be reconciled with positivism, materialism, rationalism, idealism, Marxism, hedonism, nominalism, and so many more. If these are true, then Christianity is not only false but cannot possibly be true.

Let's see, going down the list, there's absurdism, atomism, advaita Vedanta, analytic philosophy, Averroism, academic skepticism... and that's just some of the A's. 

I'm not sure if anything on the list short of Thomism -- or let us say the perennial philosophy more generally -- is capacious enough to do the job. Admittedly, I have no familiarity with some of those schools of thought, but surely they would have crossed my desk by now if they had something to them. In any case, my mind is always open. 

Clearly Christianity presumes a number of things about reality that have become controverted over the past half millennium or so -- for example, that a text means what it says, that there is such a thing as objectivity, that the universe is intelligible, that man possesses free will, that there is a reality transcending nature, etc. 

In our view, denial of any of these assumptions results in a self-refuting reductio absurdum -- for example, to say that objectivity is impossible is an objective statement. Likewise, to say that ultimate reality is material is the denial of spirit by spirit. If there is no free will, we could never know it, for truth is transcendent. And if a text has no fixed meaning, then nor does deconstruction -- it just becomes self-canceling nonsense.

Yesterday we spoke of how, for early Christian thinkers, "the gospel appeared to offer the answer to the philosopher's search for truth." Voegelin goes on to say that for these men, Christianity was "not an alternative to philosophy," but "philosophy itself in its state of perfection." Okay, like how?

The Logos has been operative in the world from its creation; all men who have lived according to reason... have in a sense been Christians.

This is in accord with what Augustine said:  

That which is known as the Christian religion existed among the ancients, and never did not exist; from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, at which time the true religion, which already existed began to be called Christianity.

The Logos is eternal, but "the history of the Logos comes to its fulfillment through the incarnation of the Word in Christ" (Voegelin, emphasis mine). It seems that the Logos is in history in a general way before becoming particularized in Christ. It's a strange idea, but once you accept the existence of the Logos, why not? 

For what exactly is the Logos? Reason, rationality, intelligible structure, intelligent beings. Who says the fullness of the Logos couldn't dwell in a single person? This is essentially the metaphysical claim in the prologue to John -- that the Light that gives light to man qua man becomes flesh and dwells among us, not just then but now. Indeed, it must always be now as a consequence of infinitude assuming finitude.

 Anyway, Voegelin suggests that

a believer who is unable to explain how his faith is an answer to the enigma of existence may be a "good Christian" but is a questionable man.

Ouch. I wouldn't go that far -- not everyone is cut out for philosophy -- but what is the question to which the Incarnation is the answer, and how does this event (and person) answer it?

There is no conflict "between gospel and philosophy," only "between the gospel and its uninquiring possession as doctrine." In other words, the latter is an unphilosophical attitude because it reduces the mystery to some explicit formulation, essentially conflating the words and the reality to which they point.

Instead of simply memorizing cutandry answers, "a sensible first step toward regaining for the gospel the reality it has lost through doctrinal hardening" is "to restore the inquiring mind to the position that is his due." 

Because "question and answer are intimately related one toward the other," the Answer "will not help the man who has lost the question." The life of reason involves

This luminous search in which the finding of the true answer depends on asking the true question, and the asking of the true question on the spiritual apprehension of the true answer. 

So, between question and answer is the luminous search; but man "can also deform his humanity by refusing to ask the questions, or by loading them with premises devised to make the search impossible."

No luminosity for you! (A reminder that the light shines in the darkness but that the willfully dark cannot comprehend it.) 

Even prior to Christ, there is always the divine pull accompanied by man's restless seeking, both taking place in the tension of the in-between. For Voegelin these are reducible to a single movement: "In the one movement there is experienced a seeking from the human, [and] a being drawn from the divine pole." Put another way, God is "the mover who attracts or draws man to himself."

And Christ incarnates this very movement, from and to the Father-Source?

That was a question. It says in John that Christ will "draw all men to himself." And

This drawing power of Christ is identified with the pull exerted by God.

Was that the answer? If so, could you elaborate?

To follow Christ means to continue the event of divine presence in society and history.... of God's pull becoming effective in the world through Christ...

I don't know what else to say, so we'll end with this passage by Josef Pieper: there is a

rounding out of the circle in which the beginning and the end, the primal Origin of the creation and the ultimate Consummation of the creative process, meet and touch in Christ. 

And

we have no alternative but to conceive of this Incarnation as something which is still present and which will remain present for all future time. 

Supposing you're asking the right question. Right?