Jesosophy and Homerology

Didn't plan to post today, and still don't, but God laughed and pointed me to a book called The Philosophy of Jesus, by Peter Kreeft. I was moving some books around when it caught my eye. I recall having read it but don't remember anything about it. A search of the blog reveals a brief mention a few years ago. 

We've already stipulated that Jesus cannot be reduced to the category of "philosopher," but nor is he not one, since he must be the ground and possibility of philosophy as such, AKA the Logos incarnate.

Does this mean we're really engaged in logology or something? No, because it seems that word is taken: "Logology is the study of all things related to science and its practitioners."

Okay, how about... philology, love of the logos? No, that was Tolkien's day job, i.e., "the study of language in oral and written historical sources." 

There's Christology, but that's the study of Christ per se, not the content of his philosophy.

All the good names are already taken -- sophiology, theosophy, logosophy... Jesosophy? That's the ticket -- even google's never heard of it.

What we are about to discuss reminds me of the book The Beginning of Wisdom, by Leon Kass. It proceeds through the philosophy of Genesis line by line, treating it like any other classic philosophical text. e.g., Plato, Aristotle, or Marcus Aurelius. For example, Genesis conveys

an "anthropology," an account of the human being, embedded in its account of the good life. The Bible belonged in a conversation with those philosophical texts, where, I began to suspect, it could more than hold its own. 

Kass and his students approached Genesis philosophically, "solely for meaning and understanding, in search of wisdom." 

And guess what: Jesus wasn't only thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament, it may be the only book he ever saw. 

Right now I'm looking at the gospel of Matthew, and the second statement recorded by Jesus is "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God," which means that he had Deuteronomy 8:3 right in his hip pocket. (His first statement in Luke is a slight variant of this.) 

Now I'm looking at John, where the first statement is a question: "What do you seek?," to which they respond by calling him Rabbi, which is to say, teacher. 

And here we are: teach us.

For Kreeft, the purpose of his book is, among other things, to show both Christians and non-Christians "a new dimension of philosophy, a new philosophy, and a new philosopher." It doesn't aim at conversion, rather, treating Jesus just as he would any other philosopher. 

In a trivial sense, "Everyone has some 'philosophy of life.' Even Homer Simpson is a philosopher." Especially Homer Simpson:

Jesus was a philosopher in the same sense "in which Confucius, Buddha, Muhammad, Solomon, Marcus Aurelius, and Pascal were philosophers." "After all," wrote C.S. Lewis, "how full of argument, of repartee, even of irony, He is" (in Kreeft). 

Now, if Jesus has the answers, what are the questions? 

Kreeft adverts to the perennial questions of philosophy, which (to paraphrase) come down to what is (or is most) real, AKA metaphysics and ontology; what we can know of this reality (epistemology); who we are in the grand scheme of things (anthropology and psychology); and what we oughtta do (ethics). In short, these "are questions about being, truth, self, and goodness."

And if "the most interesting question of metaphysics is about ultimate reality," then "the most interesting question of epistemology is about knowing ultimate reality: how can we finite fools know infinite wisdom?"

Which tracks with what Schuon says about the subject: Job One for us is to distinguish appearances from reality and to conform ourselves to the latter:

To “discern” is to “separate”: to separate the Real and the illusory, the Absolute and the contingent, the Necessary and the possible, Atma and Maya. To discernment is joined, complementarily and operatively, “concentration,” which “unites”: it is -- starting from earthly and human Maya -- the plenary awareness of Atma at once absolute, infinite and perfect.

And in fact, 

there is no truth nor wisdom that does not come from Christ, and this is evidently independent of all consideration of time and place. Just as "the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehended it," so too the Intellect shines in the darkness of passions and illusions" (ibid.).

To be continued...