We deny the non-Christian the standing of “objective, disinterested observer,” which standing is generally assumed as in effect in academia.
“We will hear again of this matter” (Acts 17:32) was the nonresponsive utterance of the Areopagite misosopher, one of Paul’s interlocuters. It lamely expresses the stance that the misosopher believes he may integrally assume.
Christian philosophy, however, claims that the attitude of neutrality and autonomy is not licit and is, in fact, impossible. If the denial of neutrality is ruled out, then Christianity is ruled out, and the misosopher who summarily rules a challenger out of court without a hearing only fails one of his own professed tests of rationality.
The mask of neutrality is ripped away as soon as the Christian is denied the right to argue as a Christian. Non-Christians may claim to be neutral as they consider the claim of Christ, and they may think that they make good on that claim if they merely refrain from ridicule. The Christian, however, may not take this self-representation as the last word. The non-Christian is not hostile to Christ only when he or she claims to be hostile, and should not charitably be presumed to be neutral if he or she does not make such a claim.
What God says is what matters, and He denies the possibility of neutrality. “He who is not with Me is against Me” (Luke 11:23). Proverbs 8 signifies that Wisdom is a person who was with God at Creation, an outline that John 1 fills in. The Wisdom of God is the Word of God. It ends on a promise with both positive and negative charges:
For whoso findeth me findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord. But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death. He who hates me loves death. (Proverbs 8:35-36)
It’s safe to assume that if one loves death, one does not love wisdom, which is ordered toward the right conduct of life. God says that such a person hates wisdom. The Greek for that would be misosopher.
Christian philosophers may challenge traditional nomenclature. They challenge the use of “philosophy” to describe discourse that is ordered to the production of foolishness. He doesn’t expect common usage to reflect his insight, but he does expect to affect Christian discourse about “philosophy.”
Christians, including Christian philosophers, are as resistant as anyone else to linguistic change. Discounting the threat of violence or other nonrational pressure, only strong reasons can overcome the conservatism of established usage. The value of conformism, however, is not unlimited. That value that our proposed revision honors may justify the breaking of linguistic habit.
While Christian philosophers and non-Christian misosophers may be doing the same thing formally, they are not doing the same thing materially. Misosophers produce something analogous to what Marxists call “ideology,” which is to be taken critically, not at face value. In this sense, of course, Marxism is as ideological as any of its rivals.
Our point of departure is the distinction the Apostle Paul made between two types of philosophy. On the one hand, according to Paul, there is “philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men, after rudiments of this world” against whose seduction he warns his audience; on the other, “philosophy after Christ.” (I assume Paul didn’t think there was such a thing as “vain deceit after Christ.”)
I concede that Paul does not give the former a distinctive name such as we propose, i.e., “misosophy.” Had he done so, his audience would probably not have understood him. There are good reasons, however, to no longer bestow on a discourse that trades in vain, despoiling deceit a name that refers to sophia. It’s not “according to Christ,” whom Paul elsewhere designates the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24). It’s not philosophy in any respectable sense of the term, and to insist on so designating it is but a “tradition of men.”
The adherents of one pole of the antithesis may challenge the claim of the other pole’s adherents to the name “philosophy.” Unambiguous communication requires that we symbolize differently the antithesis that characterizes the middle passage between origin and destination. The responder may pragmatically adjust his usage by referring to the activity that adherents of both antithetical motifs superficially have in common (an activity that, as we noted, begins in wonder and may or may not reach the wisdom toward which it is ordered).
At one level of abstraction, a common term for them may be expedient, and pragmatic exigency may submerge the differences.
At the deepest level of content, however, at the level of principle, it may be necessary to press the antithesis and highlight the differences. Pressed far enough, the need to designate the fruit of the antithetical motifs or conceits may inevitably express itself in appropriately distinct terms.
My suggestions for such terms, following my commitments, are “philosophy” (“love of wisdom”) for the one and, for the other, “misosophy” (“hatred of wisdom”) or “philomoria” (love of foolishness”).
Let us differentiate the two philosophies by subscripts: Philosophya vs. Philosophyh that is, philosophy on the presupposition of autonomy versus philosophy on the presupposition of heteronomy.
I concretely restrict the identification of Philosophyh as Christian theism, the worldview of the Bible, and the metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical arguments that are made on it basis.
I defend that explication of Philosophyh indirectly by showing the untenability of its contradictory, Philosophya
Philosophykata stoicheia and Philosophykata Christos refer to the antithesis that the Paul affirmed between “Philosophy according to the elements of this world (which philosophy is hollow and deceptive)” and “Philosophy according to Christ (Colossians 2:8), Who is the Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24).”
Explicitly Christian symbols—Philosophykata stoicheia and Philosophykata Christos—“flesh out” Philosophya and Philosophyh
The word “after” in this post’s title is one translation of the Greek kata (which looks pretty much like that in Greek script). “According to” is another.
A motive for referring to the discourse commonly called “philosophy” by another name is that (1) “philosophy” is rooted etymologically in “love of wisdom,” and (2) that discourse can be shown to be controlled by presuppositions that lead systematically away from wisdom (sophia) and toward foolishness (moria). A more accurate name, therefore, would be “misosophy” or “philomoria.”
A Christian has an additional reason for referring to the discourse in question as “misosophy” or “philomoria”: as it is practiced it regards wisdom as a quality that can characterize a human being. For a Christian, however, wisdom is in the first place a divine person, Jesus Christ, and secondarily a human trait.
There can be human ectypes of wisdom (sophoi) who achieve it in varying degrees, but Jesus Christ is wisdom’s archetype. There are, of course, many professing Christians who practice the discourse called “philosophy,” and I do not question the sincerity of their profession. If their thinking starts with something other than Christ, however, it will be unstable and head toward foolishness and absurdity, even if they resist that logical conclusion in their work.
As I suggested in a post seven months ago, my motto would not be Tertullian’s Credo quia absurdum est (“I believe because it absurd”). It would rather be a corollary of Anselm’s subjunctive Credo ut intelligam (“I believe that I may understand”), which modifies Augustine’s imperative Crede, ut intelligas, “Believe that you may understand.”
It would be Credo ut evitam absurditatem somniumque, that is, “I believe that I may avoid absurdity and foolishness.”
For foolishness and absurdity are the fruit of “philosophy after the elements of this world,” to cite again Paul (Colossians 2:8). I merely supplied a word, “misosophy,” to demarcate it from philosophy “after Christ.” I reconsider the meaning of “philosophy” in the light of criteria that I’m sure he must regard as philosophical, namely, the preconditions of intelligible predication.
The Christian holds that the ultimate truth of about life is a divine person. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” says Jesus Christ. “No one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Jesus, the Son of God, the creator of the heavens and earth (Genesis 1:1), is the express image (eikon) of the Father (Hebrews 1:3). He is also the word (logos) of God (John 1:1) as well as the wisdom (sophia) and the power (dunamis) of God (1 Cor 1:24). Jesus Christ is before all things (ta panta), and by him all things cohere (susesteken) (Col 1:17). Every human being is surrounded and penetrated by creation:
Because that which may be known (to gnoston) of God is manifest (phaneros) in them (enautois); for God has made it evident (ephanerosen) unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse. Romans 1:18-19
This is our epistemological situation as the Bible describes it. It renders nugatory the notion of “unaided reason” regarding God, the world, and man. If, therefore, one insists that “unaided reason” has real reference, one cannot also be “open” to the possibility that the Biblical description is true, for the latter excludes it. In the Bible, reason is a tool, not a supreme court before which God may appear as a defendant.
If those who practice “philosophy” subscribe to what I regard as the “fatal conceit” of autonomy achieve foolishness (moria) rather than wisdom (sophia), then there is a prima facie case for discriminating between the pursuit of truth on the basis of that conceit and that pursuit founded on the opposite, vital conceit. The Apostle Paul’s contrast between “philosophy and vain deceit according to the elements of this world” and philosophy “according to Christ” (Colossians 2:8) corresponds exactly to that between the fatal and vital conceits.*
According to Paul, God rendered foolish (asunetos) the wisdom of this world (1 Corinthians 1:20, 3:19). He did not coin “misosophy” or “philomoria,” but instead used “philosophy” to refer to one discourse that two antithetical standards structure in antithetical ways. The one who upholds one standard will regard the one who upholds the other as foolish (1 Corinthians 1:17-2:8). In my view, the antithesis to which Paul drew attention merits two antithetical terms. Such theologically motivated discrimination does not entail confusing usage. (But I thank Bill Vallicella for making me aware of that possibility.)
* I swiped “fatal conceit” from the title of a 1988 book, allegedly authored by Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) but heavily edited, if not actually written, by W. W. Bartley (1934-1990). “The fatal conceit” refers to the error that Hayek imputed to the thinking of socialists, namely, the presupposition that civilizations are products of planning rather than evolution. My use of that phrase does not, of course, mean that I am a “Hayekian” (or a “Bartleyan,” if that phrase owes to Hayek’s editor.) I use it in sense so broad that would include Hayek’s evolutionary presupposition as well as its dialectical rival.
