A response to
Albert Gedraitis

Jesus the philosopher, after all

Mr. Gedraitus’s long and interesting response to my essay, “Jesus the Philosopher,” largely puzzles me, although I am encouraged by the appreciative things he nevertheless says about the essay. Mr. Gedraitus uses my article as a springboard to write much about ancient philosophy, culture, and logic, but fails to provide an argument against my claim that Jesus was a bona fide philosopher. Instead, Mr. Gedraitus speculates on Jesus’ mode of education (something about which Scripture is silent) and merely asserts that he was not a philosopher. Perhaps his argument is that Jesus didn’t fit the official or received category of “philosopher” in his day and therefore we should not consider him to be a philosopher. But that is irrelevant to my argument, since I don’t endorse an “institutional” theory of philosophy. Such a view claims that one is only a philosopher if the established institutions of one’s day deem one as such. But Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), for example, never taught philosophy in any official capacity and was not widely recognized as a philosopher in his day (as was his contemporary, Descartes), but more as a scientist. (True, the categories were not as distinct then as they are now, but the point still stands.) Nevertheless, Pascal was a philosopher—and a first-rate one at that, as I try to demonstrate in my book, On Pascal. One might make a similar case for Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

Let me quote my definition of a philosopher, which, Mr. Gedraitus to the contrary, is not “fuzzy”: “So what is the essential condition of being a philosopher? I take it to be a strong and lived-out inclination to pursue truth about philosophical matters through the rigorous use of human reasoning. By ‘philosophical matters’ I mean the enduring questions of life’s meaning, purpose, and value as they relate to all the major divisions of philosophy (primarily epistemology, metaphysics, and ethics).” Mr. Gedraitus has done nothing I can find to refute this claim, and I believe that my book On Jesus substantiates this claim more fully than does my brief article in Books and Culture. Mr. Gedraitus does point out something of Jesus’ unique identity and work as “Lord and Savior,” but that doesn’t make Jesus any less of a philosopher. Jesus, as God Incarnate, is not only a philosopher. Jesus doesn’t search for the truth in the sense that Socrates did. Nor does Jesus change his mind or repent of intellectual errors as do merely human philosophers. (Think of St. Augustine’s later work called Retractions or the philosophical differences between the early and later Wittgenstein.) Nevertheless, Jesus employs arguments and engages in rational disputes that reveal his philosophical prowess on what matters most. He used logic to lead people into truth. In that sense, he publicly pursued and declared truth rationally. Moreover, he articulated a full-orbed theistic worldview.

Perhaps by recognizing Jesus as a philosopher (the etymology of which means “lover of wisdom”) we can learn more about both Jesus and philosophy.