Holy Scripture Unifies Theology and Philosophy

Decades ago, I was desirous of transferring from my graduate studies in one department of an Ivy League university into the philosophy department. I was interviewed by the chairman who was a world-famous philosopher based on a few papers he had published, although he had not published any books at that point in time. He asked me, “Why do you want to study philosophy?” I replied that I was seeking answers to important questions like ‘what is the meaning of life’ and ‘is any knowledge certain.’ However, he brushed off my answer by saying that philosophy was interested in asking questions, not answering them.

His ideal of asking questions without getting or even expecting answers to those questions had its roots in Greek philosophy — in the philosophical challenges presented by Socrates to the other savants of his day, particularly the Sophists. In Socrates’s dialogue with a local prosecutor named Euthyphro, Socrates kept pressing Euthyphro for a definition of good whereby Euthyphro could justify his prosecution of his own father for throwing one of his employees in a pit because of the employee’s malfeasance, and then, after going somewhere to discuss the case, returned to find the employee had died in the pit. Thus, his father would be tried for a type of murderous negligence.

He reveals Euthyphro’s reasoning to be circular as he ultimately says to Socrates something to the effect that his prosecution of his own father is good because it is good. It was a clear case of circular reasoning which shed no light on his claim that the prosecution was “good.” Euthyphro was not a Sophist, but like his counterparts in that school, and like many Greek intellectuals, words like justice, goodness, truth, piety, etc. applied as being “good ends” because those ends were known to be…“just, good, true, pious, etc.” Hence, the circularity.

The philosophy department chair was reaching back to the fifth century BCE to affirm in an abbreviated way that all the visions of ultimate answers in the branches of philosophy over about 2,300 years had not advanced further than the assumptions that drove Socrates.

His questions to this writer suggested, albeit indirectly, that the ideas of Plato and Aristotle had not actually moved the ball of philosophical comprehension further down the playing field of the mind. Their adaptations by Catholic and Protestant thinkers to a theological context over the centuries had not really provided “answers” but had simply served to raise new questions.

This writer as a modern personality often will say to students that in our present era “we are all utilitarians.” Without going into detail, the meaning of this observation is that for many philosophical/ethical issues, we tend to think along the lines of John Stuart Mill claiming to be guided by “the greatest good for the greatest number” and the importance of education in making that determination.

Others like Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx stress historical realities which manifest as dialectical movement via interactions of thesis and antithesis creating syntheses, which dynamic changes the tone and values of society as we move through time. Time is not the framework in which transcendent categories operate as in the writings of Immanuel Kant but is the substantial framework in which dialectical social change manifests.

Since the end of WWII, we see the appeal of the French existential school which tends to emphasize the authenticity of one’s life choices — how we Become or Actualize our identities — through stages of choices as we become claimants of an identity formed out of our freedom. Thus, with emphasis on becoming, there are no absolute identity goals as there would be if our Becoming were understood in relation to Being.

Existential thought then divides between the so-called atheist existentialists (e.g., Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus) who emphasize Becoming as the significant domain of personal and social growth, and the existentialists like Soren Kirkegaard and Martin Buber who continuously discuss the tension between existential Becoming and the cosmic realities of Being.

However, these many schools of philosophy, some of which tried to integrate philosophy and religion, failed to note that the founding of Christianity already incorporated philosophical innovation into its doctrine via the biblical definition of Jesus Christ as the Logos. The book of John states, “In the beginning was the Word [“Logos”], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) This verse along with the verses that immediately follow was not only religiously significant but was philosophically significant. Since Heraclitus, “the word ‘Logos’ referred to reason or the principle of order in the universe. By using this term, the text [of John] bridges Jewish and Greek understandings, presenting the Word as the divine agent of creation and revelation. The Word is not merely a spoken word but a person, as later verses reveal, who is active in the world.”

The attempts to integrate Biblical ideas with Plato and Aristotle such as we find in Catholic and Protestant thought was itself non-Biblical. John’s emphasis on Jesus as the Logos ties Biblical thought directly into Greek philosophical thought albeit the tie-in is to Heraclitus who lived towards the end of the sixth century BCE and the beginning of the fifth century BCE. This textual link enabled Jesus Christ to be portrayed as Messiah and Lord to both Jews and Gentiles. There had already been many many allusions to and descriptions of Messiah (“Maschiach”) in the Jewish holy scripture, especially in Isaiah 52:13 through the entirety of Isaiah 53. But Jesus as the living Lord and Savior of the gentiles as well as the Jews really takes on life and reality in John 1:1-3. Moreover, Jesus as “the Word” can be found at Revelation 19:13, 1 John 5:7, and Hebrews 4:12.

* E. Jeffrey Ludwig teaches philosophy at an urban university and is also pastor of a church.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/01/holy_scripture_unifies_theology_and_philosophy.html