Jesus as a Philosopher

By Dr. Douglas Groothuis

Jesus as a Philosopher[1] 

This question was posed by the moderator at an early Republication presidential debate in 1999: “Who is your favorite political philosopher?” George W. Bush surprised, if not stunned, his fellow candidates, moderator, and audience when he tersely declared: “Jesus Christ, because he changed my life.” At the philosophical level, we might say candidate Bush dropped the ball. He gave a religious or devotional justification for his choice of Jesus as favorite philosopher instead of stipulating just what it was about Jesus as a philosopher that he valued above other philosophers.

The responses to Bush’s one-liner ranged all over the political map. Was his response just shameless, pious posturing? Or was it a sincere and disarmingly modest confession—or just inappropriate in that setting however sincere it may have been? In any event, Bush’s clipped but controversial response raises a deeper question largely if not entirely avoided in the popular press: Was Jesus—whatever else he was—a  bona fide philosopher? If the answer is Yes, several other engaging sorts of questions emerge: What kind of philosopher was he? What did he believe and why? How does his philosophy relate to that of other philosophers? Does his philosophizing have anything to contribute to contemporary philosophical debates? Further, just what is a philosopher anyway?

What is a Philosopher?

We cannot proceed farther in answering our question, “Was Jesus a philosopher?” without thinking more clearly about the term “philosopher.” What qualifies someone as a philosopher? We can certainly point to uncontroversial specimens, such as Plato and Aristotle. This is an ostensive definition: we pick out a referent that fits the category. But what of harder cases, such as Jesus? Of course, philosophers philosophize, but not everyone who philosophizes is a philosopher, just as not everyone who works on an automobile is a mechanic. We think of most philosophers as intelligent, but not all the intelligent are philosophers. Many individuals intelligence may not be primarily invested in philosophy. Neither can we limit the philosophers to those who are formal academics, those who hold professorships in philosophy. Some philosophers, such as Hume and Spinoza, have lacked institutional affiliation, but not philosophical credentials.

Rather than chase down further definitional dead ends, I propose that the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a philosopher (whether good or bad; major or minor; employed or unemployed) are a strong and lived-out inclination to pursue truth about philosophical matters through the rigorous use of human reasoning, and to do so with some intellectual facility. The last proviso is added to rule out those who may fancy themselves philosophers but cannot philosophize well enough to merit the title. Even a bad philosopher must be able to philosophize in some recognizable sense. 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).

Yet one may speak to life’s meaning, purpose, and value in a nonphilosophical manner—by merely issuing assertions or by simply declaring divine judgments with no further discussion. A philosophical approach to these matters, on the contrary, explores the logic or rationale of various claims about reality; it sniffs out intellectual presuppositions and implications; it ponders possibilities and weighs their rational credibility.

Therefore, the work of a philosopher need not include system-building, nor need it exclude religious authority or even divine inspiration, so long as this perspective does not preclude rational argumentation. Being a philosopher requires a certain orientation to knowledge, a willingness to argue and debate logically, and to do so with some proficiency. On this account, was Jesus a philosopher?

Jesus and the Philosophers

Most reference books in philosophy apparently think that Jesus was not a philosopher, given the lack of references to him. For example, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967), long a standard reference work, has no entry under “Jesus” or “Christ.” The newer and well-respected Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998) has no entry for “Jesus” or “Christ,” but includes one on “Buddha.” Even the recent resurgence in Christian philosophy evidenced by the size and influence of the Society of Christian Philosophers, seems to have done little to counter these conspicuous omissions.[2] Karl Jaspers includes Jesus (along with Socrates, Buddha and Confucius) in the first slim volume of The Great Philosophers (1957), but this is rare—and Jaspers did not esteem Jesus as a philosopher in the classical sense.

Jesus certainly influenced philosophers and thinkers of all kinds (Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, etc.), and countless thinkers have philosophized about him (how could he be both divine and human?) but this, in itself, does not make Jesus a philosopher. The philosopher Augustine was very influenced by his pious mother Monica, but that does not make her a philosopher.

One’s religious commitments do not necessarily answer this question a priori. One may worship Jesus as God Incarnate yet be puzzled or even offended at the notion that he was a philosopher. “Isn’t philosophy something the Apostle Paul warned against?” one might object, based on a certain reading of the second chapter of Colossians (verse eight), which warns of “hollow and deceptive philosophy.”

Jesus and the Life of the Mind 

Biblical scholar John Stott observes that Jesus was a “controversialist” in that he was not “broad-minded.” Jesus did not countenance every and any view on important subjects, but instead engaged in extensive disputes, some quite heated, mostly with the Jewish intellectual leaders of his day. He was not afraid to cut against the grain of popular opinion if he deemed it to be wrong. He spoke often and passionately about the value of truth and the dangers of error, and he gave arguments to support truth and oppose error.[3] Jesus’ use of logic had a particular tenor to it, notes philosopher Dallas Willard:

Jesus’ aim in utilizing logic is not to win battles, but to achieve understanding or insight in his hearers. . . . That is, he does not try to make everything so explicit that the conclusion is forced down the throat of the hearer. Rather, he presents matters in such a way that those who wish to know can find their way to, can come to, the appropriate conclusion as something they have discovered—whether or not it is something they particularly care for.[4]

Willard also argues that a concern for logic requires not only certain intellectual skills but also certain character commitments regarding the importance of logic and the value of truth in one’s life. A thoughtful person must choose to esteem logic and argument through focused concentration, reasoned dialogue, and a willingness to follow the truth wherever it may lead. This cognitive orientation places demands on the moral life. Besides resolution, tenacity, and courage, one must shun hypocrisy (defending oneself against facts and logic for ulterior motives) and superficiality (adopting opinions with a glib disregard for their logical support). Willard takes Jesus to be a model in this, as does James Sire.[5]

Jesus did not build a philosophical system in the same sense that Spinoza or Hegel did. Wittgenstein, arguably the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century, did not build a system at all, although he developed a distinctive philosophical method, which in some ways attempts to dissolve philosophical questions.[6] But the fact that Jesus did not “build” a philosophical system does not preclude the possibility that he thought in terms of a well-ordered and logically consistent account of reality and argued rationally with those who disputed it. If he thought and spoke in this manner, he was a philosopher indeed—and the most influential one in Western history.

Some may bar Jesus from the halls of philosophers by virtue of his prophetic or supernatural orientation toward teaching and the rest of his activities. It is assumed that a prophetic or oracular disposition makes philosophizing unnecessary or even counterproductive. If one receives a revelation from above, why argue from premise to conclusion? Why bother with induction, deduction, abduction, reductio ad absurdum or a fortiori arguments and the like when one is divinely inspired? Why criticize another’s argument as fallacious? One would simply announce, declare, or proclaim—or bring down fire from heaven to end the argument entirely. Some Christians might even regard the notion that Jesus was a philosopher as ill-advised or blasphemous, since they take him to be God Incarnate. God has no need of human philosophy, after all.

These objections can be met in two ways. First, a Christian need not bristle at the thought that even God Incarnate might philosophize with lesser beings, if it were for the purpose of engaging their God-given reasoning abilities. After all, the Apostle Paul—taken by Christians to be a superlative authority on Jesus—claimed that all knowledge and wisdom is found in Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:9). According to orthodox Christian thought, Jesus in not only divine, but truly human: “The Word became flesh” (John 1:14). However Christians may understand the relationship of deity and humanity in the person of Jesus, they must confess that God in Christ took on a genuine human nature—reasoning abilities and all. As I argue throughout On Jesus, a close look at many passages in the Gospels reveals that Jesus does engage in careful reasoning regarding the afterlife, his own identity, political obligations, and more. He was not above a good debate. The Hebrew scriptures, which Jesus revered, report that the prophet Isaiah, speaking as God’s oracle, said, “Come let us reason together, says the Lord” (Isaiah 1:18). Jesus, I believe, would agree.[7]

Second, and more generally, a claim to divine or supernatural inspiration (whether explicit or implicit) need not rule out reasoning and debate in principle. Authority can be established through sound reasoning and the ability to interact rationally with disputants. While theistic religions are full of accounts of divine pronouncements sans argument, this is not the only mode of divine disclosure possible.

Jesus’ many proclamations regarding the gospel and the end of the world are not incompatible with prodding people to think; he often did so. Demanding (or, better, encouraging or calling for) faith can occur alongside the rational exchange of ideas, and Jesus illustrated this. While Jesus spoke with “direct earnestness,” sometimes he did communicate indirectly, especially in his parables. Jesus and Socrates do differ dramatically in that Jesus is never described as searching for truth or being gripped by uncertainty. Although Jesus proclaims ideas from a certainty of knowledge, he does leave some questions open (such as the number of those redeemed, why certain evils occur, and the timing of his return). Socrates is a kind of philosophical goad and midwife while Jesus exhorts his listeners to be “born again”—but not without reason and argument in support of the faith and commitment enjoined.

Jews, Greeks, and Philosophers

Some have excluded Jesus from the ranks of the philosophers simply because he happened to be an ancient Jew, not a Greek. Historian Humphrey Carpenter entitles a section of his short book on Jesus: “Jew, Not Philosopher.” His assessment trades on the well-worn notion that Jews never developed philosophy because they, unlike the venerable Greeks, were too theological, and, therefore, not speculative. Reason was not their tool of enlightenment. Jews were called to faith and obedience in a higher authority, which they rarely questioned and never investigated in any truly philosophical fashion.

Carpenter asks if Jesus’ teachings would appear remarkable when contrasted with those of Plato and Aristotle. His answer is that “such a comparison is meaningless.”[8] This conclusion was not reached because of their different ideas about humanity and the good life, but because of their different approach to knowledge. Plato and Aristotle constructed “elaborate philosophical models of man and the world, from which they deduced ethical conclusions.” But Jesus supposedly lacked such a system. His modus operandi was “inspirational,” not discursive or systematic. Jesus was unsystematic to the point that he had “no concern with consistency in his teaching.”[9] Although he allows that philosophers may glean insights from Jesus, “Jesus himself…was no philosopher; his mind was characteristically Jewish.”[10]

Carpenter’s position is puzzling. First, he seems to identify philosophy per se with the Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. While these giants are paradigmatic philosophers, a thinker need not resemble them in every way to be a philosopher. Nietzsche, for instance, is deemed a philosopher (whether good or bad) by nearly everyone; yet he was not systematic and took pride in that fact. Moreover, he often wrote in parables, stories and aphorisms—methods used by Jesus himself.

Carpenter’s criteria for being a philosopher would appear to shut out Socrates, a character vital to the philosophy of Plato and all subsequent philosophy. Socrates built no system but engaged in protracted dialectic with a host of interlocutors. He was a gadfly and a midwife, not a builder of an intellectual edifice. Worse yet, like Jesus, he wrote nothing. What we know of him is preserved in other’s writings, principally Plato’s. This is another parallel to Jesus, whose words are recorded by others in the Gospels. Moreover, Socrates himself operated in the “inspirational” mode when seized by his “daimonion,” a very unphilosophical thing to do, according to Carpenter.

Interestingly, in his discussion of Jesus’ approach to the Jewish law, Carpenter notes that Jesus did not endorse blind obedience to the Law, “but the kind of reasoning obedience which considers why God has given some particular commandment to men.”[11] Carpenter further maintains that if Jesus thought in terms of conscience, “he would presumably have regarded it as the will of God expressing itself clearly in human reason.”[12] Jesus, according to Carpenter, uses reason in his understanding of God, the law, and the proper human response to God—yet he is somehow not a philosopher because he was non-rational and unsystematic. This appears inconsistent.

Escaping Between the Horns of a Dilemma

We need to consult the record to find whether or not Jesus prized a well-developed rationality. Several examples illustrate Jesus’ ability to deftly escape between the horns of a dilemma when challenged. I will limit myself to addressing two telling cases from Matthew, chapter 22, although there are many more examples of Jesus exemplary reasoning abilities.[13]

Disciples of the Pharisees and several Herodians asked Jesus a controversial political question. The Pharisees, powerful religious leaders of the Jews, were ardent nationalists, who opposed the rule that Rome had imposed on the Jews in Palestine. The Herodians, on the other hand, where followers and defenders of the Herods, the Roman rulers who strictly governed Palestine. After some initial flattery about Jesus’ integrity they tried to spring a trap. “Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” (Matthew 22:17).

Jesus faced a tough dilemma. If he sided with the Pharisees, he might be seen as an insurrectionist and a dangerous element (as were the Zealots, Jews who defended violent revolution against the state). If Jesus affirmed paying taxes, he would be viewed as selling out to a secular and ungodly power instead of honoring Israel’s God. He would be denounced as disloyal. This was not a “win-win” situation. As Matthew tells us, the Pharisees had “laid plans to trap him in his words” (Matthew 22:15).

Jesus responded by asking for the coin used to pay the tax, a denarius. He asked, “Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?” They replied that it was Caesar’s. Jesus uttered the now famous words, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.” At this the delegation dispersed in amazement at his answer (Matthew 22:18-22).

Jesus displays a cool head and sharp mind. When confronted with a classic dilemma pertaining to what we would call church/state relations, he finds a way logically to escape between the horns of the dilemma. Jesus gives a place to the rule of Caesar under God without making Caesar God. Caesar’s portrait on the coin (a bust of Tiberius) had an inscription ascribing deity to the emperor. When he differentiates Caesar from God, he strips Caesar of his supposed deity.

Jesus’ saying, while short and pithy, has inspired many political philosophers to explicate and apply the concept of a limited state in relation to religion and to the rest of culture. While not offering a developed political philosophy (no one was asking for that, anyway), Jesus shows a deep awareness of the issues involved and responds intelligently under public pressure. On other occasions, as well, Jesus shows himself to be neither a disloyal Jew, nor an insurrectionist. He refers to God, not Caesar, as “the Lord of heaven and earth” (Matthew 11:25), but does not eliminate temporal authority. At his trail preceding his execution, Jesus informs Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11).

Immediately after the question about taxation, Matthew records another intellectual encounter. The Sadducees, another influential Jewish group, tried to corner Jesus on a question about the afterlife. They, unlike the Pharisees, did not believe in life after death, nor in angels or spirits (although they were theists), and they granted special authority only to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible). They reminded Jesus of Moses’ command “that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and have children for him” (Matthew 22:24). (This is called levirate marriage.) Then they propose a thought experiment in which the same woman is progressively married to and widowed by seven brothers, none of which sire any children by her. Then the woman dies. “Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?” they ask pointedly (v. 28).

The argument is clever. The Sadducees know that Jesus reveres the law of Moses, as they do. They also know that Jesus, unlike themselves, teaches that there will be a resurrection of the dead. They think that these two beliefs are logically inconsistent; they cannot both be true. The woman cannot be married to all seven at the resurrection (Mosaic law did not allow polyandry), nor is there any reason why she should be married to any one out of the seven (thus honoring monogamy). Therefore, they figure, Jesus must either come against Moses or deny the afterlife if he is to remain free from contradiction. They are presenting this as a logical dilemma: either A (Moses’ authority) or B (the afterlife), not neither A or B, and not both A and B.

Historian Humphrey Carpenter claims that Jesus was not concerned about consistency, and philosopher Michael Martin asserts that Jesus praised uncritical faith over reason and induced belief only through rewards and punishments.[14] If these charges were correct, one might expect Jesus (a) to dodge the question with a pious and unrelated utterance or (b) to threaten hell for those who dare question his authority or (c) simply assert two logically incompatible propositions with no hesitation or shame. Instead, Jesus forthrightly says that the Sadducees are in error because they have failed to know the Scripture or the power of God.

At the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, “I am the God of Abraham, The God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” He is not the God of the dead but of the living (Matthew 22:30-32).

Jesus’ response has an astuteness that may not be obvious. First, he challenged their assumption that belief in the resurrection means that one is committed to believing that all of our pre-mortem institutions will be retained in the post-mortem, resurrected world. None of the Hebrew scriptures teach this, and Jesus did not believe it. Thus, the dilemma dissolves. It is a false dilemma because Jesus states a tertium quid: there is no married state at the resurrection. Second, as part of his response to their logical trap, Jesus compares the resurrection state of men and women to that of the angels, thus challenging the Sadducees’ disbelief in angels. (Although the Sadducees did not believe in angels, they knew that their fellow Jews who did believe in angels thought that angels did not marry or procreate.) Third, Jesus cites a text from the Sadducees’ own esteemed scriptures (Exodus 3:6) where God declares to Moses from the burning bush that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Jesus could have cited a variety of texts to this effect from writings outside the Pentateuch, such as the prophets (Daniel 12:2) or Job (19:25-27), but instead he deftly argues from their own trusted sources, which he also endorsed. Fourth, Jesus capitalizes on the verb tense of the verse he quotes. God is (present tense) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all of whom who had already died at the time God uttered this to Moses. He did not cease to be their God at their earthly demise. God did not say, “I was their God” (past tense). God is the God of the living, which includes even the “dead” patriarchs. Matthew adds that “when the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching,” for Jesus had “silenced the Sadducees” (Matthew 22:33-34).

Conclusion

This essay has not conclusively established that Jesus was a philosopher or, if he was a philosopher, that he was a consistently good one. Establishing these claims is part of the burden of my book, On Jesus.  Nevertheless, I have argued that several challenges to Jesus’ legitimacy as a philosopher are misguided and that Jesus articulated an epistemology that indicates a philosophical cast of mind. If Jesus was, in fact, a vigorous and brilliant reasoner who possessed a full-fledged world- and life-view, those who esteem Jesus as Lord of the universe and as our only Savior should aspire to intellectual excellence in the power of his Spirit inasmuch as we are so gifted by him do so.

[1] This paper is taken largely from chapters one and three of Douglas Groothuis, On Jesus (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2001), which should (I hope) be released in late 2001 or early 2002. This volume is part of the Wadsworth Philosophers Series.

[2] On this movement, see Kelly James Clark, ed. Philosophers Who Believe (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993).

[3] John R. K. Stott, Christ the Controversialist (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1970), 18.

[4] Dallas Willard, “Jesus, the Logician” Christian Scholars Review XXVIII, no. 4 (1999):  607.

[5] James Sire, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life as a Christian Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 203.

[6] See Jaako Hintikka, On Wittgenstein (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth-Thompson Learning, 2000).

[7] George Mavrodes explores different modes of divine revelation, which include revelation through reasoning, in Revelation in Religious Belief (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).

[8] Humphrey Carpenter, Jesus in Founders of Faith, (UK: Oxford University Press, 1986), 243.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid., 244.

[11] Ibid., 241; emphasis in the original.

[12] Ibid., 243; emphasis added.

[13] See chapter three of On Jesus.

[14] Michael Martin, The Case Against Christianity (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991).