Why Theology Needs Philosophy!

In 1993, Talbot School of Theology at Biola University in La Mirada California, opened its doors to the first students in its new M.A. in Philosophy of Religion and Ethics.  What was the vision that inspired and discerned more clearly the strategic role played by philosophy in the task of theological education?  Dr. William Lane Craig answers this question in the current issue of Sundoulos, the alumni magazine of Talbot (my wonderful alma mater).

Why Philosophy?

Let me suggest three reasons why philosophical study ought to play an integral part in theological training.

 

First, Christian philosophy is vital to transforming our post-Christian cultural milieu. In America we now find ourselves living in a post-Christian culture that is increasingly coarse, superficial, promiscuous, and profane. Beneath it lies the widespread conviction of religious relativism. There is no one true religion, and to assert that there is to expose oneself as arrogant, coercive—even evil. In the absence of objective truth, religious belief becomes a purely private matter of subjective feelings.

 

Such a cultural context is antagonistic to the mission of the Church. In order to speak the Gospel effectively, the Church needs an intellectual milieu where the Gospel can be heard as an objectively true alternative; otherwise it will either be dismissed as superstition or appropriated only as “true for me but not for you.”

 

The Church thus faces, as Charles Malik emphasized in his inaugural address at the Billy Graham Center in Wheaton, two tasks in our evangelism, saving the soul and saving the mind; that is to say, not only converting people spiritually but converting them intellectually as well. And the Church is lagging dangerously behind with regard to this second task. Malik declared,

 

I must be frank with you: the greatest danger confronting American evangelical Christianity is the danger of anti-intellectualism. The mind in its greatest and deepest reaches is not cared for enough. But intellectual nurture cannot take place apart from profound immersion for a period of years in the history of thought and the spirit. People who are in a hurry to get out of the university and start earning money or serving the church or preaching the gospel have no idea of the infinite value of spending years of leisure conversing with the greatest minds and souls of the past, ripening and sharpening and enlarging their powers of thinking. The result is that the arena of creative thinking is vacated and abdicated to the enemy. Who among evangelicals can stand up to the great secular scholars on their own terms of scholarship? Who among evangelical scholars is quoted as a normative source by the greatest secular authorities on history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or politics? Does the evangelical mode of thinking have the slightest chance of becoming the dominant mode in the great universities of Europe and America that stamp our entire civilization with their spirit and ideas? For the sake of greater effectiveness in witnessing to Jesus Christ, as well as for their own sakes, evangelicals cannot afford to keep on living on the periphery of responsible intellectual existence.¹

The average Christian does not realize that there is an intellectual war going on in the universities and in the professional journals and in the scholarly societies. Christianity is being attacked from all sides as bigoted or irrational, and millions of students, our future generation of leaders, have absorbed this viewpoint.

 

It is the awesome task of Christian philosophers to help turn the intellectual tide back to a milieu in which Christian faith can be regarded as an intellectually credible alternative. Since philosophy is foundational to every disciple of the university, philosophy is the most strategic discipline to be captured for Christ. Malik himself realized this. He emphasized,

 

It will take a different spirit altogether to overcome this great danger of antiintellectualism. For example, I say this different spirit, so far as philosophy alone—the most important domain for thought and intellect—is concerned, must see the tremendous value of spending an entire year doing nothing but poring intensely over the Republic or the Sophist of Plato, or two years over the Metaphysics or the Ethics of Aristotle, or three years over the City of God of Augustine.

This is not a popular message for seminaries. J. Gresham Machen in his article “Christianity and Culture” observed that “many would the seminaries combat error by attacking it as it is taught by its popular exponents” instead of confusing students “with a lot of …names unknown outside the walls of the university.” But, Machen insisted, the scholarly method of procedure

 

is based simply upon a profound belief in the pervasiveness of ideas. What is to-day matter of academic speculation begins to-morrow to move armies and pull down empires., In that second stage, it has gone too far to be combated; the time to stop it was when it was still a matter of impassionate debate. So as Christians we should try to mould the thought of the world in such a way as to make the acceptance of Christianity something more than a logical absurdity.²

Like Malik, Machen also believed that “The chief obstacle to the Christian religion to-day lies in the sphere of the intellect,” and that it must be attacked in that sphere. “The Church is perishing to-day through the lackof thinking, not through an excess of it.”

Second, Christian Philosophy is an integral part of training for Christian ministry. What is ironic about the attitude that doubts philosophy’s rightful or important place at a seminary is that it is precisely our pastors and evangelists who are in need of this training. Machen’s article was originally given as a speech entitled, “The Scientific Preparation of the Minister.” A model for us here is a man like John Wesley, who was at once a spirit-filled revivalist and an Oxford-educated scholar. In 1756 Wesley delivered “An Address to the Clergy,” which I wish all future ministers would read before commencing their seminary studies. In discussing what sort of abilities a minister ought to have, Wesley distinguished between natural gifts and acquired abilities. And it’s extremely instructive to look at the abilities which Wesley thought a minister ought to acquire. One of them is a basic grasp of philosophy. He challenged his audience to ask themselves,

 

Am I a tolerable master of the sciences? Have I gone through the very gate of them, logic? . . . . Do I understand metaphysics; if not the depths of the Schoolmen, the subtleties of Scotus or Aquinas, yet the first rudiments, the general principles, of that useful science? Have I conquered so much of it, as to clear my apprehension and range my ideas under proper heads; so much as enables me to read with ease and pleasure, as well as profit, Dr. Henry Moore’s Works, Malbranche’s “Search after Truth,” and Dr. Clarke’s “Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God?”³

Wesley’s vision of a pastor is remarkable: a gentleman, skilled in the Scriptures and conversant with history, philosophy, and the science of his day. How do the pastors graduating from our seminaries compare to this model?

I can personally testify to the immense practicality and even indispensability of philosophical training for a ministry of evangelism. My ministry involves not just scholarly work, but speaking evangelistically on university campuses with groups like Campus Crusade for Christ. Again and again, I see the practical value of my philosophical studies in reaching students for Christ. The conventional wisdom is that “You can’t use arguments to bring people to Christ.” I don’t know how many times I’ve heard this said. I suspect those who say this just don’t do a lot of campus evangelism. The fact is that there is tremendous interest out there among unbelievers in hearing a rational presentation and defense of the Gospel.

Very often I’ll be invited onto a campus where a local professor has a reputation for eating Christians for lunch in his classes, and we’ll challenge him to a public debate on some issue like “Does God Exist?” or“ Christianity vs. Humanism,” or “Who Was Jesus?” or some such topic.And I find that hundreds and sometimes even thousands of students will come out to hear these debates. Frankly, I don’t know how one could minister effectively in a public way on our university campuses without training in philosophy.”

 

Dr. Craig, we couldn’t agree more!

 

William Lane Craig (D.Theol., Ludwig-Maximilliéns-Universität Munich, Germany; Ph.D., University of Birmingham England) is Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot. Bill and his wife Jan reside in the Atlanta area, from which he carries on an incredibly productive ministry of professional and popular writing, speaking and debating around the world. He also maintains a web-based ministry, reasonablefaith.org.