Selling Water in the Desert

Modern people are drowning in data and starved for truth. Let's give them Christian philosophy.

It’s been over a decade since I taught philosophy. This was my original career plan, the one for which I was trained, but it didn’t work out and I’ve been a writer and editor now for several years. That’s also a good life, and I still get to moonlight as a philosopher now and then, but I’m particularly grateful for this: I haven’t forgotten what I loved about it.

Philosophy school is where you end up when you decide, in an explosion of youthful zeal, that what you really want is to develop your intellect as much as you can and then fling yourself full-bore at the Truth. That was twenty-something me. In the intervening years I’ve trekked the often-blighted landscapes of Academia and modern media, and learned some unhappy things about the ways in which earnest zeal can wither or be twisted, and yet? The memory of my youthful self isn’t bitter. Really, I’m still a believer. Philosophy can change lives. It can change the course of civilizations. It already has.

Back when I was still teaching, I used to meditate on this irony. Philosophy professors perpetually struggle to “relate to the students’ concerns,” daily pleading the case of long-dead men who wrote very dense texts. But looking at the world, the students, the labyrinth of propaganda and distraction in which they lived, this really felt to me like giving a diabetic the hard sell for insulin. Or encountering a ragged band of people lost in a desert, fainting from hunger and thirst, and trying desperately to persuade them to drink some water. How can you not know that you need this? Isn’t it just clear that the assumptions, habits, and goals that define your life are sorely lacking in cohesion?

They didn’t seem to realize it could be any other way. Bumping through the world haphazardly, attempting this or experimenting with that, was just life. I worried that that lack of cohesion would leave students vulnerable to capricious decision-making or, worse, the manipulative designs of bad actors. Years later, I’ve left the profession but not the concern.

I recognize of course that there has never been a time in which the formal study of philosophy was not a rarefied pursuit, chosen by only a very few. Historically, only a tiny minority had the option. Our own time is quite extraordinary in that most people in the developed world could study some philosophy if they liked, if not in an Ivy League doctoral program (like I did) then at least through the Great Courses, or through writers like Mortimer J. Adler who made great efforts to explain complex ideas in accessible ways. Some do seize that opportunity; most do not. Even with the help of gifted popularizers like Adler, it’s still hard work to grasp such big ideas, and in any case, most people don’t see how it would help them and wouldn’t know where to start.

So how would it help them? Where should they start? Why does anyone need philosophy?

In fact, the early Christians wrestled extensively with the question: Does philosophy matter, and why? Also, how should we do it?

It’s clear that Christianity must from the start have held great appeal for intellectual types, because there it attracted many luminous minds. The concentration of genius in those early Christian communities was truly impressive, and that’s before we get to St. Augustine, one of those transformative thinkers who rose so far above his time and circumstances that it’s honestly hard to understand it. These were already fairly high times for philosophy, with Greek and Roman ideas percolating across the Mediterranean world, so the fact that Christianity seemed appealing to philosophical types is already quite interesting. They had some good options, in those days. This wasn’t a dark age of ignorance and evil superstition.

However, it wasn’t clear to everyone that an influx of philosophical types was an advantage for Christianity. Intellectuals tend to be headstrong, and have a long history of going off the rails. Tertullian is the most famous of philosophy’s Christian critics, with his famous question (“What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”) and his famous recommendation to believe Christianity “because it is absurd.” He wasn’t alone in his concerns, though, nor were they ridiculous. A new faith’s distinctive characteristics could easily be swamped by over-confident eggheads who really believe, on some level, that they know better than Jesus.

Some of those early intellectuals did end up getting ousted as heretics. But what emerged from those early centuries (sometimes called the Patristic period) was an incredible foundation for Christian philosophy. It included both a well-honed dogma, and a method of relating to that dogma, even or especially if one is inclined towards philosophy.

Dogma has a bad name in modern times; we tend to see it as the enemy of reason. And indeed, dogma does potentially demand a kind of blind obedience. You’re supposed to believe it even if it seems wrong to you. However, the reality is that rational beings need some “dogmatic” premises in order to make any sense of the world. This is one of the lessons of modern epistemology (illustrated by Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy): If you truly insist on “questioning everything,” you can’t “know” almost anything at all. No one can live that way. Modern epistemologists spend a lot of time racing around trying build an adequate foundation on “true and evident” principles, but the results of that effort aren’t terribly inspiring. And realistically, most people who don’t intentionally enter into an established tradition end up drawing their premises willy-nilly from the prejudices of their own time. Might it not be better to build intentionally on a carefully developed, tried-and-true foundation like, oh, let’s say… Christian dogma as developed by the early Church Fathers?

Think of Christian dogma as a kind of “philosophical bargain.” You have to accept it to be a “good-faith” Christian. Some of its components will seem quite odd! No one fully understands them. How could Jesus Christ be fully God and fully man? What does it mean that God is “three Persons in one Being?” There are many mysteries here, and yet, if you accept them, you may then employ your intellect freely in the further pursuit of truth. You can even think as long and hard as you want about Christian dogma, as long as you accept that it’s true. The Fathers certainly did! Go read St. Augustine’s De Trinitate and then try to tell me that Patristic Christianity was all about “blind obedience.”

The great thinkers of the Patristic period resoundingly affirmed two things. There are mysteries in this universe that are beyond our ken, and we have to accept that. But, God gave us rational powers to help us grasp the truth. We should use them for that purpose.

Philosophy, in its best forms, can help people by giving them a cohesive framework, which in turn enables them to employ their rational powers fruitfully. The human mind is extremely adaptable, able to latch onto all sorts of questions, from “What is my purpose on this Earth?” to “Why have groceries been getting so expensive?” to “Did Colonel Mustard do it in the Dining Room or the Conservatory?” That’s okay up to a point; we don’t need to meditate on sweeping existential questions all the time. But if a person is not able to apply his rational powers to questions that matter, about the world and his own life, it may be quite hard to live well. To appreciate the real gravity of the choices he makes, or grasp the morally salient features of situations that confront him. To understand why life is worth living.

The early Fathers used elements of Greek philosophy to build a kind of philosophical architecture around the teachings of a wandering first-century Jew. It’s proven to be a pretty remarkable foundation for engaging and making sense of the world. What they began, the Medievals further developed, such that Christian philosophy now has a rich trove of resources, relevant to every kind of question that human beings may wish to explore. Metaphysical questions about the nature of the universe. Epistemic questions about the nature of science. Ethical, political, and social questions. The Scholastics of the High Middle Ages were unbelievably thorough about considering every source of truth of category of inquiry, incorporating all into their sweeping synthesis.

In rhapsodizing the Scholastics, it’s important to be clear about the claims I am making. I am not of course suggesting that the Medievals were right about everything. Nor do I believe that Scholastic philosophy contains answers to all the questions people have now. What is extraordinary about them is the breadth and cohesion of their system, combined with a real and lively attention to the evidence available to them, even concerning certain questions that to us seem relatively niggling. They gladly drew evidence from Patristic thinkers but also from natural science, history, oral tradition, and everyday experience. St. Thomas is eager to learn, not only from Scripture, but also from pagan, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers. The Medieval Schoolmen demonstrated in a spectacular way that the Fathers’ foundation was both sound and fertile.

Christian philosophy didn’t end with the Medievals, of course. There’s a lot worth appreciating in the modern era too, but for the present I will simply say: At no point in the modern era has Christian philosophy reproduced that remarkable combination of breadth and depth to quite the same extent. From the standpoint of synthesis, the Medieval Schoolmen remain unsurpassed. The good news is that we still have all the resources they left to us. (And more! Christian philosophy has still produced some really good things since the 1300s!) The bad news is that the world has gotten much bigger. The volume of information now available to us is absolutely vast. Recreating the Scholastic achievement today feels like moving from an alphabet book to a dictionary, or from the very first Sudoku puzzle in the book to one a mile wide with ten million boxes to fill. It’s daunting. But that may be the task that sits in front of us.

Because as hard as it seems, the need for synthesis is quite glaring. All around us, we see people trying to build their lives around philosophies that are perhaps acceptable for answering one kind of question, but utterly unsuited to addressing another. Scientific materialism can give passable answers to the question “What exists and how does it work?” but it’s utterly unhelpful for broaching moral or ethical questions, or explaining why anything matters. (Even on the level of metaphysics, I don’t actually think it’s particularly good, but it does at least offer answers to those kinds of questions that people seem to find fairly satisfying.) Various manifestations of postmodernism (feminism, critical race theory, white nationalism, whatever) give people causes to care about, ostensibly rooted in a thirst for justice, which can create a sense of purpose. But even when postmodernism yields useful insights, it’s proven miserably unsuccessful at moving beyond the stance of the bruising critic. It can’t build anything. It hardly pretends to be able to broach metaphysical questions (“Why does anything exist?”), and even as a moral and ethical theory, it has very little capacity to help people figure out how to live well.

Modern people need that kind of help. Many need it quite desperately, in fact! As I discussed in Monday’s post, modern people are drowning in data, bombarded daily with far more “content” than anyone could possibly process. What they need is map, complete with organizing principles. They need a philosophy that can draw all the different kinds of truth together into a single picture. To me it seems clear that Christianity is the strongest contender. (Some might be asking, “what about other world faiths?” That’s an excellent question, but to avoid getting sidetracked, I will address it quite soon in a separate post.) It’s a full-spectrum philosophy, able to address all the different sorts of questions a person might have, and fit the answers into a single cohesive picture. That’s what people need right now.

We still have a lot of work to do. Today, as in the early days of the Church, many people prefer to banish “bad lines of thought” instead of carefully analyzing and responding, drawing what truths we can even from hostile thinkers, and synthesizing them into the whole.

That’s understandable, especially because a quest for a new synthesis does really sound quite overwhelming. There are so many ideas out there, a lot of them very bad. It’s tempting just to build Benedict bunkers, and let the world take care of itself. We should note, though, that there are a whole lot more Christians today than in the Patristic or Scholastic eras, and unlike in those days, most of us don’t need to spend our days tilling the soil. Sure, the task is daunting, but we’ve got resources, personnel, and broad shoulders on which to stand. I think Christians should move forward with every confidence that we can look forward to another transformative era for Christian philosophy, if not immediately then in the not-impossibly-distant future. I realize some will find this fanciful, but look: At the turn of the first Millennium, no one would have foreseen the Scholastics’ Golden Hour! But then it came.

Perhaps I really haven’t outgrown the naive fancies of my youth. But even if you’re scoffing, I would ask: Can it hurt to try? What better thing do our intellectual-types presently have to do?

Thanks for reading. Come back Friday for more on postmodernism and what we can and can’t learn from it.