Socrates Meets Jesus

Introduction

Who Needs Philosophy?A Stumbling Block or a Stepping Stone?

• Philosophy: An intellectual and moral morass. • Is the Bible anti-philosophical?

< Col. 2:8. < I Cor. 1-2. < Tertullian: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”

• NOTE: Classical philosophy developed outside of special (biblical) revelation. < Therefore, it depended upon general revelation alone.

• The Bible as philosophy. • Logic and reason are gifts of God.

< Matt. 22:37 – “The Greatest Commandment.” • Philosophy (lit. “the love of wisdom”) is simply the rational process of synthesizing facts,

logic, and moral precepts in order to guide our thinking and our actions.

The “Axial Period”The Sixth Century B.C.

• In China: Confucianism. • In India: Buddhism. • In Persia: Zoroastrianism. • In Israel: The collection and preservation of the ancient Jewish Scriptures. • In Greece: The advent of philosophy and logic.

The Scope of Greek Philosophy. (1) Cosmology: What is the nature of the physical/material world? (2) Metaphysics: Moral, ethical, and theological issues.

CosmologyRational Enquiry.

• The initial motivations: (1) Curiosity about the material world.(2) A rejection of traditional pagan mythological religion.

• The basic assumption: the world is rational and knowable.• Philosophers. • The philosophical parameters:

(1) Naturalism.(2) Rationalism.

• The primary focus: “What are the basic components of the physical world?”

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Socrates Meets Jesus • Introduction 2

Thales (c. 624-546 B.C.). • The first physicist.

< Natural physical laws can be discovered by reason. < One of the “Seven Wise Men” of Greece.

< What is difficult? “To know thyself.”• Theological pantheism: “All things are full of gods.”

Permanence v. Change. • Heraclitus (c. 500 B.C.):

< “All things change” – permanence and stability are illusions.< Reality is strictly material, and it is grasped through the senses. < Nothing is absolute... except the Logos.

• Parmenides (c. 500 B.C.):< Order and stability are the natural state of things.< “The Way of Truth” is reality: timeless and unchanging. < “The Way of Opinion” (or “Appearances”) is an illusion.

Speculations on Origins.• Anaximander (c. 611-547 B.C.):

< Mankind evolved from aquatic, fishlike mermen.• Empedocles (c. 490-430 B.C.):

< Life began spontaneously.

Atomism. < Democritus (c. 425 B.C.):

< The atomic theory of matter. < The “father of modern science”?

• Methodological naturalism. < Atheism.

Metaphysical PhilosophyThe Perennial Issues of Life.

• What is truth? • What is virtue (arete)? • Is there meaning and purpose in life?• Do we have an immortal soul, and what happens when we die?

Pythagoras (c. 570-495 B.C.).• Philosopher, theologian, mathematician, and mystic.• Religion and morality. • Philosophical dualism.

< Spirt v. matter. < The body as the prison of the soul. < Asceticism and ritual purification.< Theory of reincarnation.

• The Pythagorean influence.

The Sophists (“Those who are wise”). • Humanism. • The art of rhetoric. • Ancient relativists. • Ancient postmodernists.

Thales

Pythagoras

Socrates Meets Jesus • Introduction 3

“The School of Athens,” by Raphael

Among the featured philosophers are (1) Socrates, (2) Plato, and (3) Aristotle, along with otherssuch as Zeno, Epicurus, Pythagoras, Anaximander, Hypatia, Empedocles, Parmenides, Heraclitus,

and Diogenes the Cynic.

1 2 3

• Philosophical charlatans. • Protagoras (c. 490-420 B.C.):

< “Man is the measure of all things.”< “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”< Agnosticism.

• Prodicus (c. 465-395 B.C.): < Religion as a psychological impulse.

• Thrasymachus (c. 460-400 B.C.):< Relativism< Rejection of natural law. < Antinomianism. < Egoism.

Basic Tenets of Sophism.(1) Humanism. (2) Skepticism.(3) Relativism.(4) Individualism.(5) Pragmatism.

The Classical Reaction. • The consequences of sophism. • The refutation of sophism.

Socrates Meets Jesus • Introduction 4

Socrates (469-399 B.C.)The Sources.

• Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.). • Xenophon (c. 430-354 B.C.).• Aristophanes (c. 446-386 B.C.)• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.).

“The First Philosopher.”• The first great metaphysical philosopher.• The role of Reason – and the extra-rational.

Life.• Family background. • The “Golden Age” of Pericles. • A stone cutter by profession.• Family life:

< Xanthippe. < Three sons.

• Public service. < A hoplite in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.).

• Personality and character: < Genial, witty, charming, and curious.

• Appearance:< Short, squat, and physically robust.< Virginia Wetherbee: “Heavy-faced with bulging eyes, a broad, snub nose whose

nostrils spread wide... an untidy beard, balding, a paunchy body carelessly wrappedin a coarse cloak, barefoot – in appearance, a satyr.”

< Arthur Herman: “He famously lacked the conventional masculine beauty so prizedby Athenians. His homely appearance was the frequent butt of jokes, including hisown.”

Ethicist.• The “eternal law” [a.k.a., “natural law”] that defined justice and goodness.

< Socrates: “One must not do wrong even when one is wronged.”• By employing logic, honest men can live virtuously and transcend selfishness, hedonism

and materialism.• Virtue and knowledge and inseparable.

Socratic Method.• An Athenian street philosopher.• A dynamic, engaging, enthusiastic conversationalist.• The dialectical method of inquiry.• The Logos. • Principles of logic. • The goal: Self-examination.• Socratic Dictims:

< His adopted motto: “Know Thyself” – taken from the inscription on the Temple ofApollo at Delphi.

• Meaning: Know that you are a human, not a god.< “The unexamined life is not worth living.”< “Only the virtuous man can be happy.”< “When you know all the answers, you haven’t asked all the questions.”

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Encounter with the Oracle at Delphi.• Chairephon’s inquiry: “Who is the wisest man in all of Greece?”• Socrates’ interviews.

< Socrates: “Although I do not suppose that either of us knows anything reallybeautiful and good, I am better off than he is – for he knows nothing, and thinks thathe knows; I neither know nor think that I know... The truth is... that God alone iswise.”

Political Philosophy. • Justice and the “eternal law.”

• Socrates’ critique of democracy.

Socratic Theology and Spirituality

Greek Religion. Socrates the Mystic.

• Socrates’ daimonion. < Socrates: “I have been commanded to philosophize... by God through oracles and

dreams and by every other means by which divinity has ever commanded anyone to do anything.”

A Greek Theist? • Anti-atheism. • Skepticism regarding the traditional pagan gods.• There is a God – a divine Mind – who created and rules over all of creation. • The “gods” as multiple aspects of one supreme God.• Attributes of God:

< God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.< God is the source of all that is good, just, loving, rational, and moral.< God cares about humanity, and he desires that men promote goodness and justice. < God guides those whose hearts are pure through divine intuition. < Salvation through the application of Reason and resolution. < Divine justice: “Nothing can harm a good man either in life or after death; and his

fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods.” • A teleological view of history:

< The universe is purposeful. < God is guiding human history toward the realization of a good final end.

• The distinction between “natural” and “revealed” theology.

On the Soul. • The dual nature of man. • The soul (psyche) as our true essence and our real self. • The soul as a spiritual reality – “a fallen divinity in the tomb of the body.” • The soul as also the essence of one’s moral consciousness. • Theory of the pre-existence of the soul and reincarnation.

< Knowledge as a process of recollection.

On the Afterlife. • The transmigration of the soul.• Divine judgement.

< The Isles of the Blessed. < Tartarus.

Socrates Meets Jesus • Introduction 6

A Proto-Christian? • Correlations between Socratic theology and biblical theology. < EX: “I know in my conscious that I am wise in nothing.... [O]nly the god is wise,

and... human wisdom is worth little or nothing.” • Ref. I Cor. 1-2. < EX: “One must not do wrong even when one is wronged.” • Ref. Matt. 5:38-39. • Ref. Matt. 7:12 – the “Golden Rule.”

< EX: “Gentlemen,... I will obey the god rather than you, and as long as I have breathin me, and remain able to do it, I will never cease being a philosopher, and exhortingyou....”

“In view of all this, I would say, gentlemen,... either let me go free or do not let me go free, but I will never do anything else, even if I am to die many deaths.”

• Ref. Acts 5:29-31. < EX: “You are wrong, my friend, if you think a man with a spark of decency in him

ought to calculate life or death. The only thing he ought to consider... is whether hedoes right or wrong....”

• Ref. Matt. 6:31-33. < EX: “Something divine and spiritual comes to me.... This has been about me since

my boyhood – a voice, which when it comes always turns me away from doingsomething I am intending to do, but never urges me on....

“I maintain that I have been commanded by the god to do this, through oracles and dreams and in eery way in which some divine influence or other has ever

commanded a man to do anything.”< EX: “No evil can happen to a good man, either in this life or in death.”

• Ref. Rom. 8:28. • Justin Martyr: Socrates as a link between Greek rational philosophy and the revealed

truths of Christianity.

The Trial and Death of SocratesHis Trial.

• Rule by the Thirty Tyrants. • A new Athenian democracy. • The charges against Socrates:

(1) “Corrupting the youth;” (2) “Impiety” toward the gods.

• Socrates’ Apology.< His defense.

His Death (399 B.C.). • Plato’s Phaedo. • His quest for the True, the Good, and the Beautiful.

His Legacy.