John the apostle, author of five books found within the New Testament documents, in his record of the gospel of Jesus Christ recorded the summary of Jesus’ view on the three main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. This pericope in John is located in 8:30-36. In this section of Scripture Jesus speaks about truth, epistemology, and ethics in the most profound manner. Despite the crispness and the clarity of Jesus words, theologians and scholars alike have failed to appreciate the reverberating consequences and the profundity that emerges within this text. First, and foremost, we should be clear about how Jesus was characterized by His closest followers. Jesus was a great teacher, a great Rabbi, and this fact is beyond dispute. His followers were firmly convinced that He was divine, God in the flesh. They were certain that He was the promised Messiah. However, next to His status as the divine Son of God, God of very God, Jesus was not celebrated for being the greatest theologian to have ever lived. He was not esteemed to be one of the fine doctors of religion. He wasn’t even revered as the grandest of philosophers. More than all these things, Jesus was viewed by his closest and most trusted disciples as the great shepherd. He was the Bishop of bishops, a pastor with a pastor’s heart.
Jesus and Metaphysics
Most Christians never bother with terms like metaphysics and
epistemology. We are too busy living, working, relating, and watching Hollywood
productions like ‘American Idol’ to waste our time on such brain-stretching
concepts. While I am a firm believer in keeping things as simple as possible,
it is simply impossible to keep everything simple. Some things are naturally
and unavoidably more complicated. Of course, the less familiar a person is with
a subject, the more complex it will appear. Therefore, I strongly suggest that
Christians become more familiar with at least the basics of some of these
terms, if for no other reason that such familiarity will aid you in having
conversations with unregenerate people who are familiar with the terms and who
actually build their worldview around them.
Most Christians are not terribly acquainted with the term
‘metaphysics’. Ordinarily, I like to provide a working definition for any term
that might contain nebulous elements or that might not be as widely distributed
to my audience. In the case of metaphysics, that custom proves to be more
difficult than it should. Allow me to provide just one example of this problem.
“It is not
easy to say what metaphysics is. Ancient and Medieval philosophers might have
said that metaphysics was, like chemistry or astrology, to be defined by its
subject matter: metaphysics was the“science” that studied “being as such”
or“the first causes of things” or “things that do not change.” It is no longer
possible to define metaphysics that way, and for two reasons. First, a
philosopher who denied the existence of those things that had once been seen as
constituting the subject-matter of metaphysics—first causes or unchanging
things—would now be considered to be making thereby a metaphysical assertion.
Secondly, there are many philosophical problems that are now considered to be
metaphysical problems (or at least partly metaphysical problems) that are in no
way related to first causes or unchanging things; the problem of free will, for
example, or the problem of the mental and the physical.” [Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy]
The area of metaphysics addresses the idea of being.
Essentially, when we talk about metaphysics we are dealing with the reality of
well, reality. Metaphysics is the attempt to say something truthful about the
physical world. It deals with the origin, or cause of the physical and the
reality that lies behind it. It is concerned with the first cause, the source
of all reality. The question is indelibly related the question of the being of
God. Furthermore, how we see God and think of God will determine, to a large
degree, how we interpret reality. Fundamentally, there are two basic schools of
metaphysics: Christian metaphysics and non-Christian metaphysics. The area of
metaphysics is indeed a complex branch of philosophy. However, all the
Christian really needs to know is fundamentally how the non-Christian
perspective differs from biblical metaphysics and this will help equip them to
encounter non-believers and skeptics who take an ungodly perspective toward the
subject.
Heidegger wrote, “Do we in our time have an answer to the
question of what we really mean by the word ‘being’? Not at all.”[1]
According to one of the greatest minds of modern times, humans do not have an
answer to the question of being, of reality, of how things actually are. The
regrettable facts are that many modern philosophers and philosophies have been
constructed on the foundation of views of men like Heidegger. Worse still is
the fact that many theological systems have been tragically affected by this
paradigm as well. Painting the desperate situation vividly, Gadamer wrote, “So
we are led to ask with increasing urgency whether a primordial falsity may not
be hidden in our relation to the world; whether, in our linguistically mediated
experience, we may not be prey to prejudices or, worse still, to necessities
which have their source in the linguistic structuring of our first experience
of the world and which would force us to run with open eyes, as it were, down a
path whence there was no other issue than destruction.”[2]
Man’s quest for the truth about reality, about being, about our existence,
apart from God has proven to be beyond our greatest philosophers’ reach. The
picture is much different in the Jesus paradigm.
“Meaning, that pivotal term of every theory of language,
cannot be treated without a satisfactory theory of signs.”[3]
The referent of a word necessarily precedes the word. Why
would man need a symbol for nothing? The Christian view is that God is the
author of both the symbol and the referent to which it is related. Jesus says
as much in John 8:31-32. “When listening to discussions in this subject, sometimes
one gets the impression that the term “metaphysical” has lost any objective
meaning, and is merely used as a kind of professional philosophical invective.”[4]
“To mean is both what the speaker means, i.e., what he
intends to say, and what the sentence means, i.e., what the conjunction between
the identification function and the predicative function yields.”[5]
That both of these ‘meanings’, what the speaker intends and what the sentence
says, from an ethical point of view, remain the responsibility of the
interpreter.
“What is required for a given illocutionary act, in addition
to the utterance of an appropriate sentence, is not that certain environmental
conditions actually hold or even that the speaker believe them to hold, but
only that he take responsibility for their holding. In other words, what is
required is that he recognize that what he is doing is governed by rules
requiring that the conditions hold.”[6]
It follows then that ethics govern the area of communication, the use of words
and symbols to express and convey meaning from one person to another. Words are
indeed a powerful tool in the human cache, created by God, not invented by man,
for the specific purpose of displaying God’s glory in His handiwork of creation
specifically in the area of relating to His creation. “Linguistic behavior,
like most other forms of behavior, is subject to moral rules and rules of
etiquette.”[7]
“So Jesus was
saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then
you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and
the truth will make you free.”[8]
Syntactically speaking, we are dealing with a conditional
statement. Jesus’ statement is a third-class conditional clause, meaning that
the statement is uncertain but likely. What is likely? It is likely they will
continue in His word! If in fact, they do continue in His word, then and only
then are they true disciples. Jesus then says, and you will know
the truth, and the truth will make you free! This statement raises many
questions for theologians and philosophers alike. From a linguist’s
perspective, what does Jesus mean with His use of λόγος in this statement? In
one utterance, Jesus mentions word, truth, knowing, and a mysterious
metaphysical state of freedom. Continuing in the Word of Jesus is synonymous
with walking in truth. In His prayer in Jn. 17:17, Jesus said, “Sanctify them
in the truth; Your word is truth.”[9] According
to Jesus, truth and His word are one, and the same. To continue in His Word is
to continue in truth. Modern metaphysicians would take Jesus to the
philosophical woodshed for this statement.
We read this text and ask, from what does knowing truth
free us? Moreover, what does this word “knowing” in the text mean? The idea in
this Greek word is to know, recognize, or understand something. In this case,
that something is ten aletheian, the truth! Jesus obviously believed
that the metaphysical conditions necessary to make this statement actually
obtained. He presupposed truth about reality without ever attempting to prove it.
The Christian is interested in Jesus’ theory of reality or
metaphysic. He or she is concerned to know and understand a biblical
metaphysic. Truth about reality, as God has created it, is revealed in
Scripture. “This metaphysic is so simple and so simply Biblical that
non-Christian philosophers would say that it is nothing but theology…So I point
out that the Bible does contain a theory of Reality.”[10]
Jesus and Epistemology
Not only does John 8:31-32 inform us that Jesus presupposed
the existence of truth about reality, that he had a well-defined metaphysic in
his philosophy, it also informs us that He believed we could know this truth
about reality. Modern theories of epistemology are all over the map in how
humans know anything at all. The most popular among modern atheists appears to
be empiricism. This view holds that all knowledge comes through the senses. All
truth claims must pass through the scrutiny of science and scientific
investigation. However, not all truth claims possess the nature required to
undergo this type of scrutiny. That is to say that some truth claims cannot be subjected
to the scientific method. You cannot prove love using the scientific method.
There are numerous things we cannot prove using science. We cannot prove that
logic exists using the scientific method. We cannot prove that other humans
have minds using the scientific method. In fact, the claim that truth exists is
not a proposition that can be proven validated empirically. Hence, we required
to conclude that there must be more than one way to validate truth other than
the scientific method. Hence, it follows that our basis for rejecting truth
claims cannot rest solely on a claim’s inability to show validity using the
scientific method.
“For ‘I know’ seems to describe a state of affairs which
guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the
expression ‘I thought I knew.’”[11]
Wittgenstein is right. To know something describes a state
of affairs which guarantee what is known. In our case, what is known is truth.
This is truth about reality, about how things really are, about the cause and
source of all that was, is, or ever will be.
“When we first begin to believe anything, what we
believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions.
(Light dawns gradually over the whole.)”[12]
The idea of ideas is based on, not many beliefs about one
reality, but on one belief about one reality. The ideas of every worldview
begin with one idea at the foundation and move up the tree from its base, the
root. This is true regardless of how philosophers describe reality. The
statement “you shall know the truth” implies but one truth, not many. In addition,
every belief system contradicts that one truth is necessarily is false. Belief
systems are like trees with branches. You do not begin with the twig at the top
of the tree at the end of a branch. We begin with the root of the tree that
serves as the life of the rest of the branches. If the root of the tree (belief
system) does not correspond with Scripture’s teaching on reality, on truth, on
how humans can and do know things, we cut the tree down. This is because every
branch on that tree, to one degree or another possesses what is in the root. In
this case, a belief system cannot avoid contamination of error in its branches
if error is at its base.
For the Christian, Scripture must serve as the root of our
belief system. Every belief must be anchored in the root of Scripture. Christ
is our foundation. It is The Christ that is at the center of Scripture. His
view must be our view. His presuppositions must be our presuppositions. We
glean Christ’s views and beliefs from Scripture. If, however, we prefer another
method, we unavoidably encounter a crisis of authority from which we shall
never recover. Authority can only rest in one seat. For many American pastors,
theologians, Christians, and philosophers, that seat is unfortunately human
reason, science or experience. For true Christians, it is Scripture alone! Is
it okay to respond to the skeptic’s claim that we cannot know, by asserting that we
can know because Jesus said we could? I will answer that question with a question:
is it wrong to say you believe something simply because Jesus taught it? Is it
anti-intellectual to say that I believe we can know truth about reality because
Jesus affirmed truth about reality? Are the words of Christ, of God Himself
justification for me to make claims? Must we engage every godless philosophy
conjured up by sinful men in order to refute their claims if those claims,
while being different at the end of their twig beliefs, are basically the same
at their roots?
“A biblical theory of knowledge proclaims the absolute
requirement of God’s revealed truth as the tacit foundation of understanding
and knowledge.”[13]
Jesus and Ethics
For many theologians, scholars, and Christians, knowledge
has as its goal, expansion. That is to say, many people desire to increase
their knowledge of subjects for the mere sake of intellectual renovation. They
seek more knowledge in order to possess more knowledge. They are not unlike the
rich man who wanted to build larger barns in which to store his wealth. Many
intellectual Christians, theologians and scholars have the same problem with
knowledge. Some wish more for the sake of more. Others acquire knowledge in
order win arguments and debates. They want to be viewed as an excellent debater
in their particular subject, be it theism or whatever. These individuals expend
a great deal of energy to that end. However, when we survey Jesus’ philosophy
in the area of metaphysics and epistemology, that is to say, how He views
reality/being and how we can know truth about them, His end is fundamentally
different.
Jesus says that our knowledge of the truth is freeing. From
what does knowledge of the truth free us? In v. 34 Jesus tells us it is sin.
The knowledge of the truth frees us from sin. Knowledge of the truth means we
are slaves to sin no longer. Hence, we see that Jesus also has a very
well-defined view of morality. Sin is violation of God’s moral law. Hence,
Jesus believes in absolute morality. He presupposes that absolute reality,
morality, and certain knowledge of these things exist when He says you will
know the truth and the truth will set you free from sin.
So we see Jesus through the lens of philosophy. We recognize
that Jesus believed in absolute reality that was knowable. Ultimate reality of
course is God, who is the source of all truth. He is the very essence of truth.
To know truth is to know God. To know God is to keep His word. To keep His word
is to be free from sin, to walk in divine favor. It is to love what is right,
what is holy and to eschew what is evil.
Jesus reveals in this one statement that He believes in the
metaphysical certainty of truth and asserts unashamedly that we can know it.
Nowhere does Jesus or any of His closest disciples wrangle about whether or not
being is, or if it is possible for us to know it. Jesus presupposes the
existence of truth as well as the human capacity to know it, contrary to most
modern philosophers and even many if not the majority of modern theologians and
scholars.
As Wittgenstein said, beliefs are necessarily part of an
overall belief-system. Rather than critique individual beliefs, we should focus
on the simple task of criticizing the root of the system. Christians
demonstrate a belief to be false when they show that it contradicts the
revelation of divine truth, the Scriptures. Let the word of God be true, and
every competing philosophy a lie.
[5] Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Thoery (Fort Worth,
TX: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 12.
[6] Wallace P. Alston, Philosophy of Lanuage
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1964), 42-43.
[8] New American Standard Bible:
1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Jn 8:31–32.
[9] New American Standard Bible:
1995 Update (LaHabra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995), Jn 17:17.
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