As a Christian philosopher I find it
very sobering that the only place that
philosophy is mentioned in the New
Testament is in the context of a warning
by the apostle Paul when he tells the
Colossians see to it that no one makes a
prey of you by vain philosophy based
upon human understanding rather than
upon Christ. And I take that warning very
seriously. What Paul is warning against
there is a philosophy which is not
predicated upon Christian principles but
upon secular atheistic principles. I
think that Paul may well be thinking in
that warning of the philosophers that he
ran into in Athens when he went through
that city and on Mars Hill found himself
face to face with ancient, of course they
were all ancient then, Paul was too; but
he found himself face to face with
Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. And in
the message that Paul gives on Mars Hill,
he attacks that worldview head-on and
presents a very different view of God and
the world than what these Epicurean and
Stoic philosophers would have accepted.
And so I think it is very important that
in doing our philosophy and theology
that we be careful not to be
made a prey of, not to be captured by
secular presuppositions, unexamined
assumptions that could lead us astray. We
need, as Paul says, to take every thought
captive to obey Christ, and that's why
I'm committed to doing my philosophy
from an explicitly Christian point of
view.
