Exploring Christianity and Philosophy

Christian Philosophy as a Way of Life: An Invitation to Wonder  

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology in everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director of the Hendricks Center and I am so thrilled that you have joined us today. And today we're going to be talking about the relationship between Christianity and philosophy. Now, you might be saying, "Yes, I love philosophy," and if that's you, we hope that our conversation can join you in that joy and that we can discover new depths together with you. But if you bravely made the decision to click play on this episode, because philosophy is just not your thing, but you were like, you listen, "I'm going to give it a shot. I'm going to hear what they have to say," or you're wary of philosophy, we are hoping to make a case for you that philosophy is very much something that is meaningful and has an intentional role in the Christian life. 

And so if you are, like I said, if you're wary, please stick with us because Ross Inman, who I'll introduce in one second, has really good thoughts on why we should embrace philosophy with Christianity. So again, to make that case, we're joined by Ross Inman who's an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is also the editor of Philosophia. Philosophia. How do you say it? 

Ross Inman: 

Philosophia Christi. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Philosophia Christi. He says it so flowingly. Philosophia Christi, which is the Journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. So thank you Ross for joining us. 

Ross Inman: 

Really glad. I'm delighted to be here. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Awesome. 

Ross Inman: 

This is a lot of fun. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Oh, good, good. We're thrilled to have you on campus. It's even better. Typically, people who are at different seminaries we end up having on Zoom or something. So it's good to have you in the studio. 

Ross Inman: 

It's great to be here. Really great to be here. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So like any good college student, I was first introduced to philosophy with Plato's Cave, again, I feel like that's how you get introduced. And my mind was blown at that point and a little confused past the general observation that maybe we don't have the real, quote unquote, real world accessible to us. So when I got confused there, I stopped more or less and I was like, "Oh, that's really helpful. And wow, there are people who think about those things a lot." But you didn't stop, you kept going. What was it about philosophy that drew you in and just never let go? 

Ross Inman: 

Great question. I should say that I actually dropped my first philosophy class in college because it was so boring and seemingly irrelevant, and a lot of that was the teacher, but the Lord didn't give up on me, brought me back to philosophy. But yeah, so my own journey with thinking philosophically or living philosophically, it really did start, I was in college, became a Christian my junior in high school, and I was a biblical studies major. And the questions that would keep me up at night about life and meaning and purpose and Christianity, they just seemed to be fundamental questions. They seemed to be questions about what is real and true and how do I know, how can I know anything even about history, about Jesus' resurrection and these sorts of questions. And I would go to the people in my immediate church community and sincerely ask, "Would you help me? Would you help walk with me through these questions?" And I began to realize the questions that I was asking at the time were philosophical questions. 

And here I was, I was serving in youth ministry in college at a very large church in Southern California, and really feeling the vibrancy of my faith leaking and thinking, "How am I supposed to help strengthen and encourage these students if I'm barely holding on myself?" So it really became a discipleship issue for me just to find some help to think through these philosophical questions. And the well-meaning response that I received was almost like, "Please don't ask these types of questions." Or I was given remedies that were surface-deep remedies, and I was struggling to lean over a Bible and read a Bible that was allegedly written by a God that I wasn't sure was even there kind of thing. And so I walked into my first philosophy class in a Christian college and I saw the syllabus, I saw that all of the questions that I had been thinking about and wrestling with that were keeping me up at night, were up for discussion. And here it was, this professor began to walk with me through those questions. 

And so it was a homecoming into a discipline that I was like, "I didn't even know there was an area of study that looks at these fundamental questions about reality and truth and knowledge and ethics and value and these sorts of things." And I just got really excited about it and my faith was so strengthened that I just thought, when I began thinking about what would the Lord have me do with my life during that time, the Lord just spotlighted my professor, his name is Fred Blackburn. And the Lord spoke and said, "Look at the impact that this man has had in your life," and there was just great need in my community at that time, in conservative evangelical circles. There were a lot of people going into biblical studies and theology, but how few Christian philosophers there were at the time was really troubling to me. So I knew I wasn't the only one who was wrestling with these types of questions. So I asked my professor, I said, "How do I become a philosophy teacher?" He's like, "Well, you've got to go to school for a really long time." And I was like, "Okay," so. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Read a lot. 

Ross Inman: 

We did that. But that was initially, it was more of wrestling with how can I live well as a Christian and come to some satisfying answers about these fundamental questions because Christianity presupposes a lot of these answers, but I wanted to understand the things that I believed and professed. So that was the initial, and here I am all these years later, so that was the initial hook that got me. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. 

Ross Inman: 

It was a discipleship thing. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, that's really interesting. When I was, I don't actually remember my, I think it was 14 or 15, I'm giving away my age here, but is when September 11th happened and I started asking a variety of those questions for myself and before then, Islam hadn't really been on a major world scene as far as a fifteen-year-old in the US. I wasn't fully aware of that, but I was seeing all of that on my television screen and I thought, "Man, what makes them…" And I actually saw a boy about my age and I said, "He's praying and what makes me right and him wrong?" And I started asking those questions. And I was in a very small, rural Kansas environment where people aren't necessarily equipped to handle that, but praise God that I didn't have somebody who shut me down, like you were saying, somebody was like, "Please don't ask that question." I had people who said, "We don't know. We don't know how to answer this. I can only tell you." But I hear so many stories of people, especially people who've ended up leaving the faith, who hit that point in their faith journey and their intellectual journey, and they ran up against some people who said, "You shouldn't be asking these questions," when in reality, it's probably quite good to ask those questions. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, I think so. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So what phil… I don't know why the word philosophy. I think ever since I tried to say Philosophia, I'm stumbling over the word every time. 

Ross Inman: 

You can do this. Yes. You got this. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Thank you. I appreciate the cheerleading. So what philosophers or philosophical fields or veins of thought do you regularly disagree with? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, I mean, gosh, there's things to disagree with all over the place in the history of philosophy, in contemporary philosophy, amongst Christians, amongst non-Christians. So my main area that I work in, well, there's two, one is metaphysics, which is one of the sub-disciplines of philosophy that just studies the nature and the structure of ultimate reality or fundamental reality. So it asks questions about God, does God exist? Does the soul exist? Does free will exist? Does human nature exist? These kinds of things. Those would be metaphysical questions. And the other is philosophical theology. So I just love thinking about the nature of God, his activity in the world, the nature of the incarnation, the trinity and those sorts of things. So there is plenty. That is a hard question. There is plenty to disagree with. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Especially for philosophers, because philosophers like to debate and think through things and pick things apart. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

But who are you regularly encountering and not really… Sorry, I don't want to make it combative as much as it's… I think what I have in mind here is who do you highly respect? Or in my mind, I think of Nietzsche. I highly respect Nietzsche's thoughts on a lot of levels. I do not agree with him, with the fundamental way that he lands, I do not fundamentally land there, but I can respect a lot. So maybe that would be a better question. Who do you respect and what veins of thought do you respect what they have to what they're presenting, though you might not in the end land with them? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, great question. So let me just think historically here to keep it safer. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I know, right? That sounds like you don't have to name current philosophers. 

Ross Inman: 

See here. Yeah, I mean, Descartes is somebody that I engage a lot. So I also think deeply about the nature of the human person. I teach several classes on philosophy of mind and anthropology and just a lot of the early modern philosophers, I have deep respect. Some of them were brilliant and they had significant innovations in philosophy and in science but I think there was significant confusions. That was probably one of the most important turning points in intellectual history in my opinion, was the early modern period and just fundamentally re-conceiving of the nature of nature, of matter and these sorts of things. So yeah, Descartes, somebody I have immense respect for who is a Christian philosopher, but I think he went astray in a few areas that I think we're still recovering from that today that actually has significant implications for how we think about human persons, about how we think about human nature today, how we think about the true self and what the true self is, and what does my body have to do with that, these sorts of things. 

So we're seeing the ripple effects of ideas that were forged centuries ago. We really are seeing the fingerprints of the history of philosophy really unfolding before us in so many cultural issues. So these philosophers still speak. Though dead, they still speak, do they not? 

Kymberli Cook: 

Very much. And oftentimes- 

Ross Inman: 

Nietzsche as well. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah. Nietzsche as well. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Especially if you are listening and you're less inclined toward philosophy, but you're hanging with us, they do still speak. And oftentimes we don't realize that we have their assumptions and that their assumptions are, and the things that they have said function as these background assumptions that we move through life with that we don't even know. Most people might not even know that Descartes has really impacted the way that they view the world and they understand themselves in the world, but it has. 

Ross Inman: 

Absolutely. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Okay. One other just general question about you and philosophy and your thoughts there is who do you think is underrated? What philosopher would you say is underrated? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, great question. German philosopher, I think he was a seventeenth-century German philosopher, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who was a Lutheran Christian philosopher who was a polymath, co-discovered calculus, was a genius and he was a brilliant man, and his work is read. It's widely read, but it's not as widely read as some more notable Christian philosophers like Augustine or Aquinas or Anselm. So yeah, his stuff needs to be read and engaged definitely a lot more than it is today. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And so what would you say is the significant contribution, why you would say, "Man, we need to read this more"? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, so Leibniz effortlessly weaves between science and philosophy. So he has an all-encompassing vision of reality. He was one of these old rationalists who was a system builder in the sense that he had this unifying vision of reality that we've tend to, for various historical and philosophical reasons, pivoted away from having this or valuing these unified visions of reality. But Leibniz was, he was a systematician and every little piece had its place in his philosophy. We tend to be more fragmented in piecemeal today, and I think that's not necessarily a good thing because more of like a buffet, it tends to more look like our own preferences than actually these pieces fitting together in a tight-knit way, like a puzzle. 

So yeah, Leibniz was a systematic thinker, was a brilliant man, was a devout Lutheran, cherished holy scripture, but was not afraid of the sciences, but critically engaged them and was a metaphysician too. So he was a jack-of-all-trades, but for various historical and sociological reasons, we don't really have Jack-of-all trades very much any more because of the specialization in the academy. Everybody's required to be so specialized and narrow that they're really unable to adequately engage with other disciplines. And so I think that's more of a result of the high specialization in academia today, but yeah. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. So I want to connect what you were talking about, I feel like something you said a little bit earlier when you were talking about yourself, you said not just studying philosophy but living philosophically. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah. That's right. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And so when you're talking about Leibniz, would you say that there's a connection there between this sense of a holistic view of philosophy and the whole system and what you were talking about with living philosophically 

Ross Inman: 

There would be different- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Sort of, not that you're just ascribing to his philosophical view. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, so I would say the period where philosophy is seen less as a subject matter that one studies and it's a purely cognitive cerebral thing, and it's more of a holistic way of life, would be the ancient philosophy in antiquity. And so what I'm trying to do in the book is to help broaden Christian's conception of philosophy. I think it has a public relations problem today, philosophy in general. A lot of people think of it as a purely intellectual exercise reserved for those who are either majoring in philosophy or you got to take that intro to philosophy class and check it off the curriculum list and you're done with it, in fact, people can't wait to be done with philosophy in some ways. But I'm just trying to draw to Christian's attention to the fact that the perceived irrelevance of philosophy to human life wasn't… Philosophy didn't always have a public relations problem. It was seen to be more of a whole life orientation, a way not just of thinking, but also ordering your actions towards certain goods. 

And so I like to point Christians back to antiquity. So whether Roman, Greek or Hellenistic philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, and whether Stoic or Epicurean philosophers, they all were part of this conception of philosophy is not something you just go and you do and then you're done with, but it permeates. It is a subtle rhythm that orders your life from sunup to sundown. And I think we really need to recapture, especially today when philosophy has… It's conceived of so narrow. I mean, I'm thinking of Florida Senator, Marco Rubio, gave a comment in a public forum where he said, "Welders make more money than philosophers." He says, "We need more welders and less philosophers." I mean, for a public figure like that to be able to say something like that and believe it, he did later recant that, I should add. He says, "I went back and I read some ancient philosophers and I realized, we need both." 

He says, "We need welders and we need philosophers to help us make sense of things." But I think a lot of people share that worry. And so I would just want to encourage Christians that we have a rich tradition, a philosophical tradition. There are riches that belong to us as Christians that are, they're back there. There's a conversation that's been going on for a very long time. So think of even Augustine's interaction with the most influential philosophy of his day or Aquinas's interaction with the best philosophy of his day. But there is an older tradition with a much thicker, broader conception of philosophy that would actually entail, and I tell people this, that there are a few things that are more practical that you could do with your life than live philosophically, and that strikes us as wrong and odd. But I think it's because of how we're understanding philosophy, is very narrow and just to philosophize for a course grade and you're done or getting really heady in the dorm room conversation or something like that, and then you can live your life and leave philosophy behind. But you really can't honestly, at the end of the day, we will all be living philosophically in some way or other, it's just whether we'll be living a Christian philosophical life or not. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So that's actually what I was going to ask. So when you're saying it's this way of life, it permeates all of these different parts of our lives and we're doing it whether we know it or not, when I'm hearing that as a Christian, I would tend to think, "Well, that's actually what the Christian faith is supposed to be doing. The Christian faith is supposed to be permeating my life, and that's really supposed to be the worldview that I'm having." So how do you understand that relationship? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So interestingly enough, some of these philosophers, Christian thinkers in antiquity, they would've identified themselves as Christian philosophers. We would more identify them as theologians today, but I don't think they would've seen those disciplines as separate as we see those today. So you think of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, Maximus the Confessor, even Augustine, they actually viewed Christianity as an all-encompassing philosophy that could stand toe-to-toe with rival ancient philosophies. So not just as belief systems, they did think that, but also ways of life. So if you, I think, were to sit down with some of these ancient thinkers, they would say, "Yeah, Christianity is the true philosophy." Or if you were to ask Augustine, he would say, "A Platonic philosophy gets us only so far, and Christianity corrects and chastens and also fulfills that philosophy to make it the true philosophy." So Christianity, as Augustine famously puts it in his confessions, he says, "Platonism tells us that there is this rational ordering principle. All things are intelligible and ordered according to this rational logos, but it doesn't tell us that this logos became flesh and dwelt among us." 

And so there are things that Christianity picks up these ideas from antiquity and fulfills them and completes them. And I think that even Augustine would recognize today, they arrived at some truth about reality, but it's incomplete, it's distorted in some places, it needs to be corrected. So I do see, and I think I'm with these ancient thinkers, I do see, I would agree with you, the Christian faith is an all-encompassing philosophy of life that's not just a belief system we not give our mental assent to, but we actually order our lives around. And I use this language in the book about, we commit ourselves to an existential map that's shaped by the Christian story, a map that's going to include coordinates about what is real, where am I? Maybe even some coordinates are higher elevation than others. God is the chief coordinate on a Christian's existential map shaped by a Christian story. But we don't just say, "Yes, that's true," we let that map actually guide and direct our lives. We live our lives by that map. 

We order our whole lives around that map. So we live in such a way that we begin to navigate our life being informed by that map, and we engage in certain practices. And there's all sorts of… Philosophy is just a lot broader and thicker, morally speaking, than we tend to think about it today, at least it was in antiquity. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So going back to what you were saying, let's just take Augustine as an example where you were saying, "Well, I think," speaking as Augustine, "Plato was on to some things, but there are some things that the Christian faith then fills in and corrects and that kind of thing." So what do you see as the relationship between faith assent and the intellectual assent that you were talking about, and how do those two play together? Because I think that's part of that territory that makes people in these days want to separate the two. How do they interact in how you're viewing, especially historical Christian philosophers? 

Ross Inman: 

So the difference between, you said faith assent and intellectual assent? Is that what you- 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes. So if Plato was on to some things about how the world actually works and had good thoughts there, but you have to make this, and from Augustine's root, but then you make this faith assent and it makes a lot more sense altogether and it corrects some things. It seems that there might be different steps there or are there not? How do you see the two interacting with each other from a Christian perspective? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, I mean, I guess maybe one way into this would be, yeah, so merely intellectually assenting to the truth of various propositions, like there is a objective reality or there are objective values, or there is objective truth. Plato would agree intellectually with all of those things. In fact, he was an ardent defender of these things in his own context against these philosophers called the Sophists who didn't think they were hardcore relativists. And Plato was like, "You guys are just wrong about reality." There are objective standards to truth and goodness and beauty, and let's not play fast and loose with the truth. And so I think we can read Plato and say, "I agree with the exact same thing that Plato is saying there." So I think in terms of mere mental assent to the truth of there is an objective reality, there is objective truth or objective morals, we would agree with Plato. But of course, merely mentally assenting to these things doesn't save anyone, has no saving import or efficacy. So the way I understand this is there are really three stages. 

There's the conceptual understanding, there's the mental assent, and then there's the volitional aspect to Christian faith. I think Christian faith involves all three of these. So the conceptual understanding, so when I say, "The cat is on the mat," you have some idea of what a cat is, what a mat is, and what a preposition is. It's hard to have faith in something you have zero conceptual understanding of. But two, thinking, is that true or is that false? You can mentally assent to the cat being on the mat. And then lastly, the third step is involving the will. So I want to take James seriously when he says, "Even the demons believe," I think they're pretty darn good theologians in the sense that they have a pretty adequately calibrated view of reality, perhaps better than most of us, but yet what's lacking? 

They have mental assent in the sense that they believe true things about God, but they're lacking this volitional component. They haven't entrusted themselves volitionally to the triune God. So that's why they're not in a saving relationship to Him. They have a conceptual understanding. They have mental assent, but they don't have… The will has not been engaged. In fact, it's probably actively been resisted. So those would be the three things that I think are involved in it. If you're going to build the cake of Christian faith, so to speak, those would be the three essential ingredients. But you need all three to get Christian biblical faith. So I would say Plato, we can even say, we can look at Plato, we can look at Aristotle, we can even look at some of the Stoics and say, "Gosh, they got some things right. They mentally assented to truths about reality." 

They also mentally assented to falsehoods about reality too. But the question of salvation and their right relationship with God is whether they had faith or those sorts of things, those are separate issues altogether. But I think just approaching the rich philosophical tradition in the west, like an Augustine who critically chews on and interacts with the best ideas of his day, spits out the bones and consumes the meat, and he calls it plundering the Egyptians, and he says, "We will all be influenced or absorbed some philosophical assumptions that will inform our faith and discipleship." It's just the question of which, it's not whether it's which. And I'm worried today, Kym, that many Christians are very passively absorbing a whole host of philosophical assumptions about the world, about human beings, about what the highest goods are worth seeking in human life inside and outside the church, that is shaping our discipleship and our Christian commitment more than we'd like to admit. And so I just want to let Christians be aware of the fact that examine, take an audit of the things that you believe and why you believe them, but also take a look at your own life and look at your actions. How do you order your days? That will tell you what you believe very quickly. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, and that's what I wanted to narrow in on now, is this idea of, I like what you're talking about with the volitional component. Okay, so then if you entrust yourself, you have a faith assent to these things that you have become aware of and are intellectually assenting to. But again, if you turn yourself over to them, that's going to be more. And I think the whole point in what you talk about specifically in your book… Can you give me the name? 

Ross Inman: 

Christian Philosophy As a Way of Life. 

Kymberli Cook: 

As a Way of Life. Sorry, I didn't have my copy right here. So what you talk about in your book is that that entrusting from yourself as a believer must involve philosophy, correct? Is that… 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, to some degree or other, it's going to be basically setting your eyes and turning your heart towards a particular view of reality in the good life. And Christianity, Christian teachings, scripture gives us that full picture, but it's also going to be turning away from rival views of reality. And the good life, that is just to live philosophically is to… Am I tempted to think that life consists in the abundance of my possessions? Well, let me look at the way that I live and how I spend my time and what are my priorities. Our lives will tell us very quickly what it is that we really believe in our hearts, what have our hearts basically. So we will all be, to some degree or other, be living philosophically. It's just whether it will be normed and shaped by the Christian story in particular or rival visions of reality and the good life. 

And the fact is is that even those of us who are committed to walking on the way of Christ, who are walking in the truth, as John puts it over and over in his writings in the scripture, we tend to wander, we tend to be allured away by rival visions of reality in the good life at times and that's why we need people walking next to us. I talk a lot in the book about spiritual friendship and the importance of… And actually, friendship was part of living philosophically in antiquity. You actually couldn't live well philosophically without virtuous friends helping course-correct you and guide you and say, "Hey, your eyes and heart are set on pretty distorted visions of reality in the good life," reminding each other what is reality and what is a life that's truly worth living on the Christian story. I need that reminder. 

So that's what it is to live philosophically as a Christian, is to have your life shaped and oriented around a particular vision of reality in the good life. But again, it's not just saying, "Yes, that's true," but actually living as if it is true with how I spend my time, how I parent, how I teach, how I take care of my body, how I eat. I mean, it's one of these things that can permeate out into every aspect of human life. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So do you consider philosophy then as a spiritual discipline, or is it more a worldview out of which we then have particular disciplines? What's the relationship between spiritual disciplines and philosophy? 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, great question. Great question. So in antiquity there were, even amongst these non-Christian philosophers and later Christian philosophers took up some of these disciplines and actually tweaked them and even fundamentally changed their orientation in light of grace. And there's no lasting transformation of the self apart from God's activity in my life. Some of these non-Christian philosophers who employ these spiritual exercises and disciplines have a very optimistic view of the power of the self to transform oneself and that's where I think Christianity really helps correct and chasten. But yeah, the spiritual exercises were at least according to some contemporary philosophers, a fundamental part of a philosophical way of life. And that included friendship, that included meditation, that included self-examination that included Socratic dialogue, that included keeping deep attention or contemplation, we would call that today. Mind you, these were all non-Christian philosophers. 

So these early Christian thinkers come along and say, "These are really… These are helpful practices that help tame, by God's grace, that help tame and sculpt the soul." Because I mean, we know from scripture that unruly desires of the flesh will wage war against the soul, they will destroy us. And so these philosophers thought if living well means that my desires have to be towards the right objects, and they have to be in due measure in order to live well, and even in order to think well for them. So there had to be an overall harmony to the human being working properly for them to actually live well. So these exercises were just as physical exercises like sculpt and shaped the body and give it muscle memory and those sorts of things, these spiritual exercises for these thinkers were part of doing philosophy. 

Funny enough, we don't think of… So spirituality and philosophy was really quite integrated in antiquity, that they actually sculpt the soul and give the soul a kind of muscle memory in a responsiveness to reality in ways that it would otherwise be unresponsive to what's truly good and beautiful. So they actually play this sculpting role. They help shape and sculpt our loves, our desires, how we see, and whether we see. I mean, because we know from scripture, this idea of having eyes but not truly seen, having ears but not truly hearing, That's a profound philosophical insight that we can have eyes working properly, but we aren't actually seeing things as they truly are. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Do you see… So in that way, it sounds a lot like you're saying philosophy at least can be or perhaps even should be practical, incredibly practical. Would you agree with that? So is philosophy actually quite practical and that's part of why it has the image problem that it has these days, is because that dimension has been lost? 

Ross Inman: 

Great question. So when people normally hear me say philosophy is immensely practical, they scoff at that. And I think the reason is they have a view of what it means to be practical, a philosophical view, a subtle philosophical view about what activities are practical. 

Kymberli Cook: 

You're like, "You don't even know what practical means without philosophy." 

Ross Inman: 

Well, I mean, we just assume what it is to be practical and might you guess what that view is? What does it mean to be really practical? And we tend to think in quantitative terms like measurable deliverables. What products are produced? How many? Or how long have I spent in prayer this morning? Or how much of scripture have I been reading? How big is my truth? 

Kymberli Cook: 

How many people did you not yell at? 

Ross Inman: 

Exactly. And we think… Or how much money is that going to make me? We think in either pragmatic economic terms on the one hand, but there's a Christian version of this too, that can be particularly acute as well. Success in ministry or success in the Christian life is understood, I think, wrongly as purely quantitative rather than qualitative. But I think there are things in scripture that push against that view of being practical. But I think if you understand practical less as is it going to give me a large social media following or is it going to give me a six-figure salary, or is it going to help me land a job? Well, no, philosophy is useless, but it all depends on how you're defining what it is to be practical. And if being practical means helping you realize the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving, well then that changes things a little bit. 

So to be practical means helping you realize the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving. This makes philosophy or living philosophically as a Christian, immensely practical because it raises the question, what are the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth achieving? Is it fame? Is it power? Is it money? Is it pleasure? Or what? So philosophy helps us live in a self-reflective, critical posture of what am I living for, and will this particular activity help me achieve not just any goals, but the kinds of goals that are ultimately worth seeking, which is to know and to love God and to invite others to do the same? And I think historically, philosophy was seen as being immensely practical to that aim in particular. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And the Christian faith then also helps you, as you are pursuing those lines of thought, the Christian faith helps you sculpt your soul to want to do those things. Because in light of how we are living in a fallen state, and okay, fine, maybe that is what matters, now I actually have to get myself to the point where I want to do that, or I am doing it, and the disciplines definitely come in there too. So with the… I have one last question for you, and we've tiptoed around it this whole time, and I think there's one point you maybe even put half a foot in, but just so that everybody listening is really clear. So what do you see as… I want to talk about a very clear relationship with philosophy and Christianity. So what does philosophy offer Christianity? 

Ross Inman: 

Well, yeah, I would reiterate, I think Christianity is a philosophy. 

Kymberli Cook: 

This is the half foot thing that I was talking about. 

Ross Inman: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think it offers an all-encompassing philosophy of life in the sense of not just a, so as Jude puts it, contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, or as Paul puts it, the good deposit. There are theological tenets to what it means to live philosophically as a Christian, and rather than say what it means to live philosophically as Stoic or an Epicurean or whatnot, other rival ways of living philosophically. So Christianity is going to provide the framing, the ideological framing for what existential map, how many coordinates are on there, what are the highest coordinates? And just by way of example, maybe this would help. So Stoics, for example, someone like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, they were hardcore materialists. They didn't think there was any nonphysical reality. So think of what coordinates do they have on their map? Just material coordinates. So they're not only missing important coordinates, like reality is much more than meets the eye, they're missing the most important coordinate, the triune God and His kingdom and His reigning. 

So it's going to be hard to live well when you're missing, when your map doesn't include the most important coordinate, the due north, so to speak. Try to be rightly oriented to the world if you have no conception of what's a due north. So Christianity provides the true coordinates, the highest coordinates that allow us to actually live in such a way where we're actually going to make contact with the way the world is in what's truly good, not just what I perceive to be good or want to be good, or what culture tells me is good. So Christianity really is providing the content for a Christian philosophical way of life. But again, it's not just mentally assenting to a Christian worldview. It involves a soul training and regimen, ordering your life in such a way that you actually believe that, for example, God has created me as an embodied creature where my body is not superfluous to my identity, my body is a part of who I am, and I have real limitations, and that's a good thing. 

God has created me. Those limitations are good, and I can either heed those limitations or I can shake my fist at them and revolt against them to my own demise. So it puts me in this humble and receptive posture towards reality because of my Christian convictions, that I'm a creature of God with very real and good limitations. I want to lean into. I don't want to revolt against. And so Christianity, I think provides… I think Christianity is a way of life, and it involves both doctrinal content, but it also involves a whole pattern or rhythm of living that shapes how I think, how I live, how I feel, all sorts of things. So it's a total life-orienting, soul-orienting way of being in the world. I don't know how else to put it, but I think that's refreshing news when we tend to… A lot of us view Christianity as just, or can view it as just a worldview. We say, "Yes, that's true." 

Kymberli Cook: 

And if I'm hearing you in how you're describing it, then you would also say, or I think you would say Christianity is then offering, I mean, you said that Christianity is offering the content, some of the content or a lot of the content that philosophy is missing or the full picture, the due north, that kind of thing, that it's adding that. So I just want to emphasize, or I'm trying to explore both what philosophy offers Christianity, but then what Christianity offers philosophy, because it really does, and I think that that's what you've been talking about the whole time, is Christianity has a lot to give philosophy. It's not necessarily just one of many. It has a lot of things that can strengthen the field in and of itself and has over the millennia. 

Well, we could clearly talk about this all day, and you often do, right? But I want to thank you, Ross, for being here. 

Ross Inman: 

Appreciate it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And we want to thank you for listening, and we just ask that you be sure to join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture.