Towards a Christian Philosophy of the Cross

Introduction

Philosophy in the Christian tradition appears to be a chameleon, undergoing various portrayals that leave many people curious about what it really is. Some people characterize it in terms of ‘faith seeking understanding’, whereas others favor a reverse approach, via understanding seeking faith. Still others work with a portrayal that does not explicitly connect faith and understanding. Other variations persist, but the key point is that Christian philosophy somehow should be distinctively Christian. The big question: How?

Offering some initial history of the term ‘Christian’, Acts 11:26 reports that the disciples of Jesus were called ‘Christians’ first at Antioch. The term thus appears to be tied originally to discipleship toward Jesus. We also find the term used in connection with the preaching of the apostle Paul: ‘Agrippa said to Paul, “Are you so quickly persuading me to become a Christian?”’ (Acts 26:28, NRSV, here and in following Biblical translations). The author of Acts gives content to the talk of ‘Christian’ by reporting Paul’s testimony: ‘I stand here, testifying to both small and great, saying nothing but what the prophets and Moses said would take place: that the Messiah [the Christ] must suffer, and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles’ (Acts 26:22–23). In this perspective from the earliest Christianity, being Christian is somehow anchored in (testimony regarding) the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Christian religion is inextricably historical in origin, and therefore not an ahistorical philosophical system. So, we may plausibly use the earliest historical perspective from Acts and Paul to identify what is distinctively Christian about Christian philosophy—or anything else allegedly Christian, for that matter. In doing so, we shall see that much of so-called ‘Christian philosophy’ has missed the mark for being Christian. In particular, it has omitted a central role for the crucified and risen Christ. We shall correct this omission with help from a distinction between a philosophy of the cross and a philosophy of human glory. Christian philosophy then will emerge with a robust Christian focus and challenge for its audience.

Christian Cross and Human Glory

The earliest Christian movement benefited from the theology of the apostle Paul, whom some plausibly have called ‘Christ’s first theologian.’ ¹ In Paul’s view, the cross of Christ serves at the center of the Christian message and life, and this role stems from God’s own character and purpose:

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through [its] wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor. 1:18–25)

Somehow, in Paul’s view, ‘Christ crucified’ is ‘the power of God’, as is the message of the fatal cross of Christ. This approach to divine power in human death does not sit well with our ordinary expectations of an almighty God. So, we may prefer to set it aside, and look elsewhere for what is divine power and what is uniquely Christian. We will recommend against doing so.

Paul advises putting the crucified Christ front and center in the Christian message and life:

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. (1 Cor. 2:1–5)

Again, ‘the power of God’ is Paul’s concern, and he aims to avoid human obstructions. His talk of ‘Jesus Christ, and him crucified’ is also talk of the risen Christ, raised by God in validation of him in obedience. So, Paul is talking not about a Christ now dead, but about a Christ who endured death to manifest God’s unique power of righteous suffering agapē in redemption toward humans.

The power of God in the crucified Christ is foreign to human power, and not continuous with it. Paul draws the contrast bluntly: ‘God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God’ (1 Cor. 1:27–29). He adds a related point from his own experience: ‘We felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead’ (2 Cor. 1:9; cf. 4:7). So, divine power uses human death to show that God works in and for humans even when their power is depleted. God does not need a supplement or a base in human power to present needed life with God to humans. Humans, therefore, cannot make God indebted to them or boast of their own power in their redemption by God. In choosing the way of Christ crucified, God shows divine agapē for humans despite their being themselves impotent to save (Rom. 5:8).

Human boasting, or taking pride, in oneself regarding salvation is a recipe for self-deception. It needs to be exposed and challenged, and the crucified Christ, as the center of God’s redemption of humans, serves that need. This Christ challenges human triumphalism that reduces divine credit, and mistakenly takes human credit, for the redemption of humans. That is, it counters any theology of human ‘glory’ at odds with a theology of the cross. ² Intellectual triumphalism in theology is but one aspect of a theology of glory. Such a theology can bear on one’s practical commitments as well as one’s theoretical or explanatory positions. For instance, it can exaggerate the stability and goodness of one’s theological ethical commitments or one’s moral character in relation to God. A theology of glory has a foothold wherever undue human self-boasting or self-pride emerges in relation to God.

Gerhard Forde has identified an important feature of a theology of the cross:

It is quite impossible to write ‘the’ or even ‘a’ theology of the cross. The attempt to do so would no doubt be just another attempt to give a propositional answer to Jesus’s cry from the cross, ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ We can’t answer Jesus’s question. We can only die with him and await God’s answer in him. To claim such an answer would simply be to leave the actual cross behind for the sake of the theology in our books. ³

This lesson places a limit on propositional theology, leaving room for what we may call ‘de re theology’ in the presence of our limited explanations and narratives in theology. It portrays a theology of the cross as being inherently de re, that is, in relation to a real crucified and risen agent, beyond any de dicto discourse about that agent. It thus makes room for the intentional agency and power of the crucified Christ, by blocking any reduction of the Christian cross and message to a mere principle, policy, or proposition. Christ crucified is inherently personal, and thus irreducible to any philosophical or other propositional system, including any ‘worldview’. We shall see the importance of this for a Christian philosophy of the cross.

A theology of the cross generalizes to a philosophy of the cross when it extends to such philosophical disciplines as value theory, ethics, social-political philosophy, philosophy of religion, metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. So, there can be an ethics of the cross, an epistemology of the cross, and so on. A single article, of course, cannot adequately cover the broad range of philosophical disciplines. We shall limit our focus to clarifying some features of an epistemology of the cross, in our attempt to identify what is distinctively Christian in a Christian philosophy. Before doing so, however, we shall entertain for the sake of contrast a contemporary approach to advising Christian philosophers that, despite its recent influence, falls short of being Christian.

Advice to Christian Philosophers?

Alvin Plantinga has portrayed philosophy as ‘a communal enterprise’. ⁴ He observes that ‘our standards and assumptions—the parameters within which we practice our craft—are set by our mentors and by the great contemporary centers of philosophy’ (255). Philosophy, in his view, involves ‘systematizing, developing and deepening one’s pre-philosophical opinions’ (271).

Philosophers, Plantinga suggests, are Christian philosophers in virtue of their membership in, and duty toward, the Christian community. In addition, Christian philosophers have a right to pursue questions that interest their own religious community, proceeding from its pre-philosophical opinions while using methods that may differ from those of the larger philosophical guild. Overall, Plantinga recommends that Christian philosophers evaluate their work using standards originating from their Christian community, rather than exclusively from the philosophical community at large. Whether it be their choice of research questions, their starting assumptions, or their subsequent methodology, Christian philosophers should answer to their Christian community rather than to ‘the great contemporary centers of philosophy’. If philosophy is a social enterprise, Plantinga suggests, then Christian philosophy is a Christian social enterprise.

Plantinga’s advice draws upon his treatment of philosophical consensus. Consensus, he observes, fails as a normative criterion for the worthiness of questions, the right to presuppositions, or the legitimacy of methods in philosophy. Plantinga’s recurring theme is that ‘the Christian has as much right to his pre-philosophical opinions, as other have to theirs’, and this right exists apart from ‘whether or not he can convince the rest of the philosophical world and whatever the current philosophical consensus is, if there is a consensus’ (268). Christian philosophers, in his view, should reject the burden of seeking broad philosophical consensus. They should proceed with their own agenda, unmoved by fashionable threats, unashamed in the presence of whatever broad consensus may loom. Plantinga would have Christian philosophers display ‘more integrity, more independence, less readiness to trim their sails to the prevailing philosophical winds of doctrine, and more Christian self-confidence’ (258). His advice appeals to intellectual rights that all inquirers allegedly share, without claiming something distinctively Christian about those rights. He remarks: ‘Although my advice is directed specifically to Christian philosophers, it is relevant to all philosophers who believe in God, whether Christian, Jewish or Moslem’ (254).

What difference would it make if advice to Christian philosophers were to include distinctively Christian wisdom, of the kind Paul discerns in the crucified Christ? Christian philosophers, if pressed, might admit that they carry out their inquiry before the God of Jesus Christ, not just before their religious community or philosophical guild. Plantinga’s advice does not develop this distinction, and this encourages Christian philosophers to lean excessively on one set of community standards rather than another. His advice makes no mention at all of Jesus, Christ, Messiah, Savior, Redeemer, Cross, Crucifixion, atonement, forgiveness, salvation, or reconciliation, and this omission is remarkable for advice offered to Christian philosophers. It neglects what is distinctively Christian about anything Christian, including a philosophy. Perhaps, then, his advice is really for theists in general rather than Christians in particular.

Shame and Evidence in Christ Crucified

Plantinga’s advice to Christian philosophers includes the recommendation that they are not to be intellectually ashamed of their theism. His ground is that theists are as entitled as others to their own presuppositions, research questions, and methods. In contrast, Paul announces that he is ‘not ashamed of the gospel [of Christ crucified]; it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (Rom. 1:16). Shame threatens in both cases, but the advised responses to it differ starkly.

We may understand shame as felt or perceived inadequacy, relative to some standard a person regards as significant for being a responsible agent. For instance, there is no basis for shame in failing a standard to function normally without adequate sleep. That standard is obviously misguided for responsible behavior. Indeed, a common way to encourage people who are ashamed is to assure them that the standard by which they are ashamed is misguided. In contrast, we can construe guilt as a person’s failing to meet some legitimate standard, such as a correct moral standard. A person can be guilty of a failure yet unashamed, perhaps while being ignorant of the failure, denying the failure, or refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the pertinent standard for the failure.

We may construe boasting (a common Pauline notion) as exalting something as central to one’s being approved, where approval is relative to some allegedly legitimate standard. Such boasting offers a basis for not being ashamed, perhaps by adjusting a standard for approval or by stating why it is met. One who is ashamed, and accepts that shame, does not typically boast in being approved relative to the pertinent standard. An alternative to boasting can include explaining why certain alleged bases for approval fail, at least in one’s own case. It can highlight something in which one places no confidence (a typical Pauline practice), perhaps even describing potential bases for approval as ‘rubbish’ (Phil. 3:8).

Plantinga advises Christian philosophers to spurn—to reject as illegitimate—any intellectual shaming they may receive from the broader philosophical community in virtue of holding various Christian presuppositions. Spurning this shaming, however, requires appeal to some higher (i.e., more legitimate) standard by which one is approved. Plantinga’s advice does not appeal to approval by God, but instead cites a presuppositional standard for philosophy whereby one might boast or at least reject intellectual shaming. This standard relates closely to finding approval by members of a Christian community who find certain research questions to be worthwhile.

Approval by God, we submit, is irreducible to approval by some Christian community or by some presuppositional framework for philosophy. Approval by God involves, at least indirectly, facing God’s righteous corrective judgment—not to be confused with condemnation of a person. Any other standard can serve as a distraction, even a makeshift protection, from God’s corrective judgment. We prefer to look elsewhere for approval, where the moral standard is less intense. We typically like to boast in anything else so long as we need not reckon with God’s righteous assessment of our lives, including our philosophical efforts.

Paul offers correction. He identifies the righteous corrective judgment of God in Christ crucified as our ultimate standard for shame and approval. What matters to Paul, above all else, is that he would be approved by God, even if shamed by his Christian community. As his letters indicate, Paul regards himself foremost as a slave of God and of Christ, and he finds the key to God’s judgment and approval in Christ crucified. The crucifixion of Jesus represents divine judgment, including judgment upon human judgment, and provokes our interpretation of Christ crucified. The crucifixion manifests the utter failure of Jesus by human standards of approval, suggesting also divine disapproval of anyone dispensing with Jesus.

Paul’s preaching centers on a scandalous twofold fact: that human standards are no reliable indication of divine standards, and that God reveals this in Christ crucified. No human standard has predicted or explained, for instance, the cry of dereliction of the crucified Christ (Mark 15:34). God’s perfect approval, however, is available only in Christ crucified, and his obedience to God is demonstrated in his cross. Paul writes: ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead’ (Phil. 3:10–11). He finds in Christ crucified, then, the secret of divine approval. God approves of Christ crucified, in exalting him and giving him ‘the name that is above every name’ (Phil. 2:9). Paul likewise seeks obedience to God (‘leading to righteousness’) in virtue of his own dying and rising with Christ (Rom. 6:4–13, 16). ⁵ Paul remarks: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me’ (Gal. 2:19–20). Paul rejects all other potential bases for approval by God, apart from one’s sharing in the divinely approved obedient death and resurrection of Christ.

Paul offers advice on boasting and shame: ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Gal. 6:14). Much of his polemical writing rejects rival bases for boasting, including those from self-approval or community-approval. Paul holds that approval by God comes via Christ crucified, without regard to a distinction between the Jew and the Gentile, male and female, the powerful and the weak, or the wise and the foolish by human standards (Rom. 3:23–30, 4:22–24). ⁶ In his view, the apprehended revelation of the cross is an experience of both divine righteous judgment and divine forgiveness in agapē. In this interpersonal experience, we find evidence of God’s reality and character that has unique existential-moral value for a human life. It has an evidential directness foreign to the speculative arguments of natural theology, and it is widely available to people, even people unskilled in arguments. Both Paul and John direct us to such distinctive evidence of God in Christ (Rom. 5:5, John 16:7–11). ⁷

Christ crucified not only becomes the manifestation of God’s corrective judgment on our self-evaluation, but also provides the Gethsemane model for our response to God as worthy of worship and obedience. We turn to some Pauline insights of P.T. Forsyth on authority and its role in distinctively Christian inquiry. They will prepare us for the subsequent Christian advice to Christian philosophers and others.

P. T. Forsyth on Christian Inquiry

P. T. Forsyth articulates how Christian inquirers, including Christian philosophers, should proceed in relation to Christ crucified. He discovered that his congregation could not simply ‘accept my verdict on points that came so near to their souls’, but rather that ‘there were Christian matters which [people] must decide for themselves, trained or not’. ⁸ Even so, he finds his congregation ‘in no spiritual condition to have forced on them those questions on which scholars so delighted and differed’. ⁹

Forsyth explains:

Religion without an experimental foundation in grace, readily feels panic in the presence of criticism, and is apt to do wild and unjust things in its terror. The Churches are not, in the main, in the spiritual condition of [moral] certainty which enables them to be composed and fair to critical methods. ¹⁰

Forsyth links scholarship to a spiritual condition, and he suggests a spiritual condition in which Christians can face criticism without shame. Where this condition is absent, he aims to cultivate faith directly rather than to challenge naiveté.

Forsyth contends that ‘it is the wills of [humans], and not their views, that are the great obstacle to the Gospel, and the things most intractable’. ¹¹ Rather than preaching Christianity as an elaborate worldview, Forsyth challenges Christians to place their confidence in Christ crucified as the main feature of their Christian experience. He thus seeks:

to restore some sense not only of love’s severity, but of the unsparing moral mordancy in the Cross and its judgment, which means salvation to the uttermost; to recreate an experience of redemption, both profound and poignant, which should enable [Christians] to deal reasonably, without extravagance and without panic, with the scholars’ results as these came in. ¹²

Even so, Forsyth does not diminish the value of theology for Christian life. ‘Well do I know’, he writes, ‘how little a theology in itself can do, and how the mighty doer is the living faith. But I know well also that that faith is not the real thing unless it compels and loves an adequate theology; and if it cannot produce it, it dies.’ ¹³ Christian theology is a thus matter of articulating an individual or corporate Christian experience. Christ crucified inspires articulation, as a historical and moral fact that confronts us in our present Christian experience. ‘The theologian’, then, ‘is not a syllogist but an experient, an observer. He gives an account of faith, and especially of his own, as a creation by a historic fact and not the dialectic of a fertile idea.’ ¹⁴

Christ crucified serves as Forsyth’s present authority in theology and philosophy. Rather than appealing to epistemic rights or community standards, Forsyth invokes the authority that confronts him in Christ crucified. He holds that we can experience this authority that both judges and welcomes. This experience of Christ crucified has fixed features, such that Forsyth ‘cannot conceive a Christianity to hold the future without words like grace, sin, judgment, repentance, incarnation, atonement, redemption, justification, sacrifice, faith, and eternal life. No words of less volume than these can do justice to the meaning of God.’ ¹⁵ Philosophy, Forsyth contends, is no preamble to or prerequisite for Christian experience. Christian theology makes no ‘appeal to a prior and surer philosophy; but a philosophy comes later, and it must take due account of the facts, and especially of the revelationary and experienced fact which theology expounds.’ ¹⁶

In his distinctively Christian perspective, Forsyth puts Christ crucified first in Christian experience, leaving Christian philosophy to articulate an experienced gospel of divine power. He adds: ‘Neither philosophy nor psychology is there in order to determine what we may know, but to find and set out the conditions of what we do know.’ ¹⁷ A Christian epistemology of the cross, then, should attempt to explain Christ crucified in experience, rather than seeking perpetually to prepare the way for (knowledge of) him. The historic fact of Christ, Forsyth submits, is there prior to our interpretation of it.

One might fear that Forsyth’s approach is overly subjective, an appeal to experience rather than to Christ crucified as our authority. Forsyth replies: ‘A real authority is indeed within experience, but it is not the authority of experience; it is an authority for experience, it is an authority experienced.’ ¹⁸ The fact of Christ should intrude in Christian moral experience, but this experience is not the source of the divine authority in Christ. Christ crucified, Forsyth remarks, is ‘a public, social, natural fact and history, with a claim and a truth independent of the soul’s experience. Such experience is the medium but not the canon of religious truth.’ ¹⁹ Likewise, conscience is not our authority but rather that in which we encounter authority. ‘The authority is nothing in us, but something in history. It is something given us. What is in us only recognises it.’ ²⁰ An appeal to Christ crucified, then, is no subjective appeal, but is an appeal to a historic and moral fact that calls for our attention and interpretation.

As a foundational personal authority, Christ crucified differs from a presupposition, axiom, community standard, or worldview. Unlike these, Christ crucified is a powerful intentional source of distinctive evidence and life. Forsyth explains:

We are not merely inserted into our foundation. It is more than a ground that will not give way; it is a source that will not fail or dry. We draw life from it, and it is a medium in which we live. It does not simply uphold us—it carries us, feeds us, slakes us. It is not only true for us, but mighty for us. It supports us as food does, and not simply as a floor does. It is better, of course, to be on rock than sand, but to be in soil is better still. We are rooted, and not only grounded, on our God. ²¹

Forsyth thus offers advice that moves Christian inquiry beyond talk of presuppositions and community standards to a uniquely powerful agent in Christian moral experience. This agent is intentional in Christian conscience, and thus is purposive and capable of leading cooperative humans. We should expect divine lordship in Christ to offer such moral leading in the experience of Christian conscience. A distinctively Christian philosophy should give a central role, in its epistemology of the cross, to such leading from lordship (Rom. 8:14). Christian philosophy thus contrasts sharply with its secular alternatives, without a basis for being ashamed.

Christian Advice to Christian Philosophers and Others

If Christ crucified is at the center of the Christian message and life, something distinctively Christian follows for advice to Christian philosophers and others. In addition, it takes us beyond mere theism and any ultimate appeal to presuppositions or community standards for Christian inquiry. It takes us to the God in Christ who is self-giving in self-manifestation to us, if we are willing to look in the right place, involving divine corrective judgment of us. In neglecting such judgment, a Christian philosophy would omit not only a philosophy of the cross but also a distinctive source of evidence for God’s reality and character. This omission is typical in Christian philosophy and even in much Christian theology.

The Biblical God, alone being worthy of worship, is sui generis in a personal character of inherent moral perfection. So, this God swears by himself, in the absence of anyone or anything else sufficient to represent God’s perfect character (Heb. 6:13; cf. Gen. 22:16). This God is self-authenticating and self-evidencing in self-manifestation to cooperative humans, at God’s time (Rom. 10:20; Isa. 65:1). God thus self-reveals on God’s own terms, in accordance with the perfect divine character. This means that divine self-revelation stems from a redemptive purpose, and the intended redemption includes divine–human reconciliation. Paul states: ‘In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.’ (2 Cor. 5:19–20). Such reconciliation in the crucified Christ is the offer at the heart of the Christian good news. ²² It is Gethsemane reconciliation, because it seeks from us the response of Jesus to God in Gethsemane: Not my will, but Your will be done.

Neither the offer of reconciliation nor its evidential support conforms to a general human consensus or to community standards. Oswald Bayer elaborates: ‘The Word of the Cross … has its own power to convince. It does not convince by employing the category of a general consensus, but by conveying to [people] their contravention of the truth imparted in it. Were it to be a wisdom of words, convincing in any other way (1 Cor. 2:4; cf. 1:17), it would make the cross of Christ of no effect.’ ²³ It is by divine authority that divine power lies there, and this authority is not subject to human or community approval. The message of Christ crucified thus puts the cross front and center in revelation and redemption by the Christian God. In doing so, it identifies a place for divine–human meeting, in an I–Thou Gethsemane challenge. This challenge includes a conflict of wills, a human will against a divine will, and hence it is no merely intellectual matter. A philosophy of the cross identifies the contravention of God’s will by a human will, aside from larger theoretical issues about a ‘worldview’. Going beyond ancient history, it also locates divine power and evidence to convince humans in God’s manifested will to humans, including in human conscience.

The cross of the crucified Christ is historical but not just historical. ²⁴ It allows for a later person’s being ‘crucified with Christ’ (Gal. 2:20). This raises the question of how a person is to appropriate the message of the cross, and not to leave it as merely objective, non-motivating talk. The issue is important, because talk is cheap indeed, especially in philosophy and theology. For a philosopher, the answer lies in one’s becoming a philosopher of the cross, in two main areas. These areas take one beyond business as usual in philosophy, to a redemptive Christian approach to the discipline and to oneself.

The first area concerns the essential content of one’s ultimate message as a Christian: the good news of God’s redemptive judgment in the crucified Christ, for the sake of divine–human reconciliation. This ultimate message, echoed throughout the New Testament, should underwrite and guide any proximate message one offers as a Christian philosopher. Such proximate messages can benefit a philosophy, but they are not the full story. The ultimate message thus should not disappear for the sake of a message about, for instance, rights to a worldview on the basis of one’s community standards. The latter message is not redemptive in the way the Christian good news of reconciliation in Christ is, because God has chosen, by divine authority, to empower the good news. That proximate message thus misses the mark of what is distinctively Christian. Even so, the ultimate Christian message is not a triumphant worldview by human standards. It acknowledges that we have no satisfactory explanation now either of Jesus’s cry of dereliction or of much of the unjust suffering in the world at large. Our lack of an adequate theodicy now puts the explanatory limitations of the Christian message in perspective, contrary to any intellectual triumphalism among Christians. ²⁵

The second area concerns one’s mode of existence as a Christian philosopher. In particular, it concerns the importance of ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’ (Col. 1:27). This idea has no place in secular philosophy, but it figures in the New Testament message of what ultimately empowers divine–human reconciliation: a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). ²⁶ It identifies what enables one’s Gethsemane conformity to God in Christ and one’s thereby dying with Christ to all foreign glory, that is, all glory foreign to God in Christ crucified. So, even one’s ethical improvement depends on Christ crucified, the Christ now ‘in you’ as a Christian. This consideration removes any ground for self-boasting and gives credit for ethical improvement to divine grace in Christ crucified. It points to an interpersonal mode of existence that looks beyond the human domain to curb self-righteousness and self-exaltation. In this mode, a human life can become a distinctive kind of evidence for God’s reality (2 Cor. 3:2–3). ²⁷

A Christian philosophy ultimately will aim to make room for a Gethsemane meeting and reconciliation of humans with God in Christ crucified. There are various ways of doing this in philosophy, but the ultimate goal must remain clear and central. Defensively, in keeping with 2 Corinthians 10:5, one can offer good reasons to avoid various obstructions, whether in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, or some other discipline in philosophy. Constructively, one can supply good reasons in favor of the good news of reconciliation to God in Christ. In particular, one can clarify the kind of self-evidence characteristic of this God (2 Cor. 4:6) and explain how it relates to other kinds of evidence. One thus can save people from looking in the wrong places for distinctive evidence of God in Christ. ²⁸ A benefit will be removal of shame regarding the suitable kind of evidence for the Christian God (Rom. 5:5).

A question can clarify our status as philosophers of the cross: What in practice do we credit for our ultimate self-justification, self-approval, or self-security against the futility to which this world has been subjected in hope of redemption (Rom. 8:21)? Some related questions: What are our self-selected badges of honor in this area? Are they our distinctive community standards? Are they our developed worldview or philosophy? Are they our theoretical or argumentative skills? If our answer is something other than ‘God in Christ crucified’, we risk boasting in what does not capture either the Christian message or a distinctively Christian philosophy. We then will fail to give needed Christian advice to Christian philosophers and others. We are offering a philosophy of the cross, in conjunction with being a philosopher of the cross, as a way to avoid such failure. This will look foolish by secular standards, but we should expect this, given God’s redemptive aim to undermine human standards of wisdom, self-justification, and self-approval.

Concluding Objections

One might propose that Christian philosophy need not be constrained by Christ crucified, because much philosophical work done by Christians is largely free of theology. We should not deny that there is a type of inquiry that attempts to mitigate the impact of an inquirer’s will on the outcome. Hugh Ross Mackintosh observes: ‘A drunkard might do brilliantly in physics; a profligate in history; a thief in theology. Everybody knows that. There is a kind of knowledge, in short, which may be gained altogether independently of the man’s deepest moral purpose.’ ²⁹ Perhaps, then, we ought not to be surprised that Christ crucified seems far removed from some philosophical issues regarding, for instance, logic or mathematics, issues that a Christian philosopher might pursue. 

The fact that human inquirers can succeed in seemingly impersonal inquiry, such as in logic or mathematics, may suggest that such pursuits are exempt from attention to Christ crucified. The matter is, however, more complicated. Even the most impersonal forms of human inquiry involve the will of human inquirers. Humans use and interpret various terms and concepts according to their (intentional) purposes as inquirers, and these purposes can vary and change among inquirers. ³⁰ Even so, the purposes in question are subject to divine scrutiny relative to Christ crucified, particularly relative to the divine redemptive purpose of reconciliation found there. Theoretical work in philosophy and elsewhere can draw our attention either toward or away from our underlying purposes and thus can either accommodate or neglect the relevance of Christ crucified. In any case, even seemingly impersonal inquiry can be judged by the redemptive purpose of the cross, and God rightly has the authority to do so. Indeed, our whole lives, including our use of time, can be under divine scrutiny by the cross of Christ, and this encompasses our theoretical work in philosophy and elsewhere.

Perhaps we have distorted Christian philosophy in neglecting natural theology, the influential project of pursuing knowledge of God’s existence apart from the revelation of God in Christ. Maybe Christian philosophy should include development of the best arguments of natural theology. Some Christian philosophers hold that natural theology is a helpful—if neither necessary nor sufficient—aid for those coming to know God’s reality. Perhaps, then, natural theology is a helpful means to eventual knowledge of God in Christ crucified, or at least a form of support for those who have already encountered God in Christ. In that case, one might recommend approaching God in Christ by way of the God of natural theology. ³¹

We doubt that bracketing the one thing needful in a distinctively Christian philosophy, Christ crucified, deserves a prominent place in Christian philosophy. Perhaps one appeal of natural theology is that some people unwilling to face the divine judgment involved in Christ crucified might be willing to consider mere theism, by way of the arguments of natural theology. Supposedly, mere theists are, at least in some cases, more receptive than non-theists to Christ crucified, and thus mere theism deserves support from a Christian philosophy. We doubt, however, that people unwilling to acknowledge the morally challenging fact of Christ crucified as atheists or agnostics would be more willing to do so as mere theists. We thus doubt that mere theism offers a salient advantage regarding commitment to Christ crucified.

Even our prior theism is judged inadequate at the cross (see Saul of Tarsus), as Christ crucified and exalted demands a unique theological interpretation of what sort of God redeems this way. The best alternative to the vicissitudes of natural theology is to refuse to boast in anything except Christ crucified. This approach may seem iconoclastic to those who insist on natural theology as a means of grace. Even so, the cross of Christ tends to be iconoclastic from an epistemic point of view, and the climactic means of grace, by Christian lights, is Christ crucified. We do well, then, to integrate him in the foundational purpose of Christian philosophy.

We find no role for fideism or anti-intellectualism in a philosophy of the cross, although human reason has its obvious limitations before a transcendent God. We can insist on the relevance of evidence in all situations of decision-making and deliberate belief, even if some situations leave us short on adequate explanations and answers. We take exception, however, to any assumption that a Christian philosophy must be or is autonomous of theology. By its very nature, a Christian philosophy is subject to its namesake, Christ, and that would be Christ crucified. A Christian philosophy, therefore, should be a philosophy of the cross, towards which we have pointed. In doing so, we have tried to restore Christian philosophy to the theological basis, a personal basis, to which it owes its existence and resilience. The same restoration applies for Christian philosophers and others who take the Christ-based name ‘Christian’.