James R. Gorman
My major in undergraduate school was philosophy. After a certain point in my schooling I winced when folks asked me what my major was because I always knew the follow up question: "What are you going to do with a philosophy degree?"
As if an education is a cash and carry kind of a deal. The only real purpose, it seems, for getting a degree is so that you have greater earning power, and folks couldn't figure out how a degree in Philosophy could possibly result in a good paying job.
So, I always told folks that I was going to open a philosophy store after I graduate. I would sell philosophy. People could come into my store and ask any philosophical question and I would provide an answer. They could ask, for example, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?" And I would reply, "Of course it does. That'll be $25 please."
I've always been committed to a philosophy of common sense.
One of the great gifts of a philosophy major is the training that one gets in analyzing the strengths and weakness of an argument with an eye and ear to a counter-argument of some sort. This skill is very helpful in winning arguments in political life and in arguments with those with whom you are intimate: husbands, wives, children, lovers, friends. Courses in philosophy, especially courses in logic, help you construct an argument by carefully building premise upon premise.
The master of this, of course, is Socrates. His dialogues are recorded by Plato some 300 years before Christ, and they are our best examples of a carefully built argument. One of his most interesting tactics was to pretend to be stupid and in over-explaining, his opponents would say too much and give away their biases before they had an attempt to build their argument. He always reminded me of the private detective Columbo.
At the time of Christ and at the time of the apostle Paul, this Socratic tradition in philosophy became very influential. In Athens, there was a kind of court of law in a rock hewn area on a hill in Athens called the Areopagus, just west of the Acropolis. This court had the power to summon anyone before it and call them to account for their crimes. This court could even make highly placed government officials appear as they saw fit and indict them for crimes against the well-being of the community. Sort of like a combination of Kenneth Starr and Judge Judy. The Areopagus council could hear cases of murder or immorality and the accuser and the accused stood right out in the open air and made their cases on platforms cut out of the bedrock.
The political power of the Areopagus was somewhat limited by the time Paul arrived there, but it still was the most important legal tribunal in all of the Greco-Roman world.
Thus, it was a bold move for Paul to get up on one of those platforms and make his case for the Christian idea of God. Paul had been trained as a philosopher and a lawyer and you can hear his training in the way he makes his case. It is not a sermon, it is an argument based in classical logic to make the case that the god whom these Athenians seek is in fact the God he has come to know in Jesus Christ.
I love the way he starts out. "Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'to an unknown god.' "
I'm not sure if Paul is flattering his audience or trying to convince them of something they don't even believe about themselves. I know that you are religious, he says, because you have all these signs around asking the God question. And I have an answer for you. The God you are looking for is the one I know in Jesus Christ.
And this God has placed within the human soul the earnest desire to seek after holiness in all things. The irony is that God does not need to be sought after. For this God we know in Jesus Christ is as near as the breath we can see only in winter, for "in him we live and move and have our being."
In other words, this God is not far off. You don't have to go on a great journey to find this God. God is here, has promised to be here. It's all a matter of how you view the world around you. If you are convinced that you must go on a long journey to find this God, then you must go.
I've used this story recently, so forgive me, but any good story is worth telling again.
There is the old Hasidic story about Itzak, a very poor man who lived in a little village in Czechoslovakia. One night Itzak dreamed of a great treasure that was buried under a bridge in Prague. Itzak was one to follow his dreams, so he left his family and friends in his little village and headed off to Prague to find this treasure buried under a certain bridge. Itzak's mother was living with him and she said, "Itzak, this is Mother's Day, and you're leaving me today?" (Actually, that's not part of the story)
Well, after many days' journey, Itzak found his way to the city of Prague and to the very bridge that appeared in his dream. Weary from his long journey, but overcome with joy at finding that exact bridge, Itzak began to dig into the earth under that bridge. He dug and he dug but found nothing. He fell to the earth and wept.
Soon there came along a policeman and he nudged Itzak with his night-stick. "What are you doing here, peasant?" said the policeman. Itzak was an honest man and he told the policemen about his dream.
"Oh, what a fool you peasants are," the policeman said. "Who believes in such dreams? Why I just had a dream the other night in which there was an undiscovered treasure that was under the stove in the house of a certain peasant named Itzak in a tiny village of our country. But I would never have wasted such time and energy to have traveled such a distance at such a great cost to myself and my family."
But Itzak simply thanked the policeman and went hurriedly back to his own village, to his own house and to the stove in his house. He moved the stove, and there was a great and unimaginable treasure.
And the rabbis tell us that the moral of this story is that there is great treasure at home, but knowledge of it is in Prague.
Paul would have wanted to save Itzak the trip. Paul communicated to these sophisticated Athenians a simple and common sense truth. God is near to all who call. You may want to take a trip far from home in order to find God, but if you are willing, God can be found where you are. It all depends on how you look at the things around you.
I suppose that this is in a certain way a Mother's Day message. Or at least it is a message that celebrates the values that we have traditionally associated with motherhood and home.
Luther declared that the mother who teaches the child about the goodness of God, who is the shepherd of all children, is as much a doctor of the Word of God as is the archbishop of Mainz. So when the preacher preaches on the Word of God, he or she might not quote Scripture. When one declares the presence and the grace of God, the Word is being preached. During the 10th to the 12th centuries, when virtually no one could read, how did the church continue? The people didn't read Scripture; in fact, many priests didn't either. So they didn't preach Scripture. What they taught was the celebrative worship of God through images and liturgy, hymnody, acts of devotion and tradition. So the church lasted without Scripture.(1)
Thus, the church's preaching and teaching has been kept alive, not so much by the theologians and philosophers, though they did their part. It was kept alive by those who tended hearth and home in ways that showed those who grew up there that God loves them most dearly and is never far off.
So, the message to the philosophers in our midst is, do your philosophy. But remember that the ultimate truth that you seek is near you, for it is that context in which you "live and move and have your being."