Is the Bible Philosophy?

When I first came to the University of Florida and got connected with Gator Christian Life, I was invited to go out on campus and share the Gospel with strangers for the first time in my life. One of the ways we would start off the conversation was with a “Spiritual Interest Questionnaire,” a short, nine-question get-to-know-you-and-your-beliefs survey leading up to the really kicker question, “Hypothetically, if you were to die today and you stood before God, and He asked you why should I let you into Heaven, what would your answer be?”

But it was question five that took me a little while to ponder: “What would you say the Bible is, primarily? A historical book, mythology, philosophy, God’s revelation to mankind, or other?” I knew the right answer was “God’s revelation to mankind,” but in my head, I thought, “technically, isn’t it all of those things except mythology?”

For years, I just accepted that “God’s revelation to mankind” was the best answer, but it was not until my very last semester at UF that I realized just what it meant to call the Bible “philosophy,” and I determined that the Bible is as far as can be from being “philosophy.”

Having been in the Electrical Engineering program for most of my college career, and having finally made it to my last semester, I had thought I had successfully avoided having to take any classes like the kind you see in “God’s Not Dead,” but here I was in Dr. Leslie’s Telecomm Ethics class, the lone Christian, with no sign of the Newsboys to save the day. Never have I had a class that was so blatantly against the Bible and spewed so many lies to its students. Never have I had textbooks that were held so high above the Bible and were obviously bitter towards what the Bible says. Never have I had a professor who so belittled the power and role of God in determining what is right and wrong. Never have I seen the minds of human philosophers like Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Ross, Rawls, and Benhabib, held so highly above the God who created them. Never has a class made me so frustrated.

The premise of the entire class was that “The best moral argument is the one that has the best reasoning.” This, Dr. Leslie told us, was the “foundation” of what makes something right or wrong. Sure, at first this seems logical, but when you think about it, how often do we see that human reasoning is flawed? The “greatest” minds of Aristotle, Kant, Mill, Ross, Rawls, and Benhabib don’t even agree with each other. How can we hold these minds to be flawless? The only thing that we can trust as the foundation of right and wrong is the one thing that has never been found to be flawed: The Word of God.

From day one, we were told, “You cannot invoke God or religion in any of your arguments because God has no place in morality.” What? How could God, who created morality and made the very definition of right and wrong, have no place in morality?

But the first lecture was about morality and religion (or the Devine Command Theory, stating that morality comes from God) which was the only “theory” immediately dismissed as not even worth considering. Only two arguments were given to disprove this argument:

The first was that religions don’t agree with each other. Therefore, none of them can explain what is right and wrong.

Everyone in the class was so quick to nod their heads and say their “Amens,” I felt like I was the only one who could see the logical blunder in this statement. The fact that two or more statements disagree with each other proves only that not all of them can be true. This leaves that either none or true or one is true. Of course, according to modern society, to say that there is one Truth and others are false is intolerant and should therefore be dismissed.

The second argument was: if God were to tell you to do something bad, it would still be bad. Therefore God could not be the source of morality

How can a person accept logic like this? This is circular reasoning at it’s finest: starting an argument with what they are trying to end with. They tried to prove that God is not the moral source, but in order to prove that they had to start with the assumption that God is an immoral source. This is human reasoning. This is what is held above the Bible.

But once we got the silly notion of God out of the way (though God was repeatedly and regularly referred back to in both the textbooks and the lectures as the silly theory people used to accept), we moved on to the “legitimate” moral theories:

Ethical Egoism-

This theory claims that “each person ought to pursue his or her own self-interest exclusively.” [Rachels pg70] Any time a person does something good for another or sacrifices of themselves, it is only moral if they get something out it.

What? I don’t think I have to argue hard against this one. Didn’t my God come down and selflessly sacrifice himself for my sake? Would we call that immoral? I have some very generous supporters who have sacrificed money and time to pray for me, so that I can minister at the University of Florida full-time, so that students can benefit from my ministry, and so that God will be glorified. They expect nothing in return so should I call them immoral for that?

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

-Philippians 2:4

And yet, as silly as this theory may sound, we see it hidden so prevalently in our society. The whole “follow your heart” epidemic, the sweet-sounding belief that we should always do what we most want to do, has led many to follow their hearts into sin and depravity. How often have we seen the excuse, “how can it be wrong if it makes me feel good?” used to defend sexual sin?

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

-Jeremiah 17:9

Utilitarianism-

Utilitarianism is the moral theory proposed by David Hume that the most moral decision is that which results in the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is a sort of “ends justifies the means” concept. The chapter begins with a quote by Joseph Fletcher, stating that “Given our present [apparently superior] perspective, it is amazing that Christian ethics down through the centuries could have accepted almost unanimously the sententious doctrine that ‘the end does not justify the means.” [Rachels pg. 89]

Fletcher was right about one thing: Christian ethics does not accept such a theory like this. Firstly, this theory still demands that a moral decision maker decide what is “good for the greatest number of people,” a decision that cannot be left to human fallibility.

Before this class, I had thought that it was common belief in the United States that euthanasia was wrong, but after this lecture, most of the class was convinced that killing someone to relieve pain was an admirable action.

Yet the sixth commandment plainly says, “You shall not murder,” [Exodus 20:13] (a word that was commonly confused with “kill” to exemplify God’s “hypocrisy” in ordering the Israelites to exact punishment on the natives in the Promised Land)

Was not the Amalekite who murdered Saul put to death by David for his sin, even though Saul was already impaled by his own sword and had himself asked for death? [II Samuel 1] The Amalekite thought it was the most good for the most people. The enemy wanted him dead. Saul wanted to be dead.  He even thought David would rejoice over the news [II Samuel 4:10]. But it still stands that God was displeased because murder is still wrong no matter how many people “benefit.”

Social Contract-

The chapter on Thomas Hobbes’s idea of a social contract begins again with the phrase, “Assume, first, that there is no God to issue commands and reward virtue…” [Rachels pg 141]. This theory claims that moral rules are formed only because people see the need to work for the betterment of society for the sake of their own personal benefit (still rooted in self interest and psychological egoism). It claims that a person would say, “Why do I not murder people? Because I have entered into a social contract that says I won’t. Why did I enter the contract? Because others in society have agreed not to murder me. Jail time and consequences are for those who break the social contract.”

But this creates a “morality” that based on, “well it isn’t hurting anybody.” When we take God out of the picture, we only see what immediately affects us and those around us. We forget that God is a personal God with emotions and a heart. We forget that He is a jealous God who does not want to share our attentions with other gods that he knows will at best let us down.

It is not just society and us. There is a God is affected by what we do. There is a God who sees what is good and bad for us, better than we do. There is a God who sees beyond what we think is not hurtful to anyone or ourselves.

Feminism-

“…it remains unclear whether women and men really think differently. One thing seems certain, however: Even if they do think differently, the differences cannot be very great.” [Rachels pg 165]

I do not need to tell you that the Biblical views of men’s and women’s roles are very different than the world’s. But here, the world has taken away all our uniqueness in saying that men and women think exactly the same way and that if there is any difference, it is only a conditioned difference.

The problem occurred when men and women both saw the Biblical command, “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands…” [Ehp 5:22], yet ignored the biblical commands before and after it: “Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.” [Ephesians 5:21] and “ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” They chose not to see the perfect example of submission in Christ as He gave Himself up for His bride and determined that one type of submission was more significant or important than the other. They failed to see that leadership = submission and determined that submission = inferiority.

Thus, angry at the false idea that the Bible teaches that women are inferior, the world determined that women can and even should think and be exactly like men, taking away the valuable, needed, important, and beautiful role of womanhood.

Virtue Ethics-

Virtue Ethics asserts that a moral action is one governed by any one of a set of “virtues” that are seen to be desirable characteristics in a person.

But the theory still leaves a moral decision up to human ambiguity. Who (if not God) has the right to determine what is virtuous? Or who is to determine what virtue wins out if there is a conflict between two? Has not our world placed pride as a virtue higher above humility and “tolerance” as a virtue higher above steadfastness? Who (if not God) has a right to define these virtues?

Let’s look at Justice for example. John Rawls’s defined justice as redistributing “social value” to those who have little of it [Plaisance pg 85]. A sort of Robin Hood socialism.

But does not God’s law say,

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

-Leviticus 19:15

Human beings attempting to determine what is write and wrong without an appeal to the one who made it.

Why is the Bible not philosophy? I hope that my brothers and sisters who study philosophy do not take offense. We need Christians to study philosophy so they can know what they are fighting against. But the Bible is not philosophy because philosophy is man-made. The Bible is not. Philosophy is nothing but human beings attempting to determine what is right and wrong without an appeal to the One who made right and wrong. It is nothing but ideas and theories that were put together by man to deny or disprove God’s role in morality. But once you put moral decisions into human hands, you get a lineup of immoral actions done by people who are convinced they are doing the right thing.

I say this so that you know what is happening in college campuses. This is what the world is teaching students at such a vulnerable point in life and this is what people are believing: There is no God, and even if there is, He has no role in determining what I do with my life.

We have to combat this. We must overcome lies with truth and we must “overcome evil with good.” [Romans 12:21] This is why I plan on returning to the University of Florida. Because I want to be on the front lines.

“Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

-I Corinthians 1:20