What Would Jesus Think?

By Douglas Groothuis

The ideas and arguments of recognized philosophers form a firm part of the canon of significant thinkers in history. Recently, many have argued that the canon should be widened to include the voices of women and non-Western thinkers. If we read Aristotle, why not Mary Wollstonecraft and Confucius?

One thinker remains oddly exiled -- outside nearly everyone's canon of noteworthy intellects, even though no one has transcended his influence on global history. He wrote no books, but neither did Socrates or Buddha. The historicity of the documents that record his life and thought have been disputed, but that is true for nearly all ancient thinkers. While the thinking of those who were inspired by his life and teachings -- whether Augustine, Aquinas, Martin Luther, or Martin Luther King Jr. -- is often studied, the philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth rarely appears in the curriculum of higher education.

Discussions of the historical Jesus are plentiful. But they usually take place in religious-studies contexts and often fail to address the philosophical dimensions of Jesus' teachings. Most reference books in philosophy ignore him. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1967) has no entry under Jesus or Christ. Neither does the newer and well-respected Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (1998), although it does include an entry on Buddha.

Many religious scholars and theologians consider Jesus to be more of a sage, exorcist, mystic, or prophet than a philosopher. Even those who hold to the theological doctrine of the Incarnation sometimes devalue Jesus as a thinker, considering his statements to be authoritative on the basis of his divinity, not his intelligence.

I was challenged to evaluate Jesus' philosophy when the secular philosopher Daniel Kolak asked me to write a volume on Jesus for the Wadsworth Philosophers Series. Scrutinizing the canonical Gospels, I encountered a mind at work on matters of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and gender relations. Amid Jesus' prophecies, exorcisms, and prayers, I found a disciplined and discriminating intellect.

But several scholars deny that Jesus was a careful thinker. The historian Humphrey Carpenter claims that Jesus could not have been a philosopher because he was a Jewish theist, not a Greek. That principle, of course, would exclude Maimonides and many other Jewish philosophers. Neither does it do justice to Jesus' teaching, as recorded in the Gospels. The philosopher Karl Jaspers asserts (with little evidence) that Jesus' thinking was unsystematic and contradictory, yet he shows no appreciation of Jesus' various ways of reasoning or the coherence of his worldview.

A contemporary philosopher, Michael Martin at Boston University, argues that Jesus disparaged rationality, because he praised the faith of children. But Jesus commended the humility and sincerity of children, not their ignorance or stupidity. When asked to state God's greatest commandment, he answered that one should love God with all of one's being, including the mind.

Although Jesus did not articulate a systematic philosophy in the manner of Plato or Descartes (few philosophers have), his teachings, debates, and even prayers indicate a logical mind at work. The Gospels document Jesus pronouncing divine judgment on occasion, but not at the expense of reason, evidence, and analysis. If the necessary and sufficient conditions for being a philosopher are the lifelong pursuit of truth through the rigorous use of reasoning, then Jesus qualifies as a philosopher.

Recently, philosophers have been exploring the role of moral character in epistemology. Philosophers still rightly ask how to distinguish between belief and knowledge (usually arguing that knowledge requires truth plus justification or warrant), but, increasingly, they are also wondering what makes believers good candidates for acquiring knowledge. This is called "virtue epistemology"; it has a long pedigree, going back to Aquinas and Augustine in the Western tradition. Intellectual virtues have classically included patience, tenacity, humility, studiousness, and honest truth seeking. Vices to be avoided are impatience, gullibility, pride, vain curiosity, and apathy.

A strong emphasis on character pervades Jesus' epistemology, which is closely intertwined with his teachings on ethics and the knowledge of God. Not only did he make arguments and tell parables, but he called people to intellectual rectitude and sobriety. Jesus' familiar moral teaching about the danger of being judgmental, from the Book of Matthew, contains an epistemological element easily and often overlooked:

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, "Let me take the speck out of your eye," while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye.

That passage is frequently taken to forbid all moral evaluation, as if Jesus were a relativist. But Jesus had something else in mind: an objective evaluation of both oneself and others. When one judges others, one is implicitly bringing oneself under the same judgment. Therefore, a person needs first to search her or his own being for any moral impurities and address them ("take the log out of your own eye"). Only then is one in a good epistemological and ethical position to evaluate another.

Accurate moral evaluation requires knowledge of the self, and allows for no special pleading. The hypocrite is not only morally deficient but epistemologically defective as well. By failing to be subjectively attentive to one's conscience, one fails to discern moral realities objectively. Thus people will often condemn others because they ignore or obscure their own transgressions.

Another famous response cited in the Book of Matthew is also quite philosophically nuanced. Disciples of the Pharisees and several Herodians asked Jesus a controversial political question. The Pharisees were ardent nationalists who opposed Roman rule over Palestine. The Herodians, on the other hand, were followers and defenders of the Herods, the Roman rulers of that region. After some initial flattery about Jesus' integrity, they tried to spring a trap: "Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?"

Jesus faced a dilemma. If he sided with the Pharisees, he might be seen as an insurrectionist (as were the Zealots, Jews who defended violent revolution against the state). If Jesus affirmed paying taxes, he would be viewed as capitulating to a secular power instead of honoring Israel's God.

Jesus responded by asking for the coin used to pay the tax, a denarius. He asked, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered that it was the emperor's. Jesus uttered the now-famous words, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's."

When confronted with a classic dilemma pertaining to what we would call church-state relations, Jesus found a way out logically. He gave a place to the rule of the emperor under God without making the emperor into God. The emperor's portrait on the coin (a bust of Tiberius Caesar) had an inscription ascribing divinity to the emperor. In differentiating the emperor from God, Jesus stripped the emperor of his supposed divinity.

Jesus' short saying has inspired many political philosophers to explicate and apply the concept of a limited state in relation to religion and the rest of culture. While not offering a developed political philosophy (no one was asking for that, anyway), Jesus showed a deep awareness of the issues involved and responded intelligently under public pressure.

In light of those examples (and I could cite many more), I encourage professors in the humanities to rectify the omission of Jesus from the canon of philosophers by asking philosophical questions about Jesus' worldview and patterns of reasoning. Challenge students to bring new questions to those old texts -- questions that don't fit nicely into stereotypically religious molds. One might discover new dimensions to Jesus' thought, and new significance as well. Jesus, the philosopher, should be released from the religious ghetto and welcomed into the classroom as an intellectual participant in the discussion of things that matter most.

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Douglas Groothuis is an associate professor of philosophy at Denver Seminary where he directs the master's program in the philosophy of religion. His books On Jesus and On Pascal were recently published by Thomson/Wadsworth. This essay was originally published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. ITW received permission to host this essay from both the original publisher and author.

Also, see Douglas Groothuis’ essay: Jesus the Philosopher What counts as thinking?http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2003/001/21.38.html (offsite).

END                    Posted: 04/09/03