Introduction
In Colossians 2:8, the Apostle Paul wrote, “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ” (ESV). The relationship between Christians and philosophy has been “#complicated” ever since, with writers such as Tertullian (Prescription of Heretics 7) and Augustine (Confessions 3.4.8) invoking the verse in an apparently anti-philosophical sense. The long shadow of “Christianity as anti-philosophy”[1] reaches us today through biblicism in all its guises.
On the other hand, we are also living in a time of great educational renaissance, as seen in classical Christian education at all levels from kindergarten through college, a development to be greeted with gratitude following the almost unfathomable regress of humane education—and humane action—in our major institutions and instruments of education in the twentieth century, and its latter half in particular, to say nothing of the twenty-first. Its educational program is not the same as that of our forebears from a couple of centuries ago, and most of these differences are to be regretted (I think here especially of the proportion of original-language texts to translations in formal educational settings, which we have inverted from that of bygone ages); but it is far from nothing, and it would be peevish to complain of a great gift because it did not also include other gifts.
Both of these themes—educational revival and an exhortation to gratitude for it—are treated in the oration of Philip Melanchthon below, now translated into English for (I believe) the first time. In “Is Philosophy a Hindrance to Piety?,” Melanchthon rebukes the anti-philosophical posturing of would-be theologians and argues instead that the Christian use of philosophy (which here means dialectic, natural philosophy, and ethics) is endorsed by Scripture itself. He does this through a characteristic reliance on the distinction between law and gospel: though he does not use the phrase itself, his entire analysis turns on the difference between the gospel, which is the forgiveness of sins and emphatically not philosophy, and the realm of law, that is, the realm of God’s good creatures that we encounter everywhere in life, including in philosophy and liberal learning. More briefly, something can be good without being redemptive, and it is under the rubric of creaturely goodness that we find philosophy. We are to use God’s good creatures. The Bible itself tells us that we are to use them.
Not only so, but something can also be necessary without being redemptive. Melanchthon makes this stronger claim, too, on behalf of philosophy, touching on education’s civic function: no commonwealth can survive without the “public patrimony” of liberal learning. This secular, civic function is not somehow separate from God. Instead, all of it—law and gospel, sacred and secular, civic and ecclesiastical—occurs under the aegis of God’s benevolent superintendence. We should do our work in the law’s domain in gratitude to God and with a smile, knowing that he has already smiled upon it, and upon us, in the gospel (Eccl. 9:7; Rom. 4:5; Gal. 3:20).
For more on Melanchthon and philosophy, see my essay “Reason Diabolical, Reason Divine: Philosophy, Classical Humanism, and the Scripture Principle in Philip Melanchthon and Niels Hemmingsen,” in Philosophy and the Christian, ed. Joseph Minich (Lincoln, NE: The Davenant Press, 2018), 214-49.
A note on the text
The following is the first of Melanchthon’s Quaestiones Academicae, short pieces of oratory that were used for disputations in the University of Wittenberg. I translate the text as found in Corpus Reformatorum 10, ed. C.G. Bretschneider (Halle an der Saale: Schwetske, 1842), 689-91. Bretschneider’s text depends in turn on the collection of Paul Eber, Quaestiones de rebus cognitione dignissimis, explicatae in publicis congressibus in Academia VVitebergensi. Item utiles aliquot commonefactiones de disciplina et legum dignitate, recitatae a Rectoribus ante lectionem Statutorum: Scriptae pleraeque a Philippo Melanthone (Wittenberg: Rhau, 1557), sig. A1r-A3r.
E.J. Hutchinson
February 2024
Is Philosophy a Hindrance to Piety?
None of you is ignorant of the fact that duty brought me here to speak, since our school’s custom puts this burden upon me. For that reason, I ask you to give me mercy in keeping with your kindness, if my speech will be insufficient for you owing to the weakness of my mind; nature has invested me with it and this crowd increases it. For, in addition to the rest of my difficulties, the following, too, is added: since I have to speak about the praises of philosophy, I judge that, in a case that has been argued so many times, people are looking for a new speech, and, according to the proverb, Τὰ κοινὰ καινῶς [ta koina kainōs, “common things said in a new way”].[2] But this cannot be done by a mediocre talent. And so, since philosophy has previously been adorned with true praises in this school in such a way that it has not been lauded more honorably in the literature or monuments of any other age, I, having omitted an encomium for the time being, have decided for my own part to touch on just one topic.
Some people are deficient in fairness to philosophy because they think it is a hindrance to piety. However, due to time constraints, I will not explain what useful flowers the theologian can pluck from the individual parts of philosophy, especially since Augustine has written so sufficiently about this matter in On Christian Teaching. And those advantages are too well known to be able to be disregarded, even by the ungrateful. I shall dispute only—and that in a few words—with the sort of men who use piety as a pretext for their own ignorance in order to avoid undertaking these studies. For no argument can be more efficacious in good men’s eyes for commending philosophy than if they should understand that it is approved by God; if they should see what uses God made it known to the human race for; if they should reflect on the fact that the gift of God is not to be despised, but is rather to be preserved and adorned with unparalleled piety.
Perhaps some men are of quicker intelligence than I am; I do not hesitate to admit my own slowness. I was never able to understand what philosophy was or what uses it had before I encountered the sincere teaching of the gospel that has recently been reborn by the altogether unparalleled kindness of God. I expect that there are many in this assembly who would say the same thing—that they first understood the worth, power, and use of philosophy once they had learned Christian teaching. And I see in the writings of the previous age that there were many who philosophized to no advantage, because they did not pay attention to the judgment of Scripture about philosophy, nor did they perceive the distinction between the gospel and philosophy. Now, therefore, since the worth of philosophy has been revealed and illuminated by the gospel, those who do not wish to make use of this kindness of the gospel—who scorn these studies that the Holy Spirit earnestly proclaims to us—must be judged to be ungrateful.
“I was never able to understand what philosophy was or what uses it had before I encountered the sincere teaching of the gospel”
And see what perversity belongs to men’s dispositions! At that time when theologians did not know what philosophy was useful for, there was no one who did not think he should grow old in its study.[3] Now, when the gospel has made known to us the power of these arts and extols their study, what do we do? No one shrinks back in horror from the most beautiful disciplines as much as those who want to be called students of the Sacred Scriptures. Really, as if the gospel had been purged for this one reason alone: to remove the arts from their rightful domain! Now, on the other hand, reality itself tells us that by the kindness of the gospel the worth of the arts is made manifest and increased. This fact ought to have spurred on men’s industry and roused them to learning. Formerly, men had the hots for these studies—it’s amazing how much so—when those who could teach them were lacking. Now, in the greatest abundance of the best instructors, the schools are not very crowded at all. And, the arts, although they previously lay covered over by dirt and squalor, have now gotten back their luster. Dialectic had been absolutely buried by certain slanders of the grammarians, and no practice in speaking was applied to its study, though it cannot be understood without it. Natural philosophy was in tatters, for mathematics, from which nearly all the demonstrations in natural philosophy are borrowed, was lacking. Ethics had attacked and seized the domain of theology, so that the entire course of the Christian life was now being sought more from philosophy than from the gospel. In such a way, the entire multitude of the disciplines, which ought to have been a harmonious chorus, had been thrown into confusion and disorder. Now, after they have been corrected and each has been set in order in its proper place, that zeal for studies that formerly existed has been snuffed out again. And there is no other reason, in my view, than the fact that it is so much a part of men’s nature to habitually turn up their noses at the good things that are right in front of them. But if we desire to be seen to be pleasing to God, from whom these enormous goods have come to us, we must by all means make an effort not to be seen to have scorned them; it will be a part of our piety to acknowledge the gifts of heaven and to both cultivate and preserve them. And it is not only for our own sake that we should do this, but we also owe this effort to the commonwealth and to all of our posterity. For the commonwealth has placed us in this station to preserve the arts that are useful for life. Nor should anyone think that he has defrauded the commonwealth in a small matter if he has done his duty negligently. Every head of household owes it to his children to be more eager to leave behind this public patrimony than his own piece of land. For private property cannot be maintained unless the commonwealth has been well constituted.
I have used rather many words[4] to speak about these matters so that those who despise the good arts[5] under the pretext of the gospel may remember that they[6] are doing grave harm to the glory of the gospel. It is much more becoming for Christians to revere the gifts of God and to use them with thanksgiving, as Paul says.[7] And I beseech Christ that he would govern our studies for the purpose of their public usefulness and would preserve the good arts, since, as they have been made known to the human race by God, so they cannot be preserved except by him.
E.J. Hutchinson is Associate Professor of Classics at Hillsdale College, where he also directs the Collegiate Scholars Program. His research focuses on the intersection of Christianity and classical civilization in late antiquity and early modernity. He is the editor and translator of Neils Hemmingsen, On the Law of Nature: A Demonstrative Method (CLP Academic, 2018).
I borrow from the title of F.R. Leavis’s The Critic as Anti-Philosopher ↑
Cf. Philostratus, Discourses 1. ↑
I.e., should devote his entire life to it. ↑
Recall that he said at the outset that he would be brief–and in fact, despite his protestation here, he has. ↑
bonae artes, a synonym for the liberal arts. ↑
I read se with Eber’s text, misprinted in CR 10 as si. ↑
“For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:4-5 [ESV]). For Melanchthon, these verses (among others) serve as a charter for philosophy. See his comments on Col. 2:8 discussed in Hutchinson, “Reason Diabolical,” 232. ↑