PHILOSOPHY VERSUS THEOLOGY

As I have already observed elsewhere, the Greeks did it. Zeno of Citium divided Philosophy into three parts: Physics, Ethics, and Logic. Cleanthes further subdivided the three divisions, thus making six: Dialectic and Rhetoric within Logic; Ethics and Politics within Ethics, and finally Physics and Theology under the common heading of Physics. While previously, in another place, my emphasis was on the grouping together of Ethics and Politics, my interest here focuses on the third combination: of Physics and Theology.

The Greek word physis meaning nature,--- this grouping together of the study of the nature of things and the study of the nature of God curiously reveals a comparable dualism, or, more accurately, a direct parallelism of matter and mind. I applaud the logical reasoning in this endeavor (the origin of nature and the origin of God seem, indeed, to somehow belong together) in its scientific ambition to learn about God, like we learn about nature, to prove the one, like we strive to prove the other. However, the end result of such comparison seems rather pointless to me. I am not at all interested in any proof of the existence of God. It does not even make any sense: to me: had this been provable, we should have been so overawed by God’s infinite power, that Satan himself would have lost all his ‘charms’ (fear kills all temptations) and we would have lost all our freedoms, or whatever we had of them, and of course, even the concepts of good and evil would have totally lost their significance, superseded by mere commands of obedience.

Come to think of it, what is the usefulness of theology, as opposed to, say, religious philosophy, or history of religion? By placing theology within philosophy, as its branch, the Greeks made a wise choice, but their Christian epigones did a lot of damage to the integrity of theology by confusing philosophy and religion, in their development of theology as a separate discipline. A humble Christian exegesis within religious study is a necessary and commendable practice, and so is a detached philosophical study of religion, which probably was the intention of Ancient Greeks, when they made theology a subdivision of philosophy. But what must be seen as unacceptable is the fusion of philosophy and religion, where the authority of faith dictates what is right or wrong to the philosopher, preempting his independent intellectual contribution by its tyrannical fiat. This has been done ever since the Catholic Church had come up with the idea of “infallibility.”

On the other hand, the war over creation and evolution may serve as an illustration of a more recent bogus controversy.--- Instead of allowing the religious philosopher to validate the philosophical merits of creationism, and thus to reconcile it with the legitimate aspects of the theory of evolution, modern Creationist theologians have been effectively shoving their primitive exegesis down everyone’s throat demanding that creationism be accepted not as a matter of reason, but as a matter of faith.

There is another major problem with theology, using its position as a subdivision of philosophy to sneak a particular Church doctrine on its unsuspecting host. There is nothing intellectually worse than the armies of different religious denominations battling each other all clad in “philosophical” armor, like the real armies of yore, claiming God to be squarely on their side. Therefore, the first challenge of the so-called interfaith movement ought to be not some superficial handshake of the competing religions, but first and foremost the clearing of the air, by cleaning up the philosophical-theological mess, caused by all those holier-than-thou attitudes.