Does the Bible Reject the Use of Philosophy?

Does 1 Corinthians really reject philosophy—or is Paul the Apostle targeting a false “wisdom” that opposes the Gospel? In this episode, I unpack Scripture with the help of St. Thomas Aquinas to show how Paul is not rejecting the use of philosophy when it comes to knowing God but rather a human “wisdom” that focuses on the things of this world alone and attempts explain the world without God.

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Does the bible reject the use of philosophy? There are some Bible passages that would seem to indicate it does. But, as we’ll see, the operative word there is “seem.”

Hey guys, Welcome back to the channel! So glad to have you with me. If you haven’t done so already, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell notification so you can be notified when new videos are released. Also, I’d like to invite you to consider helping keep this podcast going by financially supporting us on Patreon at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.

So, as I mentioned, the question we’re looking at today is whether using philosophy to talk about God and his revelation goes against the Bible.

There’s one passage that seems to say it does: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25.

There, Paul talks about the message of Christ crucified as God’s wisdom—and he contrasts that with what he calls the “wisdom of the world.”

Here’s what he says:

[PHONE READ]

“For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? . . . For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified . . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God [Christ crucified] is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor. 1:18–25)

Some Christians take Paul to be rejecting human wisdom entirely as a legitimate way to know God. Here’s what the author of Enduring Word Commentary David Guzik has to say about it:

[VIDEO]

[W]hy has God destroyed the wisdom of the wise did you see that in 11:52 verse 21 this is staggering friends for since in the wisdom of God the world 12:01 through wisdom did not know 12:07 God my friends there is a constant tendency to think that the smartest and 12:13 the wisest humans will know the most about God but God cannot be found through 12:22 human wisdom but only through what through the message of the cross the 12:29 pursuit of human wisdom may bring Earthly contentment it may bring Earthly 12:34 happiness though that may be rare I mean I don’t know many philosophy Majors that I think are really happy 12:41 people my friends this pursuit of of human wisdom it and in it of itself it can 12:48 never bring the true knowledge of the true God

Did you catch that? Guzik thinks Paul is saying that

[VIDEO]

“God cannot be found through 12:22 human wisdom but only through what through the message of the cross. . . this pursuit of of human wisdom it and in it of itself it can 12:48 never bring the true knowledge of the true God”

Is Guzik’s interpretation, right? If so, then philosophy is out the question for explaining and defending the faith. We’d have to leave all that philosophical stuff behind and focus merely on preaching the cross of Christ.

Let’s walk through a few things we can say in response.

First off, from a Catholic perspective this interpretation can’t fly. It goes directly against what Vatican I definitively taught in Dei Filius. Here’s what Canon 1 “On Revelation” says:

[PHONE READ]

If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.

Stated positively: God can be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason.

So, at least, Catholics must reject Guzik’s interpretation on magisterial grounds.

But not everybody’s Catholic. What should other Bible believing Christians think?

They should be suspect of this interpretation because it runs contrary to what Paul teaches elsewhere. Check out what he says in Romans 1:20:

[PHONE READ]

Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

That means God can be known through human wisdom—that’s to say, philosophy is a legit tool to know at least some things about God.

Okay, what else can we say in response?

Well, if we take God’s words, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever,” as a blanket rejection of all philosophical reasoning, we end up with some big problems.

For starters, Guzik’s take is actually self-defeating. Why? Because he’s using human wisdom—philosophical reasoning—to make his case!

He’s saying, “Paul teaches that God destroys human wisdom,” and then concludes, “therefore human wisdom can’t help us know God.” To reason from premise to conclusion is nothing less than the use of philosophical reasoning, which is human wisdom.

But here’s the kicker: Guzik is using human wisdom—philosophical reasoning—to arrive at knowledge about God. What’s that knowledge? God can’t be known by human wisdom.

So if Paul really meant we can’t use human wisdom—like philosophical reasoning—to know anything about God, then Guzik wouldn’t even know the truth of his own conclusion that God can’t be known by human wisdom, since the human wisdom of philosophical reasoning was used to know such a conclusion. That’s a classic self-defeating argument.

Another big problem with the idea that Paul is forbidding the use of philosophy to talk about God is that it would mean God is acting foolishly, since he would be acting contrary to His own nature, which can’t be.

Let me break that down.

As human beings, it’s part of our very nature to be rational. We have an intellect, and our intellect naturally reaches out to understand reality. That’s basically what philosophy is: the pursuit of truth, trying to understand the deepest causes of things using our natural reason.

So when we engage in philosophy—especially when we use it to help guide our lives toward God—we’re actually doing something good.

Now, if God, through Paul, were to tell us not to use our reason like that—not to pursue truth through philosophy—He’d be telling us to go against something that’s actually good for us as human beings. That would mean God is asking us to act against our own nature.

But here’s the kicker: If we act against our nature by acting against what’s truly good for us, we’re actually turning away from God, since to act against our own good is to act against the divine will. The order of good built into our human nature is really just an expression of God’s will—because, after all, He’s the one who created our nature in the first place.”

So, if God were to ask us not to use our reason by using philosophy in talking about God, he’d be asking us to turn away from him, which means he’d be asking us not to love Him.

But that can’t be, because that would mean God would be failing to love himself, which is absurd. God by definition is fully actualized in His love because he is pure actuality or existence itself. He cannot do anything but love himself.

So the bottom line is: God isn’t condemning all philosophical reasoning here. That can’t be what Paul means either, since Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit and wouldn’t be saying something that contradicts what human reason can clearly understand.

So what does God (and Paul) mean when He says,

 “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever”?

Let’s call in some help from St. Thomas Aquinas.

In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Aquinas points out that God can’t be saying, “I’ll destroy all wisdom.” After all, Sirach 1:1 says,

“all wisdom is from the Lord God.”

Instead, so Aquinas argues, God is saying He’ll destroy the kind of wisdom “the wise of this world have invented for themselves against the true wisdom of God.”

James 3:15 puts it this way:

“This is not wisdom, descending from above; but earthly, sensual, devilish.”

In other words, God’s going after the kind of distorted thinking that leads people to live only for the things of this world. That’s the kind of “wisdom” the cross overturns.

What Paul’s getting at comes into sharper focus when we look at what seems to be his Old Testament backdrop: Isaiah 29:14. There, God says,

[PHONE READ]

[T]herefore, behold, I will again do marvelous things with this people, wonderful and marvelous; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish, and the discernment of their discerning men shall be hidden.”

What does God mean here? In their Ignatius Catholic Study Bible, Curtis Mitch and Scott Hahn explain:

[PHONE READ]

Originally this was a warning for the leaders of Israel, whose overconfidence in human understanding was manifest when they paid more attention to politicians than to prophets. The same warning is now posted for the Corinthians, who prize the rational wisdom of men over the revealed wisdom of the gospel (pg. 286).

 

So it’s wisdom opposed to the Gospel, or the desire for human wisdom before God’s wisdom, that Paul is rejecting.

Aquinas continues in his commentary by saying God’s not rejecting prudence altogether either. Instead, He’s targeting worldly prudence—the kind that focuses only on temporary goods and completely ignores the eternal, which is what true prudence deals with. As Paul writes in Romans 8:6,

“The prudence of the flesh is death.”

And here’s where it hits home: When we live just for this world, we start interpreting everything in terms of this world too. We explain the world only through natural causes and push away any thought of God or divine revelation. That’s what Aquinas means when he says,

“[O]n account of the vanity of his heart man wandered from the right path of divine knowledge.”

Fr. Thomas Joseph White, a Dominican priest, explains this beautifully in his 2014 article “St. Thomas Aquinas and the Wisdom of the Cross,” published in the journal Nova Et Vetera. He says that this kind of human confusion—this misery, really—is precisely what the wisdom of God in the crucified Christ comes to heal.

It “opens reason up,” he writes, “to an authentic horizon of intellectual universality.” That’s a fancy way of saying the cross helps us see the big picture.

And in Aquinas’s words,

[PHONE READ]

“God brought believers to a saving knowledge of himself by other things, which are not found in the natures of creatures.”

Translation: God comes to help us out by giving us saving knowledge that’s we can’t have by reason alone—it’s supernatural.

Think of it this way: If a teacher sees their students totally missing the point, what do they do? They switch gears. They try a different example, a new explanation—whatever it takes to help them understand.

God does the same. When He sees that we’re struggling to grasp life’s meaning through the natural order alone—by reason alone, He speaks to us through something that hits at the heart—the cross.

And what’s the cross saying?

Love.

That’s the message. Christ crucified reveals the deep, powerful truth that we’re called to a loving relationship with God the Father, through Jesus, by the Holy Spirit.

Fr. White puts it this way:

[PHONE READ]

The “love of Christ crucified . . . redeems the human mind by introducing it at once to the heights and depths of the mystery of the Trinity.”

So how do we live out this loving relationship with the Trinity?

By imitating Jesus. By living a life of self-giving love, offering ourselves for the good of others—just like He did. By living the sacramental life and living the life of grace.

 

So, bottom line: Paul isn’t rejecting philosophy—he’s rejecting the kind of false “wisdom” that pulls us away from God. Real wisdom, the kind rooted in truth, actually leads us closer to Him because it reflects the way He made us. That’s why the Church embraces both faith and reason, not one against the other.

And in the end, the wisdom of the cross doesn’t shut down human reason—it transforms it, heals it, redeems it, elevates and opens it up to see the bigger picture. Which means that when we use philosophy in service of the Gospel, we’re not going against the Bible—we’re actually doing exactly what God designed us to do.

Well, my friends, that’s it for today! If you found this video helpful, make sure to like, subscribe, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. And for more resources, check out my website at karlobroussard.com.

If you want me to come and speak at your event, visit catholicanswersspeakers.com.

Lastly, I’d love for you to consider supporting me over on Patreon. I can’t continue doing this podcast without your financial support. You can find me over at doctorkarlo.com with “doctor” spelled out.

Thanks for hanging out, and I’ll see you next time!