Philosophy of Jesus Christ
Philosophy of Jesus Christ
Philosophy of Jesus Christ
Jesus Metaphysics
Metaphysics-- is a type of philosophy or study that uses broad concepts to help define reality
and our understanding of it. ... As such, it is concerned with explaining the features of reality
that exist beyond the physical world and our immediate senses.
Proverbs 18:15 says, “An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks
knowledge.”
It turns out that God created us to be inquisitive, to seek knowledge, to pursue the truth.
Jesus was Jewish, born to Mary, wife of Joseph. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke offer two
accounts of his genealogy. Matthew traces Jesus' ancestry to Abraham through David. Luke
traces Jesus' ancestry through Adam to God.
Christ was not originally a name but a title derived from the Greek word christos, which
translates the Hebrew term meshiah (Messiah), meaning “the anointed one.”
Everything. Jesus knew the crucial answer to the crucial question of Metaphysics because he
is a Jew. The ultimate truth of Metaphysics, the nature of ultimate reality, reality at its most
real, was not the unknowable mystery to the Jews that it was all to all the pagan tribes,
nations, and religions all around them.
It was because Ultimate Reality, for reasons known only to Himself, had chosen to reveal
Himself to them as to no one else
He told them His name.
"I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I Am!" John 8:58
For the metaphysical basis for the idea of the rights of man is the idea of man as
created in the image of God.
The name Jesus called God was an even more startling one than the one God had
revealed to Moses. Through Moses the Jews had learned that God is simply I AM,
the one, eternal, perfect, unique, utterly real Person. Now Jesus called this
Person a name no one had ever dreamed or dared to use: “Father.”
“So that you may have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father
and with His Son Jesus Christ.” (I John1:3)
Only love could motivate such madness. Christ’s outstretched arms on the Cross
are God’s answer to our childlike question: “How much do you love me?” “This
much!” How big is that stretch? It is the distance between Heaven and earth that
was bridged by the Incarnation, and it was the distance between Heaven and Hell
that was bridged by our salvation.
Christ is the ultimate revelation of God, or ultimate reality, of the deepest secret
of metaphysics
Epistemology is derived from the Greek word “epistome” meaning knowledge and
“logos” which means the study of. It is synonymous with the Latin word “scientia”. Basically
it deals with the study of knowledge.
THE FIRST GREAT PHILOSOPHICAL question is: What is? The second, which naturally
follows, is: How do we know what is? The first question is about being, the second is about
truth.
Jesus’ answer to the first question, the question of being, was Himself. It was not to point but
to be, to be “I AM.” So His answer to the second question, the question of truth, is also not to
point to anything else as the truth but simply to be Himself the truth: “I AM the truth.” (John
14:6)
So he is not just an epistemologist but the truth that all epistemology seeks. For Jesus
is not just a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, only because He is wisdom. He is the Beloved
that “the love of wisdom” is in love with.
In epistemology, what we must know is ourselves, the world and God. There are
degrees of knowledge and the key is wisdom. Again, Jesus not only taught in Jewish wisdom
but personified it. As Kierkegaard wrote in Practice in Christianity, the only explanation of
truth is to be it. Jesus philosophy is in that sense ‘existential. Our knowledge will increase
with our sanctification of the Name of God, and of the world and ourselves. Kreeft rightly
refers to prayer as an important key to knowledge, allowing us to draw close and relate to
that which we need to know, rather than just to know about.
It shows how all things point to Christ. Everything in the universe and everything in
the bible is finger pointing to Him. He is the end of Epistemology.
Jesus Anthropology (the philosophy of man)
Jesus Ethics
Ethics is the art of science that deals with the morality of human acts.
In looking at Jesus ethics, Kreeft says, “There are really three moral questions, three
basic parts to morality; how should we relate to each other, to ourselves and to God? Kreefts
writing prowess shines through as he reflects on Christ as the answer to the ethics:
“He is the world’s greatest moral teacher, but He is more than that. He is the world’s
most perfect moral example, but He is more than that. He is the world’s greatest prophet but
He is more than that. He is more than one who taught goodness and lived goodness and
demanded goodness. He is goodness.
The Philosophy of Jesus is a powerful and even worshipful look at the person of Jesus
Christ. This is a profound look at Christ as the answer to life’s great questions: “Philosophers
seek wisdom. Christ is wisdom. Therefore Christ is the fulfillment of philosophy. Moralists
seek righteousness. Christ is righteousness. Therefore Christ is the fulfillment of morality.
The conclusion; “The answer is that there is only one hope, for societies as well as souls;
What must I do to be saved? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved
(Act11:14)
Jesus ethics revolves around the imitation Dei, the imitation of God, which in
Christianity becomes the imitation of Christ. Kreeft argues that we have to be little Christs,
which I take it has to do with becoming all that God has called us to be, individually and as a
people of God. The idea is that we each need to be personally responsible for our share in
collective destiny, which is with God, to mend the world. Jesus own philosophy was to do the
Father’s will, which he did, and which he enjoined us to do, and in which prayer and
personal wholeness is the key to knowledge and true freedom.
Reference:
A Book The Philosophy of Jesus By Peter Kreeft. St. Augustine’s Press South Bend, Indiana 2007