The word philosophy has taken a beating of late in Christian circles. Philosophy means, love of wisdom, which is the motivation encouraged in the book of Proverbs. This hunger for wisdom is the file cabinet which contains all the other virtues; love, joy, peace, longsuffering, goodness, gentleness, meekness, temperance, etc. These files are interconnected and discreetly unfathomable
Philosophy is not greater than the other virtues any more than a file cabinet is more important than the files. There is another file cabinet, in the book of 1st Corinthians Paul calls it, “the wisdom of men,” in Colossians he describes it as, “philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men after the rudiments of this world and not after Christ.” We first need to get into the right file cabinet. Perhaps this is what Christ meant when he told the disciples to let down their net on the right side of the boat. Collectively the files in the philosophy cabinet are inexhaustible wisdom.
Love of wisdom is not just so that we can obtain the right results, though it is that, there is also the joy of a prospector finding gold. In the early church in Athens they lived” to hear some new thing,” philosophy is different; it is the joy of finding the authentic. “The wisdom that is from above,” is self evident. Those that the religious leaders sent to capture Jesus came away empty handed and apprehended, they said, “Never a man spoke like this man.”
Like gold ore, to get to the authentic sometimes, wisdom ore, must be tried in the hottest of fires to remove the impurities of the, “wisdom of men”
Dennis Bazzell lives in Fenton MO just south of St. Louis. I can be contacted at 314-971-3692 or revdcb@yahoo.com
