Careful students of church history see far more in it than names and dates, battles and councils, popes and reformers. The history of the church is very much a history of ideas.
But in order to talk about the course and influence of these ideas, we have to talk about the various schools of philosophy which men have debated and held down through the ages. Now some Christians are allergic to this sort of thing. When I was in college (majoring in philosophy), a friend of mine came to me with a rebuke. The psalmist said that he would set no worthless thing before his eyes (Ps. 101:3), and so what was I doing studying all this worthless humanistic nonsense? Now he was quite right that some of what I had to read was dubiously edifying, particularly Wittgenstein. So why do it?
The psalmist was referring to the practice of being entertained by, or participating in, the wickedness and worthlessness of those who would rebel against God. But a man who studies an erroneous doctrine in order to refute it, and warn other Christians against it, is not participating in the error he sees. His attitude should be that of the apostle Paul, who was not willing for any autonomous thought to continue on its independent way. “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:4-5). It is hard to cast down an argument when you don’t know what it is. It is difficult to go into battle with your eyes shut.
From Ireneaus to Walter Martin, men who have studied and written against the false sects and cults have provided a very valuable service to the church. But unfortunately, this has not been taken far enough. It is far easier to get good material on the Jehovah’s Witnesses than it is to get a good biblical treatment of, say, neo-Platonism. This is because institutionalized error attracts the attention of orthodox believers, while general philosophical currents show up everywhere, and are consequently harder to identify. No one really knows what they are because few Christians study the subject, and many of those who do study it do not have the right level of intolerance for nonsense. They are more interested in schmoozing with the intellectual spirit of the age than they are interested in doing intellectual battle. In turn this spirit of compromise encourages the one who is suspicious of all such philosophical study, and confirms him in his conviction that the best policy is just simply to stay away.
So this is how a layman in the church might come to object to the study of “all this humanistic philosophy” and yet have his own general worldview shaped by the objectionable philosophy in question. Because he does not know his own presuppositions he does not know if he shares them with anyone else, including Messrs. Plotinus and Locke. In other words, avoiding philosophy does not work. American fundamentalism is notorious for adopting in substance various philosophies that have somehow been purified through an ignorance of the adoption.
The subject is a very big one, but one general example should suffice to make the point. Although the ancient Greeks were divided into various philosophical schools, they generally shared what we might call the Hellenistic mindset. Platonists, Stoics, Epicureans, and so forth all had their fierce intramural squabbles, but they still had a great deal in common.
In sharp contrast to this is the mindset presented to us in the pages of Scripture, what should be called the Hebraic mind. Where the Hellenists emphasized the abstract, the Hebraic mind emphasized the concrete. Where the Hellenists valued the power and authority of autonomous reason, the Hebraic mind demanded rational submission to the sovereign authority of God. The Hellenists demanded a religion which made sense to them — as Paul put it, the Greeks sought wisdom. The Hebraic mind sought a religion which made sense to God, to be determined by what He said in His Word.
Now how could this be relevant to our current debates? To take one example at random, the modern evangelical church is very suspicious of creeds and confessions. So suppose a modern heretic trots out what he pretends is a new and improved doctrinal advance. He is rarely told that his theology was rejected centuries ago, and is in conflict with the historic creeds of the Church. But if he is, such historic creeds are then dismissed with a wave of the hand. “Well, you have to understand that the church back then was being corrupted with Hellenistic philosophy, particularly neo-Platonism. We should forget all this philosophy, and go straight back to Scripture.” Well, yes, the Church was being tempted with a neo-Platonic philosophy back then, and the Nicene Creed was the successful rejection of it. Arianism, the view that Christ was not the eternal Son, was simply a form of neo-Platonism in religious clothing. Christ was to be understood as a neo-Platonic emanation from the divine, and the orthodox rightly showed this view to the door. We see the value of refusing to study philosophy is perhaps over-rated. Debating with such people is like debating someone who thought the Yankees wore gray and the Rebels blue.
In contrast, the Hebraic mind knows both sides, and clearly knows the characteristics of the disobedient mind. The Hebraic mind seeks the mind of Christ.