![\"3624789-Soren-Kierkegaard-Quote-In-the-Christianity-of-Christendom-the](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/766\/2017\/08\/3624789-Soren-Kierkegaard-Quote-In-the-Christianity-of-Christendom-the-2-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nThere is a big difference between \u201cChristendom\u201d (an institution) and \u201cChristianity\u201d (a way of life)\u2013it is a difference that persons of Christian faith should always keep in mind.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve spent my entire professional career as a philosophy professor teaching in Catholic institutions of higher education. Since I\u2019ve always been straightforward with those interviewing me, my colleagues, and my students that I am not Catholic, I\u2019ve never been accused of being a \u201cCatholic philosopher\u201d (although many of my colleagues wear that description as a badge of honor). I used to\u00a0struggle, however, with whether I am a \u201cChristian philosopher.\u201d Somewhere along the line in my early years of being a professor I became defensive when talking with others about this. I regularly would say that \u201cI\u2019m not a Christian philosopher. I\u2019m a philosopher who happens to be a Christian,\u201d as if I freely chose to become a philosopher but was saddled with being a Christian in the same way I was saddled with curly hair, blue eyes, and bad teeth.<\/p>\n
More than twenty-five\u00a0years ago, Jeanne and I went to visit Forrest and Nancy, a couple who had been very important in my life before Jeanne and I met. In the seven or eight years since I had last seen this couple, a number of big things had happened in my life, including a divorce, a bitter custody battle, a remarriage, and completing my PhD in philosophy. In the middle of one conversation, Nancy asked me a question that has stayed with me ever since: \u201cHow can you be a Christian and a philosopher?\u201d The question was sincere, without a hint of challenge or judgment. She simply wanted to know. Nancy admittedly knew little about philosophy, but she\u2019d at least heard that philosophy is the art of questioning, of asking better and better questions about the biggest possible issues.<\/p>\n
The problem, as she saw it, was that for a Christian, most if not all of these questions are already answered. Why, if as a Christian I know all of the answers to these questions, would I spend my professional life continuing to ask them and inspiring others to do the same? Why not just introduce everyone to the truth? Nancy\u2019s question returned me to my youth, to bumper stickers on cars in the church parking lot that read \u201cGod said it, I believe it, That settles it,\u201d to sensing from those around me that I thought too much, that I asked too many questions, that I was too smart for my own good and too big for my britches. What I needed to do was simply believe and shut up. It would make my life, and that of those around me, a lot easier.<\/p>\n
As I have processed Nancy\u2019s question over time, I\u2019ve came to realize that the joy and fulfillment I find in life of the mind, of academia, and of open-ended questioning is partially, at least a teeny bit, the working out of a rebellious \u201cup yours\u201d to everyone who sought to fit me for their straitjacket. Philosophy on the one hand, as a life-defining activity, is who I am, and I even get paid for doing it. Being a Christian, on the other hand, is something I was born into. It was part of the atmosphere I breathed from birth. My family and community were Christian, the first words I learned were Christian, the first songs I sang were Christian. One doesn\u2019t just walk away from that or shed it as a snake sheds its skin. I\u2019ve never really believed someone who smugly with an air of superiority says something like \u201cI was raised in (fill in the blank religion), but now I know better and I\u2019m an atheist.\u201d If you were\u00a0really\u00a0<\/b>raised in a religious tradition that seeped into your bones and psyche before you even became fully conscious and self-aware, then that influence does not end by flipping an intellectual switch. So I\u2019m a philosopher who happens to be a Christian.<\/p>\n
Along the way, a philosopher friend\u00a0reminded me of a distinction that Kierkegaard makes between \u201cChristendom\u201d and \u201cChristianity.\u201d Christendom, on the one hand,\u00a0is an institution, a top-down hierarchy, the various rules, prescribed actions, and rituals that human beings have constructed to limit and control human behavior and various dangerous elements of Christ\u2019s message. This is what Simone Weil called \u201cthe Great Beast,\u201d the powerful collective which attempts to control human freedom and choice in the name of God. For better or for worse, I was born into one specific, very powerful version of Christendom. Christianity for Kierkegaard, on the other hand, is a radical, individual commitment to following Christ at all costs, a commitment to the law of freedom and love so challenging and frightening that it shows Christendom to be a timid and safe mockery of faith.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s put that way, I realize that I\u00a0can<\/b>\u00a0be a Christian philosopher\u2014the two could very well go perfectly hand in hand. Working this possibility out in real time has been the focus of this blog for the past five years, as well as the central theme of (shameless plug) my recently published book (check out the \u201cPublications\u201d tab at the top of the page!). A few weeks ago, a person in media and promotions at my college taped a 10-15 minute interview with me about the book; she sent me the edited and distilled two-minute version last week. During the interview she asked me the million dollar question: \u201cHow can you be a philosopher and a Christian?\u201d Here\u2019s what I said in response:<\/p>\n
Intellect challenges faith with questions, with doubt, while faith provides a framework within which you can be free and fearless to ask those questions. Faith provides a certain amount of security that lets you be fearless, because you know that the answers are there, even if you might never fully know what they are.<\/strong><\/p>\n I don\u2019t actually remember saying that, but I like it! It is the brief version of where I am after a number of years of consciously grappling with how to get my intellect and my faith to talk to and cohabit with each other fruitfully. It is possible to be a philosopher and a Christian after all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a big difference between \u201cChristendom\u201d (an institution) and \u201cChristianity\u201d (a way of life)\u2013it is a difference that persons of Christian faith should always keep in mind. I\u2019ve spent my entire professional career as a philosophy professor teaching in Catholic institutions of higher education. Since I\u2019ve always been straightforward with those interviewing me, my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2938,"featured_media":10681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14,17,19,35,36,40,56,61,73,79,87,94,96,101,104],"tags":[169,196,287,439,441],"class_list":["post-10668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-belief","category-books","category-catholicism","category-certainty","category-faith","category-family","category-god","category-jeanne","category-literature","category-philosophy","category-providence-college","category-simone-weil","category-teaching","category-theology","category-truth","category-writing","tag-christianity","tag-dominicans","tag-jeanne","tag-simone-weil","tag-soren-kierkegaard"],"yoast_head":"\n