The Philosophy of Jesus

Amazingly, no one ever seems to have looked at Jesus as a philosopher, or his teaching as philosophy. Yet no one in history has ever had a more radically new philosophy, or made more of a difference to philosophy, than Jesus. He divided all human history into two, into "B.C." and "A.D."; and the history of philosophy is crucial to human history, since philosophy is crucial to man; so how could He not also divide philosophy? This book (1) looks at Jesus as a complete human being (as well as divine), therefore also as a philosopher; (2) looks at philosophy as Jesus' pre-modern contemporaries did, as a wisdom, a world-view, and a way of life rather than as a super-science (Descartes, Hegel) or as a servant-science (Hobbes, Hume); and (3) looks at philosophy in light of Jesus rather than at Jesus in light of philosophy. It explores the consequences of Etienne Gilson's point that when St. John brought Christianity and Greek philosophy into contact and identified the Messiah the Jews had most deeply sought with the logos that the Greeks had most deeply sought, nothing happened to Christ but something happened to the logos. This book explores the most radical revolution in the history of philosophy, the differences Jesus made to metaphysics (the philosophy of being), to epistemology (the philosophy of knowing), to anthropology (the philosophy of man), and to philosophical ethics and politics. And, besides, it has the greatest ending of any philosophy book in a century.