We have seen that the existence of a perfectly loving God would challenge everything at odds with God's character, from false expectations to cognitive idols to us. We need to ask how this bears on our favorite intellectual and theoretical projects, including philosophy itself. Few have asked, but we'll do so here, and find that the results are surprising indeed.

One result will be a portrait of intellectual pursuits, including philosophical pursuits, that rarely, if ever, has received public display. The volitional pneumatic epistemology outlined in the previous chapters involves an authoritative divine call to volitional transformation toward God's perfectly loving character. This call includes definite love commands that demand, by implication, the reorienting of philosophy as a discipline. We need to characterize the main results of this demand. We shall see that philosophy becomes, if not itself kerygmatic, at least kerygma-oriented, relative to the redemptive Good News outlined in Chapter 3.

BEGINNING AGAIN

Philosophy, according to Plato (Theaetetus 155d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 982b12), begins in wonder (thauma). Wonder, as they understood it, involves not just a feeling of astonishment but a question about what is real or true. Plato typically asked questions of the form “What is X?” where “X” may stand for “knowledge,” “justice,” or “courage,” for instance. (On such questions and their central role in philosophy, see Moser 1993.) Grammatical form, however, doesn't explain the substance of philosophical questions.