Extract

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Part II:  Witness as Proof

The ancient observers of Christianity had good reasons not to protest the packaging of its call to repentance, conversion and transformation as a philosophical etiquette. Even ignoramuses, not to mention those shaping their lives according to the exercises of Plato, Zeno or Diogenes, accepted, without protest, the new topography of the old crossroads, which was always faced by the same Heracles.190 Despite that, the consensus with regard to the picture of philosophy as a path of totally transforming one’s life did not signify a lack of questions and substantial doubts. Trypho, one of the protagonists of Justin’s dialogue, tells his Christian interlocutor to follow Plato or some other philosopher when training in constancy, self-restraint, and moderation, rather than by following Christ, who nobody knows.191 In the preceding chapter we were concerned with establishing the Christian view of philosophy and philosophy’s relation toward Revelation. Trypho’s observation, coming from outside the Church, radically changes this perspective. Trypho knows that the Christians considered their teaching to be the most perfect variety of philosophy. However, in the eyes of Trypho and others (meaning, those looking at Christianity from the outside) this conviction will look like a symptom of simple-minded pride, until they get a substantial answer, formulated in philosophical categories, to the following question: why Christ and not, i.e., Plato, Aristotle or Pyrrho? In order not to fall into a position that is ahistorical in its bias toward Christianity, we should remember that...