Socrates’ Axiom
Applied
How might Socrates’ axiom, “The
unexamined life is not worth living,” be applied to our lives and culture
today? One means of applying Socrates’
axiom is allowing it to serve as an inroad to an apologetic encounter with a
non-Christian.
Our culture is glutted with
sound-bite sloganeering, superficial platitudes, and bumper sticker
philosophies. Consequently, our lives
are full of uncritically-adopted suppositions and intellectual
superficialities, all of which are controlled by personal pragmatism and
prejudicial bias. The careful
consideration of the fundamental ideas, upon which one operates and makes
decisions, is extremely rare in our culture.
Therefore, Socrates’ axiom may be used to challenge non-Christians (and
Christians alike!) to contemplate the basic beliefs on which they have built
the edifice of their own worldview. If
the foundation is faulty, the superstructure will be too.
The apologetic utility of this
application of Socrates’ axiom comes when the non-Christian presuppositions
have been duly uncovered and examined.
This allows the Christian to help the non-Christian see the
contradictions and internal incoherence of the fundamental ideas of their
non-Christian worldview. Socrates’ axiom
applied to our culture reveals that, whether examined or not, a life grounded
on non-Christian presuppositions is, in fact, not a life worth living, but a
life wasted. This clears the way for a
biblical examination and valuation of life, having Christ and his gospel
grounding the meaning of a worth-filled life.
This application is actually consistent to Socrates’ own application to
his culture, although his and my conceptions of both God and man are
antithetical (see, e.g., Apology, 23).
Examining the Truth
Value of Socrates’ Axiom
Whether
understood in terms of a Christian or a modern non-Christian perspective, I
don’t believe Socrates’ axiom is true.
On the one hand, could we not respond to Socrates with an incredulous,
“Says who?” Socrates is just one thinker
(and not the first) in a vast, almost-shoreless sea of thinkers in the history
of Western philosophy, many of which contradict one another. Granting the near unanimous espousal of
naturalism today, what is beauty, goodness, virtue? These are immaterial, absolute, abstract
concepts. But if reality is made up of
only sensibles (i.e., material things), then Socrates exhorts us to rationally
reflect on things that are unreal, and thus irrational. From a secular outlook, Socrates’ axiom is
untrue, since it leads to irrationality.
In terms of
a Christian outlook, Socrates’ axiom is certainly untrue. Human speculation about ultimate questions of
the real, the right, and the reasonable, autonomous and independent of God, is
precisely what introduced sin and calamity into the world (Gen 3), and has
since only been an expression and recapitulation of that archetypal sin. Socrates described this autonomous examination
of life as the very best thing a person can do; that is, it’s man’s greatest
good (Apology, 38). For Socrates, autonomous, unaided human
reason, operating independent of God, is man’s greatest good.
According to the Christian
perspective, however, to glorify and enjoy God forever is man’s greatest good (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q.
1). These ideas are perfectly antithetical.
Wisdom and knowledge are the result
of reverential awe and fear of God in Christ (e.g., Prov 1:7; 9:10; Ps 111:10;
Job 28:28). God cannot be known through
autonomous human wisdom, just as wisdom cannot be apprehended apart from God (1
Cor 1:21). Jesus Christ is God’s wisdom (v.
24), and becomes wisdom to us through faith (v. 30). That is because Christ is the sole depository
of all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:3). Therefore, in our pursuit of wisdom, we must begin
in humble submission to its Source, and seek him to find it (James 1:5).
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