At 8:17 AM -0600 3/12/98, Edgar Foster wrote:
>Does the NT employ FILOSOFIAS in an absolutely pejorative sense? I.e.,
does Col.
>2:8 or Acts 17:18 condemn philosophy in toto?
>
>Some commentators assign a negative denotation to FILOSOFIAS, others
say it has no
>"meaning" apart from context. Then there is the argument that the word
has an >"unmarked meaning" apart from context, but context provides the
marked meaning.
>
>Which is it?? :)
I'd say that it does NOT have a negative connotation in Acts 17:18 but
pretty clearly DOES have a negative connotation in Col 2:8. Similar to
Col 2:8 are Paul's remarks about human wisdom in the first four
chapters of 1 Cor. I don't think it is really safe to say that this
word has a distinct universal connotation apart from its denotation
either in the NT or in early Christian literature; and indeed the whole
matter of "philosophy" is a lengthy chapter in any account of early
Christian thought; offhand I'd say that there's an entire spectrum
stretching from Tertullian on one end with his celebrated rhetorical
question, "What have Athens and Jerusalem to do with each other?" to an
opposite extreme of what some might call an uncritical open-mindedness
toward any and all sophisticated thought in the Hellenic and
Hellenistic traditions, as in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Between
these, it seems to me there's quite a range of open-minded and
closed-minded attitudes toward serious pagan thought. I'd be curious
what Edgar Krentz and Edward Hobbs, to mention only two of our elder
statesmen on the list, might have to say on this issue, with particular
focus on the connotations of FILOSOFOS and FILOSOFIA in actual NT
usage.
Here, by the way, is what Louw and Nida offer:
0000,7777,000032.39 FILOSOFOS
0000,7777,0000m:
a person of professional or semi-professional status regarded as having
particular capacity or competence in understanding the meaning or
significance of human experience - 'philosopher, scholar' 'certain
Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him' Ac 17:18. In
some instances FILOSOFOS in Ac 17:18 may be translated simply as
'teacher,' since such a word would normally designate a professional or
semi-professional person involved in scholarly activities.
32.38 FILOSOFIA f: human
understanding or wisdom and, by implication, in contrast with divinely
revealed knowledge - 'human understanding, human wisdom, philosophy.'
'lest anyone make you captive by means of human understanding and
worthless deceit' or 'É by means of the worthless deceit of human
wisdom' Col 2:8. In Col 2:8 FILOSOFIA may be rendered in some languages
as 'the way in which people are wise' or 'the way in which people
understand things' or 'the manner in which people reason.'
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/