1.1 The Inescapable Quest for the Divine

What is more pitiful than a human being? Compared to other mammals, we are born only halfway through our gestation period – the huge size of our craniums makes that necessary. No other mammal is so immature at birth: we are born as mere embryos.Footnote ¹ Unlike other animals, we are born without any natural weapons or reliable survival instincts – unshod, unarmed, unclothed, and unready. Like other biological organisms, we are vulnerable to a thousand different dangers. Compared to the immensity of a mountain – let alone the cosmos – we are miniscule; compared to the longevity of the earth, we are utterly ephemeral. A single microbe can kill us by the millions; cockroaches will probably outlive us.

And yet, we can comprehend the infinite expanse of time and space: we travel in thought back to the beginning of the cosmos and forward to the end; we take the measure of the whole universe. We are rapidly discovering the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology – enabling us to produce artificial matter and someday even life itself. We have conquered the earth and explored the solar system. We have the capacity to destroy all life on earth or to bring life to other planets. We remain tiny, short-lived organisms but with godlike powers.

Because of this staggering contrast between our pathetic fragility and our terrifying power, our lives are haunted by anxiety. Although all animals and plants die, we call only human beings “mortal” – a word we use not only as a description but also as a protest. We feel secure only in the recesses of our own powers of thought – once we exit our inner citadel, we are at the mercy of other people and our own manifold weaknesses. Even the citadel of our intellect can be besieged and destroyed by disease or accident. It is not the fact of our many weaknesses that makes us anxious – it is the perceived incongruity and even injustice of them.

As creatures who can imagine immortality, why should we accept being mortal? The first quality we ascribe to our gods is immortality: indeed, for the Greeks, the title “immortals” is used synonymously with “gods,” just as “mortals” always means “humans.” That the gods are immortal gives us hope for our own immortality. From ancient Egyptian embalmment to contemporary cryogenics, the quest to become like god has usually meant the quest to escape our fragile mortality. Only certain Greek philosophers aim at deification within the confines of human mortality.

Even more revealing is the fact that the most popular gods of ancient Greek and biblical religion are the gods who survive the descent into the underworld – that is, who die and are reborn.Footnote ² The idea of a god who can die may seem theologically incoherent, but it makes perfect sense anthropologically. Heracles was the most popular hero of the ancient world because he managed to both descend into Hades and ascend to Mount Olympus. What a symbol of hope!

Our pervasive anxiety and the sense that we deserve better lead us to imagine that we are better or can be better than the mere rational animals we seem to be. We like to fantasize that we are gods, dispensers of life and death, exercising unlimited power over ourselves and others. By hoarding goods, we feel secure from want; by looking down on other people, we feel taller; and ultimately, by killing, we feel more alive. Like schoolyard bullies, our existential insecurity leads us to pride and arrogance.

The mismatch between our human frailty and our divine imagination explains why we not only rise far above all other animals in knowledge and virtue but also sink far below all other animals in vice and cruelty. The more godlike we become, the more satanic as well – at least, that is the premise of much science fiction. By aspiring to utopia we end up in dystopia: only a creature who tries to make heaven can create a living hell. Our transcendence of mere animal nature is as evident in the nobility of our arts and sciences as in the horrors of our crimes. Human beings have always understood themselves in relation to both animals and gods because we are like both.Footnote ³ Grasping human nature will require both biology and theology, since we are animals who reach toward god.

Human beings have always been deeply puzzling to themselves.Footnote ⁴ The chorus in Sophocles’s Antigone sings: “Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful than man.”Footnote ⁵ Plato described the human soul as a “middle being,” suspended between matter and mind, time and eternity.Footnote ⁶ Aristotle wonders how human beings manage to be both the best of all animals and the worst.Footnote ⁷ We are more than rational animals; we are metaphysical animals.Footnote ⁸ How can one explain why human beings have a natural desire for the supernatural? Although everything we do must be determined by natural causes, we somehow know that we are free to act against our own natural impulses. For example, we not only share with every other animal an instinct for self-preservation but also possess a uniquely human power of willful self-destruction.Footnote ⁹ We are born of this earth but are preparing to leave it; bound to this fragile body but planning a bionic or robotic future. Today, many philosophers are puzzled by how a mere physical brain could give rise to consciousness, let alone self-consciousness. Many linguists are puzzled by how human language could emerge so suddenly from quite primitive forms of animal communication.Footnote ¹⁰

To do justice to the complexity of human nature, we must avoid both the Scylla of naturalism and the Charybdis of supernaturalism. We degrade human dignity by seeing ourselves as merely clever animals, but we invite hubris by pretending that we are gods.Footnote ¹¹ We often oscillate between a biological debasement of human greatness and a self-deifying hubris. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal saw the need to contradict human self-assessment: “If he exalt himself, I humble him; if he humble himself, I exalt him; and I always contradict him, till he understands that he is an incomprehensible monster.”Footnote ¹² By “monster,” Pascal means that a human being is a bizarre hybrid of animal and angel.Footnote ¹³

While we sometimes reduce human life to the level of other animals, we also elevate human beings into gods. Indeed, thanks to modern technology, human beings are now said to have the potential to produce new species, guide their own evolution, colonize space, and aspire to immortality. According to contemporary humanists, there is no limit on the possibilities for human self-deification. With the rise of “transhumanism” – the project of creating posthuman species – the quest to become god has only just begun in earnest.Footnote ¹⁴ We will never be content to remain clever apes.

What is called modern secular humanism emerged as a movement for the deification of humanity.Footnote ¹⁵ According to the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel, the essence of all religion is to first posit an opposition between the human and the divine and then to transcend that opposition. All religions first dig a chasm between gods and men only to then build bridges over that chasm. Deification, then, is a necessary part of every religion.Footnote ¹⁶ Judaism created a seemingly unbridgeable chasm between God and human beings; Christianity resolved that opposition by claiming that God became human in the person of Christ Jesus. Hegel’s students went on to argue that the opposition of God and man could not be fully transcended until humanity itself is identified as divine. And so Auguste Comte and Ludwig Feuerbach began to create a religion of humanity.Footnote ¹⁷ Feuerbach rejected the biblical claim that God created man in his own image; instead, said Feuerbach, man created God in his own image. In other words, theology is best understood as anthropology.Footnote ¹⁸ These pioneering humanists sought not to humanize God but to divinize man. They argued that the best way to kill the biblical God was to replace him with the religion of humanity. All of the powers once attributed to God, such as omniscience, omnipotence, and justice, are now properly attributed to the human race.Footnote ¹⁹ Once freed from the constraints of biblical religion, they claimed, the human race will build a divine paradise here on earth.

The idea that human beings create gods in their own image and likeness goes back to the ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes.Footnote ²⁰ What is new with Feuerbach is the claim that humanity itself is divine: Feuerbach reduces theology to anthropology in order to exalt anthropology into theology. We need only to reclaim the divine powers that we have alienated by creating gods.Footnote ²¹ Feuerbach’s project of divinizing human beings was pursued, in very different ways, by Max Stirner, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Nietzsche.Footnote ²² This kind of secular humanism is less atheist than autotheist.Footnote ²³ Dostoevsky was the first novelist to notice how modern atheism led to the ideal of self-deification.Footnote ²⁴

Atheists need god as much as do theists. If god did not exist, we would have to invent him. The best evidence for the inescapability of the idea of god is found in the writings of Feuerbach and Jean-Paul Sartre. Feuerbach pioneered modern atheism by arguing that god is nothing more than a projection of human ideals, and that by creating gods, we alienate ourselves from our own ideals. Feuerbach claimed to reduce all theological concepts to anthropological concepts; but by divinizing humanity, Feuerbach only demonstrated the necessity of theology to any anthropology. The question is not whether we project our own ideals onto the gods – of course we do – the question is why we have those ideals in the first place. What is puzzling is not that we project ideals of perfect knowledge, perfect goodness, and perfect beauty onto divine beings; the puzzle is why a mere animal seeking survival would pursue those perfections at all.

Feuerbach describes humanity as “supernatural” and “infinite” and “divine” without ever explaining how a biological species could be divine.Footnote ²⁵ Feuerbach was right that theology is always anthropological, but he failed to see that anthropology must also be theological. Rather than effect “the dissolution of theology into anthropology,” Feuerbach’s own anthropology rests on an implicit theology.Footnote ²⁶ Theology and anthropology are inseparable – and neither can be reduced to the other – because “God and man are paradigms of each other.”Footnote ²⁷ No knowledge of gods without reference to humanity – but equally, no knowledge of humanity without reference to divinity.Footnote ²⁸

That anthropology rests on theology is also evident in the conundrums of the thought of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre begins by claiming that man has no nature but only a history: “Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” Human beings are not bound by any limits; indeed, to set a limit is already to have transcended it. Human beings, said Sartre, are essentially “self-surpassing.”Footnote ²⁹ Although Sartre denies that human beings have a nature, he then proceeds to define human nature as the desire to be god: “To be a man is to reach towards being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God.”Footnote ³⁰ For Sartre, human nature is defined not by our animal biology but by our aspirations for the divine. Sartre concedes that although he does not believe in God, he cannot explain the world without God.Footnote ³¹ He even confesses that he refuses to see himself as the product of mere biological evolution; he sees himself as coming from God.Footnote ³²

How do we take the measure of human aspiration and achievement? How do we distinguish what is better from what is worse? The ancient Greek Sophist Protagoras claimed that “man is the measure of all things.” But it makes no sense to say that humanity could be the measure of itself. As a matter of logic, nothing can be the measure of itself. Plato was right when he attacked Protagoras by arguing that not man but god is the measure of all things.Footnote ³³ As Hegel showed in his critique of Kant, it is logically impossible to define a limit without being able to see beyond that limit. Without some notion of god, we could not define the limits of the human.Footnote ³⁴ Alexander Pope seems to channel Protagoras by saying: “Know then thyself; presume not God to scan / The proper study of mankind is man.” But Pope is wrong: the proper study of mankind is god. Even the affirmation of human limits rests upon a comparison with the divine.Footnote ³⁵

From Plato to Sartre, human nature is described as theotropic: we perfect our humanity by reaching toward god.Footnote ³⁶ Theologian Karl Rahner imagines a future in which we have lost any interest in the ultimate questions about the origin and destiny of the cosmos. Perhaps we become focused on questions that can be answered. Would such a future creature still be human?Footnote ³⁷ Rahner is grateful for atheists, who keep the idea of God alive by rejecting it. The death of god would mark the death of man.Footnote ³⁸ Even if we were not created by God, we become human by our questions about the gods. What makes us human, says Rahner, is “the permanent openness of our finite being to the living God of infinite, eternal life.”Footnote ³⁹ Like Sartre, Rahner sees human beings as essentially unfinished works in progress; because our future is so open-ended, man is essentially undefinable.Footnote ⁴⁰ According to Rahner, to be human is not to desire to be God but rather to desire to know the truth about God.

Here we see a contrast between philosophical theology and biblical theology. This book will be focused on the human striving toward god because that striving is central to any philosophical anthropology. The Bible, by contrast, is focused on God’s turn toward humanity, as our creator, redeemer, and sustainer. Philosophy tells us a lot about human love for the divine, while the Bible tells us about God’s love for humans. In the words of Abraham Joshua Heschel, philosophical theology is “man’s search for God,” while biblical theology is “God’s search for man.” As an exercise in philosophical anthropology, this book will focus on human theotropism rather than on divine anthropotropism.Footnote ⁴¹ Of course, the two are fully compatible: perhaps we always reach for a god because we were created with a desire for God.

The longing to return home is a longing like no other. In every human culture, there resides the idea of a time when humans were either themselves gods or lived with the gods. In Plato’s myth, our divine souls fell from the stars down to earthly mortality. In the biblical myth, we once walked with God in Paradise but were then expelled. The whole of the Bible is the story of how Paradise lost can become Paradise regained. The memory of our original divine happiness, immortality, and virtue haunts human life and prevents us from ever feeling fully at home: Who can remain content, as Yeats put it, in “Sailing to Byzantium,” to be “fastened to a dying animal”? The haunting memory of paradise explains our strange desires, now made plausible with modern technology, to escape from the earth, from our bodies, and from death.

We want to return home because, as Emerson said: “A man is a god in ruins” – ruins reminding us of our former and rightful glory.Footnote ⁴² Plato tells the story of how human souls were created with the ingredients left over from the production of the cosmic soul: we are made of divine stuff but of a lower quality – a deteriorated god.Footnote ⁴³ Although some of us rather like ruins, many people find them to be an invitation to rebuild and to restore. The history of technology shows that human beings are determined to reclaim the divine powers we think are rightfully ours.

1.2 Ambivalence about Becoming Divine

What is the most terrifying sentence in the English language? According to Oscar Wilde, the answer is: “I had a very interesting dream last night.”Footnote ⁴⁴ I disagree. I think the most terrifying sentence is: “I want to become like god.” Nothing is more outrageous and arrogant – or more admirable and heroic – than the desire to become like god. A very fine line separates an admirable striving for the highest ideals from the preposterous ambition to become divine. Psychiatric hospitals are full of people who claim to be god.Footnote ⁴⁵

Is there a fundamental difference between wanting to become like god and wanting to be god? Becoming like god is a matter of degree: one can approach divine attributes more or less closely. If gods are all-powerful and all-knowing, then becoming like god means growing in power and knowledge. Actually becoming god, however, seems like a transformation in kind: one can become god only by replacing one’s human nature with a divine nature. Wanting to become like god thus appears to be much more reasonable than wanting to become god. Human beings arguably can become more powerful and knowledgeable, but we cannot possibly acquire a different nature.

Still, the contrast is less stark than it at first seems: differences in degree can become differences in kind. If I seek to become like god I might well seek to become so much like god as to be indiscernible from god – and, according to some philosophers, to be indiscernible from god is to be identical to god.Footnote ⁴⁶ To say, “I want to become like god” without qualification can be just a polite way of saying, “I want to become god.” The real question is: Why would you want to become divine in the first place?

A long tradition of wisdom, as old as religion itself, insists on the necessity of accepting our human limitations. We should fully acknowledge that we are not gods, that we are weak, fallible, and mortal. Flying too high led Icarus to disaster. Human beings should strive to become fully human; we are not suited by our nature for things divine. Science fiction going back to Frankenstein warns us not to “play god.” What could be more prideful than wanting to be like god? And pride goeth before a fall.

Our religious traditions have often reinforced this prudent humility by claiming that the gods are jealous of their divinity and will punish anyone who arrogantly transgresses the boundaries allotted to humans. Look what happened to Adam and to Prometheus when they violated the boundary between human and divine. Adam was a man and Prometheus a god, but both took knowledge reserved for the gods and gave it to humans – and both suffered divine punishment. In both Athens and Jerusalem, gods are determined to keep humans in their place.

An equally long tradition of human wisdom, stretching from Plato to Jean-Paul Sartre, argues for the importance of seeking to become, if not a god, as much like a god as possible. Although it sounds wise to strive for purely human excellence, nothing could be more shortsighted. There are no fixed limits on human nature: our desires and aspirations are infinite. We are essentially unfinished creatures whose only limits are the limits of our imagination. To set any putative limit on human achievement is already to have transcended it. Nothing is more human than to run faster, climb higher, explore farther than was before thought possible. What would humans have achieved had our reach not exceeded our grasp? To attain anything worth achieving is to strive for the impossible – like the man from La Mancha.Footnote ⁴⁷ Boundaries are meant to be transgressed; rules are meant to be broken. Nothing can satisfy human aspiration short of becoming god.Footnote ⁴⁸ To paraphrase Bernard Shaw: the reasonable person strives to be fully human; the unreasonable person strives to be divine. Therefore, all progress is due to the unreasonable person.

Note that whether it makes sense to seek to become like god usually depends on what we take god to be. If we think that god is jealous of his divinity and wishes to protect his prerogatives – either for his own good or for our good – then it is prudent to accept the limits of our humanity. But if we think that god wants us to share divine wisdom and virtue, then we might feel obliged to become like god. As we shall see, those thinkers who endorse the human aspiration to become like god do so on the explicit grounds that god is not jealous of his divinity, while those thinkers who reject the aspiration to become like god usually fear divine retribution. Although Promethean defiance is always possible, most human beings will seek to become like god only if they are already convinced that god invites them to do so. Here, we see a nice illustration of our theme that we cannot know what it means to be human without also knowing what it means to be divine. To be human in relation to a jealous god is quite different from being human in relation to a generous god.

This ambivalence about whether to accept human limits or to aim for the divine cuts across many familiar divisions in our culture. Above all, we must avoid the mistake of thinking that religious believers strive to become like their god while nonbelievers affirm the modest limitations of their humanity. I noted above that many secular humanists embrace the infinite aspirations of a deified humanity, while many religious humanists encourage us to embrace our finitude. Many religious believers – especially Muslims and Jews – affirm the unbridgeable chasm between humanity and divinity. They reject as blasphemous any human attempt to become like God.Footnote ⁴⁹ Christians tend to be more open to the ideal of divinization on the premise that in Jesus, God became man so that men might become like God. Nonetheless, many Christians (especially Protestants) reject the whole idea of divinization as prideful if not satanic.

What about the contrast between Greek paganism and the Abrahamic religions – that is, between Athens and Jerusalem? Does not Athens stand for moderate humanism and Jerusalem for the immoderate quest for the divine? Yes, Athens is the birthplace of humanism – but also the home of many religious cults as well as philosophical schools devoted to the ideal of becoming godlike. If anything, Athens is more enthusiastic about divinization than is Jerusalem. The ambivalence about the quest for divinity cuts across any divide between Athens and Jerusalem. What is at stake in this conflict is nothing less than what it means to be human.

If we are ambivalent about becoming godlike, we have a similar ambivalence about the quest to become righteous, which, for many, is one key divine attribute. The quest to become fully righteous is part of what it means in a biblical culture to become like God. Yet nothing is less righteous than to be self-righteous. Similarly, to be described by others as holy is very high praise, but to claim to be holy is profane in the extreme. In general, to become virtuous unselfconsciously is supremely admirable, but to devote yourself to the goal of always being virtuous is to be a prig.

In biblical religion, self-divinization has the same relation to genuine divinization as self-righteousness to genuine righteousness. Many of us admire people who become godlike just so long as they never set out to do so. In many religious traditions, the gods will reward virtuous human beings by giving them a share of divinity, ranging from making heroes into gods (such as Heracles) to granting the gifts of holiness on earth and eternal life in heaven. To be divinized by the gods is the supreme reward of virtue; to attempt to divinize oneself is the supreme sacrilege and blasphemy. For the Greek philosophers, man is by nature an animal who seeks to become divine; for Christians, man is an animal by nature capable of being divinized by God.Footnote ⁵⁰ In the Bible, even the Son of God is praised for not attempting to exploit his divinity.Footnote ⁵¹

And yet, we often cannot resist admiring those humans who do not wait to receive a divine blessing but who storm the heavens by their own indominable pluck, like Jacob wrestling with God or the Aloadae twins invading Mount Olympus.Footnote ⁵² The Greek hero, Bellerophon, attempted to ride Pegasus right into the abode of the Olympians – only to be thrown by his winged mount.Footnote ⁵³ Although both biblical and Greek myths condemn human pride or hubris, biblical and Greek stories often operate on the assumption that the gods help those who help themselves.Footnote ⁵⁴ So we are ambivalent even about self-divinization.

Perhaps our ambivalence stems from the different motives people have for becoming divine. There are as many reasons to seek to become divine as there are attributes of the gods. What has attracted most people to the divine is, of course, divine power and divine immortality. Who would not want to hurl a thunderbolt and smite one’s enemies? And, unlike other animals, human beings suffer from a lifelong anxiety about illness and death. Becoming divine promises us a share in divine immortality. Most of us envy divine power and immortality, which might lead us to seek to become godlike. Envy of the gods is human, all too human, and just as common among the nonreligious as among the religious.

There have always been a few people, however, who have admired the gods for their virtues. Some gods have been exemplars of justice, wisdom, courage, and holiness. So, one reason to become like god is to share, not in divine power or immortality but in divine virtue, even at the cost of one’s life, as in the cases of Socrates and Jesus. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, most people’s motivations for becoming divine are nonrational. Devoting oneself to power is foolish, he says, since power is subject to the caprice of fortune. As for immortality, that, says Plutarch, is not consistent with human nature. The only rational motive for wanting to be like god is to become virtuous, since virtue is within our power and consistent with our nature. And, yet, sadly, this is the least common motive.Footnote ⁵⁵ Many modern thinkers agree with Plutarch that most people want to be god for the sake of sharing in divine power and immortality.Footnote ⁵⁶

Many people admire the quest for divine virtue but disparage the quest for divine power or immortality. Perhaps this partly explains our ambivalence about the whole idea of divinization. What is the value of becoming immortal if we lack the wisdom to make good use of it?Footnote ⁵⁷ Plato warns us of the danger of misusing even divine invisibility.Footnote ⁵⁸ But even the quest for perfect virtue has often been condemned, especially by Christians, for being prideful and arrogant. Instead of pretending that we can make ourselves perfectly virtuous, Christians say that we should beg forgiveness for our sins. In this view, the quest for godlike virtue is no more within our human power than is the quest for immortality.

How does the quest to become like god relate to mysticism? Mystics are people who begin as ordinary votaries of a particular religion but who dedicate themselves passionately to a transcendent or ecstatic experience of ultimate or divine reality. Mystics are the Olympic athletes of the spiritual life: they train body and soul ruthlessly in the pursuit of transcendent or ecstatic experience. There are no unaffiliated mystics: all mystics are Orphic, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Christian, or Islamic mystics.Footnote ⁵⁹ Because mystics belong to particular religious traditions, mystical experiences reflect the variety of those traditions.Footnote ⁶⁰ Many mystics in the Platonic and biblical traditions describe the highest stages of mysticism as a kind of deification. But only those in the biblical traditions describe deification as intimacy with a divine person.Footnote ⁶¹ The quest to become like god has philosophical, religious, and mystical modes of ascent. Just as most religious believers are ambivalent at best about the quest to become like god, so they are also ambivalent about mysticism.Footnote ⁶²

1.3 Philosophy as Religion

The human aspiration to become divine is a theme found everywhere in human culture, including mythology, literature, visual art, theology, and mysticism. In this book, I will develop a focused comparison between Socratic philosophy and the Bible. We often sharply contrast philosophical reason with religious faith, but the actual relation of philosophy to religion is much more puzzling. Philosophy turns out to pursue religious goals of wisdom, virtue, and transcendence – but with its own distinctive methods. Philosophy is the pursuit of salvation by logical means.

What unites philosophy and religion is that both address questions of ultimate human concern – in Kant’s words, what can we know, what ought we to do, and what may we hope for? That is why the aspiration to become like god is shared by both philosophical and religious thinkers.

What is philosophy, anyway? A good place to start is with the observation that philosophy is the only academic discipline that will never define itself. There are almost as many definitions of philosophy as there are philosophers, and a whole branch of the discipline is devoted to this question: “metaphilosophy.”Footnote ⁶³

Perhaps the least controversial definition was offered by the Catholic apologist G. K. Chesterton: “Philosophy is thought that has been thought through.” In every field of inquiry, ideas are presupposed but not examined. What R. G. Collingwood calls “absolute presuppositions” are assumptions so basic that they cannot be themselves proven because they make possible all scientific inquiry. They are the lenses by which scholars and scientists see the world. In Collingwood’s example, if you ask a pathologist, “Why do you assume that every disease has a cause?,” the pathologist “will probably blow up right in your face, because you have put your finger on one of his absolute presuppositions, and people are apt to be ticklish in their absolute presuppositions.”Footnote ⁶⁴ Biology, like every other science, makes progress by taking some ideas for granted. Scientific thought, in Chesterton’s expression, is not fully thought through. Only philosophers ask whether all things have causes and, by the way, what is a cause, anyway?

If by philosophy we mean the high tradition of speculative metaphysics, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Al-Farabi, Maimonides, Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Sartre, then philosophy is best understood as a systematic and logically rigorous exploration of the basic presuppositions of religious thought – presuppositions such as personal immortality, freedom of the will, revelation, the existence and nature of god, and the like. The great philosophers have subjected these religious presuppositions to rigorous logical analysis and explication. Just as philosophical analysis of causation has tracked the evolving concepts of causes among physicists, so philosophical analyses of god have tracked the evolution of religion.

The great speculative philosophers combine the sweeping imaginative power of the major religious thinkers with the logical rigor of the major mathematicians. To study these great philosophical systems is to be at first overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of the attempt to bring the whole of reality into a unified perspective. These philosophers claim to see the universe, not from the limited perspective of mere mortals but from the perspective of eternity. No wonder they have often been accused of hubris, of claiming a wisdom possessed only by a god.

The great philosophical systems weirdly combine mysticism and logic, religious vision with scientific analysis. At least this was the view of the twentieth-century mathematician and logician Bertrand Russell, who is not usually regarded as a religious fanatic. According to Russell, metaphysics is the attempt to grasp the whole cosmos in thought, and the great metaphysicians managed to blend mystical insight with rigorous logic, making philosophy greater than either religion or science.Footnote ⁶⁵ Mysticism is the quest for union with the divine; philosophy is the systematic and disciplined effort to see the world as god sees it and in this sense to share the mind of god. Jean-Paul Sartre complained bitterly that all the great philosophers before him believed in a god.Footnote ⁶⁶

If philosophy is the logical rigorous exploration of the presuppositions of religious thought, then what are those basic presuppositions? To answer this, I would have to define religion, about which there is no agreement. I will attempt to be modest and uncontroversial. The etymology of the word “religion,” in its Latin root, is disputed but certainly makes no reference to anything supernatural.Footnote ⁶⁷ When we say that someone practices yoga “religiously,” we mean they practice yoga assiduously, conscientiously, and rigorously. Within Christianity, a “religious” vocation traditionally meant joining an order of monks, friars, or nuns, so that one’s whole life would be unified around Christian ideals. A religious life is at least a disciplined life.

According to some philosophers, this task of unifying all the major pursuits in life around an ideal of the good is sufficient to make a doctrine religious, no matter how otherwise secular.Footnote ⁶⁸ A religious life may or may not be oriented to a god, but it cannot be a mere hobby or temporary fancy. The great philosophical systems are religious in the sense that they aspire to unify the pursuit of knowledge, virtue, and aesthetic experience – in short, the true, the good, and the beautiful. In our age of hyper-specialization, it seems ludicrous to attempt to pursue so many areas of inquiry. Why do the great philosophers attempt to theorize logic, nature, beauty, ethics, politics, and god? Are they merely attempting to cover all topics, to be encyclopedic? No, philosophy aspires to be comprehensive for practical, not merely theoretical, reasons. Since a complete human life includes thinking logically, understanding nature, appreciating beauty, acting ethically, being a good citizen, and knowing god, philosophy cannot lead us to live our lives well unless it shows us how to integrate all the major goods into a coherent whole.

The French historian of philosophy Pierre Hadot argues that all the great ancient thinkers saw philosophy as a distinctive and unified way of life rather than a mere body of knowledge.Footnote ⁶⁹ The first person to be called a “philosopher” was Pythagoras, and he is said to have founded a religious cult with its own diet, rituals, and god.Footnote ⁷⁰ Socrates is a better-known exemplar of philosophy as a coherent, integrated way of life. Socrates’s aim was never to teach a doctrine but always to turn around someone’s life. Philosophy, for Socrates, was a divine mission literally to save souls.Footnote ⁷¹ Because the heroic virtues of Socrates were consistent with differing philosophical interpretations, he became the ideal sage not only for Platonism but also for Stoicism, Skepticism, and Cynicism. According to Hadot and other scholars, the various schools of ancient philosophy resembled different religious orders, each with its own characteristic customs, disciplines, and styles of living.Footnote ⁷² In this world of rival ancient schools of philosophy, each offering its own way of life, it is not surprising that Christianity was initially described as a philosophy, since it also offered a path to salvation. Conversion to a philosophical way of life was comparable to conversion to Christianity.Footnote ⁷³

Hadot is certainly right about the practical orientation of the great philosophers – ancient, medieval, and modern – who aspired not merely to change minds but to change lives. It is no accident that Spinoza calls his great metaphysical study of god and nature the Ethics. Philosophical inquiry into physics, cosmology, and logic was always in the service of the acquisition of the virtues, both moral and intellectual. The goal of philosophy was less the perfection of knowledge than the perfection of the knower. Plato says we cannot be certain that philosophy will save us – but believing in philosophy is well worth the risk.Footnote ⁷⁴

Religion means more than a life integrated around the pursuit of some ideal; a religious life is integrated around some transcendent or divine ideal. Hadot is unduly reticent about the ultimate goal of what he calls “philosophy as a way of life.”Footnote ⁷⁵ The reason why Socratic philosophy aims at the perfection of the moral and intellectual virtues is so that human beings might become like god – or at least as much like god as is humanly possible.Footnote ⁷⁶ As we shall see, the very first thinkers who called themselves “philosophers” – Pythagoras and Empedocles – even claimed to be gods.Footnote ⁷⁷

Ever since the ancient Greek thinker Thales fell into a well because he was staring at the starry sky, thinkers who were later called philosophers have developed a reputation for being impractical bumblers who have their heads in the clouds rather than their feet on the ground. Philosophers have more often been the object of pity and ridicule than of fear or scorn.Footnote ⁷⁸ But this reputation is unjust. Philosophers are Promethean heroes who storm the heavens to bring divine powers down to men. Pythagoras and Empedocles were accused by their contemporaries of seeking a wisdom reserved for the gods alone. As often happens to marginalized groups, those accused of being “philosophers” ended up proudly adopting the label for themselves.Footnote ⁷⁹ The ancient Greeks were right to fear philosophical hubris and to worry about divine vengeance.

The quest to become divine helps to explain the curiously ascetic character of most philosophical ethics. Socrates insisted that we should care for our souls more than for our bodies. Plato’s ideal philosophical rulers possess no private property and renounce family life: they live like soldiers in common barracks. Aristotle argues that the supreme pleasure in life is contemplation. The Stoics were famously stoic and advised us to escape the grip of the passions. Even the Epicureans, in theory devoted to pleasure, advocated an abstemious regime designed to avoid all pain: the pleasure of wine, they insisted, is not worth the hangover. There is something downright inhuman about much philosophical ethics, which may explain why so many of the great philosophers were unmarried and childless. The whole philosophical tradition, as Nietzsche observed, seems bent on the denial of the body and the suppression of mere life. All of this makes sense only if the goal is to cultivate what is most divine in ourselves – namely, our intellects. Philosophical asceticism served much the same function as Christian asceticism: to lead us away from our animal nature and toward our divine vocation.

Not every important philosopher explores the foundations of religious thought, but a surprising number of the giants do. Immanuel Kant, I have noted, concludes his Critique of Pure Reason by posing the fundamental questions his whole philosophy aims to answer: “What can I know? What should I do? And what may I hope?”Footnote ⁸⁰ Clearly, these are the basic presuppositions of religious life and thought. Yes, there are many differences among various philosophers, but Western philosophy, from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche and Sartre, is unified by a common quest to measure human life according to a divine standard. Conceptions of god certainly vary but not the quest to become like god.

1.4 Athens and Jerusalem

What is called Western or European culture has always been an unstable compound of Greco-Roman and Jewish cultures. From Hellenism, we get our arts and sciences; from Hebraism, we get our dominant religions and moral ideals.Footnote ⁸¹ Yet over time, European arts and sciences have been shaped by Hebraism, just as biblical religion and morality have been shaped by Hellenism. Much of the dynamism and creativity of Western culture stems from the attempt to combine these radically different ancient cultures.

Comparing and contrasting Athens and Jerusalem has been a scholarly parlor game ever since the schools of ancient Alexandria. Because Greek and biblical cultures are so verbose and so internally complex, few generalizations about Athens and Jerusalem can withstand critical scrutiny. That has not stopped people who should know better from using Athens and Jerusalem as code words for all manner of ideological contrasts: reason vs. faith, universalism vs. particularism, Christianity vs. Judaism, philosophy vs. religion, Catholicism vs. Protestantism, skepticism vs. dogmatism, art vs. morality.Footnote ⁸² From Tertullian to Leo Strauss, rhetorical contrasts of Athens and Jerusalem have always reflected contemporary culture wars more than ancient cultures.Footnote ⁸³

Despite the egregious abuses of this contrast, we cannot avoid comparing Hebraism and Hellenism if we seek to understand our own culture and civilization. And although Athens and Jerusalem have been intertwined ever since the conquests of Alexander the Great, Hellenism and Hebraism did arise independently, and each retained distinctive features. We need a way to focus the comparison of Athens and Jerusalem, so that it might shed more light than heat.

All productive disagreements rest on deep foundations of agreement. For all their differences, both the Socratic philosophers and the Bible tell us to seek to become as much like god as is humanly possible. The quest for deification is what unites Athens and Jerusalem; the different paths toward god are what divide them.Footnote ⁸⁴ Focusing on deification permits us a more disciplined and illuminating comparison of Socratic Greek philosophy and biblical religion.

A growing body of recent scholarship is now exploding many traditional oppositions.Footnote ⁸⁵ Greek culture, including philosophy, turns out to be less “rational” than we once thought. The brilliantly white marble temples and statues of the Acropolis, symbols of the clarity of Greek rationality, are now known to have been garishly painted and ornamented by the ancient Athenians. In the same way, the gleaming monuments of Greek philosophical reason – the works of Plato and even parts of Aristotle – are now seen to be garishly colored by “irrational” Dionysian mystery cults.Footnote ⁸⁶ At the same time, biblical scholarship is increasingly revealing the philosophical dimensions of the Bible and the pervasive influence of Greek philosophy on ancient Judaism and Christianity.Footnote ⁸⁷ The Bible is full of speculation about the nature of God, human beings, and the cosmos; it is much more than a historical chronicle or a code of laws.Footnote ⁸⁸ Greek philosophy has its own articles of faith, and the Bible expresses plenty of skeptical doubt. Greek philosophy is now looking much more religious just as the Bible is now looking much more philosophical.

In the wake of the Enlightenment, scholars often described Greek religion as “irrational” and Greek philosophy as “rational.”Footnote ⁸⁹ E. R. Dodds’s classic book, The Greeks and the Irrational, brilliantly documents the pervasive influence of religion on Greek science and philosophy. Less brilliant is Dodds’s complacent assumption that religion is essentially irrational. Like other modes of thought, religious thought is a mix of the rational, the nonrational, and the anti-rational. Surely the experience of the twentieth century demonstrates that the purely secular ideologies of class, nation, and race are as anti-rational as any religious dogma. Human beings are credulous animals, but not all creeds are religious.

The triumph of biblical religion in the world makes it very difficult for us to understand ancient Greek religion, which, with its colorful pantheon, strikes us at first as bizarre. By contrast, ancient Greek philosophy seems at first quite like contemporary philosophy – if we focus on doctrinal claims and arguments. We shall discover that both first impressions are misleading: Greek religion is more philosophical than we thought, while Greek philosophy is more religious.Footnote ⁹⁰