If the Bible doesn’t have much philosophy, then what do Christians write in the thousands of books that they publish?

From Kirankumar Prabhu based on the “KC and World Religions” lecture series

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
if Christians and Muslims do not have solid philosophy what do they write in their books I heard millions of books are written based on the Holy Bible yes Bible and the Quran are mostly moral codes about how to live better in this world so that one will be rewarded by God in the next world and it doesn’t contain much philosophy but Christians use this fact to their advantage because if the Bible doesn’t contain philosophy then what does it contain it contains practical advice and to a significant extent the Bible does contain moral principles which bring people to the mode of goodness and it helps people to live better so most of the Christian books that are that are widely distributed are self-help books based on the Bible in fact much of the self-help industry is flooded with books which are based on the Bible there was a famous Christian Norman Vincent Peale he started a series of books called the power of positive thinking he is considered one of the pioneers of positive thinking and his books were best sellers and after that there is Robert Schuller who wrote tough times don’t last but tough people do so he was also a paster and then even Stephen Covey is an international bestseller self-help guru he is actually a Christian he is a Mormon and he has written also books directly talking about Christianity exclusively for Mormons and other Christians but he has written these self-help books in which also he brings in some biblical insights so in general most people are non-philosophical and most people come to religion not because they find the philosophy coherent most people don’t understand also if a philosophy is illogical unless somebody else points out the illogicality in the philosophy to them most people come to religion because it makes them feel good because it gives them a sense of community and because it helps them to make their life better so Christianity does offer some basic moral principles which can surely help people to improve their lives and Christians use this to their advantage and they present Christianity as helping people to become better in this life through self-help so this is the main genre of books that people that Christians flood the world with, they are self-help books about how Christianity can help people to become better apart from that although there is not much philosophy in the Bible there is philosophy written by some of the Christian theologians and in general any tradition is as intellectual as its practitioners and especially as its proponents are so throughout history there have been including people who took up Christianity for whatever reasons, maybe the reason was that they did not know any other philosophy that was more coherent than was Christianity and then they used their intellectual genius their intellectual abilities to explain Christianity in intellectual terms so there are many Christians who have written books about say the design argument and the existence of God, that is one of their main preaching plans in the scientific and philosophical realms so Alvina Platinga is a prominent Christian philosopher and now if we look at his philosophy, he makes a very logical and rational case for the belief in God but if we go deep into what he is saying, really not much of it is based directly on the Bible so he is making rational logical arguments based on his intelligence based on what other philosophers have said and he is refuting the atheistic philosophers so that means there are scientists who are Christians there are philosophers who are Christians there are intellectuals who are Christians but much of what they write is largely their own intellectual abilities presented according to the intellectual climate of their times with some primary basic insights from the biblical literature so in this way they use their own intellectual abilities to establish the credibility of the Bible and they also explain that the Bible is primarily conversations and as conversations some Christians try to interpret the Bible in metaphorical terms, for example when it says that God created the world in seven days then they say that actually seven days are seven geological ages in the earth and they try to use metaphorical explanations to make everything seem more intellectual but primarily there are these two factors one is that they use the practical insights in the Bible to use self-help books and secondly they use their own intellectual abilities to take the Bible as a just beginning point and to establish the points of philosophy and science that are in harmony with the Bible using their own intellectual abilities