Most of us were taught that questions are dangerous and philosophy is a trap. Dr. CJ Rhodes thinks that teaching cost the church more than it protected.
Christians should study philosophy because the people they are trying to reach ask philosophical questions, and a faith that cannot engage those questions will not hold up under real pressure. Rhodes argues that the church, and the Black church in particular, often treats philosophy as off-limits. He thinks that is backward. Philosophy is a tool for thinking clearly, defending the faith honestly and loving God with the mind he gave you.
Doesn’t the Bible Warn Against Philosophy?
This is the verse everyone reaches for first, and Rhodes does not dodge it:
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8).
Used as a blanket ban, that line becomes a reason to treat any serious thinking as spiritually risky. Rhodes pushes back on that reading directly.
“We’ve been taught in many of our churches that philosophy is not something Christians ought to study. As we look at Colossians 2:8, it becomes a proof text for that, where it says, be careful not to be captivated by philosophies,” Rhodes says. Read closely, the verse names a specific target: philosophy that is vain deceit, shaped by human tradition and “not after Christ.” It is a warning about content, not a ban on a category. Paul was not telling the Colossians to stop thinking. He was telling them not to be fooled by thinking that led away from Jesus rather than toward him.
Rhodes opens with an image that makes the avoidance pattern easier to see in yourself: a soul food buffet where most people walk past the greens and the green beans straight to the meats and the dessert. “The study of philosophy is much like that soul food line. There are a number of persons who would rather avoid the unappetizing greens and green beans and go straight to the meats and starches and even dessert,” he says. Philosophy looks unappetizing at first glance, so the church skips it, and then wonders why it is undernourished when a real philosophical challenge shows up.
Why Would an Ordinary Christian Actually Need This?
Here is the practical case, and it should land even if the theological argument does not move you yet. If you ever try to give a reason for your hope to someone who is genuinely searching, that person is not going to limit themselves to easy questions. They will ask about truth, evidence, suffering and meaning, which is the actual subject matter of philosophy whether anyone calls it that or not.
Rhodes ties this directly to Peter’s instruction:
“Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).
“If you’re going to defend the faith, if you’re going to give people a defense of the hope that is within you, there are those out there who are gonna ask philosophical kinds of questions, and you’ve gotta be ready to give an answer,” he says. You cannot give a reason you have never learned to think through. Skipping philosophy does not make the hard questions go away. It just means you are unprepared when they show up, usually from someone you actually care about.
Isn’t Knowledge the Real Goal, Not Wisdom?
Rhodes makes a distinction that reframes the whole purpose of studying philosophy. He prefers the word wisdom to knowledge, because the goal was never to stockpile facts for their own sake. “I like the word wisdom over knowledge, because wisdom is not just about the accumulation of data, facts and truths. Wisdom is about applying knowledge to life,” he says.
This comes from his own story. As a teenager he wanted to believe but carried too many unanswered questions, and a radical encounter with Jesus settled his doubt without erasing his mind. The questions did not disappear. They got put to use.
This connects to a wider conviction across the Jude 3 Project’s conversations about what the life of the mind is for. Sho Baraka, who has spent his career using art to engage culture with theological depth, makes a parallel point about why form and substance both matter: “When you communicate countercultural views in a fresh way, and those things are repeated, that’s a beautiful way to use art.” Whether the tool is philosophy or art, Rhodes and Baraka share the same point. The goal is never information sitting inert in your head. It is something true, applied to an actual life and communicated in a way that reaches someone.
What’s a Practical Skill This Actually Gives You?
One of the most immediately useful tools philosophy offers is the ability to name a broken argument when you see one, which matters more online than almost anywhere else. Rhodes walks through a few common ones. The straw man is the most common move on social media: instead of engaging someone’s actual view, you attack a cartoon version of it that is easier to knock down.
“A straw man fallacy basically means you take the worst caricature of a person’s argument or belief and use that to argue against all the people who agree with the best of that argument,” Rhodes says. Learn that move, and a few others like the ad hominem, and you stop falling for them and stop committing them yourself. That second part matters as much as the first. Philosophy does not just protect you from bad arguments aimed at you. It keeps you honest about the arguments you make toward other people.
Where Does All This Actually Point?
Rhodes maps philosophy onto three old pursuits that go back to the ancient world: truth, goodness and beauty. Truth is how we know what we know. Goodness is how we ought to live. Beauty stretches all the way to justice, what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called the beloved community. “One way that has come out of classical philosophy has been looking at philosophy as the search for truth, goodness and beauty,” Rhodes says.
For the Christian, none of these three pursuits dead-ends in an abstraction. They all lead back to the one who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). That is the real case Rhodes is making underneath the practical one. Studied well, philosophy is not a competing discipline that pulls you away from Jesus. It is one more set of tools for pursuing the things that find their source in him, more clearly and more honestly than avoidance ever could.
What Would Change if Your Church Actually Took This Seriously?
Picture a Bible study where someone’s honest question about suffering, or about why a loving God allows what he allows, gets met with real engagement instead of a quick verse and a change of subject. That is the practical difference Rhodes is describing. A congregation with even a little philosophical literacy can sit with a hard question long enough to work through it, instead of treating the question itself as the danger.
This is not a call for every believer to become an academic philosopher. It is a call to stop treating careful thought as the opposite of strong faith. Rhodes’s own testimony is the proof of concept. He did not out-think his way into doubt. He used the tools of careful reasoning to hold his real questions without panicking, and found that a genuine encounter with Jesus did not require him to set his mind aside. The two grew up together, and that is the invitation he is extending to the whole church, not just to the students in his classroom.
Start small if the whole framework feels like too much at once. Pick one hard question you have been avoiding, the kind that surfaces at a family gathering or in a college dorm and leaves you grasping for a verse instead of an actual answer. Spend real time with it. Read what thoughtful Christians across history have said about it. You will not need a philosophy degree to do this well. You will need the willingness Rhodes is modeling: to stop treating the question as a threat and start treating it as an invitation to think more clearly about a faith that can bear the weight of your scrutiny.
Quick Answers
Doesn’t Colossians 2:8 tell Christians to avoid philosophy? Rhodes says it warns against philosophy that is vain deceit, not against thinking itself. The verse is often misused as a blanket ban when it actually names a specific kind of content to avoid.
Why does an apologist need philosophy specifically? Skeptics and genuine seekers ask philosophical questions about truth, suffering and meaning. To give a reason for your hope, as 1 Peter 3:15 calls for, you have to be able to think through those questions, not just recite an answer.
What are the main branches of philosophy worth knowing? Metaphysics covers the big why questions, logic covers how to reason well, epistemology covers how we know what we know, ethics covers what is good, and aesthetics covers what is beautiful.
What is a logical fallacy worth learning to spot? The straw man: arguing against the worst version of someone’s view instead of its best version. Also worth learning is the ad hominem, which attacks the person instead of the actual argument.
Does studying philosophy mean putting knowledge over faith? No. Rhodes prefers the word wisdom to knowledge, because the goal is applying truth to an actual life, not accumulating facts for their own sake.
Listen to the Full Conversation
This teaching comes from the Jude 3 Project podcast, hosted by Lisa Fields, founder of the Jude 3 Project. Listen to the full session to hear Dr. CJ Rhodes’s complete case for why the church needs philosophy, and watch for his follow-up conversations on the philosophy of religion.
Dr. CJ Rhodes is a pastor, writer and speaker who teaches at the intersection of theology, philosophy and the Black church.