In the book of Colossians, Paul warns against being taken captive by specific types of philosophy, that is, by "hollow and deceptive" philosophy (NIV). Even translations like the ESV and KJV that might initially make it sound like Paul's worldview is against philosophy itself, as if there is any single philosophy (although only some philosophical ideas can be true!), continue to speak of the philosophy in question being a construct of human tradition, not a truth of logical necessity. This is not the only place in the New Testament epistles where Paul may initially appear to be quite hypocritical and otherwise irrational without actually holding to something illogical by default. If Christianity is false or if he only assumed it to be true, then he would still be irrational, but at least he is not pretending like all philosophy is false or like Judeo-Christianity is not an example of a philosophy.
As with some other misinterpretations of Biblical passages, simply reading the full verse already shows that this misconception is indeed contrary to the plain statements in the text. It is not all philosophy that Paul rejects; if he did, he would be an utter hypocrite, and even more erroneously, he would be denying basic logical facts: everything is philosophical, and all philosophies are true or false, with Christianity being no exception. There can be none! First and foremost, for his ideology to be even possible, it must at least be consistent with what is logically true either way, and he absolutely does not hold to anything which contradicts these truths.
Colossians 2:8 (NIV)—"See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ."
According to his own words, Paul is only writing against a certain kind of philosophy, namely that which is erroneous, invented by people, and (if Christianity is true) contrary to the nature and teachings of Christ. Paul's philosophy is hardly anti-philosophy. Whether or not any other tenet of his worldview is correct, he does not mishandle this particular point.
Rationalistic philosophy is inherently true, moreover, because logical axioms being false still involves them being true, and other necessary truths are rooted in these axioms. True rationalism is not a human tradition or construct, but a philosophy centered on the objective, intrinsic truths of logic [1], which cannot be false and apart from which there is neither anything to know nor a way to secure knowledge. They depend on neither Christ nor Yahweh, just as they do not depend upon the material world or the human mind. Paul does not directly mention rationalism in Colossians 2, but he does not deny its truth, nor does he proclaim that philosophy is irrelevant to truth or that Christianity is not philosophical as all aspects of reality are, as well as all false concepts and the reasons why they are false.
He in fact appeals to explicitly philosophical ideas in accounts like that of Acts 17:16-31, where he engages with Athenian philosophers and elaborates upon certain concepts such as the metaphysical dependence of humans on God and cites what certain pagan authors wrote about God (17:28). Yet valid philosophy is both grounded in and illuminated by the laws of logic, not education, books, personal exposure to literature, and appeals to authority (including scholars and authors). Paul vitally does not say one must read works like the ones he quotes or even the Bible itself in order to know anything which can be known, including some facts about the concept of theism and its relevance to Judeo-Christian philosophy, or that one must fixate on conversational prompting or cultural popularity in order to explore a worldview or rightfully give one's allegiance to it, if applicable.
Later, in Romans 1, he advocates for specific philosophical ideas like theism and moral realism; while he does not go into a large amount of detail into how to epistemologically prove miscellaneous things he is committed to, he plainly presents it as logically apparent that God has an eternal nature as the uncaused cause (Romans 1:20) and that worshiping idols is asinine because they are merely images created by people to resemble other things in the contingent world of matter (1:22-23). Unlike what "Christian" presuppositionalists assume, the New Testament author does not say one must or can only assume that God exists or deny rationalism itself in any other way, metaphysically or epistemologically.
Paul obviously does not dismiss philosophy in all its forms. More fundamentally than that this error does not reflect what he really says in the Biblical book of Colossians, any rejection of philosophy entails an anti-philosophy philosophy, which contradicts reason and the Bible itself, as the Bible plainly puts forth a particular philosophy containing many individual ideas. Paul does not stoop to this hypocrisy or genuinely make it seem as though he does in his exact wording, which, again, is starkly clear if one reads the entire verse even in versions besides the NIV.
[1]. Not all logical truths are intrinsic in the ultimate sense, since only logical axioms are true in themselves because their falsity still entails their veracity. Some logical truths do depend on others, with only logical axioms being true independent of all else. However, other logical facts are still necessarily true because they stem from these self-necessary truths.
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